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A grammar book in English based on the grammatical principles presented in Niall O Dónaill's Irish-English dictionary. The rules of Irish grammar are presented here in a clear, easy-to-understand manner ... Read more

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One of three recommended grammars for learners of Irish
This book's a useful entry in what I'd recommend as the troika of grammatical references that'll pull you ahead as a learner of Irish through snowdrifts and impassable ruts. Irish grammar for English speakers offers few recognizable landmarks by which to orient one's self. This book is a straightforward reference, the 'Leabhar Gramadaí Gaeilge' from 2002; this English version is also from the same publisher, the fine Irish-language book and music purveyor Cló Iar-Chonnachta. (I presume that as Noel McGonagle this same author wrote for Hippocrene Press the shorter resource "Irish Grammar." That book is not the same as this one!) Based on Niall Ó Dónaill's Foclóir Gaeilge- Béarla, the standard dictionary, IGB sets out the Irish terms and paradigms in an attractive green font; the English translations appear side by side in an italicized green boldfaced. This handsome layout appeals to the learner.

Unlike Éamonn Ó Dónaill's "Teach Yourself Irish Grammar," IGB lacks any exercises. The explanations are here slightly more detailed in places than in TYIG. This book lacks the immediate classroom usefulness that Donna Wong's college-level "Learner's Guide to Irish" possesses with that book's expensive spiral-binding and larger, easier to hold, format. But, for concision, IGB may be sufficient for quick answers and simple demonstrations of conventions. If not here, than in LGI would be the expected order of investigation for topics; TYIG than could be used for drills and reinforcement by practical examples for student practice.

I spot-checked ordinal and cardinal numbering, for me a difficult concept. IGB offers a bit more than TYIG, far less than LGI, so it fits my estimation of the coverage intended by each of these three basic grammatical works for learners, all written in this century, therefore attentive to how Irish is taught to learners in urban, far-flung, and self-tutored set-ups beyond the typically near-uniform Irish schoolroom.

Unlike LGI and TYIG, the Irish vocabulary used for explanations and exemplification is not always translated. My four-star ranking reflects this, although per se it may not be a shortcoming. I look at this book, however, from the perspective of a student, and so ask myself: if some of its illustrations are given also in English, why not all of them? Generally, lists appear of Irish words left as such; their English equivalents generally appear only when rendering phrases into Béarla. So, those needing the support of English might want to be more confident in their level of comprehension, although a dictionary on hand is an obvious necessity anyway. Yet, having the IGB reinforcement when learning of phrases alone and not vocabulary in English and Irish appears uneven. LGI and TYIG give the impression they could be used by learners anywhere, as they take pains to balance Irish with English; perhaps IGB reflecting its genesis is intended more for applications within classrooms in Ireland?

I would buy IGB before LGI; as a handy reference it's well-designed, laid out so as not to crowd the page, and pleasing to the eye of the otherwise overwhelmed newcomer to this fascinating but convoluted language-- at least as it appears to many native English-speakers. Including information on idioms, "varia," and expressions, although all are dealt with on only a page or two respectively, is a useful supplement that shows attention to a learner's needs. Any student of Irish can benefit from IGB, and along with LGI and TYIG may find that he or she will soon want to set all three on the same shelf to complement their aims and compare their explanations on fine points and how-to's of grammar.

Best Irish grammar for new learners
This is the long awaited English - Irish version of Nollaig Mac Congáil's Leabhar Gramadaí Gaeilge.The grammar rules are based on Niall Ó Dónaill's Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla and are presented in a concise and clear manner.An excellent addition if you are using a course such as Learning Irish by Mícheál Ó Siadhail. ... Read more

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Survey of how Belfast got its Irish (language) back
As with all Four Courts Press titles, this is a pricy book. The small academic publisher in Dublin, however, here gives good value for your money.

Cliché: a man on Belfast street listens to the hounds. They find more than one ear cocked in this collection of essays edited by Fionntán de Brún. Loyalists fearing native incursions repeat fears that the dogs themselves will revert to Irish, not only their Gaelic masters. As for the non-canine contingent, those not only native but many planted, of course, once spoke Irish and learn it today. This volume efficiently but thoroughly documents the fortunes of Irish throughout Belfast's eras.

Recent research has explored uses of Irish in the North so that the editor's wish for 'study of census figures' has already been undertaken. (14) Chapter 6 (pp. 134-171) of Diarmuit Mac Giolla Chríost, in The Irish Language in Ireland (London: Routledge, 2005--also reviewed by me on Amazon), synthesises 1991 and 2001 census data. He finds, among many intriguing details, that females more than males identify with the language 'as part of their cultural identity'. (MGC 164) Females with advanced technical and managerial occupations supply many of the region's younger Irish-speakers, the 1991 data suggested; however, 'males in particular are over-represented in the class "No Paid Job in Last Ten Years'".(MGC 145) Has this situation changed in the last fifteen years?

The final essay in this collection, Seán Mistéil's 'The Gaeltacht Quarter', affirms optimism. Like Temple Bar in Dublin, a district (he does not locate where but implies West Belfast) could by signage, cultural centres, businesses, and schools entice and endure - Mistéil proposes - as a magnet for Northern urban Irish speakers. His scheme illustrates how visionary the youngest proponents (he was born in 1964 and raised in 'Gaeltacht Bhóthar Seoighe' his note says) have grown - as among thousands raised in Ulster's original language.

While any city dweller might guess the meaning of Béal Feirste as 'the mouth of a farset', what is a farset? Patrick McKay explains this and more about the onamastic history that survives in the city on maps and signs today, in 'Belfast place-names and the Irish language.' Subsiding under today's districts, the old -often rural - toponyms ghost today's built environment. McKay provides each townland's etymology and appends a gazetteer of bilingual street names allowed under a Local Government 1995 order. He concludes by reminding urbanites that postal addresses now can restore townlands as well as numbered streets. Even those in the city may be able to add the ancient names underlying their current residences.

Belfast was settled by Irish speakers, but after 1603, the Plantation drove away most of its indigenous inhabitants. Aódan MacPóilin examines the state of Irish up to the 18th century. Its placenames exist as a 'palimpsest' but they were understood by fewer locals. Still, the language kept a tenuous hold in the countryside. First from evangelicals, and then sponsors of the 1792 Harp Festival, Irish recovered respect.

A.J. Hughes in two lengthy essays recounts its revivalists.These at the start and the end, bookend the 19th century; both movements were funded and perpetuated by the Protestant gentry.
Hughes investigates the eloquent champions of the 19th century language revival. In the early 20th century, ecumenism ended. Protestants became discouraged as they were discriminated against both by their co-religionists and by Catholics for their 'suspect' interest. Sectarian and political divisions segregated the learners of Irish behind nationalist militants.

Up until 1980, de Brún uncovers in the next essay, descendants of native speakers of Irish on Falls Road continued as fruit vendors - a profession brought by their families as far back as 1856 from Omeath, where the bardic heritage echoed from medieval Oriel.

With the Gaelic League, sectarianism prevented the promotion of Irish outside of a few Catholic enclaves. Republicans dominated the 20th century control of Irish. Those Protestants determined to learn it were not welcomed by either camp. Aódan MacPóilin in this chapter scrutinises the survival of Belfast Irish from 1892 up to 1960. After the statelet's establishment, ironically the separation of the political from the cultural that Douglas Hyde sought for Conradh na Gaeilge reified itself in the North. After partition, under a regime hostile to nationalism, those promulgating Irish had to retreat towards a more idealistic rationale. Since the recovery of a Gaelicised Ulster was impossible, efforts to revive Irish energised these grassroots if marginalised community-based efforts. Although this volume distances itself from the political realms of the language (cf. Camille O'Reilly's 1999 book; notably missing from de Brun: Lisa Goldenberg's MA thesis published on the symbolic significance of the Irish language in the North), the role played by IRA prisoners who came out of jail able to communicate in Irish gains attention.

Tarlach Ó h-Uid gains welcome attention. Imagine including in Irish lessons for beginners in the republican War News of the 1950s such 'useful sentences in Irish' as 'throw the hand grenade' and 'aim the rifle at him.' (qtd. 133) Non-sectarian, Social Credit advocate, English Greenshirt, briefly converted to Catholicism, adult learner, and bomb-maker, Ó hUid perches as a progenitor once removed of many in Belfast who can trace their own fluency to a prison stint.

Another agitator, Cathal McCrystal, suffered for his non-sectarian Gaelic leftism. This intentional provincialism, even by those committed to Irish, demonstrates a repeated tendency for the Northern speakers of Irish to rally around their surviving Donegal dialect. Northerners sought to preserve and renew their version of the language apart from the strong pull from the 26 Counties, especially after 1922.

Gabrielle Nic Uighir (as Maguire) in 1991 published Our own language, the first academic study of West Belfast's linguistic struggles for legitimacy during the Troubles. She surveys the Shaw's Road Gaeltacht, started in the mid-60s by half a dozen families. Now, it reigns as the largest urban community of Irish speakers; its pioneering dynamism, however, has not spurred settlement of Irish speakers over the rest of the city or the North. West Belfast spins centifugal rather than centripetal force when the energy of Irish is measured. This may account for Seán Mistéil's supposition that any future Gaeltacht must build upon that already formed into An Bhóthar Seoighe, with its infrastructure of schools, housing, committed families determined to nourish anew a nursery and a garden for Irish in the 21st century city.

Yet, can such a seed truly flourish in a soil still inhospitable to many Protestants who wish to learn Irish? Gordon McCoy presents bluntly exclusive reality vs. inclusive rhetoric. Republican Movement chauvinism - the Cause glowers over the language revival to fend off other suitors - repels many potential students across sectarian and neighborhood divides in Belfast. McCoy observes: 'During the conflict Irish speakers appeared more strident in Irish and more conciliatory in English.' (151)

McCoy offers quotes from interviews with young Protestants, testimonies from learners, motivations that tempted learners, fears that learners evoked from nationalists and loyalists, and a century of Protestant linguistic intersections at 'sectarian interfaces'. His essay, disturbing in this mild-mannered collection, defies the barrier behind the bunting. Ultach Trust works to bridge the perceived gap between Gaelic Irish and Ulster Scots pride. UVF and Red Hand Commandos have incorporated Irish language phrases into iconography; some Loyalist prisoners have learned a bit of Irish in prison. RUC and PSNI recruits likewise have studied Irish. But these efforts meet with suspicion from both sides. Nationalists, McCoy concludes, gain positive attributions by their ties to the Irish language; loyalist learners receive negative reactions.

Few Protestants learn Irish in local school, despite the efforts of activists; Irish-medium education, as Seán MacCorraidh reveals - although he avoids any mention of sectarianism - thrives within Catholic Belfast's enclaves. Still, he notes the early example of Cumann Cluain Ard in attracting learners from throughout the city; more study of the cross-community nature of those educated through Irish would have been welcome in his short essay that blends his own experience as a teacher with a statistical summary of nursery, primary, and secondary enrollments. Community support, as Nic Uighir also finds, invites families with passive, limited, or no knowledge of Irish slowly into the vision that those more adept have framed; this blend of learners at young ages with their parents at all levels of fluency provides a generous opportunity.

Finally, we edge back near where we started, with Mistéil's hope of a Gaeltacht that prospers not only within homes and schools but in public, as visual as well as verbal expression. Fulfillment of this dream generated by Mistéil and his peers - as the first generation substantially raised bilingually and educated in Irish - demands a third revival.

One shortcoming of this book: it neglects any mention of Belfast's most prominent writer, one raised solely in Irish, as he claims, until the age of ten. Ciarán Carson, poet in verse and prose in English, translator of Irish among other tongues, merits mention as one who, a decade before Shaw's Road, blazed a lonely path until recently rarely roamed within Belfast - many more follow his direction now. These Irish speakers circle the city back to its mediaeval nomenclature and out to its most cosmopolitan visionaries, a trail that tracks its course not by intervening English but spirals of indigenous Irish. (Edited from a review in the Belfast on-line journal The Blanket, 'Even the dogs bark in Irish.')

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Product Description
This book offers a descriptive and contact-linguistic account of the grammar of Irish English, also known as "Hiberno-English." It examines Hiberno-English dialects past and present and their distinctive grammatical features. Special attention is paid to similarities between Hiberno-English and the other Celtic-influenced varieties of English spoken in Scotland and Wales. ... Read more

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English is now the most widely spoken language on the planet. Although it has been spoken in Ireland for eight centuries and used creatively in literature for over six centuries, Irish speakers did not simply adopt English. They grafted it onto a Gaelic stem, making it capable of expressing an Irish culture and world view. This book explores the origins and development of English in Ireland; how emigrants, missionaries and writers have influenced English worldwide; how the loss of a mother tongue can affect a nation's psyche; it also asks if the loss has been accompanied by abundant recompense. This book is updated to include a dictionary of commonly-used words with Irish origins. ... Read more

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Green English
Her main thesis seems to be that the influence of people from Ireland on the English language has been vastly underrated.Maybe, but it will take more than this book to convince me.However, one point that seems well taken is that often when the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists an etymology as unknown, it means they haven't checked Gaelic sources.

So, I am not particularly recommending this book.But by going through it and noting the examples, I thought back to phrases, word usage and individual words that were common in our household and our neighborhood when I was growing up.Mostly, they are not part of the vocabulary I currently use but seeing them on a page opened the door to many memories.Here are some examples:ballyhoo, slug (mouthful), shanty, galore, acushla (darling), allanna (darling), banshee, blather, machree (my love, beloved), mavourneen (my love), puss (face), shenanigans, shindig, smithereens...and many other words and lots of phrases.

There were new insights into old words.For instance, "Dear" = God.As in "The Dear knows who I'll marry."Or, to use the cite in the book, "Dear knows but I rared an eejit."

While I don't think Todd has really made her case, I am intuitively in agreement with one of her main thrusts: that the loss of a language (i.e., Irish) has far-reaching effects, not all of which are offset by becoming proficient in a world language.I do like one of her comments: "It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can." ... Read more

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Irish Words and Phrases is a popular guide to Irish speech. English as spoken in Ireland draws heavily on words and phrases of Gaelic origin: these are the main emphasis in this book. However, many other words and formations were originally standard English but have fallen into disuse so that a word like oxter (armpit) which used to be commonplace in England now only survives in Ireland. This guide to popular Irish usage will appeal to visitors and Irish persons alike. It is a friendly, informative and charming guide to popular Irish speech, written by one of Ireland's best-known and best-loved linguists. This book appears as part of a well-established and popular series. ... Read more

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Salvaging Spenser is a major new work of literary revision which places Edmund Spenser's corpus, from The Shepheardes Calender to A View of the Present State of Ireland, within an elaborate cultural and political context. The author refuses to engage in the sterile opposition between apology and attack that has marred studies of Spenser and Ireland, seeking neither to savage nor to save, but rather, in a project of critical recovery, to salvage Spenser from the wreckage of Irish history. ... Read more

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Finally a book that presents the rules of Irish grammar in a clear, concise and understandable manner. "Leabhar Gramadai Gaeilge" is an essential component in any learner's armoury of materials, and also serves as a comprehensive reference manual for Irish scholars. The author, Professor Noel Mc Gonagle, is a member of the School of Irish in the National University of Ireland, Galway, and is an expert in effective methodology for the teaching of Irish grammar. ... Read more

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Ta nios mo mac leinn ag gabhail don Ghaeilge ar an triu leibheal anois na mar a bhi riamh - agus tugann na haisti seo aghaidh fhuarchuiseach ar riachtanais foghlama na mac leinn sin. Is e dearcadh na n-udar go mbraitheann todhchai Leann na Gaeilge ar fheabhas theagasc na teanga fein, chomh maith le cumas aos acaduil na Gaeilge mic leenn a spreagadh le speis a chur i sainreimsi ar leith scolaireachta. ... Read more

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"Teach Yourself Irish Grammar" is the first up-to-date, accessible grammar written in English for students working independently or via formal courses at school, evening classes or further education. The book helps students become both functionally and formally fluent in the language. The examples used in the book reflect everyday usage and use up-to-the-minute vocabulary, and there are lively, varied exercises with an answer key. ... Read more