This reading book contains an anthology of Modern Irish prose texts in the original and in German translation. The texts cover the areas of folklore, biography and literary text (short story) and deal with the lives of Irish speakers on the west coast of Ireland in the first half of the 20th century. They provide a direct insight into a lost world that nevertheless plays an important role in present-day Irish identity. The texts are in the original and in German translation and are accompanied by a complete Irish-German glossary with page and line references.
This reading book which builds on the book Sláinte! of A. Ambros and T. Illés contains an anthology of Modern Irish prose texts in the original and in German translation. The texts cover the areas of folklore, biography and literary text (short story) and deal with the lives of Irish speakers on the west coast of Ireland in the first half of the 20th century. They provide a direct insight into a lost world that nevertheless plays an important role in present-day Irish identity. The texts comprise a number of folklore tales from the collection of Éamon a Búrc; a text on the construction of a thatched cottage by Seán Ó Conghaile, a number of semi-autobiographical, semi-folklore texts from the famous works of the writers from the Blasket Islands: an excerpt from a collection by Peig Sayers, passages from the Tomás Ó Criomhthain’s diary and the first chapter of his biography, two chapters from Muiris Ó Súilleabháins autobiography; and three examples of a literary treatment of this world: two short-stories by Liam Ó Flaithearta and one short-story by Máirtín Ó Cadhain. Amongst the common themes of the folklore, biographical and literary texts are: how people coped with the difficult living conditions; human feelings in the central area of partnership (matchmaking and love); the social life of the people in their dependency on each other and their conflicts; but also the confrontation of the old, disappearing world with the new one, within Ireland and even outside of it.
The texts are in the standard form of the language with its standardised spelling and also in more or less modified forms of two of the three dialects of Modern Irish, that of Connemara on the mid west coast and that of Corca Dhuibhne in the south.
These texts cover various aspects of the lives of Irish-speaking farmers and fishermen on the west coast of Ireland. They document a hard life at a time when simultaneously the interest of linguists and collectors brought a degree of regard for this way of life and for the Irish language and also the premonition of its demise had set in. In many ways it is an archaic world in the process of disintegrating. The texts provide a direct insight into this now lost world that nevertheless still plays an important role in present-day Irish identity. In the mainly English-speaking but officially bilingual Republic of Ireland it is mainly texts such as these that are used in school and that therefore have come to represent Irish as such for the English-speaking population.
The texts are in the original and in German translation and are accompanied by a complete Irish-German glossary with page and line references. The references also allow the book to be used to gather authentic occurrences of the vocabulary contained in these texts.
„Das Neuirische Lesebuch schließt für Lerner eine wichtige Lücke zwischen reinen Lehrbüchern, wie zum Beispiel dem im selben Verlag erschienenen „Slainte!“ von Arne A. Ambros und Theresa-Susanna Illés, und Ausgaben weitgehend unkommentierter Originalliteratur irischer Muttersprachler. (...) Das Buch ist durch seinen Aufbau sehr nutzerfreundlich und gut für das Selbststudium oder den Einsatz in universitären Lehrveranstaltungen geeignet.“
Astrid Fiess & Lars Kabel
In: Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie. 58 (2011). pp. 220-222.
Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, born in the Republic of Ireland. Studied Mediaeval History (M. Phil. 1981) and Indoeuropean Linguistics (Dr. Phil. 1991). Publications mainly on Iranian languages.
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