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Teach Yourself Gaelic Complete Course Audiopack | 
 enlarge | Authors: Boyd Robertson, Iain Taylor
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $15.00
You Save: $12.95 (46%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 107128
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.7
ISBN: 0071418849
Dewey Decimal Number: 491.6282421
UPC: 639785413660
EAN: 9780071418843
ASIN: 0071418849
Publication Date: November 21, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: M20080807092403H
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Product Description
Learning Gaelic as easy as 1-2-3 With this book, Gaelic is attainable for any beginning student. You can use Teach Yourself Gaelic Complete Course at your own pace or as a supplement to formal courses. This complete course is based on the very latest learning methods and designed to be enjoyable and user-friendly. Prepared by experts in the language, Teach Yourself Gaelic begins with the basics and gradually promotes you to a level of smooth and confident communication, including: - Up-to-date, graded interactive dialogues
- Graded units of culture notes, grammar, and exercises
- Step-by-step guide to pronunciation
- Practical vocabulary
- Regular and irregular verb tables
- Plenty of practice exercises and answers
- Bilingual glossary
Package includes two 60-minute CDs and a book.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
 Not for beginners! December 25, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is definitely not for beginners. There's little in the way of explaining pronunciation, or anything else for that matter. I'd return it if I could. Better look elsewhere.
 Dedication will pay off September 7, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
While the older version by Roderick MacKinnon may be better for all the fine points of grammar, this is the version you want for learning conversational Gaelic. The lessons build upon each other gradually, so you'll want to master each one before preceding. With dedication, you'll do just fine.
 Some very good points, a few areas to work on. July 12, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
One thing I very much appreciated about this course (though it is likely to be a point that turns off inexperienced and first-time language learners)is the way in which the book plunges straight into quite sophistocated language. The approach of providing "lexical chunks" rather than single words or endless grammar examples is, in my opinion very useful and very appropriate to such an idiomatic language as Gaelic.
On the down side, I have to agree with other reviewers that felt the pronunciation section of the book was severely lacking. A more detailed description of what to expect would enable learners, not only to better follow the CD, but also attempt to more accurately pronounce new vocab learned from reading independently outside the course. Way too much detective work is necessary to build up a picture of pronunciation rules from the CDs and a more comprehensive overview would really be immensely helpful- especially given how complex the pronunciation of Gaelic is!
Regarding the CD moreover, personally, I wish the speed of delivery were a little more natural- the stilted word-word-word delivery is a little annoying. It is possible to speak clearly yet naturally and I don't feel it is much help to get used to turtle-speed speech when normal spoken Gaelic is much faster. Clear speech is essential but overly slow speech is unnatural.
Finally, I really wish that the grammar index was more comprehensive so that it would be possible to refer to grammar as necessary without feeling bound by the course structure- it is, after all, a self-instruction course and I need something that will enable me to reach the language I need when I need it. On a related point, it would also be a great help to have an English-Gaelic glossary as well as the Gaelic-English one to avoid having to search through the units looking for forgotten vocabulary.
Overall, with some revision, this could really be a good course. I have enjoyed using it and it has been a great help but with some improvements it could be much better.
job well done September 11, 2006
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
I bought this pack without high expectations but because it looked better than the alternatives.
Let me say at the outset that the book by itself is useless for teaching anybody Gaelic. I have yet to see any useful written material on Gaelic pronunciation, and this book does not even try. My guesses, even as an experienced linguist, were far off the mark. With the CD's however it is another matter - they are excellent, though the learning curve is steep at first and a few written tips of things to look out for would have been helpful.
Each unit contains (primarily) a dialogue, with key expressions collected at the end, a grammar section and a useful selection of exercises. All this material is professionally organized, and the level of the grammar explanations is probably about right for most learners - clear and thorough enough without any danger of overload. For the first half of the book there are also sections on Gaelic terms against their cultural background.
After working through about half of the book, I can say that I am pleased with the purchase, and feel that I am already getting the hang of this language far more quickly than I would have imagined. But don't forget the CD's.
The Tongue of the Gael... May 2, 2006
22 out of 23 found this review helpful
I think this set has aquired some negativity it does not deserve. For one, it never claimed to be teaching Irish, it's a matter of proper terminology - if you want to learn Irish, buy a book that says IRISH. Nor does it claim to be an on-the-go trainer; of course it's book dependent.
I highly recommend this, it is the most thorough course available for beginners. The other course mentioned hereabouts, "Colloquial Gaelic", does NOT do as good a job teaching the language, focusing on phrases rather than giving one a full understanding of the functions of Gaelic grammar, a must in order to learn this complicated language.
TY's kit does an excellent job teaching the really useful elements of speech. We learn conversational ballast rather than the mostly-ubiquitous "this is a book" lines too often taught. Lessons are given in managable chunks, and the background sections make for interesting reading. The edition does stand in need of a little revision, being unchanged for over a decade, and a little more audio material would be nice, but as a beginner's kit, it does its job well.
I've owned this kit for a number of years, making a little more progress each time I turn to it. Gaelic is best learned this way, along with a dictionary to browse through, and of course listening to much good Gaelic music (I recommend Runrig and Capercaillie).
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