"Afaik most young Gaeltacht speakers speak better English, and more often English, than Irish."

Yes there are studies which show this.

One of the problems is that the Gaeltachts were never really protected areas, and nobody had the balls to say "You have to have passed a comfortable level of fluency in Irish to live here."

It's got to the point where it's too late to do that now, as there is a critical mass of English speakers already there.

Some researchers have concluded that the only way to save Irish as a community language now is to build new villages or communities just for them and to have protections in place this time. (The government decided to ignore the conclusions of these researchers by the way, they decided that their twenty year plan was better.)

= shocraigh siad go rabh a bplean níos éifeachtaighe leis an teangaidh a mharbhadh.

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I suppose there are some similarities like there are amongst all the European languages to a certain extent. But there are more differences than similarities, and I don't think speaking English helps at all with learning Irish. If you spoke Hebrew or Arabic you might have a better understanding, especially of the CH sound, but also syntax.
I'm a native Conamara Irish speaker, and I learnt English from an early age so I can say I acquired it naturally too. Almost always you can tell when people are speaking Irish as a second language, there are exceptions of course. But that's not surprising most people will have an accent when speaking a learnt language. I'm very aware that my French pronunciation is far from perfect much as I'd like it to be I still can't do it. It was the same when I was trying to learn Welsh, I couldn't pronounce some sounds that weren't in Irish, especially the LL sound in the middle of a word.
You won't notice it today with native Irish speakers as they all learn English very young, and there is television and other media etc. But in previous generations where people learnt English as an adult or had little experience in using it daily you could tell from their English that Irish was their first language, they had a particular accent.

Native speakers don't mind if you can't do it perfectly, the important thing is that you try your best, and not be condescending to natives.

I notice the nasalisation in Breton too, I thought it was a French influence.

Ok, I think I know what an English R sounds like, but I'm not sure. Maybe you can help me.

This boy singing below, his R's are clearly English one's aren't they?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uNGUMHsIN1g


And also, I know the English R is quite widespread in Munster, but can you hear it in the conversation below? The men speaking are as native as you will find in West Kerry.

https://mobile.twitter.com/buailtin/sta ... 7160754177

I think it existed in all Celtic languages but it has disappeared of most now. It's still normal in Breton and can be heard in the speech of older speakers in Irish, and also in Sc. Gaelic.



Aye, most of his r's are as in English (but I heard at least one "normal" ie. one-tap r)

Looks like the guys of the twitter video use the one-tap r's all the time - féar plé daobhtha

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

I’ve found an interesting passage regarding English /r/ in Dingle in Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne le Diarmuid Ó Sé:



which, if I understand correctly, translates to: one strikes the tip of the tongue against the ridge of the teeth and raises the back of the tongue to say [ɾˠ] (…) [ɾ] is before t´, d´, l´, n´ (…) Often continuous(?) [ɹ] or [ɹˠ] is used in singing, instead of the sounds above. (not sure how to understand leanúnach, I guess it describes [ɹ] as not a stop nor a tap?)

This is a book based mostly on 1970s interviews with speakers born before 1940 (most before 1920, one before 1900). That would mean older speakers of Dingle Irish would use the Irish tap r always when speaking but turn to the English r when singing. Interesting when it happened and if that’s a late English influence or rather it happens independently because of the singing styles.

I can't believe a pronunciation that exists only in songs has influenced speech...

Btw I also heard English r's in Donegal sean-nós (ex: Gearóidín Bhreatnach), especially at the end of verses.

I can't believe the [ɹ] (ie. English-like) pronunciation is not caused by the influence of English. Because it looks like in old recordings and in the speech of older speakers in general (those who've learnt English at school), you rarely hear an English r. And the younger the people are, the more they use it.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

Yeah, I totally agree there’s huge English influence on modern speech and [ɹ] in spoken language is caused by English.

What I’m not entirely clear and find to be an interesting question, is whether [ɹ] in sean-nós singing first appeared under English influence or developed internally and then was just reinforced by English and spread to speech under its influence.

What I mean is: I agree there probably would never be [ɹ] in Irish without heavy English influence and English being first-language of most speakers, regardless whether [ɹ] were used in singing or not. I have no idea, though, if [ɹ] in sean-nós is also an English influence or an older independent phenomenon (and if so, then it might have made it a bit easier to adopt [ɹ] in speech too, since it wasn’t that foreign sound to many speakers, especially singers, already).