Teach Yourself Gaelic Complete Course
by Teach Yourself Publishing, Boyd Robertson, Iain Taylor

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Book Reviews of Teach Yourself Gaelic Complete Course

Book Review: Excellent beginner's course in Scottish Gaelic
Summary: 5 Stars

Each chapter has vocabulary-building lists, a brief grammar section, and exercises and practice drills. Aspects of the language's grammar are typically introduced in the context of a given conversational requirement, so although the coverage of the grammar isn't systematic and especially technical, it's still good and more than adequate to understand the conversational examples and phrases. For those wanting a more rigorous treatment of the grammar of a language, you'll probably want to pick up a separate grammar to accompany the Teach Yourself courses, which is what I do.

To give you a little idea of what I've learned so far (much of it from this particular book), Irish belongs to the Celtic language family, the most western of the Indo-European language groups. It is of interest to linguists since it may preserve features of the original Indo-European proto-language. The family has two branches, the first composed of Gaelic and Manx, which are very similar to each other, and the other branch, composed of Welsh, Breton, and Cornish, but they are too different to be mutually intelligible. Irish is known as Gaeilge, and Welsh is called Cymraeg. Breton and Welsh are grouped together as Brythonic languages, while Irish and Scots Gaelic are grouped together as Goedelic languages. Irish and Scots Gaelic speakers can understand each other with some difficulty and also Welsh and Breton speakers. However, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a Welsh and an Irish speaker to understand each other.

Irish and Scots Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still alive, but Cornish and Manx have died out. The other Celtic languages that have died out are Galatian (spoken by Celts in central Turkey), Gaulish, and Celtiberian or Hispano-Celtic. The last three were assimilated into the Roman empire. Lastly, there was Pictish, which may or may not have been a real Celtic language.

Irish has a relatively small alphabet compared to most European languages, with only 18 letters. One of the ways Irish gets along with such a small alphabet is that there are complex rules relating to combinations of consonants and vowels, with the vowels affecting the pronunciation of the consonants. You'll learn about all of these in the sections on phonetics and pronunciation.

There are several interesting aspects to Irish phonetics. One is that it has what are called slender and broad consonants, or short and long versions of the consonants. An American speaker typically has long consonants, and a Scottish speaker short consonants, but Irish has both. To illustrate this concept, the "l" in the word "leaf" would be "slender," but in the word "feel," broad. Another interesting aspect of Irish phonetics is there are complex rules for mutation of sounds, such as in lenition and eclipsis of consonants. This often happens in the first consonants of verbs and nouns. Lenition means softening, or the replacement of a loud, abrupt sound by a softer hissing or continuous sound, as in the replacement of "c" by "ch." Eclipsis occurs when the sound of a consonant like "c" is overtaken by the sound of the consonant before it, such as a "g." I'm used to this phenomenon being referred to as forward or anterograde assimilation of consonants, and English also has it, as when the "s" in dogs sounds like a "z" because it is being assimilated by the voiced "g" sound. Russian is the reverse, and has regressive or retrograde assimilation of consonants.

Irish has masculine and feminine genders, and also something called the genitive singular, which affects different kinds of nouns when they are joined to the previous noun. Irish has similar verb tenses and moods to English, but the habitual past is more important in Irish. There are two perfect present tenses, based on the verbal adjective, or past participle, such as in "written," or the verbal noun, or gerund, as in "writing." Hence, Irish has present, past, present habitual, past habitual, and future tenses. It also has the imperative, conditional, and subjunctive moods, and there is a passive voice, similar to English and most Indo-European languages.

Well, I hope you didn't mind my little digression on Celtic and Irish linguistics, but getting back to the present book, this is an excellent book and audio tape combination for the beginning student of Scottish Gaelic. After completing this course, you'll have an excellent foundation in the language and will be ready to advance to the intermediate level in your studies.

Summary of Teach Yourself Gaelic Complete Course

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