I finally found my 10 year old copy (never opened) of New Irish grammar by the Christian brothers, a friend recommended it to me years ago,
it's pretty dense so I'm gonna with a chapter a week
in the meantime I am looking for any links to conversational vocab, I know there's a lot of free stuff out there, it's just a lot of it is too easy 'n' repetitive (classroomy) or just plain impossible, I read an interesting article last week (maybe here) by an American who lived in Prague and learned a lot of conversation connectors, or something, .(Stuff like " That's a good question, I'll try and answer it best i can, let me just start by saying...Etc. etc. I need some rescue phrases/waffle to be able to rattle off while I try to compose sentence's/conjugate etc.)
I'm learning as many seanfhocail as i can, it's just annoying if you use them TOO frequently (you sound like Obi wan konobi)
otherwise links to good essays ???

The Irish Independent has a great site, called "Learning Irish with Liam O Maonlai"
[note to others on the forum: that's how they give his name -- I know it's missing accents]:
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/education/features/learn-irish-with-liam-o-maonlai-692551.html

Some of the beginning lessons may be too easy, but later ones are much more advanced, and go into all sorts of topics like politics, current affairs, religion, etc., and you can download both audio files and written materials to use in following the audio part.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

GRMA Caoimhín

I'd come across some of their videos on youtube, but having all the written stuff+ audio really helps, I also tried out some of the stuff on the Des Bishop site, fair play to Liam and Des for doing such a good job, shame the department of Education is incapable of bettering them