I am taking a class on ESOL (English as a Second Language) for my teaching certification. I have always been in love with Irish culture, and for this language research project I could think of no better language to research than Gaeilge. Could any native Gaeilge speakers please help by answering the following questions for my paper.

1)Describe a challenge a speaker of this language would have when learning about nouns in English.
2)Describe a challenge a speaker of this language would have when learning about verbs in English.
3)How is formality or respect expressed?
4)What topics are considered inappropriate or forbidden?
5)What are challenges native Gaeilge speakers have when learning English?

Thank you very much for your help!

Not a native speaker, but I can answer one of your questions.



Gaeilge, as a whole, only has 11 irregular verbs. English has about 5 trillion.
This seeming lack of any regular conjugation pattern would be a big stumbling block for a native Gaeilge speaker trying to deal with English verbs.

Also, this doesn't directly answer any of your questions, and is more of a reflection of the culture in Ireland than of the language.
But Irish people curse a lot. Noticeably more Not sure why this is, and I assume that by the time a native Gaeilge speaker gets to your course,
they'll realize that cursing isn't as commonplace and acceptable as in their native culture.

Finally, the native language of Ireland is IRISH. Is is not, like many people think, Gaelic. Not a big deal to many people, but some native Irish people will get seriously peeved by this common mistake.

The older I get, the more I think of this as a characteristic of the school system in Ireland. Irish is taught as Irish and for many of us the first time we hear it being called anything else is when people who did not grow up in Ireland refer to it.

This is further complicated by the classification of Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic as Gaelic languages. It makes the term seem like it can solely refer to the language family, which simply isn't the case.

While talking to a grandaunt of mine recently in English, I heard her referring to Irish as Gaelic a few times. She's a native Irish speaker from Donegal. I have, in fact, only ever heard her refer to the language as Irish when somebody else brings up the topic and refers to Irish, but it's not at all natural to her. And why would it be? To her the language she speaks is no less closely related to the Irish I learned in school than it is to Scottish Gaelic. Each represents a deviation from what she grew up speaking, but neither are unintelligible.

I think the development of referring to Irish as Irish-and-not-Gaelic is a new one, fostered in the school system and common experience here, but anyone who gets peeved about it does so at the cost of forgetting that neither Irish nor Gaelic is incorrect as a means of referring to the Irish language.


Edit to say: OP seems to be saying Gaeilge, not Gaelic. Unless the original post has been edited since you got to it, Vitaee?

Hi sullivanshan,

As a linguist with an interest in Irish, I'm sure you're aware that any native speakers alive today are bilingual and would likely have grown up with both English and Irish from a very early age.

You may, of course, want to collect your data about the experiences of children learning English in this way in bilingual Irish homes as opposed to monolingual ones, however, I think referring to the English of any Irish person as being a "Second Language" is probably incorrect. An Irish person for whom English is an L2 language in the modern day would be an outlier. The chances of them also being a native Irish speaker are zero.

Donegal people often say "Gaelic" because the name of the language in Irish is pronounced, roughly, "GAY-lig" in Ulster.

Redwolf