Thanks for the links above. I printed some material out to read later.

I agree it's helpful to study a language if you really want to sing the songs. The problem, of course, is that there are so many appealing sounding traditional songs in many languages, and one can't study all these languages! (From the point of view of a complete non-speaker of the language, they could be appealing in terms of melody or story line, if a translation is available.)

I've gone at Irish a few ways. I took a beginning class several years ago. A few years after that, I took some Sean Nos singing classes taught by a woman who was a fine singer and had been studying Irish and Scots Gaelic for several years. This was incredibly helpful in learning how to sing the songs. She often pointed out differences in dialects and even vocabulary. She also was helpful in learning when to elide words, etc. After taking these classes, I took the beginning Irish class over again. Each of these approaches was complimentary to the other, but in terms of singing, it was of course more helpful to work with an actual singer. I hope to study more of the language when time permits. I do still try, even when I have a translation, to look up as many words as possible so I know the exact content of what I'm singing at any given point, which allows you to sing more meaningfully. I've generally only tried to learn songs where I have a recording available, so I can hear the pronunciation One album I really like for this is the Skara Brae CD, which has all the lyrics printed out.

One interesting thing I found was that Irish had a lot in common with Russian, which I had previously studied. Although I'm not aware of any actual linguistic connection, some of the Irish pronunciation was familiar to me because of the Russian. It was often easier to represent Irish sounds phonetically using the Cyrillic alphabet than using the Roman alphabet. Some of the grammar was even the same. (No actual verb "to have"; in both languages, you say something is "at me".)

I'll finish up by saying I did order the book (Thanks again Nancy!) and it arrived yesterday. It's definitely something I will use. Most of the songs are familiar to me in terms of recognizing the melody, and it seems to be an effective way to learn these songs. (Now I have some song requests for a second volume...) Mary McLaughlin was at the Old Songs festival a few years ago and taught a short workshop including a few songs in the book. I thought her approach worked well then and would recommend this book. Zhenya