Certainly a great resource. I hope he keeps at it as well.





I can confirm. We Gall-wegians all came together and agreed that nobody should ever strive to improve their Irish based on the speech patterns of native speakers.

All hail the Caighdeán!

Thanks Ade! That's a super conveniently timed upload for sure!


Interestingly enough I heard a younger native cork speaker (from the folláin jam people) on Saol ó Dheas last week say "le linn an tréimhse" a few times. It threw me off but this may explain it.

Ayiyiyiy so this is great info but learning this creates a conundrum for me.
At this point I've drilled a bunch of genitives and am comfy with genitive plurals but now I'm wondering if it makes more sense to wipe them all out.
Furthermore as I've worked through TYI I've started to work in datives but this again may be wasted time.

Up to now (rather naively I suppose) I had assumed that the genitive was still in common use. I regularly listen to Saol ó Dheas on RnaG and routinely hear genitives from Helen ní Shé so I figured they were par for the course in Munster, but perhaps this is not the case and maybe speakers like this jazz up their Irish with genitives for the radio but maybe don't do so at home? (sort of like a formal vs informal register maybe?)

That's my rant over, but I guess I'm looking for a steer. My aim is to sound like a native munster speaker and what I assumed that meant was: (1) Welded verb forms in most tenses (these are for sure still used), (2) Genitives (singular and plural and bonus for using urús for gen pl. adjectives), (3) Working in 'do' a bit more, (4) Datives for at least the body parts/stuff that comes in pairs, (5) Munster intonation, (6) Second/third syllable stress as per Muimhneachas, (7) Some other things like datives for all F2 nouns, not just dropping the genitive 'e' e.g. amu sa bháistigh, (8) Datives for F5 nouns (abha/abhainn, teanga/teangain) and also for cara and bó on the masculine side of things,

But is all of this some sort of antiquated Irish that doesn't really exist with any native speaker anymore and am I committing hogwash to memory?

Possibly scratch this, tréimhse may indeed be fireann in cork, seeing this in séadna:
"Ansan do labhair sí i gcogar le Siobhán agus chaitheadar tréimhse mór ag cogarnaigh."

I would keep all that you've learned. You will most likely get a "tá an Ghaoluinn go binn agat-sa!" out of an old person at least if your accent is native and you use genitives and datives rather than them going to that you're not a native speaker. The older people, especially those in Munster, put a high value on good grammar and "poetic" language in Irish, and they like to grade people's Irish in my experience.

You will have to make up your own mind. I believe in trying to follow the seanchaithe, the best (and probably oldest) speakers. This approach was recommended by Peadar Ua Laoghaire. When Osborn Bergin asked him what the genitive of sleagh "spear" was, he wasn't quite sure, and thought it was sleithe, but recommended asking an older speaker. He didn't say, "why don't you ask the least knowledgeable person in the Gaeltacht?"

On the other hand, the change in the grammar - a watering-down compared with Father Peter's - is definitely the likely trajectory. The number of native speakers who will be saying "go gcuais" is likely to increase and increase until they don't speak Irish in the Gaeltacht any more. As it is authentic native Irish, there is a logic to speaking Irish as the younger speakers in the Gaeltacht do. Maybe Diarmuid Ó Sé should issue a version of his book Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne focusing exclusively on this for those who want to follow progressive grammar.

Another thing is that vocatives are largely defunct.

And some of the absolute forms, e.g. gheibhim for faighim, and dependent forms like abraim for deirim would also be rarer choices now.

And something interesting is that a lot of apparent Béarlachas expressions are normal in the Gaeltacht and have been for generations and can't be rowed back. I listed many of them at https://corkirish.wordpress.com/idioms- ... ish-idiom/ like "ní thógfainn aon chómhartha dhe" - I'd take no notice of it. The original meaning of tógaim is "I lift".

Helen speaks like that all the time. There isn't really a register difference in my experience. It's just that grammar and usage varies wildly even between neighbours.


If it helps:
The genitive plural and especially an urú on the adjective are so rare as to not exist outside of stock phrases for even the oldest speakers.
"Do" is quite common, although it now means something like "So". "Do bhris sé an fhuinneog...." = "So, he broke the window...". It's rarer for the basic "unmarked" past.
The datives you mentioned are quite common, but mostly because they've replaced the nominative. Actual nominative/dative distinction is quite rare.

The stress and intonation are as you have learned.

_________________
The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Lots of things in Amhlaoibh Ó Loingsigh are no longer current, e.g. tugtar pronounced as tugathar, and féna déin (towards her) pronounced as féna géin.

Just for interest, basically everybody does this with "An" whether they are using the old or new system. It's simply A' before consonant or dropped entirely, though still with eclipses.

The New system still uses dh', so:

go dh'fhoghlamaís

Also in the past some people use do instead of gur:

Is dócha do ndein sé

Almost everybody uses go for the "ná go" relative (the "definitive relative" you might call it):

Ba bheag lá ná go ndúradh é
Ní raibh tránthóna ná go dh'airigh sé...

Also for some people the new system has "bar" as a past copula form.

_________________
The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Thanks for weighing in everyone, all of the extra context has really helped and I think I'm clearer on what I want to do.

If I'm aiming to keep genitives and genitive plurals (outside of eclipsing adjectives as Lon Dubh mentioned) would I be right in thinking that Muskerry Irish would still currently retain these grammatical features most? I recall reading on the TYI study group thread that genitive plurals are still active there.
If so, what's next for me is to find a strong (older the better) Cork speaker who wants to take my money - If anyone knows one I'll take numbers!


Would this be the case in Cork too? So nominatives are now ascaill, snáthaid and suchforth?
How would it work for the nouns whose genitive ends in 'n', teanga, abha and so on?
In Galway I've heard abhainn in the nominative but also teanga/teangan for nominative/genitive instead of what you would think should be teangain/teangan if following the same pattern.


I've found this to be the case also, the urús make the questions pretty evident once you're used to it.
Although I think I've heard "a' raibh sé...?" more so than "raibh sé...?" So maybe there's a tendency to keep part of the particle in place when the verb cannot be urúd.

As an aside, I'd like to formally lodge a complaint with all native speakers for dropping urú of adjectives as it's a super cool language feature .