Product Description

Colloquial Scottish Gaelic offers a series of stimulating and informative lessons in modern Gaelic, the historic language of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The lessons are based on everyday situations and relationships, and the step-by-step approach has been devised to make speaking, reading and writing Scottish Gaelic easy and enjoyable. No previous knowledge of the language is required. Features include: * emphasis on up-to-date, conversational language * clear explanations of how the language works * helpful grammar notes * comprehensive vocabulary lists (Scottish Gaelic-English and English-Scottish Gaelic) * lively illustrations throughout. This rewarding course will give you confidence in using Scottish Gaelic in a wide range of situations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #642502 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent introduction to the Scottish Gaelic language
Anyone who has used one of the other titles in Routledge's Colloquial series will know exactly want to expect. The book is an introduction to the Scottish Gaelic language for students presumed to have no previous knowledge. The emphasis is on building oral proficiency and the language presented has a concrete context in real-world situations e.g. shopping, food and drink and hobbies, usually presented in the form of lively dialogues. Grammatical explanations are clear, concise and again rooted in a real-world context. The book has a clear layout and it is easy to locate information within the text. As with other Colloquial textbooks, the authors do not attempt to cover too much material in each chapter (of which there are sixteen), although a wide range of topics and contexts are dealt with during the course.

The pronunciation of Gaelic does not come over well on paper, although the introduction to the book does give a good outline to the subject. However, a student serious in wishing to learn the language would be well-advised to buy the cassette which accompanies the course. This contains many of the dialogues and texts spoken by native speakers and will aid good pronunciation.

Self-study is not the easiest way to acquire a new language. However, if your aim is to learn modern, spoken Scottish Gaelic, you have an excellent opportunity with this course.

Colloquial Scottish Gaelic
The best language course I have tried in many years of learning languages. You MUST make sure you buy the book and the accompanying CDs. From then on all the work is logical, clearly laid out and easy to follow.
The only down side to my mind is the incredibly boring monotonal voice of the tutor on the CDs who sounds like a limp-wristed English 'anorak'. Why it isn't narrated by a Scot as are the speaking and listening examples, I don't know: Otherwise its brilliant and well worth the money.

For beginners but not easy
This a a very comprehensive course, but is only for beginners in the sense that it starts at the beginning. It is not an easy course to take, and requires much dedication and time to complete. Forewarned is fore-armed.