Nil Gaeilge agam, but I'm trying

[bloodygranuaile]

Last summer I began studying Irish, and when I went looking for study materials in addition to what was given to us in class, I bought a tiny little pocket dictionary and phrasebook titled simply Irish Dictionary and Phrasebook. The book is about the size of a large index card, and the dictionary portion and the phrasebook portion are each about 70 pages. (The dictionary includes both an Irish-English and English-Irish section, so it is functionally more like two 35-page dictionaries.) I would read this a few pages at a time when I arrived to class early, just to learn and reinforce my basic vocabulary and practice pronouncing things. Because of its brevity, it is not entirely useful for looking up words when reading very often, but it still provides a decent chunk of solid 101-level information in a familiar and easy-to-understand format.

I could quibble a bit with the pronunciation guides provided, but quite frankly, since sounds in Irish are often different sounds entirely from the sounds in English, I can't really be mad that they didn't use the same written approximations that I tend to. I'm also finding that as I try to be more accurate in my pronunciation notes for myself, I am finding it increasingly difficult to figure out how to write down what sounds I should be making. And if I want to write the broad "dh" sound as "rh" because it sounds like a French "r" to me, that doesn't mean the dictionary is wrong for not catering specifically to people who know French sounds.

I think it's a bit cute that the phrasebook adheres so closely to the usual travel phrasebook standards, with phrases for how to book a hotel room and go through customs and all that, when everywhere you go in Ireland you can do basic travel stuff in English. But that's not really the point, is it?