Bingo 13: Europe
Ireland is part of Europe; this is a review of a book on the theme off “learn some basic Irish language”. I have tried the annoying owl who shall not be named; for the language I tried (for over 2 years), I can barely recognize a few words and phrases. That’s it. Not worth the constant email reminders, or pouty face cartoons. I deleted the app about two months ago, and I do not regret this.
The much better alternative is along the lines of those occasional heartwarming news stories about kids reading books to rescue animals; it’s a book called Teach Your Cat Irish. The title is basically the summary; this book teaches you phrases you might use with your cat; plus, as it points out, it’s probably a whole lot less embarrassing to practice with kitty than a person.
The illustrations alone would have been worth it as each phrase is accompanied by a scenario in which you might it; “Stop!” for examples shows a kitty making eye contact while it pushes a bottle off the counter. The page before this? Kitty with paw to bottle, looking at the bottle: “Leave it!”. In Irish, “Stop!” is “Stop!”, and “Leave it!” is “Fág é!” “Pron. Fawg (aw as in ‘awesome’) ay!”. The pronunciation guide is slightly questionable to me though, since different people from different places are likely to pronounce English differently even if they are all still native speakers. I’m guessing there’s about as many ways to pronounce “ay” as there are people who read this review.
Some of the phrases are probably also useful in everyday human interactions, but it does neglect basic tourist that you might actually use if visiting an Irish-speaking region (and yes, these do still exist, although English is still common in those parts of Ireland). For example, knowing how to order a pint of Guiness is not part of this book, and I have never asked a cat if it wants to play Gaelic football, or if it has a cold (both of which are included here). Likewise, I’m sure how or why I’d need my cats to know how to count to twenty, but who cares? It’s still kind of fun.