Irish books, cds, posters, etc

Motherfoclóir: Dispatches from a Not So Dead Language by Darach Ó Séaghdha

LauraHuntORI — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 02:07:59 GMT

Anyone read this? I am reading it now.

Google agus Gaeilge

michelle — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:15:40 GMT

Google has kicked off an Endangered Languages Project. This is a site to help preserve languages that are under threat in the modern age. Half of all the world’s languages are described as being “on the verge of extinction.”

The site details four levels of language-crisis: “at risk,” “endangered,” “severely endangered,” and “vitality unknown” (uh oh…)

Here’s how they describe and rank Irish:

http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/3437

Anyone been on the site?

Recommended dictionary and grammar?

tora — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:30:25 GMT

Dia daoibh a chairde!

Just wanted to check if anyone can recommend an Irish dictionary? I'm just a beginner, but I'd like to have a good sturdy dictionary that won't be too basic once I get better...also, if there are any good grammar books out there I'd be interested to know!

Slán go fóill, Tora

Irish shoes

sbat — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 03:03:07 GMT

Hi,

I would like to get my husband some nice, traditional Irish shoes for Christmas. We live in the states and have never been to Ireland, but we both have Irish running through our veins. I was looking at different styles of brougues and found some to be very nice, but really expensive. Where can I get some Irish shoes from an Irish company?

Thanks!

Great new album inspired by Ireland

SweetJesus — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 16:46:25 GMT

The album is called "The Right People" by Fine by Me. You can find it on Spotify

I met this kid in Chicago who claimed to be a former banjo player, and he asked me to listen to his album. At first I was skeptical, because it seemed pretty bogus. Turns out, not only is the album pretty good, but it has everything to do with Ireland. Underglow on a Pontoon is about a day spent in Ireland, and the whole album seems heavily inspired by the town of Slane.

Solid 7/10 overall, I wouldn't pay for it but luckily enough it was free. Check it out

please recommend interesting irish fiction for a beginner

toggobogay — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 14:42:31 GMT

i'm trying to learn irish on my own and would like to start reading a simple irish book. are there any recommendations?

i would prefer text that was originally written in irish rather than something translated from another language. the little prince would be a fall-back option.

Grá Mo Chroí An Óige

LauraHuntORI — Thu, 18 May 2017 02:22:46 GMT

Cheannaigh mé an dlúthdhiosca Grá Mo Chroí An Óige chanadh ag Gearóidín Breathnach. Is maith liom é.

Ar chuala sibh é?

Pimsleur Course

Cianaigh — Sun, 24 May 2009 18:51:46 GMT

Pimsleur $9.95 + Free S&H

Best Pimsleur offer ever! Offer ends soon. Act now.
PimsleurApproach.com

I don't know how good this is but the price isn't bad.

BYKI Irish iPhone App

michelle — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:23:32 GMT

BYKI French was one of the first iPhone apps I bought - when the Irish app came out, I bought it straight away. BYKI's online software which has been around since about the early 90s. The BYKI website promises you'll be able to 'learn <a language> fast, know it forever' using their system. If only

DIALECT

The BYKI Irish app aims to teach you 1000 words and phrases. I'm not an expert on identifying dialects - I can only say it's not Ulster - e.g. 'Dia duit' is pronounced 'Jee-ah Guh-widge' not 'Jee-ah Ditch' as you'd more commonly hear in Ulster. You'll learn 'Conas atá tú?' for 'How are you?' instead of our more common 'Cad é mar ata tú?'

HOW IT WORKS

BYKI teach with their 3 step process, which involves:

1 Look through flashcards with images and text.

2 Test yourself - look at the Irish and see if you can get the English

3 Test yourself - look at the English and see if you can get the Irish

4 QUIZ

Yes. It's actually a four-step process. They must think that three steps sounds better than four!

In step one you see the text, an image and hear the Irish spoken. Steps 2 and 3 show you the Irish/English and you tap to reveal the answer, telling the app whether or not you got it correct.

Finally, there's the quiz. I use this as a test quite often - I go straight to the quiz to see how I do. If I'm awful, I'll do the set from scratch. If I'm 100%, I'll mark the list off as learned. I also use this to quick revise lists I learned a while back.

Problem 1 - the lists
BYKI's language lists are frustrating. You only get to download a maximum of 91 lists - with about 10 words in each. That's sort of fine, I guess, except that there's no real reason for this limit. And the lists are not always grouped the way I would group words - e.g. You might be asked to learn 'go raibh maith agat' in the 'at the bank' list. It's not that I might not want to say 'go raibh maith agat' at the bank - it's just that I'd rather learn that word in a list of 'polite stuff' and learn another money word or phrase in the bank list. You can't really tell what you'll get in a list.

Problem 2 - Learning what you already know
You can't delete words you know and keep words you don't. So if there's a list of 10 words and you already know 'dia duit' and 'slán', you'll still have to sit through repeated exposure to 'dia duit' and 'slán' when you'd rather be pushing your brain with new stuff. EVERY app I've used has this problem, so it's not a big BYKI failure - but still - being bored when learning is death to the retention process.

Other useful features on BYKI French
Twitter search
Real-time Twitter search of words and phrases from within Byki for iPhone. I loved this feature in BYKI for French - it's so interesting to get random real-life usage of French phrases. Doesn't work so well for Irish - even obvious words like 'slán' frequently don't have results. Guess we all need to tweet more as Gaeilge!

Download User Language Lists
I know you can donwload lists from over 5,000 user-created lessons, but this feature never seemed to work for me - kept crashing and I gave up. Perhaps it's more stable now, but you've still got the problem of figuring out which of the 5,000 lists are any good. Would be better if BYKI would either create new lists for us to download, or star extra-good or popular lists from the user-generated lists.

Extend your app with BYKI deluxe
If you buy BYKI deluxe (currently about £35) you can create your own language lists and download them to your phone. There's a free trial for this - and it's a similar feature to Mental Case, which I'll be reviewing later. Great feature, I guess, if you've the time to sit and make your own lists. I certainly don't.

Neat controls
BYKI offer great settings control - you can turn off the English voice that so irritates a lot of users, so you just hear the target language. You can change the scores, either to mark off word sets you know and don't need to learn, or to cheat and make yourself feel better. You can change the quiz settings from Irish-English and vice versa (I prefer the harder English-Irish setting).

Stats
It's got a nice little stats option, which will tell you how many sessions you've had, number of learned cards, number of learned lists and total time spent learning.

VERDICT?
I highly recommend BYKI as one of the best language apps I've found. It could do better, but few apps compare. It's well worth the money.
Costs: £4.99 sterling

Want to try BYKI before you buy? I can't find a 'lite' BYKI Irish app, but I found 15 BYKI languages - a free app that introduces you to different languages using the BYKI system.

Anyone else tried BYKI and liked it?

wall calendar

birdnbush — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:19:46 GMT

Could anyone tell me where I could get an Irish language wall calendar? Do they even exist?

Birdnbush\ heather Mavis

Rosetta Stone - Irish (Volumes 1-3)

Aio — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:23:22 GMT

Dia duit,

As part of my resolution for the new year, and a commitment to make myself better, I purchased the Rosetta Stone language teaching software and have now been using it for 5 days. It seems the first 'block' of lessons has been dedicating itself to lightly to vocabulary and actual sentance structure, instead focusing a lot more on pronunciation. I can construct a few basic sentances now and am trying to dedicate 45min to 1hr a day working on these lessons. It came with companion CDs too that are basically 'repeat after me' lessons, for the one's I've experienced thus far.

Part of my 'non lesson' time involves me seeing objects and trying to repeat, and if I can, spell the Irish for that word. I own two cats, so cat is easy, hehe. Some of what they're teaching me I can make light sense of, such as how singular and plural affects the structure of the verbs and their tense. I am hoping they will expand more on this in future lessons. I enabled the international keyboard on that laptop and now have an Irish keyboard I can switch to and use instead of their in program 'vowel palette' which I am not terribly fond of.

This was a rather hefty investment I feel, but I feel it is worth it thus far. I am going to look for some music in which Irish is spoken to help reinforce my learning at work. The companion audio CDs are nice, but they're more engaging and I need something that allows me to passively address the pronunciation and grammar of the language. I do like going from, "Hey! They just said horse!" to, "Oh, so this song is about his horse!"

After some more time progresses I will weigh in again on how I feel my lessons are going. I wish there was more focus on writing/spelling the words, but I hope that will come later.

Slán!

PS - If i get something wrong, PLEASE tell me. Won't learn unless I am corrected.

Foclóir Gaeilge Amháin

LauraHuntORI — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 01:40:25 GMT

An bhfuil foclóir Gaeilge amháin ann? Is é sin, foclóir de na focail Gaeilge lena bríonna i nGaeilge?

Saor leabhair PDF

Cianaigh — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:36:36 GMT

This link was sent to me the other day.

Donna Wong's "Learner's Guide to Irish" is now free for personal use:
http://coislife.ie/books/academic/learners2.htm

I also found these online while looking for Old Time Radio programs on Internet Archive.

The educational pronouncing dictionary of the Irish language : - Duirinne, Seamus O
Cover title: The educational Irish-English pronouncing dictionary
Irish English Dictionary (1904) Irish English Dictionary - Rev. Patrick S. Dinneen
An English Irish dictionary (1814) An English Irish dictionary - [Connellan, Thaddeus], d. 1854. [from old catalog] Book digitized by Google from the library of the New York Public Library and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

Teach Yourself Irish by Myles Dillon

Mary Lea — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 19:13:16 GMT

Hi there - I've just found an original copy of this book for a pound, and it will be turning up in the next few days. My Dad tells me that it used to come with LPs for the (Munster) pronunciation. (He's also warned me what to expect - grammar and lots of it, though he assures me it is very practical.)

Anyway - I have heard it said that, in some mystical internet land, there are mp3s of the original LPs. Which would obviously help pronunciation if it were true.

Does anyone know where I can find sound files? Or if worst comes to worst, where I can find LPs that aren't scratched to ribbons?

Thank you!

Irish Posters?!

danielm — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 11:40:36 GMT

hi all!

I been looking for irish posters on the web and i found a few pieces that i really liked and i might order, then i searched for pictures with the Google Images option and came across some really fantastic images, im thinking to have them printed as posters but i feel i should ask for more!

any good websites that sell posters?

Leabhar nua le Dale - New book by Dale

seano — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 17:56:02 GMT

Announcing a new e-book in Irish! Cúig Nóiméad go dtí an Nollag is an Irish language translation of a poem published in picture book form, and is available from Amazon.com for Kindle, or you may download a free Kindle reader from Amazon or from your app store to read this or other Kindle content on your iPad, iPod, iPhone, Android, computer, or other pad or device. Cúig Nóiméad go dtí an Nollag (Five Minutes to Christmas) tells the story of an old gentleman alone on Christmas Eve who receives a series of gifts from an unknown source. Each gift has a message attached, and the messages together remind him of why Christmas is celebrated.

If you are interested, here is the Amazon.com link: http://www.amazon.com/C%C3%BAig-N%C3%B3im%C3%A9ad-Nollaig-Irish-Edition-ebook/dp/B00QU9GDNS/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_img_1

If you are interested in the English version, it can be found at:

http://www.amazon.com/Five-Minutes-Christmas-Dale-Dennis-ebook/dp/B00QSMXMTU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1418390324&sr=8-3&keywords=five+minutes+to+christmas

The poem was written by Dale Dennis, who is a member of the TalkIrish forum, and illustrated beautifully by his friend Terry Johnston.

The book is a great place to pick up a lot of seasonal terminology in Irish!

All the best, Seáno. :-)

Litriocht.com

Litriocht — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:23:45 GMT

Tá Litríocht.com atá bunaithe i gCorca Dhuibhne ag obair ar gach leabhar atá foilsithe as Gaeilge a chur ar fáil le díol ar a suíomh idirlinn. Tá rogha cuimsitheach leabhair, CD, agus DVDs do leanaí agus do dhaoine fásta le fáil ar an suíomh. Tá téacs leabhair scoile do bhunscoileanna agus do mheánscoileanna ann chomh maith. Tá léirmheas as Gaeilge agus as Béarla agus pictiúr de chlúdach gach leabhair le fáil ar an suíomh. Tugann áis cuardaigh téacs tuarthach ar an suíomh saoráid chun an leabhar atá uait ar an suíomh a aimsiú.

Tá an catalóg iomlán le fáil ag www.litriocht.com

West Kerry-based Litriocht.com is working to make all books published in Irish or on the Irish language available for sale on its website. There is a comprehensive selection on offer, including dictionaries, grammar books, novels, poetry, children’s books, DVDs and CDs for children and adults. We also supply school books to Irish Primary & Secondary schools. A bilingual description of each book together with the cover image can be viewed on the site. Our search facility with its predictive text makes it easy to find the book you are looking for.

The complete catalogue is available at www.litriocht.com

A free operating system in over 60 languages

Cianaigh — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:15:05 GMT

I was recently given a CD with Ubuntu 9.10 on it, Ubuntu is a version of Linux.

This is a free operating system and can be installed in one of over 60 languages including Gaeilge.

I installed it on an old computer that had windows xp on it that had crashed about 3 years ago

(I just never got around to disposing of it) It turns out it was just a windows problem and not a computer problem.

Anyway I installed the OS as Gaeilge and almost everything is in Gaeilge including the instructions for the games that come with the system.

Other software titles that are included, Firefox, Open Office.

Other options for running this OS include installing as a windows app, run it from a live CD, and dual booting. I tried running it from the CD and decided I like the OS enough that I'd try the old computer since it was just setting in a corner gathering dust.

Anyway if anyone is interested you can download the latest version 10.04 (699 MB) from Ubuntu and burn a CD and give it a try.

Irish Dictionary.org — Open Source Language resource

michelle — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:37:37 GMT

Eoin from www.irishdictionary.org works hard to bring Irish language resources to as many people as possible, for free.

His English Irish dictionary online is a great example of this.

It's a wikidictionary - created by submissions from its users. The dictionary has over 1,500 entries, and it's growing every day. You can also download a pdf containing all the dictionary entries.

Eoin's aim is to have a simple, accessible dictionary with fast search. You can search in Irish and in English. Eoin himself is the first to admit his dictionary isn't perfect - but it's better to have something than nothing.

Eoin's approach and goals can be summed up in two old Irish proverbs:

Tús maith, leath na hoibre - A good start is half the work

and

Trí na chéile a thógtar na cáisléain - In our togetherness, castles are built.

Learning for children

Cianaigh — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:19:21 GMT

I ran across this site last night that has an Irish speaking teddy if anyone might be interested.

An Prionsa Beag

Dale D — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 18:03:27 GMT

Cheannaigh mé leabhar "An Prionsa Beag" ó Cló Mhaigh Eo Foilsitheoirí (www.leabhar.com). Tá an leabhar so agam as Béarla; cheannaigh mé sé i mblian 1974 i gCorcaigh. Is féidir liom ag léamh as Gaeilge agus a chur i gcomparáid le Béarla. Tá súil agam go foghlaim focailí nua.

Dale D

PoetryBeo App - an Irish language Poetry App

EoinJ — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:00:56 GMT

Di Dhuit A Chairde,

PoetryBeo is a paid App that promotes the language that was relased recently in the app store and on android- it is of 10 poems in Irish. they are recited on video (streaming) and audio (downloaded). With subtitles in irish on the video there is no longer any need for phonetics. It has full explinations of the poetry including Caoinead Airt Uí Laoighre, Fill Arís, An tEarrach Thiar, the poetry and the analysis of it in both languages and sheds light on our history, ourselves and the language itself. In fact Fill Arís might be precribed readng for all. Its a lot of fun and and really brings the language alive. A frined of mine, Niamh Gleeson (who is now living in New York) said her kids cannot keep their heads out of it. We hope you like it.

Is mise, Eoin

www.poetrybeo.com (PoetryBeo Leaving cert app).

Spoken Irish LP records

MicheálOF — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 12:13:36 GMT

If you can still get them, the two LP vinyl records as companions to the old (pre1980) Teach Yourself Irish, from Gael-Linn, give a particularly attractive dialect - the lilting accent of West Cork, by two native speakers.

(I realise I'm biassed...)

'Dhá Theanga'?

Zhongwen — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 03:18:11 GMT

Hello~

I'm interested in viewing a BBC Northern Ireland programme from a few years ago, called 'Dhá Theanga'. Does anyone know of where I might purchase a dvd or video? Or alternatively, is anyone aware of a website where I might watch this series. I believe it was meant for children, thus would probably be right on my level!

Go raibh maith agaibh!

Nevermind

Jasmin — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:24:35 GMT

Nevermind!