Dia daoibh, a chairde,

Has anyone seen this opinion piece by Dr. Desmond Fennell on Advertiser.ie? He states, "In the remainder of the Republic only some academics and a few thousand enthusiasts speak and write Irish well." Is the number truly so low? I thought the population of the Gaeltacht exceeded 80,000 people. Is Dr. Fennell suggesting that even the majority of these people speak poor Irish? It seems an overly harsh assessment to me.

Le meas,
Seán

My best guess is that native speakers speak Irish very well, but perhaps the criticism might be that more and more English words are being used more regularly and seen as the norm. My experience with the written Irish of native speakers is that it can be riddled with spelling mistakes. If it was read out loud, it would sound perfect, but looks a bit dodge in places. For the record, there aren't too many people with perfect English knocking around either!

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He's not referring to the Gaeltacht population. He mentions the Gaeltacht in the previous paragraph, and then he says "In the remainder of the Republic..." meaning the non-Gaeltacht areas.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

Good catch, Mick. I should read more carefully next time! Go raibh maith agat!