Irish Nouns, a Reference Guide, by Andrew Carnie

[Aislingeach]

Is anyone familiar with this work? I am looking for feedback regarding its value as a resource.

GRMA!

[Héilics Órbhuí]

It’s a good reference. It breaks nouns down into a newer, seemingly more complex, but more accurate declension system, rather than the typical 5 class system. If you are married to the existing patterns you may find it confusing, but it’s a solid book. My personal thoughts are that it perhaps overly complicates the the declension process for most learners, who will end up learning the forms of the nouns as they use them rather than memorizing declension patterns. It would definitely be of use to someone looking to study the language as intimately as possible.

[Aislingeach]

Go raibh maith agat as an eolas. Having not yet learned the declension patterns (I tend to learn the different forms along with the noun itself), I have no preference regarding that. Is that the gist of the book, his alternate declension methodology? If that’s the case, and, absent the declension issue, it’s basically the same information that I can find in the dictionary, it would, perhaps, be a waste of time and space to download it.

GRMA

[Héilics Órbhuí]

There is an extensive section that talks about nouns in general and the different patterns. I’d say it’s worth a look. I can’t remember how big it is and I don’t know how fast your internet connection is. But as far as the actual definitions and the information about individual words goes, O Donaill is probably more extensive.

[Seáinín]

Is there a free version of this banging around in cyberspace somewhere, because the one advertised on Amazon.com goes for $120. That’s not chump change. It better be an extraordinarily awesome resource that brings you to fluency by a touch to your forehead.

[Héilics Órbhuí]

I have a free version that I downloaded online. It’s kinda weird – it’s actually its own application that opens and I believe it is flash-based. So it isn’t exactly a pdf or text file, but that may not matter to you. It is searchable. I’ll see if I can find the link for you. If not, I can email it or upload it somewhere, since it is free.

[Héilics Órbhuí]

Here is the link I used. Go here and click on Options in the upper left and select “download offline version”

http://content.yudu.com/Library/A18la3/IrishNouns/resources/158.htm

Looks like you can get an ebook version here for free if you become a member. Don’t know what it takes to become a member…

http://earthseasky.com.au/data/282823-buy-book-pdf-Irish-Nouns-A-Reference-Guide.html

[Héilics Órbhuí]

Is there a free version of this banging around in cyberspace somewhere, because the one advertised on Amazon.com goes for $120. That’s not chump change. It better be an extraordinarily awesome resource that brings you to fluency by a touch to your forehead.

I don’t think you’ll get fluency for $120 anywhere 😉 If it were that easy I would have laid out the cash long ago. But it is a pricy item. But you can definitely use it online at the link I gave and it looks like there are several ebook sites that will let you download it free if you sign up. I haven’t done that yet to test it out though. It’s definitely a valuable resource, but a different kind than Ó Donaill. It purports to contain 10,000 Irish nouns, which is a hefty amount of words. The grammar overviews are really clearly written as well. The dictionary section doesn’t contain a lot of phrases like ÓÂ Donaill, so it’s not really a replacement for that dictionary, which still seems to be where the bar is set. But you can judge for yourself 😉

[Aislingeach]

GRMA, a Héilics Órbhuí, for the feedback. Sounds more promising than I originally thought. I’ll give it a read.

[Seáinín]

Go raibh míle maith agat, a Héilics. I downloaded the flash-based version. A good resource to add to the pile. And the price ain’t too bad, either.

[Author]

Posts