Teach Yourself Gaelic Complete Course (Book Only)

Scots-Gaelic is a modern but ancient language of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Alba, in Gaelic). Scots-Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is closely related to Irish-Gaelic (Gaeilge) and Manx-Gaelic (Gaelg), all minority languages. Scots-Gaelic can be especially rewarding for Celtic language and Scottish cultural studies, as well as a beautiful language. Many of the areas that speak Gaelic regularly have attractive areas for hill-walkers, so that might be a helpful reason to work on your Gaelic skills, if you are planning on going to those areas of Britain. Teach Yourself Gaelic (at least this edition) is strong on cultural information (which is nice) and is a nice Gaelic course. There is an updated cover with real photographs, also. Another alternative would be Colloquial Scottish Gaelic: The Complete Course for Beginners, of the Colloquial series. These are generally nice books, but I've only used Colloquial Icelandic. I think it was a good buy. If you are interested in Irish-Gaelic, I would not recommend buying Teach Yourself Irish at all, as I found it difficult, stilted and unnatural, and eventually returned it. Irish, however, is a very interesting language with more speakers than Scots-Gaelic, so I would recommend other series' Irish courses. Cheers and good luck.

I got this tape and book set about 2 1/2 years ago in 1999. I started on my own with absolutely no one else to practice with. In the summer of 2001 I went to Scotland to attend a short 2 week course in Scottish Gaelic at Sabhal Mor Ostaig on the Isle of Skye. They had 8 levels, one per week. After I had my interview they put me straight into level 5! Mind you, I had NO ONE else to speak with. The tapes REALLY help with the pronunciation, which is the hardest thing about this language in my opinion, b/c words are not spelled how they sound to an native English speaker. If you read through every part of the chapter and treat it just like a textbook, and if you do all of the exercises in the book in the proper way, you will have no choice but to learn this language as best as it is possible without a live teacher. If you want to get back in touch with your Scottish roots, or you just love the celts and want to feel cool by speaking a beautiful and ancient language, then this book and tape set is for you.

I am a student of foreign language grammars and have a good collection of old and new texts in several languages... I consider the Teach Yourself Gaelic book and tapes to be at the very top of my list for several reasons. First, the conversations are extremely well designed and recorded. All points of grammar are contextualized by examples and very cleverly imbedded in the conversations, which are lively, pertinent to general conversation needs, and do not bore one even after many repetitions. If one memorizes the conversations the most important features of Gaelic grammar will be learned more or less automatically without the drudgery of the intensive prescriptive explanations and fill-in-the-blank drills which are endemic in most gammars. Second, points of grammar are stripped of the dross and complexity which can turn off the beginning student. Grammar is presented logically, succinctly, and in a brain-friendly manner. Third, the vocabulary used is both comprehensive and useful for general conversation needs. I teach Gaelic... and I highly recommen this course.

I have been teaching myself Gaelic, with varying success, for about 10 years now, and I still haven't come across a better learning tool for the Gaelic beginner than this book-and-cassettes set. It is organized systematically and has the up-to-date orthography. Once one gets through it one will have learned all the basics of Gaelic grammar. Certainly, it is a little lacking in the vocabulary department, but in my view this is not a flaw, since the purpose of the set is to teach the structure of the Gaelic language. Combined with "Everyday Gaelic" and a couple of good dictionaries you have everything you need to learn Gaelic.

This book is very well done. It is clearly the best "Teach Yourself" or "Colloquial" series book out there. Everything has been explained nicely and it is fairly easy to work through. My favorite part, though, is that there is one dialogue per unit, and it usually very large. However, the cassettes are a must, because you don't stand a chance to be able to pronounce Gaelic without them.