Inspired by Redwolf's link to a great page http://nos.ie/gniomhaiochas/teanga/6-bh ... -ghaeilge/ on the thread viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3713, I thought it might be interesting to ask people to post common mistakes that they encounter. I am not suggesting obscure one-off errors; I mean the type that you hear/see really often. Anyone wish to kick it off?

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Go to the group Gaeilge Amháin on Facebook and read, 99% of the messages contain mistakes - which isn't surprising since most members are learners.
The weirdest thing is that even native speakers make mistakes when they write, while they wouldn't when they speak (for instance, they can forget to make a séimhiú in writing but they'd make it when speaking, or even when reading their sentence!)

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

I don't thibk that's too weird tbh, sher how many people with native English do the same (miss-spellings and the like)?

Grammar isn't emphasised in school for any language too much anymore, so it's not surprise that many people are lax about it.

I've noticed that a lot as well, a friend of mine always does it in his letters, even though he'd never do it in speech. I think it's because even native speakers are used to writing English rather than Irish, so the just don't write lenition.

One common mistake in Irish is basically forgetting gender, a lot of even intermediate learners do it, like always saying sé or é for inanimate objects.

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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

not sure it's a mistake, since it's common in Donegal (I read it mentioned in An Teanga Bheo).
Not writing lenitions also happens in Breton, I saw native speakers trying to write in Breton although they never really learnt to do it, and quite often they don't write the initial mutations, while when they read the text they make the mutations automatically. Actually before about 1650, people wouldn't write mutations at all, except in a few exceptions when they write them "by mistake" (that's how we know mutations existed before and what they were like ).

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

You learn something new everyday! I haven't seen this in Donegal novels and I'm rarely in the Donegal Gaeltacht so I wouldn't have experience of it. Is it a recent thing or is it in part of Donegal? I think I remember you saying the North and South of the Donegal Gaeltacht have quite different Irish.


Cool! That's similar to Old Irish, I emailed a friend and she said older Welsh speakers would be similar.

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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

I don't know how common this is, but in speech I often mix up "caill" and "caith," so I'll say something like "chaith mé mo mhála" instead of "chaill mé mo mhála" (which does get some odd looks!). It's not something I mix up in writing, though.

Redwolf

Strange, they don't have the same meaning nor the same pronunciation...



no idea, I don't know more about that than what is written in An Teanga Bheo.
Actually I can't find the quote anymore. But I'm 100% sure I read it in some book about Donegal Irish (was it in the book about Tory Irish, or about Rosgoill Irish??)

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

What, mine? True...meaning is totally different, but the only difference in pronuciation is the end, and assonances are often confusing to learners. I know the difference (which is why I never make the mistake in writing), but when I'm speaking my brain often mixes them up.

Redwolf

I'd rather guess lenition is still a normal phonological process which comes naturally in the speech of native speakers but not so naturally in writing.
[v] is just a usual reflex of /b/ or /m/, so naturally that often there isn't felt any need of writing it down.

I would expect far-from-fluent non-native speakers (like me ) to be much more fixated on writing every h correctly.