Ireland Travel

» iolas - Lonely Planet Irish Language and Culture

I am very disappointed and embarrassed by this booklet.
It is not, as its title suggests, a guide on Irish culture as the majority of what is referred to as culture is, in actual fact, mostly slang and (regional) urban social mores.

To add insult to injury, the language is a bungled furball of confusion. Irish is not the English language with an Irish cultural inflection! The Irish language is a swift and sweet tongue with much beauty - a facet just as swiftly set aside with its very brief references to greetings and a small, stop gap vocabulary.

Granted, English is the second official language of Ireland with the majority of its populace speaking it. However, if Lonely Planet wanted to write a book about this then they should have labelled it "English language and culture in Ireland" or something like that to indicate the true nature of its contents.

Apart from its grossly inaccurate leaning, the book is also very light on in all areas of the traditional LP format. For example, when one compares this to the (much heftier) French counterpart, one can easily see that Lonely Planet must've been in a slow news day when it coughed up this pathetic rubbish.

-- posted by iolas