Buntús Cainte Rudiments of Speech
What is Buntús Cainte?
Popular since the 1960s, Buntús Cainte is a series of three books designed to help beginners achieve fluency in spoken Irish. The books are still available in print with recordings included on CDs.
There was also an accompanying television series broadcast in Ireland between 1967 and 1969. You can find some episodes on YouTube.
Despite much of its content being very dated now, Buntús Cainte has remained a popular tool for beginners (and their teachers), because it reinforces key sentence patterns with a simple ‘listen and repeat’ approach – and many of the illustrations are hilarious!
It is ideal for learners who live far from the Gaeltacht, and need ‘comprehensive input’ to improve their listening and speaking skills.
What is the format?
Each book is a small handbook (roughly A5 in size), with each lesson presented on a double page.
Each lesson covers a specific topic, with new words presented in a specific sentence or question format.
On the left page are:
- New words or phrases to learn
- Six sentences or questions with illustrations to aid learning
- A few more sentences that revise older material and further demonstrate the topic in context
On the right right page is a short dialogue demonstrating the use of the lesson’s topic, words and sentence patterns in daily conversation.
How can I buy Buntús Cainte?
Buntús Cainte is published by An Gum through the auspices of Foras na Gaeilge. The current editions include remastered versions of the original recordings on compact disc.
The course is also available as an MP3 course for iPod, iPhone and iPad. The English and Irish text can be viewed by the learner using the lyrics function on the device.
In Australia, you can often find second-hand copies in the larger second-hand bookshops in Sydney or Melbourne.
Listen to the recordings online
The publisher, Foras na Gaeilge, has made remastered versions of the original recordings for Buntús Cainte available online through the live streaming service, Soundcloud.com.
Select the image to go to Soundcloud.com and listen to the recordings for each book ->
Or go to the Table of Lessons (below) to find the recording for an individual lesson.
Click here to discover other recordings of Foras na Gaeilge publications available on Soundcloud.
Memrise Community Courses
Memrise.com is a site designed to help people learn a language through active flash cards. The Memrise Community Courses site contains user-generated flashcard sets. You’ll find flashcard sets (including the audio recordings) based on Buntús cainte on this site.
Click here to go to the Memrise flashcard sets for:
YouTube videos
The Buntús cainte TV series was broadcast during the 1960s to accompany the popular book series. Some episodes have been uploaded to YouTube.
