Books

Of course, books are going to help. There are several really good Irish language books out there. When you get books, however, get the CD's with them. There is nothing more frustrating that trying to learn Irish from a book without a CD. The words are just too hard to figure out from their spellings. You need the CD to get the pronunciations right. 

One of the best books I have is Teach Yourself Irish by Diarmuid O Se and Joseph Sheils. There is an incredible amount of information in the book and some short exercises as well. It is not exactly a text book and I would not use it by itself but it is great to reinforce what you are learning.

Another excellent book is Learning Irish by Micheal O Siadhail. I love how it gives vocabulary first, grammar, exercises,text to read and  sections to translate. I unfortunately, do not have the CD to this book yet which is why I haven't been using it. When I do get the CD though, I am going through it cover to cover.

Gaeilge Gan Stro is another book I bought. I bought it because I hoped it was more like a textbook I would use in school, with lessons and exercises. I came with 4 CD's and was quite expensive. It was also a real disappointment. If you want to learn Irish by memorizing sentence after sentence...this is the book for you. I hope to use it later on when I am better at Irish but right now it is not getting used at all. No grammar, no vocabulary...just memorize sentence after sentence...ugg.

Anyway, those are the Irish language books that I have. There are others and I will post about them if I get them and tell you what I think. 

You can't just stick to the language teaching books though, you need other books. My Kindle is full of Irish language...children's books. Yes children's books because you aren't going to be able to read adult books (good luck finding Irish language adult books anyway). You won't be able to read them at first. Children can't read at first and they, for the most part, know the language. You might get Google translate to help out at first but eventually you are going to start to pick up the words and know them (just like any child!).  Most of these books I find on Amazon.com. You might find some on Ebay too but most of the time I find them cheaper on Amazon. I am constantly ordering new ones. Remember simple is better at first. Some of the ones I own are: Ulchabhain Oga, Is Geal Liom Sibh Go Leir, Fiacla Mhamo, and Saili na Spotai.

The one book I have found the most usless with the Irish language is an Irish/English dictionary. I have one. I never use it. The problem with Irish is that their words take so many different forms that it is almost impossible to look at word up unless you know the basic root word and most of the time you don't. It is way easier to use Google Translate which given a sentence will most of the time get it right. It has to have the sentence most of the time though to get the words put in the right context. 

So start getting some books people. They are definitely going to help.