Progress in Irish Answer Key

If you are beginning to study the Irish language - Gaeilge - this Answer Key book provides a confident double check when using the Progress in Irish: A Graded Course for Beginners & Revision by Máiréad Ni Ghráda. The program introduces basic words and phrases, and forces the participant to use their knowledge when answering questions and creating phrases. Both books are pocket sized and light to carry.

I recently started to brush up on my study of Irish Gaelic (an Ghaeilge), and one of my favorite books to turn to for such study is "Progress in Irish ..." by Mairead Ni Ghrada (which I've also reviewed). It's a great little book, but one thing that is lacking is an answer key for it's otherwise very serviceable exercises. Fortunately, Colleen Brady has come to the rescue by putting together "Progress in Irish Answer Key", which was published recently (2016). The format of Ms. Brady's work exactly follows that of Ni Ghrada's work, providing translations for English-Irish and Irish-English sections in all 72 lessons of Ni Ghrada's book. Brady has keyed each lesson number to the corresponding page number in Ni Ghrada's book. With a couple of notable exceptions, I usually review books that I'm enthused about, and so I usually rate such books with five stars, less often with four because of some shortcoming. Such is the case with this book. I've used Brady's book for about a week, getting through the first dozen chapters, but already I've found at least a dozen errors of at least three types. (Sorry, my computer seems to have no way to produce diacritics.) -- 1) Some errors consist of straight typos, such as "innui" for "inniu" (today) [Lesson 9, Revision 16], "said" for "siad" (they) [Lesson 4, Cuir Gaeilge air seo 7]. 2) There are some lenition errors. Two involve the feminine noun "brog" (shoe) (in the nominative-accusative case) preceded by the definite article without showing lenition, e.g. "an brog" instead of "an bhrog" (the shoe) [Lesson 2, Cuir Gaeilge air seo 5; Lesson 3, Cuir 12]. Another example shows lenition with a negative imperative, viz. "na bhris" instead of the correct form "na bris" (don't break) [Lesson 8, Cuir 16]. Then the positive future of "Ta" is printed as "Bheidh me" instead of "Beidh me" (I shall be) [Lesson 9, Cuir 1]. 3) There are, so far, several instances of mistranslation, e.g. "The work is finished" is translated as "Ta an obair deanta" (where "deanta" means 'done'), instead of the correct translation, "Ta an obair criochnaithe" [Lesson 3, Cuir 6]; "Wash the car" is translated as "Glan an carr", where "glan" is properly glossed as 'clean', and thus the more accurate translation would then be "Nigh an carr" [Lesson 7, Cuir 10]; the Irish sentence "Ta an obair criochnaithe agus taimid ag rince" is erroneously translated "The work is finished and I am dancing" instead of "The work is finished and WE are dancing" [Lesson 4, Leigh 5]. I suspect that there will be more such typos and translation and glossing errors as I continue to go through Brady's book. One could argue that, with such a sampling of editing errors, one should assign this book less than four stars, but that would be overly harsh, because Brady has done an arguably great service for Irish-language students by providing such an otherwise very useful and much needed supplement to Ni Ghrada's work. It's just too bad that sufficient time and effort weren't put into copy editing before publishing this otherwise fine contribution to learning "an Ghaeilge".

It has helped me with my lessons

This is an awesome book for beginners

I am studying the Irish language. The book is helpful.

A very useful addition to the Progress in Irish instructional book. Not 100% accurate but hey, that helps keep you on your toes.

The way each lesson is set out gives you the path to correct answers but sometimes there is just a niggling doubt and this little book takes away any doubts about the direction study is going. An excellent aid to making progress.

This book is handy for correcting the exercises. I have noticed, however, that there are a few errors in the answers; fadas missing, words spelt incorrectly and some inconsistencies. It would probably need a good check over in the next edition.

An excellent book to buy if you already have "Progress in Irish|". I have found it very useful.

excellent purchase