Reviews for Spanish First Names

The average rating for Spanish First Names based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-05-08 00:00:00 Steve Carberry Gabriel Rosenstock's Beginner’s Irish is yet another example of why Hippocrene is the worst publisher for language-related books around. Published in 2000, Beginner’s Irish promises to give basic language instruction, but it would be a miracle if anyone gained even the simplest competency in conversational Irish from the book. Teaching of the nuts and bolts of the Irish language doesn't even begin until page 39 of this 145-page book. The first several dozen pages are a rather absent-minded discussion of the Irish people and the phases of its language. Rosenstock's sources for the Celtic languages seem to be quite old and historically superseded. This initial pages contain a listing of Irish baby names and their etymologies, which is just fluff, but it ends with the only useful part of the book: an extensive bibliography of other textbooks and reference materials, and a listing of places in Ireland offering solid language courses. The actual coverage of the grammar and lexicon of the Irish language consists of 10 short lessons. The lessons generally start with some conversational phrases, followed by Rosenstock's tiresome quips about how those boisterous Irishmen love to drink and carouse. Morphology is usually presented as a dry series of tables, and vocabulary comes in long lists much more than a student could ever be expected to absorb at a time. And you can forget about being able to apply what you learn, for exercises are so meagre they might as well not even be here. Cassettes or CDs are not available, and Irish orthography has such an unusual relationship to actual pronunciation that the student will have no clue of how to accurately sound out what he learns. Beginner’s Irish is a simply muddled and confused textbook. One wonders if the author has any training in language teaching at all; the little biography on the back cover calls him only an editor, poet, and translator. Would that Hippocrene have commissioned a real teacher of Irish, with plenty of now-competent speakers of Irish among his former students, to write a textbook for them. If you want to learn Irish, I commend you for showing interest in such a colourful language, and a threatened minority language that could use all the attention it could get. However, pretty much any other textbook could beat Rosenstock's. Seek out, for example, Teach Yourself Irish.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-04-12 00:00:00 James Sweany A little tough to get started, but worth it to try.