Colloquial Irish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

260 Pages·2008·2.67 MB·English

by  Thomas Ihde

Colloquial
Irish
The Colloquial Series
Series Adviser: Gary King
The following languages are available in the Colloquial series:
Afrikaans German Romanian
Albanian Greek Russian
Amharic Gujarati Scottish Gaelic
Arabic (Levantine) Hebrew Serbian
Arabic of Egypt Hindi Slovak
Arabic of the Gulf Hungarian Slovene
and Saudi Arabia Icelandic Somali
Basque Indonesian Spanish
Breton Irish Spanish of Latin
Bulgarian Italian America
Cambodian Japanese Swahili
Cantonese Korean Swedish
Catalan Latvian Tamil
Chinese Lithuanian Thai
Croatian Malay Turkish
Czech Mongolian Ukrainian
Danish Norwegian Urdu
Dutch Panjabi Vietnamese
English Persian Welsh
Estonian Polish Yoruba
Finnish Portuguese
French Portuguese of Brazil
COLLOQUIAL 2s series: The Next Step in Language Learning
Chinese Italian Spanish
Dutch Portuguese of Brazil Spanish of Latin
French (forthcoming) America
German (forthcoming) Russian
All these Colloquials are available in book and CD packs, or separ-
ately. You can order them through your bookseller or via our website
www.routledge.com.
Colloquial
Irish
The Complete Course
for Beginners
Thomas Ihde, Máire Ní Neachtain,
Roslyn Blyn-LaDrew, and John Gillen
Center for Irish Language Acquisition Research
Institute for Irish-American Studies
City University of New York
First published 2008
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group,
an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2008 Thomas Ihde, Máire Ní Neachtain, Roslyn Blyn-LaDrew, John Gillen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Colloquial Irish / Thomas Ihde...[et al.].
p. cm. – (The colloquial series)
1. Irish language–Textbooks for foreign speakers–English. 2. Irish
language–Self-instruction. I. Ihde, Thomas W.
PB1227.5.E5C65 2008
491.6′282421–dc22 2007025225
ISBN 0-203-88961-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978-0-415-38129-1 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-38131-4 (audio CDs)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-38130-7 (pack)
Contents
Introduction ix
1 Ag cur aithne ar dhaoine 1
Getting to know people
2 Ag caint fút féin 13
Talking about yourself
3 Ag caint faoin teaghlach 27
Talking about the family
4 Ag lorg eolais faoi lóistín 41
Seeking information about lodgings
5 Ag caint faoi chaithimh aimsire 54
Speaking about pastimes
6 Ag cur síos ar imeachtaí an lae 66
Describing events of the day
7 Ag caint faoi na scileanna atá agat 79
Talking about the skills that you have
8 Ag cur síos ar chúrsaí oibre 91
Describing employment situations
9 Bia, deoch, agus ceol 102
Food, drink, and music
10 Sláinte 113
Health
vi Contents
11 Cúrsaí siopadóireachta 125
Going shopping
12 Laethanta saoire 137
Holidays/vacation
13 Orduithe 150
Orders
14 Socruithe 161
Arrangements
Grammar summary 173
Dialect appendix 190
Key to exercises 200
Dialogue translations 215
Irish–English glossary 222
English–Irish glossary 232
Index 243
éarby
std
miue
Liss
na ps i
ú a
dm
Orn
he d o
te
y s
ba
56 n. B
19w
n ho
ed ie s
as define text ar a (2005).
d th ht
haded in eltac
se a
ricts ntion na G
distme ás
g e ar
kinhos Úd
at
er
po
h-sds
sn
ria
e Iisl
ther
h g
witlar
ay nly
wO
Galht).
n c
ra
WesteGaelt
(

Introduction
This book teaches the regional dialect spoken in the Province of
Connacht in Ireland. While every effort has been made to notbecome
overly focused on one local dialect, in an effort to be true to the title
of this book, Colloquial Irish, the Irish of Cois Fharraige is deferred
to when vocabulary or grammatical choices needed to be made.
Cois Fharraige roughly extends just west of Galway City to Ros an
Mhíl. However, many of the specific characteristics of this local
dialect would be similar to the entire region including Connemara
and other Irish-speaking areas in the Province of Connacht. A gram-
matical guide that compares Connacht Irish with the other two
regional dialects appears in the appendix.
This book is written by Irish-language instructors who have taught
adult complete beginners in Ireland and the USA for many years.
This book is the product of a collaboration of four research fellows
affiliated with the Center for Irish Language Acquisition Research,
part of the City University of New York (CUNY) Institute for Irish-
American Studies. The chapters were originally drafted by Thomas
Ihde, who teaches Irish at Lehman College, CUNY. Thomas’s
own interest in the Irish of County Galway is a result of his native
Irish-speaking grandfather who grew up on the eastern shores of
Lough Corrib. Máire Ní Neachtain (Coláiste Mhuire Gan Smál,
Ollscoil Luimnigh) provided essential native-speaker input as well as
overall pedagogical and grammatical editing as each unit was com-
pleted. She also coordinated the selection and recording of native
speakers. Máire was born and raised in Cois Fharraige where she
still lives and remains active in the Irish-speaking community. Roslyn
Blyn-LaDrew (University of Pennsylvania) and John Gillen (Hostos
Community College, CUNY) each provided grammatical input on
the drafted chapters. Additionally, Roslyn shared her many years
of pedagogical experience of teaching Irish to adults in America,
and John provided expert dialectal knowledge for the chapters and
grammar appendix.