Not all of it, but anyway, for some reason, anytime I listen to learning stuff, I come across sentences that aren't properly pronounced.
Btw, you say "any Irish is better than no Irish", but good Irish isn't more expensive than bad Irish. It's just as easy to ask native speakers.
If the recordings were done in Ireland, they could just ask any native speaker (in ainm Dé, it isn't difficult to find native speakers there! go to the Gaeltacht and you'll find thousands of them), instead of someone who doesn't pronounce properly.

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

Good point Lughaidh. One thing you all helped me with was pronouncing the Glance Card (you may remember you made me a recording and I believe Ailein did as well (whoever was tchifidh...or something like that). When you're in the middle of no-where and you mail off for something like that, it's almost insurmountable to figure out where to start. I wouldn't have had a clue how to find a native speaker, so good basic materials would help with such speakers pronouncing on them. I think a dictionary with all prounounced and the glance card would be incredible.

When I was in Glenn Finn I had the grandson in the house (a 10 year old) pronounce the glance card for me and it is an incredible resource. If I can figure out how to get it off the recorder on to an mpeg maybe some of you would care to hear a native speaking Donegal child. It's pretty interesting and very clear.

Be wary also of the pronunciation of younger school-age kids, though, Faber, as it is considered "cool" by some kids in the Gaeltacht to modify their pronunciation away from the traditional pronunciation of their parents and make themselves sound more like the non-native school learners, a kind of peer-group pressure towards the non-native norm in schools.

I'm not saying that that is necessarily the case with your young friend, and I'd love to hear the recording one day, but there are all sorts of hidden pitfalls with "native" speakers of various ages. (At the other extreme, many old recordings of monoglot speakers were of people who had few teeth left in their mouths, and if you mimicked them, you'd sound like you had a "native" lisp. )

The pronunciation in the materials under review in this topic/thread are definitely non-native. One indicator of this is the diphthongization of mé, which should be MEH /m´e:/ or /m´e/, but is instead being pronounced MAY /m´ei/ on the "Is féidir liom" recordings.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

I don't think in Gleann Fhinne anyone's too interested in being cool or speaking cool (even the kids). The principal (whom I mentioned before) is from there and so is everyone else. They understand "standard" Irish or whatever they hear perfectly I suppose, but they just speak in their own way (we would listen to news on the radio in the evening from all over Ireland...Connemara, etc). The school room posters et all are in Irish (except for the one board helping them to learn English properly). When I got to certain words on the chart (example "dún") he would pronounce it properly and then say , "we don't use that here we say dríd" or whatever. He even told me a word that "his granny" uses for door (they don't say doras), but I don't remember the word and it wasn't recorded. He was pretty pure in communicating with me what he knew. Also, they didn't say "deisigh" for repair, they said something like "corigh" (pron: cawree). Lughaidh will know the word. But back to the topic, it would be cool for these people to put together a lesson set like the Is Feidir Liom. They're busy however just living, tending cows, selling tractors, shearing sheep, and pouring concrete, etc (that's what the family did where I lived). And, they were happy to just try to understand any Irish I could throw out there and seemed pleased that we all had any interest in any blas or canúint we could muster. They didn't seem to be as preoccupied with it and with perfect pronunciation as we learners often seem to be. I'm not saying we shouldn't do our best, but I live in a state with 30 million people. I would say that 40% probably speak English as a second language, and native speakers (like me) don't try to correct them as they speak (unless they want us to do so), and we certainly don't expect them to ever sound native. They often just plain can't because they aren't. We try to understand what they're saying and we speak standard English back to them. I didn't find my experience too different in the Gaeltacht in Donegal. That's what prompts me to say any Irish is better than no Irish. It's just a starting place.

My first week there I was with a family and I had a very difficult time understanding the Bean an Tí. She had such an odd way of saying things, I just figured that was a "real native speaker" and I should do my best to listen and immitate. I told one of my teachers that later in the week, and he said, "Oh...that lady has a terrible lisp when she talks".......so...we must be careful of "native speakers" as well and just do our best.

I (mostly) agree with you, Faber. As I said, it doesn't necessarily apply to your young friend but the phenomenon does exist and we, as learners, should be aware of it. Awareness is important. It is hard to make an informed choice if you aren't made aware of differences in the first instance.

You have mentioned the second language creole speakers of English in your state before. While I agree that people need to function in their everyday lives in the language and not be corrected in that usage, unless they ask to be corrected, if you were given a choice between learning from a first language (native) speaker and a second language (non-native) speaker, wouldn't you prefer a native (or near-native) speaker as a teacher over a non-native (or creole) speaker? or at least to be made aware which was which so that you could make allowances for the differences?

I, for one, would be extremely pissed off if someone told me they were a native speaker of a language and I then found out they weren't, or only spoke a rare subset of the language in question. I wouldn't be half as disappointed if they were upfront and explained that in advance so that I could place my learning into the proper context within the complex whole.

Whether or not you agree with the way people distinguish between, or even discriminate against, certain ways of speaking, it is worthwhile being aware of the distinctions that are made and the reasons therefore, so that you can make an informed decision about whether to adopt those same distinctions into your own language usage, or not.

As a (rudimentary) speaker of Pisin (Pidgin English) and Langus (Torres Strait Island creole), I know that learning a creole can be great fun - provided that you are aware that that is what you are doing, and don't think you are learning the English language in its wider context.

The same applies to Irish and being aware of how the dialects and the standard relate to each other, and how native and non-native pronunciations can exist side-by-side in a living language.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

cóirigh.

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

Brendan: Absolutely! I would love a native-speaker to teach me. That is how I became fluent in Spanish. To support your point further, I'd never buy learning materials for Spanish that were created by non-native speakers (say by some Texan like me who learned Spanish). Although I'm fairly fluent I am not a native speaker of Spanish. I will add however that in this Irish journey it has been more difficult for me to figure out who is a "native speaker" and who is not, and how much of that I can really control and still learn Irish. Also, I don't know how many courses there are that have been created by native speakers. I know when I started with Tús Maith a few folks criticized it for not being done by "native speakers", but frankly I learned a ton of Irish from it.

I know there are many "revived native speakers" (if we might call them that) in Ireland whom I met. One is Risteard MacGabhann who was the creator of Tús Maith. They learned in a Gaelscoil or somewhere else because of their passion to get the language back or their parents passion to have them learn it. These people did not learn from their parents. They are fluent and it seems they speak very respectable Irish. I think one such person was on of my teachers at Oideas Gael. The best experience I had was last year studying under Aoife NíGhloinn at St. Thomas Univ. in Houston. She has now returned to Ireland. Her mother was a native speaker from the north (Aran Mór) and her father was a native speaker from the south. She sort of gave me a rounded approach centered around the Standard Irish. Irish is her mother tongue. I still have recordings and such of her and would also share those if you guys cared to hear her. It was incredible, clear and beautiful Irish. Anyway, until now, I've never had a native speaker who is willing to Skype with me and pull me along to try to be more fluent. I understand that. It would be a great commitment for people that are as busy in their lives as we are.

I think it would be wonderful if one of these organizations in Ireland that are promoting the language would set up a phone/Skype bank that could be accessed for a nominal fee (so many euros an hour). It would create employment in the Gaeltacht and would help those of us out on the fringe to hear good and perhaps native Irish. There seems to be a wall that many of us (or at least me) just can't get over where we're beyond the usual beginner course stuff, but we're not at the advanced level. All our goals are subjective. Brendan, I think you might have heard me speak Irish before and I admit it isn't that pretty.....BUT... it is way more than when I started (I had none), and it's way more than a lot of people have. And it is alot considering I've only had about 3 weeks where I've had the opportunity to actually speak what I do know.

My own goal (at this time) is to be communicative and to speak good conversational Irish that is understandable by any speaker of Irish. I have sent my form to Liofa 2015 and hope to just be a good speaker by 2015. I think that "Liofa" is an unrealistic goal for a guy living in the center of Texas on a farm. i am too old and have commitments here that make it impossible for me to duplicate the experience I had with Spanish (immersion for months at a time with a Spanish-only family). Skype is a whole new world for me and makes conversation possible. I Skype 2-3 times a week and it is keeping me motivated. I am willing to speak with anyone of any level, and I will use things like the "Is Feidir Liom" course to teach (what I do know) until I have something better. I'll just use my own blas which is more Northern. I'm open and waiting for anything better that can come along.

I really appreciate this forum and all that you've done to create it. I read it daily and I try to learn something new from it every day and from Ailein's "Gaeilge Amhain" on Facebook. I learn alot of new things there! I know you all have done these things as a labor of love. Sorry to ramble....but it's Saturday and I've fed the horses and just wanted to continue this chat and get some of my thought here if it might encourage another Irish Learner on the Irish Learners' Forum.

That does indeed happen. But probably not as likely in the Donegal Gaeltacht. I think a Caighdéanach pronunciation would stand out in Gaoth Dobhair as very strange. Kids don't like to be laughed at either.
Donegal native speakers are very proud of their dialect too, and don't want it tainted.

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It is recommended that you always wait for three to agree on a translation.
I speak Connemara Irish, and my input will often reflect that.
I will do an mp3 file on request for short translations.
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True. I think it's very like English in that respect. Kids do like to be 'cool,' but, on the other hand, they don't want to sound "weird" among their peers. If you were to take, say, a kid in Appalachia, and have him speak in standardized American "TV English," the other kids would look upon him as odd, or even affected. It's one thing to throw around "cool" terms and such, but taking on a completely non-native accent is not something that a child in any area or language is likely to do.

A trend I do find disturbing is the tendency for announcers on TG4 to take on what I can only describe as an "American" accent (I call it that because it sounds like how an American from my part of the country who has been taught the sounds by rote, in a rudimentary fashion, but who doesn't have enough experience with the language to have picked up on the nuances, might pronounce things. At least that's how I imagine an "American" accent might sound to people from other areas).

Redwolf

I also predict that it will become the prominent dialect at some point. When I was in school, I had never heard anything other than Munster and Connaught Irish. When I first heard Ulster Irish, it sounded so different that I didn't even realise that it was Irish! Obviously, schools here now expose students to all dialects - at least when preparing for the aural exam. I still presumed that Ulster Irish was very much a minority but when I see the success of Oideas Gael, and the fact that people abroad seem to learn the Ulster dialect, I think the rest of us are the ones who are more likely to go the way of the dinosaurs. I never thought I would think that (if that makes sense!)

On the other hand, the continuing success of Gaelscoileanna may increase the influence of a Galltacht dialect - a bit of everything, often in a Dublin accent!

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