Fascinating 2010 study on gaelscoil vs. gealtacht irish

Dylan · **Joined:** Sat 15 Aug 2015 6:09 pm **Posts:** 39

It's not impossible to get learning materials in dialectical Irish. There's Ó Siadhail! The problem is how forbidding and riddled with inconsistencies the book is. It needs a redesign without compromising its integrity. Imagine how much improved school Irish would be if it were based on something solid like that.

Also, in my opinion, speaking Irish would be no fun at all without /x/

Wes H. · **Joined:** Mon 07 Dec 2015 11:57 pm **Posts:** 29

Fascinating discussion. I wasn't aware of Ó Broinn's latest article.
You all probably have read it before, but Feargal Ó Béarra's "Late Modern Irish and the. Dynamics of Language Change and Language Death" (2007) makes points similar to the ones made in the OP.
[url]https://books.google.ie/books?id=VgBtaDT-evYC&pg=PA260&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
[/url]

galaxyrocker · **Posted:** Tue 08 Dec 2015 4:04 am

An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

But unfortunately, it is impossible to buy learning materials in dialectal Irish anymore.

This is sadly very true. I wish I could find some South Connemara things. Luckily I can find some Cois Fharraige (even if it's mostly academic).

Quote:

Urban speakers need to acknowledge that in the majority of cases (sadly, very true), the Irish they speak is wrought with mispronunciation, i.e. replacing Irish phonemes with the nearest English one. We are in serious danger of actually losing Irish phonemes because students aren't taught them in the first place and teachers themselves don't know them either.

And secondly, to inform people and children in Gaelscoils that the Irish they learn in school is not dialectal Irish, but is instead standard Irish and not indicative of the language once spoken in their area (now, they may learn token dialectal features, but certainly not dialectal Irish)

Furthermore, people need to be challenged in the view that the 'deviant' (e.g. Tá sé ag bualadh mé) forms that they used in the Gaelscoileanna are not dialectal, so when they meet the correct expression they don't automatically assume that it's (A) incorrect, or (B) a different dialectal form.

The same needs to be said of Gaeltacht speakers, who often see different dialectal forms as incorrect, but in the case of the dialectal feature, 'their' form will usually not be 'deviant' and will probably be consistent with native Irish and not a calque; if it is a calque, it is usually quite an old one.

Cian

I would go one step further and say that they need to learn the definition of "native speaker". I've been arguing on Duolingo with a lad from Dublin (assuming based on his profile picture) who kept insisting my definition of native speaker (one who learned it from birth as their language) was wrong. And that, of course, Urban Irish speakers were speaking a new 'dialect'. In fact, I might link him to your post, Cian!

Wes H. · **Joined:** Mon 07 Dec 2015 11:57 pm **Posts:** 29

You folks who are native speakers, where are you from/what dialect do you speak?

Our man in Brussels · **Posted:** Tue 08 Dec 2015 10:15 am

Cian, thanks for all the info about other studies and for the method of distinguishing evolved-dialect from creole elements! I read it all but the only part I can reply about is:

An Cionnfhaolach wrote:

Our man in Brussels wrote:

I read a lot about the quality of French education here in Brussels and one common complaint by parents is that kids' spelling isn't as good as back in their day. It's true that a modern 10-year-old makes more mistakes in written French than one of times gone by, but what's actually happening is that the perfecting of people's spelling is just happening later in their school career.

Were these native French speakers?

Spelling doesn't really have anything to do with language proficiency per se

Natives, even monolinguals (at age 10), in a French-speaking city. In the case of French, good spelling is closely linked to proficiency because there are lots of usually-silent-but-sometimes-pronounced letters with grammatical functions (unlike silent letters in English which have no grammatical function, and letters in Irish which don't change the pronunciation which may have grammatical reasons but not functions). Dictations are even part of the Leaving Cert over here!

Our man in Brussels · **Posted:** Tue 08 Dec 2015 11:59 am

Dylan wrote:

It's not impossible to get learning materials in dialectical Irish. There's Ó Siadhail! The problem is how forbidding and riddled with inconsistencies the book is. It needs a redesign

It definitely does, but I think one additional, more accessible CD is also necessary. Ó Siadhail's audios use somewhat native speed and shortcuts right from the start, but as a non-native I'm not sure I'm hearing everything. How many different 'r' sounds are being used? How can I copy them when I don't know if I'm I noticing them all?

It reminds me of when I was in a beginners' French class and the teacher said "In French there are four nasal vowels: uh, uh, uh, and uh".

Same for shortcuts. If someone wants to learn native Dublin English, then one approach would be to start by saying that "Hello" in Dublin is "Scone". But a better approach would be to tell them it's "How's it going" and let the learner eventually speed it up. I think I'd get more out of Ó Siadhail's audios if I had a primer.

Jay Bee · **Joined:** Tue 15 Nov 2011 7:35 am **Posts:** 1098

Quote:

Feargal Ó Béarra

Late Modern Irish and the Dynamics of Language Change and Language Death
http://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php? ... 15&start=0

Quote:

It reminds me of when I was in a beginners' French class and the teacher said "In French there are four nasal vowels: uh, uh, uh, and uh".

In properly spoken traditional Irish, the consonants are clearly different from one another

Quote:

. I think I'd get more out of Ó Siadhail's audios if I had a primer.

Primers should be brought back! They were great things for explaining. I had one on Anglo-Saxon, thought I can't see it now

Quote:

letters in Irish which don't change the pronunciation which may have grammatical reasons but not functions

I kind of get what you mean, but could you give an example (I'm guessing -adh in the conditional and saorbhriathar maybe)

Dylan · **Joined:** Sat 15 Aug 2015 6:09 pm **Posts:** 39

Our man in Brussels wrote:

Dylan wrote:

It's not impossible to get learning materials in dialectical Irish. There's Ó Siadhail! The problem is how forbidding and riddled with inconsistencies the book is. It needs a redesign

It definitely does, but I think one additional, more accessible CD is also necessary. Ó Siadhail's audios use somewhat native speed and shortcuts right from the start, but as a non-native I'm not sure I'm hearing everything. How many different 'r' sounds are being used? How can I copy them when I don't know if I'm I noticing them all?

It reminds me of when I was in a beginners' French class and the teacher said "In French there are four nasal vowels: uh, uh, uh, and uh".

Same for shortcuts. If someone wants to learn native Dublin English, then one approach would be to start by saying that "Hello" in Dublin is "Scone". But a better approach would be to tell them it's "How's it going" and let the learner eventually speed it up. I think I'd get more out of Ó Siadhail's audios if I had a primer.

I just assume that there aren't any phonemes that aren't listed in the back. I feel like there's more complexity to R than he's letting on, but overall he has 34 consonants (35 if H counts, plus there's 3 more that I think are only in loan words). If Jay Bee is right in saying that 32 consonants is the base number of good Irish, then I figure I'm in a pretty good spot by just sticking to what is listed and explicitly demonstrated. As for hearing them, that's where the transcription comes in. No good to try to pronounce the word directly from transcription, but it can tell you what the sounds are. And once you know they're there, it's only a matter of practice to start hearing them. I'm still getting the hang of the 3 different N's, but I just keep listening closely to recordings where, based on the transcription, I know which one is being said.

Do people write/text "scone" or do they just say it like that?

Our man in Brussels · **Posted:** Tue 08 Dec 2015 3:03 pm

Jay Bee wrote:

Quote:

letters in Irish which don't change the pronunciation which may have grammatical reasons but not functions

could you give an example

Not with much confidence

maybe an example is the second vowel when a consonant is slender-ised by sandwiching it between two slender vowels. But my point regarding Irish is that the spelling is almost completely tied to the pronunciation, just like Spanish's spelling is - only the connection is far less intuitive and more complicated in Irish's case.

English is unlike Spanish and Irish in that its spelling is tied to its mongrel past and lack of a central authority, so its difficulty comes from being an unordered mess. Since its spelling isn't linked to its grammar, someone could master the tenses and the grammar and just be a lousy speller. They're two separate skills.

French is different again because its spelling is tied very much to its grammar (without necessarily changing the pronunciation) and it's difficult because French grammar is difficult. But if you master French tenses and grammar then spelling should be simple. That's why French-speaking parents get worried when their 10-year-old makes more spelling mistakes than they did at that age. For example, these four tenses of the same verb are pronounced the same: allé, allai, allez, aller but if you mix them up in writing it's like hearing an English speaker saying "I brang my bike to school".

Our man in Brussels · **Posted:** Tue 08 Dec 2015 3:28 pm

Dylan wrote:

Do people write/text "scone" or do they just say it like that?

Only spoken. When it's a simple greeting rather than a question, a local will say it like that or like "s'goin" in more situations than the full "How's it going", but there are some situations, like shouting across a noisy road, or repeating yourself when someone didn't hear you, where there's no point in just slowing it down: ssssccoooooonnnnnne.

I guess an Irish equivalent is that you'd usually say "g'ma'ad" but if you're shouting down a bad phone connection, you have to know that the expression is "go raibh maith agat" instead of shouting "gumaaaaaaaaaad"

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