I agree with you there. They have established a separate dialect over centuries in Québec and Australia.
It's not the same thing as Glasgow, or another major Urban area, where the majority of the people wouldn't speak the same dialect of Gaelic. Isn't it the same with their English. They speak Scottish English (dialect) with a Glasgow accent (not a separate dialect of English).

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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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I agree with everything said here. I'm not necessarily thrilled that that's the way it is, but I believe it to be true.

The other thing I would add is that it is easy to be super idealistic and purist in cyber space; meanwhile on the ground the language is in trouble and we need to be very careful not to put anyone off who may become a user of the language. As someone who lives in Ireland outside of the Gaeltacht, it would take very little for someone to feel inadequate about using Irish if they feel their every syllable is being scrutinised. I am not saying that users of Irish should not strive to be correct in their usage, but (to use an analogy of a friend of mine) sometimes we are in danger of fighting over the seating arrangement on the Titanic.

I left it until after Christmas to post this!

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I totally agree with this.

Redwolf

(The Titanic analogy is in rather poor taste, Saoirse, as it sinks in the end, no matter what is done.)

I offer an alternative analogy. Urban is an iceberg. It is ripping through an already foundering ship.

Buntús Cainte-style standard Irish is an artificial pontoon that can keep the ship, i.e., the native dialects (and therefore the real language) from being destroyed until the ship can can be shored up and remanned.

If you support Urban, you guarantee that the ship will disappear into an ocean of English.

It is however, never too late to stop pushing the iceberg and start helping to bail out the pontoon, or better still join the crew on the ship.

This site is for the teaching of Irish, i.e., native dialects and Buntús Cainte-style standard Irish. I don't think we should be proactively teaching Urban pronunciation or promoting Urban teaching materials here.

I also don't think people who are clearly not native speakers should be deceiving people by claiming they are native speakers, or even simply preying on people's lack of knowledge that not all Irish people are native speakers.

If you speak Urban, don't be afraid to use it, but be aware that you aren't helping to save the language as much as if you were to adopt native pronunciation. Be prepared to be advised how to improve your Irish in a way that will actually help the language rather than destroy it.

If you feel you are being scrutinised, understand that you are being scrutinised for a very good reason.

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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 am a member of this online community as I believe we are all here for the same reason - to promote a language that is important to us all for a myriad of different and interesting reasons. If I didn't believe that to be true, I'd leave in the morning.

Some of us live in Ireland and believe it is an important part of our identity (that is not the same as claiming to be native speakers); for others, the pull began with an aspect of culture, perhaps music or dancing and then the language drew them in; for others, the language had a draw for its linguistic appeal. And then, of course, we have the best resource on the site of all - people whose first language is Irish and they bring a richness that the rest of us can draw on with appreciation mixd with a little bit of envy!

My ideal situation would be that Ireland would not be divided into Gaeltachtaí and Galltachtai, but that Irish would be the first language of all. Unfortunately, it seems that is never going to happen. As regulars here know, I am not a native speaker nor have I ever claimed to be, nor will I ever be. I believed for a long time that, because of that, I didn't have the time or skills to acquire the ability to raise children through Irish. However, my husband and I both had an interest in the language and decided to 'try out' our school Irish with our newborn eight years ago. In the secure environment of a non-judgemental baby, we became used to speaking in Irish every day. Our limited exposure grew with our child. I will never sound like a native speaker, but I do not believe that what I am doing is helping to kill the language. I have begun plenty of threads on ILF asking if something is Béarlachas or not. I am trying to improve the quality of my Irish all the time.

I think a difficulty with the whole 'Urban' thing is that people understand it to be different things. A few people here have said at various times that there is a difference between someone speaking Irish without a 'Gaeltacht' accent and someone speaking Irish riddled with mistakes. (And as an aside, native speakers of English make lots of mistakes when speaking English too.) Perhaps that is the problem - we need to agree a definition of what it is we are talking about. Ironically, that was probably the purpose of this thread.

I believe, as lovers of Irish, we have a responsiblity to encourage people to use what Irish they have and, of course, to improve it. We need to be very careful about how we do that. If I had encountered some of the comments made here eight years ago, I may have abandoned our efforts with our daughter. I don't believe that it is anyone's intention to have that effect. Thankfully, I encountered positivity and support when I faced uncertainty.

In Ireland, we are used to being made to feel inadequate about our Irish, almost to feel that it is only people in the Gaeltacht who have the right to use the language. Our own Bríd (amongst others) is a breath of fresh air. I wish the country was full of people with her generosity to share her knowledge and time about Irish. Unfortunately, many people in the Gaeltacht itself choose not to bring up their children through Irish. We can teach as many adults the language as we like, but until people choose to raise their children through Irish, the language has no sustainable future. The numbers who were themselves raised through Irish are diminishing with each generation, so now the responsibility turns to those who weren't. This is certainly a challenge to be encouraged and supported.

I believe we can be idealistic and exclusive and watch the language die within a few short generations, but with our principles firmly intact. Or we can be practical and promote the language as best we can whilst obviously striving for quality, but ensuring that we encourage people to use what they have. Language is a powerful tool and if we choose to use it to discourage and criticise and perhaps ridicule, the outcome may not be what we intended.

This post is not directed at one person here; it is based on a culmination of comments I have recently read in a number of threads. I had chosen not to reply for a period of time, but then felt I was leaving it up to a few to voice a particular opinion.

Ultimately, does 'Urban' = 'learner Irish'
or does 'Urban' = Irish spoken outside of Gaeltacht areas?
I believe it means the latter.

I am not basing this on years of study. I am not as knowledgeable about linguistic matters as many of our members, but I believe that it is possible to make a positive contribution to the promotion of Irish without being a linguist. It would be simpler if I were a linguist - that's for sure!

Anyway, looking forward to Bliain na Gaeilge......

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Saoirse and I are very much on the same page with this, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has known me for very long.

One of the reasons I posed this question is I wanted to know exactly what people were condemning when they condemn "Urban Irish." As I expected, it's quite a mixed bag...some of which I agree with and some of which I strongly disagree with.

A person knowingly and deliberately using poor grammar, poor pronunciation, Béarlachas, English syntax, etc., and then trying to defend it as "my dialect, and therefore OK" is one thing. I'm sure it happens, but it's certainly not something I've run across often. I'm sure that we can all agree that, if and when that happens, it's not a good thing. This hasn't been my experience with speakers of Urban Irish, however.

My experience has been that most learners who care enough about the language to use it regularly are also quite open to correction, if it's offered kindly. Again, I'm sure there are exceptions. I'm sure there are also people who might normally be open to correction but who get put off if it's presented in the wrong context (for example, public correction, if unsolicited, is almost guaranteed to put someone's back up and cause a defensive reaction).

I have said before, and will say again, that if we insist on keeping Irish enshrined in the Gaeltacht, we will kill it. If we insist that all learners either choose an established dialect and stick with it, or follow an artificial standard (whether it be An Caighdeán Oifigiúil or Buntús Cainte), and shoot down those who follow a different path, we will kill it. Some of the Irish teachers I most respect (themselves native speakers) accept and support the fact that most learners learn a mixture of dialects...and that that's OK. Left to themselves and allowed to flourish, these "mixtures" will eventually tend to form a natural "middle dialect." The important thing, if the language is to survive as a living language and not as a museum piece, is to encourage people to use it, to live through it as much as possible, and to teach it to their children. To that end, I see the trend toward "Urban" Irish to be extremely positive.

Redwolf

I agree 100%. I've tried to stay out of the discussion, because we've gone through this same discussion several times on this site and the old one (and probably did so long before I joined the old forum), and I don't see anything productive coming out of rehashing it yet again, because there are some very closed minds involved.

Please don't misunderstand -- I really like some of the posters who are taking the "purity" side. I admire their Irish and they seem very helpful and friendly most of the time, but on this one issue I have to say that some of them seem downright cranky. I wish they would read carefully what Saoirse said. As a non-native speaker on the front lines, as it were, she and open-minded native speakers like Bríd are the future of Irish. It should not be Gaeltacht vs. the city. It should be both, working together, not to promote a particular dialect, but to promote knowledge of the language, with friendly assistance in grammar and syntax, but without being judgmental.

Languages develop and change constantly. No dialect of Irish is or ever has been the one, true, correct, and holy version, and the existing dialects reflect only a moment in time, created by historical events (which killed other dialects and isolated the survivors). They are not now precisely what they were 100 years ago, and they may be very different in another 100 years (or largely gone), with or without "school Irish" or "Urban Irish". That is the way with language. The hope is that the language as a whole (with whatever dialects or accents it may have) will survive. In order to ensure that, people need to pull together, not carp at one another.

The language came close to extinction because it was marginalized, and people became ashamed to speak it. It would be ironic if it were finally to die because the surviving speakers made those who are trying to learn it ashamed of their speech, so that they give up trying.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

I agree with this too.

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There are a large amount of people who do actually make a lot of errors and think these errors are dialect features. It's possible you haven't met these people and I don't think there are any on this forum (or they don't post much), but they are fairly common in Ireland itself. They usually think native Irish sounds strange and is incorrect. I know this possibly sounds unbelievable if you haven't encountered these people.

I wouldn't want people who are making a good effort think they are being included in this group because of our use of loose labels like "Urban Irish".

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

That's actually why I'm trying to see if we can "tighten up" the definition, so to speak. "Urban" is used in a very perjorative sense here. I do think there should be a non-perjorative term for the Irish that is growing outside of the Gaeltacht. And, frankly, "Learner's Irish" doesn't really cut it either. While it can be argued that all of us who don't have this as our native language are "learners," there does come a point of fluency at which "learner" becomes derogatory as a label.

For example, I know a woman for whom Swedish is her native language. She learned English as an adult...and her English is excellent. Sure, there is the odd grammatical idiosyncracy (which she will happily fix, if it's politely pointed out), and of course she has an accent, but at this stage, I wouldn't refer to her as an "English learner," but as an "English speaker."

If Irish is to thrive, it needs a foothold outside of traditional Gaeltacht areas. I see people choosing to live as much as possible through Irish as a very positive development in this direction. And I don't think that their Irish is only acceptable if it conforms either to an established dialect or to an artificially established "standard" or "middle" dialect.

I totally agree that people who knowingly speak poor Irish and pass it off as "my dialect" when corrected, or who look down on Gaeltacht speakers, are in the wrong. That said, I don't think that speakers who don't live in a Gaeltacht have to either carefully emulate a particular Gaeltacht dialect (or something that someone else has decided is an acceptable "middle dialect") in order to be correct. If the grammar, syntax and sounds of the language are correct, everything else will follow.

Redwolf