Just released - Buntús Cainte for iPod, iPhone and iPad!

A few weeks ago, we secured the rights to produce a new version of Buntús Cainte, the most popular Irish language course in history. And after a few weeks of very hard work, we’ve launched Buntús Cainte for iPod, iPhone and iPad!

We’ve used some geek magic to insert the English and Irish text right inside the MP3 files. This means you can listen to the audio and read the text right on your iPod or iPhone!

Now there’s no need to carry a course book with you. Just download the MP3s to your device and you can learn or brush up on your Irish wherever you are, whenever you want. I’m taking Buntús Cainte away with me this weekend on a trip to Fermanagh – I love having the chance to learn and revise my Irish in short bursts no matter where I am. Where will you learn Irish with Buntús Cainte?

Check out the course and let me know what you think of it. And feel free to spread the word to friends, colleagues and family too!

Slán,

Michelle

Hi Michelle,

Still haven't located this in either the irish or British AppStore.......soon come?

I have been looking for something for the ipod.

Any idea of what the content is like.

there's not really much info on that advertisement page.

Lastlad,

If you visit the bandcamp page at http://talkirish.bandcamp.com/album/bunt-s-cainte-book-1, you can get the first lesson free, so you can check it out. What sort of other information do you reckon we should put on the site to explain the course to people? I could do a lesson list if that was useful?

Éamonn,

The course isn't available on the app store - it's an MP3 course with the lyrics embedded as metadata. Unfortunately Apple doesn't accept content from wee publishers like us, so we had to go through a third party to get our content out there. And none of the third party publishers we could find accepted MP3s with metadata, so we had to go through bandcamp, who distribute MP3s with metadata. This all took quite a while to figure out and test.

We do have other content in the pipeline that we will be able to submit directly to Apple (apps). But for now, you can only get the Buntús Cainte MP3 course through our site.

Give it a whirl and let us know what you think of it.

Go raibh maith agaibh,

Michelle

Ah, this is handy.  I can add this onto my iPods! i have on for my car and and a Shuffle for the gym.  Excellent, will download tonight at home.

Hi there, I saw your post and I just bought the course for my iPod touch yesterday - so I can let you know what I thought of the content so far!

I bought the course the other day.  It's good value I think, it's £9.99 and you get 60 lessons.  I downloaded it from Bandcamp - it's like an independent version of iTunes where you buy digital stuff.  I downloaded it on my computer and then put the content into iTunes on my iPod Touch (because stupid Apple only let you download on an iPod via iTunes - damn Steve Jobs and his lockdowns!!!  But it's easy to do, and then you can put straight into iTunes either on your computer or your iPod.

So I've been listening to it the past day or two, and I think it's really good.  The lessons are short and sweet, just enough content to take in in one lesson.  You hear the audio, which is very clear and it's good quality audio.  It's slow enough for a beginner to take in as well.  You can follow the lyrics/words on screen, so you can hear the audio and see the vocab at the same time.  You get the necessary vocab words, phrases and sentences first, with their English translations - like Tá an aimsir go dona - The weather is bad (very apposite today!!)  

So you can hear them and see the words as well.  It really helps to see the words and hear them spoken because the spellings look so different from the actual pronunciation, so I found that v useful.  Then there's a short dialogue with a few of the Buntús Cainte characters, with the English translation below.  You can pause it at any time and practice repeating the phrases or sentences they've just used.

I like it a lot so far, I don't have the time to do big long lessons so these are perfect as I can follow a lesson in 10 or 15 mins.  I do mine on the train in the morning :)

I think this course is great for anybody on the move, you can watch or listen or even have it on in the background to remind you of key sentences etc.  It's great for the bus, the plane, the train or just for fitting in whenever and wherever you are!

Hope that helps folks :)

Karen

It helps a lot Karen! Thank you! I was debating whether or not to purchase Buntús Cainte. I was afraid it would be like the other CD I purchased (not from here..lol) and the whole thing was about..Are you an American?  No I am Irish..etc.  I was so disappointed. But after reading your post I am going to buy this. So thanks again! 

Sasha

Maidin mhaith a chara ( hope I said that right? lol)  I just tried again to download the free lesson ( tried once before but flopped..it was my bad though ) anyway , just wanted to say that this time I did it right and it works great on my MP3 player! You really put a lot of effort in this site and I just wanted to say thank you!   Slán  Sasha

yeah bought it myself there last week. its really good and handy for the car on the way to work.

found it really useful for learning what sentences sound like which is important when learning to speak the language.

found a bug in one of lessons. anyone else find it?

A bug ?  As in a virus bug??

no no no not a virus bug

rather a language mistake. well, maybe not a mistake, probably more dialect.

Hey lastlad, can you let me know what the issue is? I should be able to clarify!

You mention that there is more content in the pipeline ... could you elaborate a bit please? I'm hoping that there will be more lessons.

It seems that the text only appears in the MP3 format.  I downloaded the free Lesson 1 MP3, and it looked good, but I’d prefer to have this kind of thing stored as an audio book.  I just prefer, when I click on “shuffle” in my music, to not have some random chapter from the middle of some book or language lesson get thrown into a mix of music.

Yeah true, I think there is 3 books in the series?

But, I just wanted to mention that I bought Buntús Cainte and I have an iPod Classic.
It works well, you just have to click the centre about 4 to 5 times and then you will be able to see the written Irish and the English translation.

I think this is a great download to purchase. To be able to learn on the go, very useful for very busy people.