I'm sorry but Irish-English isn't completely different from "standard English", not as much as Urban Irish is from Irish.
There has been a transmission of the English language in Ireland, the Irish people have learnt English from native English speakers some time. When you all write in English I don't see mistakes all the time, Irish-English isn't wrong English, unlike Urban Irish that is just standard Irish with mistakes because it's used by people who don't master the language.



lol So this means that all the rules of Irish grammar don't exist anymore. You can say anything, it's always right. Who would believe this, really?
What other language evolves through the speech of learners? Learners are learners, by definition they don't master the language. French schoolchildren don't speak a new dialect of English, they just speak an incorrect kind of English since they are learning it and when you're learning a language you can't get everything right from the beginning.
Why would it be any different with Irish? I'm asking that again and again and, surprisingly enough , nobody answers me...

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

actually lughaidh we did at the start if you want to see a example of how differently just look at the play the playboy of the western world for a example where people claimed the english being portraited in it was irelands shame these were first and generation english speakers patterns .

Examples of this would be besht and wesht same thing is happening in urban areas. Some of it stuck after it levelled some of it didn't.

You say that these people are learners well i agree there is loads of learners in urban centers but do you know where the highest population of native speakers of irish is in Ireland ? It is not any of the gaeltacht but dublin. Most people who speak this are native speakers who are getting the mix of different dialects and also how the dublin people speak. Most of these people speak with rolling rs and broad and slender sounds ie they have the sounds of irish. Now i would agree that they are others who dont speak Irish properly and yes they are contributing to the new dialect but when it becomes standardized then it should have all the irish features and be uniquely dublin or blás átha cliath. (or derry belfast and the other urban centers that is seeing a rise in spoken Irish) . So to say that the people who are comming up with this new blás are learners is completley wrong.

A dialect isn't only a "blas"...
And there are Gaeltacht native speakers outside the Gaeltacht, and they don't speak "Urban Irish".
Anyway, the day full-of-mistakes-Irish has become the new standard, we shall have a discussion again.

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

Another excellent example of this trend can be found in the regional dialects of the United States. If you go to the upper Midwest, for example, you'll hear a very distinctive dialect that came from German and Scandinavian settlers...English language learners. In Louisiana, you'll hear a dialect that came from French-speaking Quebecois...also English language learners. These are legitimate dialects of English and, while non-standard, would never be considered "incorrect" or "not authentic English."

BTW, an accent shouldn't be confused with "not pronouncing words correctly." You can pronounce words with great precision and still have a marked accent. In fact, without extensive vocal coaching, very few people who learn a language after the age of 13 or so will be able to speak it without an accent. So much more goes into making up an accent than "correct pronunciation."

Redwolf

and whom did they learn English from? From native speakers... otherwise I wonder how they would have managed. Transmission hasn't been interrupted.



that's right, and what is important in Irish pronunciation is the set of slender/broad consonants, the way vowels are pronounced etc. All things that Urban Irish speakers haven't picked up, according to what O Broin wrote. The "general accent" you're talking about is less important, in my opinion.

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

I've been trying to stay out of this debate, because it's largely pointless. It's a lot like arguing about politics or religion. Minds are rarely changed, nor is what is eventually going to happen altered much. However, I just have to put my two-cents' worth in.

The people(s) of Ireland spoke one or more non-Celtic languages for about 6,000 years (ever since people returned after the last ice age) before the first Gaels came. Then they learned Goidelic (in some early form, and leaving aside the argument as to whether they spoke a Brythonic Celtic for a while before that). Some of our pre-Celtic ancestors (and Irish people are mostly of pre-Celtic stock, as genetic studies have shown) were probably irritated to have to learn this barbarous foreign tongue, and thus began the early stages of whining about the language (whinging, for those of Anglo culture).

The Goidelic they spoke for the next 1000-1500 years probably sounded (in its various stages) very different from any form of Irish spoken now, and what they spoke was in any case not the "pure" Goidelic brought in (presumably from Spain) by the Gaels (whoever they actually were). Linguists have determined that more than a dozen key characteristics of Irish grammar and syntax (such as its verb-first structure) are remnants of a pre-Goidelic "substrate" which the people were speaking when Goidelic arrived (it may even have been related distantly to Berber, Arabic, and other Afro-Asiatic languages, which were also verb-first, and had many of the same characteristics).

So, from the very beginning, and for the whole time since then, there have probably been Irish people whining/whinging about how poorly some people spoke the language, and how odd their pronunciation was. And with the borrowing of Latin, Norse, Welsh, Norman French, and ultimately English words, and the effects on pronunciation caused by those many "visitors", there were probably people all along complaining about how adulterated Gaelic was becoming in vocabulary, in pronunciation, and even grammar (think of the Norse and their Germanic compound words, which probably upset some Gaelic purists). One can lament Béarlachas all day and night, but that sort of language change is inevitable, and happens in all languages, even the most widely-spoken. Even the French people have stopped fighting things like le weekend, even if the government hasn't noticed.

When Gaelic culture started to break down in the 17th Century, there was still a continuum of Gaelic "dialects" from Munster all the way up Ireland, across the Isle of Man, and through much of Scotland (even still in many Lowland areas) and the current Munster, Connacht and Ulster Irish "dialects" (each of which has its own subdivisions even today), as well as the remaining Gàidhealtachd in Scotland, are only a remnant of what once was, and a fringe remnant at that. While I envy the current Gaeltacht speakers their native fluency, and I enjoy learning the dialectical differences and their etymology, and I hope that the Gaeltachts do survive and thrive, Gaeltacht Irish speakers have no claim to be the arbiters of "correct" Irish. In fact, a classical Gaelic speaker of 1601, particularly a high-born, arrogant, and educated one, might have considered the dialects of such isolated areas to be well outside the "norm" and almost barbarous (no offense to Bríd and others -- I'm just trying to make a point about language change). They only get to claim comparative "purity" today because they were so isolated that they survived he longest.

Rather than the endless debate as to who speaks correctly, we should celebrate the fact that the language has survived, and is now even thriving in a small (but hopefully sustained) way outside the Gaetachts. Among those urban kids may be someone who, inspired by the beauty of the language, may be the next great Irish-language poet. If he/she doesn't pronounce things just the way they do in Gaoth Dobhair, Conamara, or Corca Dhuibhne, so what? Even the people in those places probably don't pronounce things just the way their grandparents did, because that happens in all languages. Just be happy Irish is alive enough that there is change to whine/whinge about. The Irish are a lot better off than those poor Native American tribes with three elderly speakers who would love to have some kids to speak their language with, no matter how bad their pronunciation.

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

Always the same argument: bad Irish is better than no Irish. That's the argument lazy people use, they hope soon all mistakes will be considered correct, so Irish will be much easier to learn.
But this is my argument: good Irish is better than bad Irish, and if you really like the language, learn it as it is, don't leave apart half of what makes it so special.

Now, could someone answer this: why so many teenagers from towns go to Gaeltacht courses in the summer, if their Urban Irish is considered as valid as Gaeltacht Irish? And why don't Gaeltacht speakers go on summer courses in the Urban Irish speaking communities?

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

Actually, no...or only peripherally. Immigrants to the U.S. in the 1800s generally didn't mix with other groups (it wasn't safe to do so...this country has a distressing history of dealing harshly with immigrants, for all our rhetoric). We like to talk about the USA being a "melting pot," but in reality it took generations for that to occur. Most adults and teenagers who came to this country back then picked up what English they did on their own from what they heard on the streets...often filtered through other immigrants (and sometimes even from immigrants from different cultures than their own). The people who made their way to the midwest (or, in the case of the Acadians, to the south) would have still had German or Swedish or French as their day-to-day household language, and the English they had would have been what you might call "Learners' English." That's what they passed on to their children, who passed it on to their children, with the result that they now represent a distinct dialect. That's why you'll hear not only a distinctive accent, but also differences in vowel and consonant sounds and in word usage in those regions. It's something that only began to disappear in the latter part of the 20th century, with the wider availability of mass media.

Redwolf

I'm sorry but I don't see any significant difference between your English and Breandán's or Bríd's or Ben's... So I guess there was some uninterrupted transmission from native speakers to native speakers, otherwise there would be much more differences and mistakes etc.

Btw I don't understand why you're trying to defend Urban Irish although it's not the Irish you're learning.
If I showed you a transcription of a conversation in Urban Irish, you'd all say "oh my, it's full of mistakes!". You can't do your best to learn proper Irish and spend so much time on this forum, improving your Irish and helping other learners with Irish grammar, and at the same time, saying that incorrect Irish is right.

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

If you want to hear the difference between my English and Bríd's and Ben's and Breandán's, all you have to do is hear us speak. English has a written standard that has a tendency to mute dialectical differences. That said, there's an even bigger world of difference between my English and Cajun English or Midwestern English...or, for that matter, Yorkshire English.

I am learning, and defending, a living language...one that will hopefully outlive you and me and all these petty arguments, even if it has to adapt and change to do it.

Redwolf