As regards native Irish - not all Irish speaking households are situated in the official or actual Gaeltacht - I wouldn't knock it too much because of an accent, though. This needs to be encouraged.
I think something like Bitesize is a good idea. They give a free trial run, which is good.
Technical terms used in this thread such as: phonemes, creole, diphthongise your long vowels, Y-glide, nasalisation... I will have to look-up to understand them and try to follow the thinking there.
Grammar I think should be proof-read all right and any errors corrected early, but Dialect is a tough one
Should you get a Conamara speaker, or a Corca Dhuibhne speaker or someone down there in the Oideas Gael direction to speak the pronunciations...
Still, I think the thing should work and I wish Eoin well with it and, as Bríd has said, he will likely expand it.

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Bí cinnte de go nglacfaidh triúr le gach aistriúchán a thabharfar.
Be sure to get three in agreement with a translation given.

I haven't heard Eoins accent. But in general if you were brought up speaking a language at a young age you are a native speaker of it.

Even if It just so happens that it is a dialect more influenced by English than many others.

I hear some young people here in the Gaeltacht employing varying degrees of school Irish along side the more traditional Munster dialects of their parents. Id imagine they would take umbrage at any suggestions of them not being native speakers.

I also dont understand why people are turned of by dialects, they exist, they pretty much are the lanaguge. The standard doesn't really have a form of pronunciation, so you have to look to a dialect as a guide.

Personally I find it hard to relearn things. I have stuff from school I consistently mispronounce even though ive subsequently learned how they should be pronounced.
císte comes to mind, i know there is an í in it, we used to say ciste in school. I still do.

Things I have learned subsequently I am able to pronounce much better.

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Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

Yeah, that's typical. The form you heard at school just gets stuck in your head.


No dice young fella, you'll be examined in a week and you better be y-gliding with the best of them.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Fascinating stuff to say the least ! I have been a subscriber to Bitesize Irish Gaelic for about a year now so I've been following this thread with great interest over the past few days. It does seem to have morphed just a bit into something beyond Saoirse's original query. As I am still in the "larval" stages of my endeavour to learn Irish, probably due to my more casual approach , some of the more in-depth posts are quite a bit beyond me Couple that with the fact that I am an American and not a native born Irish person, there might not be much credibility or veracity in anything I might have to say in regards to Irish dialects. To be sure, at my level of learning and geographic location, I can barely recognize when someone is speaking Irish let alone what particular dialect. This has certainly caused me to wrestle with whether it's even my place to offer comment on the subject. However, some of the comments posted by others in regards to what might define a "native speaker" of a language has prompted me to interject a few "unqualified" remarks.
I will have to humbly and respectfully disagree with the idea that because someone lacks a particular accent or dialect, or perhaps has a mixture of accents and dialects, he or she cannot be considered a "native speaker" of the language of the country in which he or she was born, raised and educated. Now, my viewpoint is based primarily on my narrow experience and observations here in my own country which, because of it's comparatively more diverse population, might be like comparing apples to oranges. As I'm sure others have more eloquently pointed out, when one travels about the U.S., there can be detected very distinct differences in accents, colloquialisms and vernacular within different regions of the country. Some are so stark that in some cases it can be very difficult for a person from say ... the bayous or back country of Alabama to understand someone born and raised in the rural areas of Maine. Some might even say there are parts of the U.S. where people lack any distinctive accent at all. In the past (not so much these days), broadcast journalists were taught how to speak in a very bookish "anti or non-vernacular" in order to present a non-biased account of their articles. However, for the most part, they were all taught the same basic, or "standard", form of english in their respective public school systems. I would be willing to guess that if any one of them were to accuse the other of not being a "native speaker" of the language of his country of birth, they would take great exception to this.
I don't really know how Irish was taught prior to the Norman and English invasions and the story of the attempts to eradicate the Irish language is a sad and painful one to be sure. Presently though, if Ireland does indeed want it's pre-invasion native tongue to return to common use, and it maintains a unified school system throughout the country, a standard method for teaching it, at least at the elementary level, would probably be the most efficient way to go. It's my guess that the various dialects will continue and perhaps, just as the existing ones came into existence in the past, another dialect, or even a number of other dialects, will evolve in the future.
As for those of us (speaking only for myself actually) who are not Irish citizens but do express an interest in Ireland, it's language and it's culture, whether through shared heritage or just an appreciation for it's beauty or both, the issue of dialects is probably much lower in priority than a native Irish citizen when first starting out learning the language. In that respect, and in answer to Saoirse's original intent, I have enjoyed using Eoin's program and listening to his accompanying audio files. One of the features I like most about it is the way Eoin will slowly pronounce the more common, and maybe some not so common, words and phrases so that one can relate what he/she is reading to what he/she is hearing. I do have other material such as Butús Cainte and certainly I've benefited from it but, because it speeds along at normal conversational speed, it's difficult to follow along and some of the more subtle nuances are missed. In my very limited experience, I'd say Bitesize Irish Gaelic is certainly a great addition, if not the primary element, to a collection of various learning materials.
Please know that I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for all of those who have contributed to this thread, whether more or less learned than myself, and though I may disagree with a few personal viewpoints, my comments are not intended to insult any of you. Thanks for allowing me to participate.

Patrick

Well said, Patrick!

Redwolf

This is of course true, but trivially so. By definition, a language you speak from birth is your native language. The question is what said language actually is.

Let me point you to the large number of native speakers of English in India who speak a radically different language to you and me. It is a language born from a meeting of English and a whole bunch of non-native errors from people who learned it as adults and then attempted to pass it on to their children. It's a language that would fail any internationally-recognised English exam, because it is hugely divergent from the statistical norm of the language of "continuity speakers" in the British Isles and in the majority-white-settler former colonies. But Indian English is fairly internally consistent (in the northern states, at least) and therefore stands on its own two feet as a valid independent language. It has grammatical features, vocabulary items and phonological features that occur in almost every dialect. There are still some speakers of "English" in India (mostly from military and legal backgrounds), but the vast majority of speakers are speakers of "Indian English". If you switch on your TV to an English-language channel, you'll mostly see Indian programmes, and when the cartoons come on, you'll often hear the Singapore English dub rather than the international version that you'd receive in Ireland, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand etc... because it's easier for them to understand.

Similar patterns occur in other parts of the former empire where the English-native settlers were in a minority. You'll've heard Jamaican Patois at some point, or maybe the Barbadian Creole of the "Redlegs". You will have seen Africans speaking forms of English on TV but with the need of subtitles to be understood. If you want to see an extreme example of non-native English language change google "Bislama pronouns", and let your mind boggle.

But Indian English is the best example in this instance, because the North Indian languages are structurally very similar to the Celtic languages, so there's almost as big a gap between English and Irish as there is between Hindi and English.

In Scottish Gaelic, there's a term that isn't used enough: "Gàidhlig ionnsachaidh". Tha Gàidhlig ionnsachaidh agam: I speak learner Gaelic -- I will never speak just "Gàidhlig", and neither will anyone I teach. This doesn't mean that learners aren't important to Gaelic or to any other minority language, just that learner language is always imperfect.

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

I know this has nothing to do with this thread, but wow, the world is full of interesting things. I'd love to see those Pacific island nations (and the whole planet really! )

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Who uses that term?

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I'm sure he meant the (I)rish Isles (and aren't they just smiling at you?)

It's not my intent to pour gasoline on the fire, and once again I'm probably in over my head on this one but, I've become a tad intrigued with the topic of dialects and what constitutes a "native speaker".
While pondering the issue a little more, a couple of questions came to my mind that I can't seem to find definitive answers to. Perhaps someone on the forum can enlighten me ? I was wondering ... Was there a predominant language spoken on the island before the ancient Celts arrived ? And ... were the three major dialects that exist today brought by them at that time or are they a result of a divergence of the language evolving over time into what Ireland has today ?