Gabháil is common in Munster also especially among older speakers (but pronounced and spelled as Gabháilt and Góilt) its also used in the passed tense a lot as Gha(i)bh mé or Ghabhas!

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Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice

I've encountered just about all of the above at one time or another, although if these were our only complaints wouldn't it be great ! Just imagine, three or four million native Irish speakers, bad pronunciation and all !

Dream on !

Just listening to a fluent non native speaker on the radio right now, and I'm irritated at how he pronounces 'nuadh'. He's saying 'Knew-a'. Maybe he's from B'l'a' Cliath !

What annoys me quite often is when someone says,'this is the way we say it, but of course it's incorrect, the correct way is (to take an example mentioned by a previous poster) we say 'gabháil', but the correct way is 'dul'. That's how all pervasive this caighdeán stuff is, and the way it's been pushed in the schools srl.

that's a quite effective way to kill a language. They used it (as well as prohibition etc) to kill the Breton language here and it worked quite well...

They said to Morbihan and Côtes-d'Armor Breton speakers that the real Breton was that of Finistère, and they said to southern Finistère Breton speakers that the real Breton was that of northern Finistère, and to northern Finistère Breton speakers that the real Breton was that of southern Finistère. So almost all native speakers here think they don't speak the right Breton (although they all do!). People stopped to talk the language to their children in 1945. Now most native speakers are older than 60 years old, and almost no child or teenager speaks it as his/her first language.

I hope Irish won't evolve like that, it would be even worse, in a way, since Irish is (in theory) supported by the government...

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

Pronouncing ''mo'' before a vowel, you often hear learners say ''mo uncail'' etc instead of m'uncail.

Same for ''do''.

That reminds me of another one: saying "go raibh maith agat mo chara" (thank you my friend) instead of "go raibh maith agat a chara" (thank you, friend).

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

Yes, this one may be a bit subtle to explain. The sound may not be a "w" but there is definitely something there in Connemara Irish (and apparently Munster Irish), so if it isn't GWAY, it certainly isn't just GAY either.

Here are some native speaker pronunciations of Gaeilge, Gaeltacht and Gaeltachtaí from Learning Irish for example:

.. Gaeilge, Gaeltacht and Gaeltachtaí

(Source: アイルランド語文法コシュ・アーリゲ方言Learning Irish, Mícheál Ó Siadhail, KENKYUSHA, 2007)


That can be dialectal though. Connemara and particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect often lengthen vowels where the other dialects do not. The long a, for example, is not the same as the á in that case.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

That can be dialectal though. Connemara and particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect often lengthen vowels where the other dialects do not. The long a, for example, is not the same as the á in that case.[/quote]

Granted, though learners (especially in the States, I think) have a real tendency to over-enunciate vowels (including schwas) regardless of the dialect they're learning.

Redwolf

I agree with Breandán, there's definitely something in Gaeilge. It's not a full-on "w", but it's halfway there, at least imo.

I'll add one - not distinguishing between a broad schwa and a slender schwee, especially at the end of a word.


To me, this should be ''uh-wah-lih'' or "uh-wah-leh", not "luh", which to me would be -la like in boladh.

Here's a sound file from Learning Irish so that learners can hear the actual sound:

..abhaile, sa mbaile

(Source: アイルランド語文法コシュ・アーリゲ方言Learning Irish, Mícheál Ó Siadhail, KENKYUSHA, 2007)

So while abhaile is certainly not ''UH-WALYUH/bal-yuh'', there is still a distinction in the slender l that learners have to master.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

It's an unrounded w actually: it is a velar glide, written [ɰ] in the IPA.

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