There was a language or possibly languages spoken in Ireland before Irish. Although very little is known about them. There was still some non-Irish language in the ninth century that Cormac mac Cuilennáin in his dictionary Sanas Cormaic called the Iron language (Old Irish: Iarnnbélrae) which had recently become extinct, which he described as dense and difficult. He gives two words from it ond stone and fern good.

The three major dialects are thought to have come into existence around the late 12th century. Of course there were dialects differences in earlier times, but the major regional divisions were not prominent before then.

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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

It's a pity Cormac mac Cuilennáin didn't record more of it.

I suppose the differences between the dialects would've been less extreme when Irish was spoken throughout the country,each would've merged with each other. It's when they because isolated that they drifted more apart.
There are other dialects that have died, like the Leinster one and Antrim (which would've been a bit closer to Scots Gaelic).. Feel free to correct me as I'm definitely not an expert on this.

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It is recommended that you always wait for three to agree on a translation.
I speak Connemara Irish, and my input will often reflect that.
I will do an mp3 file on request for short translations.
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Sorry, Patrick, but you are confusing being native to a country (a political concept) with being a native speaker of a language (a linguistic concept). Since there is only really one language in the US, anyone born there is a pretty much a native speaker, though it might be debatable if some people raised exclusively in Spanish-speaking communities can be said to have native-level English.

The American analogy doesn't otherwise fit the situation in Ireland. In Ireland, you have a large body of English speakers and a minority of Irish speakers. The examples of American dialects you have given would apply to any _traditional_ dialect of Irish, but as Niallbeag explained, the English-accented neo-dialect of Irish is equivalent to Indian English. It has its place but I don't think it should be taught as standard.

It is true that not all Irish-speaking families are in the Gaeltachtaí, as Braoin says, and it is even possible for people whose parents weren't native speakers of Irish to achieve native-level fluency - Gumbi and An Cionnfhaolach are two examples here on our forum.

It is also true that some native speaking children are affecting a galltacht accent to fit in with their peers at school.

But that isn't the case with Eoin. He is simply an advanced learner with an English accent and makes frequent English mistakes in his Irish.


Unfortunately, Eoin's pronunciations are often wrong. So you get to practice an incorrect pronunciation slowly.

He also has grammatical errors in his material.

If the whole thing were free, then a lot of those mistakes could be overlooked. The overall concept is great but if he is going to charge people money, he should put a lot more effort into making sure there are no mistakes in it, like paying someone who knows what they are doing to edit the material properly, etc.

Insofar as people are paying good money with expectations of learning correct Irish, I think it only right that people should be warned that the project needs a lot more work and higher level input to live up to expectations generated by claims such as "native speaker". This warning is for people with a more precise understanding of the term "native speaker". If you subscribe to the broader interpretation then you probably won't feel you've wasted your money at all.


Incidentally, if you are looking for slow pronunciations of words in Buntús Cainte, you can find them on Forvo or ask for them there. You can also find some amongst Bríd's Word of the Day here, or you can ask for them. Free of charge.

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[hr]Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher[/hr]
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's pretty much what I've read as well. The dialects used to be much closer. For example, Ó Siadhail says it in his book "Modern Irish".

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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

Yes, it's like that in any language but you do just notice it far more with Irish due to large Galltacht regions that separate the Gaeltachtaí. Imagine if you compared the colloquial English of Texas and New Jersey. That's the sort of situation we are in with Irish. There is no more natural linguistic shading from community to community that helped give a feeling of linguistic unity.

But American English has a fairly well agreed upon "standard" and we don't teach the dialect of Texas or New Jersey in schools. The main (British, American, etc) dialectal standards are still pretty close. Imagine what EFL students would do if we asked them to choose between American (Southern), American (North East), British (Northumbrian), British (Southern/London) British (Glaswegian). The predominance of Hollywood and the BBC hide a lot of this from EFL students and even from native English speakers. This helps to give a feeling of linguistic unity even across oceans.

No one knows, nor are they likely to ever know. There is nothing left of the languages that were spoken before Celtic arrived.



No, the Celtic languages of 200 BC were very different from what we see today. A lot of people like to make a distinction regarding P and Q Celtic but current linguistic opinion on the P/Q Celtic divide is that this is far too trivial and amounted to nothing more than what one might call an "accent". Many people seem to be confused the fact that the Celtiberian dialect was "Q-Celtic" and think this means there had to have been some direct connection between that language and the Celtic language of Ireland. But there is neither archaeological nor linguistic evidence to support that. It's just a historical accident that Irish scribes saw a connection between the Latin Hibernia and Iberia and wove that into stories about Ireland.

We know that there were both Q/P-Celtic languages in Ireland and Britain circa 200 BC. And we know that Rome conquered the southern part of Britain and that Gaulish was predominantly P-Celtic. It should not surprise anyone that the Gaulish dialect would have had huge influence on Southern Insular Celtic from Gaulish diaspora and from Roman occupation. Does it surprise us that Q-Celtic (the older pronunciation) predominated where that influence never really occurred? I think what you would have found in Britain in Ireland before the Roman invasion was a continuum of dialects with a predominance of the P-Celtic pronunciation in what is today Southern England to a slow gradation and patches of the Q-Celtic pronunciation in what is today Scotland over into Ireland where the P-Celtic pronunciation was far less popular but still existed. A lot of historians kind of assumed that the Dál Riata brought Gaelic to Scotland and Man but we know there just wasn't enough of a movement of people to explain a linguistic conversion from a language something like Primitive Welsh to something like Primitive Irish.

I think they probably already spoke a language much like that of Primitive Irish around 300 BCE and then that political connection just kept the linguistic continuity in place and then helped to spread it into other territories that were attested as Brythonic speaking by the historical period (6th century).

Is there archaeological or linguistic evidence to support the claim that it's just a historical accident? If you're criticising others for stating unsupported theories as facts, you should be careful not to do the same yourself.

While it is true that there is next-to-no linguistic evidence and absolutely no archaeological evidence, there is increasing genetic evidence of an Iberian origin for the Insular Celtic peoples, which also provides increasing support for the Insular Celtic hypothesis.

Of course, none of this will ever constitute unquestionable fact.

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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.

Eoin decided to address some of the questions raised here in his regular Bitesize podcast. Here it is, if you'd like to have a listen. He does quote a few of the posts from this thread and speaks specifically to the questions raised:

http://www.bitesizeirishgaelic.com/blog/podcast017/

The genetic connection that Ireland has with Iberia is much further in the past than anything that can reasonably be described as Celtic. What I am stating is that there is no evidence to support the idea that the Gael came from Iberia. There is ample genetic evidence to support that there was a connection between the pre-Celtic Iberians and the pre-Celtic people who inhabited Ireland and that this genetic component survived. But that is not what Lebor Gabála Érenn states. It states that the Mileseans, the Gaelic speaking people of Iron Age Ireland, came from Iberia. It also mentions Troy and a number of other places, none of which has any actual bearing on history. The most likely explanation is that the Iberian/Hibernian connection in LBG was just an accident rather than something that was remembered from the Copper or Bronze Ages, circa 2000 years before LBG.

It just does not make sense given what we know about the languages and movements of people in those parts of the world at those dates to postulate a direct connection between the Celtiberians and Ireland. Now, that being said. If John T. Koch and Barry Kunlife are correct regarding Tartessian and it's place in the Indo-European language family, then I will be willing to revise my thoughts on this topic. But as of yet I don't think we have enough evidence to see Tartessian as a Celtic language at all, let alone to postulate that it represents Proto-Celtic - Koch has not been able to sway the majority of people in his field.

And if you would like source material on how I have formed my opinions on this matter, see The Emergence of the Celtic Languages, by Joseph F. Eska, CH2 of The Celtic Languages. Towards a Relative
Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic, by Dr. Kim McCone. and Common Celtic, Gallo-Brittonic and Insular Celtic by Patrick Sims-Williams. Here is his tree from that book showing the joint relationship that Brythonic seems to have as an insular Celtic language and with it's influence from Gaulish. Note the question marks. It's not a settled question, but it's still the best fit we have for the evidence.

Just to add, the bit about the forum thread is near the end, but the whole podcast is worth a listen.