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Learning Irish with Asarlai YouTube channel
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Gaeilge le Eímear -

Her pronunciation is awful.

We can’t recommend learning sources on this forum that are not up to standard.

We expect learners to make mistakes and to not have perfect pronunciation at first. Obviously they are welcome on this forum and we will try to help them improve. Yes go out there and speak Irish with whatever level you have achieved. But everybody should aim for correct pronunciation. Bad teaching sites online, youtube etc, confuse learners who don’t know the difference, in particular foreign learners who aren’t aware of the history of Irish in schools.

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Learning Irish with Asarlai YouTube channel
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There's a difference between having native pronunciation and having learners' pronunciation that is awful. She doesn't have anything close to a native pronunciation, and just constantly uses the English sounds. This is a contentious issue among the learning community, sadly, as many seem to think that any pronunciation/idiom is okay, but, in general, I'd say we don't feel that way here (though it's a conversation worth having)

I also disagree with what the language needs. The language needs more focus on keeping native speech communities alive, where native idiom and pronunciation are used. It doesn't need passionate teachers who are incompetent teaching what is basically English with a few Irish-esque words. There's a difference between native and non-native pronunciation; we certainly need to be emphasizing the former. And 'passion' won't save Irish, especially if the Gaeltacht dies. That's where the only hope is.

I agree 100% with what Bríd an Galaxyrocker said.

Also I wonder how one can be "passionate" about a language and butcher it at the same time.
I've been passionate about Irish for 25 years and I do my best to speak like a native speaker, in pronunciation, grammar and everything... It wouldn't make sense to me to be in love with a language but not to bother about its basic sounds and grammar...

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

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Learning Irish with Asarlai YouTube channel
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most who have learnt Irish through the school system will speak with a mixture of the dialects

Most who have learnt through the school system, those who actually can speak some Irish after leaving it, are rarely educated on the dialects and speak not with a mix of dialectical pronounciations but with anglicised pronunciations which have no basis in the Gaelic phonetic system still in use in all native dialects of Gaelic.

The Lárchanúint was created as an attempt to rectify this problem (the standard not having a standard for pronounciation) but sadly it did not make any difference.



pretentious to try to speak like you're from a certain Gaeltacht if you're not. And that is especially true for foreign students

So if somebody from Cork learns French or Italian, they are pretentious for trying to use a French or Italian accent, or to mimick the stress, pronounciation and prosody of native speakers. They must speak Italian with their thick Cork accents to avoid being seen as pretentious in your eyes.



It'd be like a Japanese person only wanting to learn and speak Cockney English

No, it'd be like a Japanese person wanting to learn the English of native speakers instead of the English of Spaniards who learned English in school.



reaction to an Irish teenager wanting to speak her native tongue.

It's not a reaction to a teenager wanting to speak her native tongue, as she is a university graduate intending on being a primary teacher (and indeed already teaching online). I understand that the previous reactions may have seemed visceral, and I hope that if Eimear ever sees this she'll understand that those are expressions of frustration with a substandard college and education system and an 'any Irish is good Irish ideology' which she has been taken to represent at this time, unfair as that may seem.



who cares how good someone is at Irish grammar or that they've focused entirely on one particular Gaeltacht dialect if they have no people skills and are terrible optics for the promotion of the language

So forget grammar. Forget pronounciation. Forget about being educated on the living dialects. Don't worry about all that boring reading, listening and practice it takes to improve your language skills. Got people skills? Great! Get out there and promote the Irish language




which again is why the Welsh language is now doing so well with over a half a million daily speakers

Welsh is in a healthier position because it began from a healthier position. A far larger percentage of the Welsh population were native Welsh speakers when they began their revival efforts. This led to there being a much greater percentage of native Welsh speaking teachers and students in the Welsh Medium schools, which probably helped them lessen some of the problems faced in Irish medium education (where principles are complaining of the difficulty of finding teachers with a high enough standard)

I think the main thing about learning any language is that one should strive to focus on native phonology, grammar, syntax and idioms. If we ignore the way natives speak then why try to learn that language? Clearly not to communicate with natives, it would seem.

It's especially unfortunate that this would be the case with minority languages where the language still survives in a living community of natives speakers, and learners then disconnecting themselves from the natives rather than trying to help keep the language alive where it truly counts, the Gaeltachaí.

If people claim to teach a minority language but don't make an attempt at utilising any of the native elements (phonology, idioms, etc.), they only contribute to hurting that minority language. One should never compare the Irish language with English, nor any other non-minority language, when the former is in danger of being completely replaced by the latter.

Having spoken to natives on the matter of pronunciation, they've made their feelings clear regarding "School Irish", and as a learner, I can respect those feelings and understand why they have them. If learners don't have the goal to make themselves understandable to natives, then what goal are they trying to achieve exactly?

Regarding "native tongues", a native tongue is the language you're born into and the tongue utilised by the everyday community you're brought up in. If one is learning another language, that language cannot be their native tongue, no matter their nationality nor geography. It's simply a matter of socio-linguistics. Languages don't have borders or nationalities, they have living native speaking communities. One can strive to learn from the natives and maybe, with good enough Irish, join and help expand their community.

The responses have been heartening.

French was one of my favourite subjects at school. I was one of only two students who took Honours Course in it for my Leaving Cert (ok I’m bragging LOL). And still I finished school not being even close to fluency. But maybe I should set-up a YouTube channel about “Conamara French”, and how we speak it in Conamara. I’d be laughed at, and rightly so. I would love to speak French like a Frenchwoman/man, with the proper pronunciation, and the glides and abbreviated speech that natives use and is never taught in school.

There are some learners who do their best and still can’t wrap their tongues around some sounds, and that’s ok, the main thing is they tried their best. I know I’m never going to learn Xhosa, and I can’t do the LL Welsh sound when it’s in the middle or end of a word, but I’m not going to say to a Welsh person my way is better than yours. It’s the people who say they know it’s not correct and don’t care, that they’ve created their own dialect, that offends native speakers-that is so disrespectful .

An bhfuil nóisean agat don ógbhean Eímear, a Asarlaì?