If Urban Irish is a new dialect, then the English spoken by the French is also a new dialect



"allai" isn't pronounced the same way as the others, at least not everywhere. To me, "aller, allé, allez" sound alike (ie. [ale]) but "allai" is [alɛ]. I think they pronounce it as [ale] mainly in southern France.



Aye, normally it's what a native speaker is. Now, the problem is that nowadays, in the case of endangered & revived languages, there are children that get brought up through Irish by parents who don't master the language. So those children, technically, are native speakers but they don't speak Irish properly. To me, another word should be used in this case, because they can't be compared to Gaeltacht native speakers in any way.

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

Some say they are 'neo natives' or even less charitably, its a question of a pidgin or creole, although there is a continuum of ability of course

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

I know a fair number of Dublin/urban Irish speakers who were either raised with it or went to primary school through Irish and they're perfectly fluent and have good grammar, pronunciation, etc. They wouldn't be mistaken for someone from the Gaeltacht, obviously, but I wonder how many Dublin/urban speakers have the mere "pidgin" of Irish words and English syntax, and how many have good, grammatical Irish.

I think its fair that most language enthusiasts, wherever we're from, are often dismayed by the Gaeilge lofa that some people use, but in my experience there seems to be a real continuum, as Jay Bee put it, ranging from truly poor to excellent Irish. I think it's important to recognize the existence of that continuum rather than to simply dismiss the potential positive impact that Dublin/urban speakers might have on any ostensible revival of the language.

why wouldn't they be mistaken for someone from the Gaeltacht?
To me, it's hard to imagine how one can speak Irish properly without speaking a Gaeltacht dialect, just as it would be hard to imagine someone who speaks good English but doesn't speak England English nor Scotland English nor Ireland English nor American English etc, ie. no natural variety of English.

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

Or Indian English? Where does that fall in your schema of "natural" vs "unnatural" varieties of English?

An Indian friend of mine (who speaks like a native speaker of English, tho Tamil is/was his first language) has a friend who is part of the third generation to grow up speaking English, is from a wealthy background and is educated and is in business. He has to be counted as a native speaker, but I don't know the numbers of such people. You would think they make up a large number, in absolute terms

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

Well, yeah. If your starting assumption is that only Gaeltacht Irish can be proper Irish, then by definition...

But why wouldn't Gaeltacht Irish be the only 'proper' Irish? Why would some non-native speaker be indicative of what is 'proper' in a language?

(Just discovered the "Quote" feature. Fantastic set-up you folks have here. )

Anyhow, I'd be grateful if anyone could sort of unpack why you make this assumption (i.e., that only Gaeltacht Irish can be good Irish), because I'm trying to imagine why that would be the case. Maybe if you could say what you mean by "Gaeltacht Irish." But I wonder if the confusion for me doesn't lie in what is meant by "proper."

And where, again, does the Caighdeán Oifigiúil fit into this scheme? Say, hypothetically, that someone has CO grammar, syntax, etc. but doesn't speak like someone from one of the Gaeltacht areas, does that hypothetical CO speaker have Irish that is inferior in some way? If so, how so?

GRMMA

The Caighdeán's grammar only works for short term agreement and localised items (morpho-syntactic agreement, the genitive, mutation) -it has little to say on the native idiom, and thus the underlying metaphor (buried and apparent) of the tongue, so should you say is mise agus mo chairde ag enjoyáil an chaife (even if it might be frowned upon, it is only frowned upon for having committed the mortal sin of using an English lexical element -the breaking of the underlying' semanto-metaphoric' system is less of a concern. Lenition and gender are marked, so that's ok). Ag dul faoi'n gcasúr (at an auction) is another example.

The lack of concern here means that longer range colligations (grammar that goes together with grammar) is ignored so the normal suite of collocations you see, such as 'league sport', 'call time', 'side swipe', are, apart from set phrasing (like 'mála scoile', 'bean an tí' etc) in need of being made up on the spot and are very often calqued from English. Discourse managment phrases like (é) sin ráite are not as problematic, I think, as they are frozen and functional, but the lacking of collocations (in reference) and functional exponents (when doing things with language, such as 'take your time', 'have a break', and 'mind your self') backwork themselves onto the syntax. It's not that it is first grammar then idiom; rather its a multi-pronged thing -idiom, metaphor, lexis and syntax are all eroded at the same time. It's the not the fault of speakers, but it happens nonetheless.

You also have the issue of enunciation and inability to hear contrasts. The last is a real mystery to me, as having grown up in Ireland, the sounds of Irish are CLEARLY different for broad and slender, and I can't fathom statements such as 'they are subtle' or 'most sounds are the same as English' or it is only a 'bogger accent'. This means that those who see the Caighdeán as a standard can't even mark the grammar they insist on as being correct (weak plurals, genitives, vocatives and datives) when speaking.

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