It is not the topic that motivated me to write that comment, but more that one or two of the comments seemed to suggest that someone who does not have the good fortune to have had proper immersion in and exposure to one of the dialects may not be well placed to bring up their children through Irish.

In an ideal world, we would all have been brought up in an Irish-speaking environment, but we were not all so fortunate. Therefore, the rest of us are trying to do the best we can. We have jobs and lives that do not allow us to uproot and move to a Gaeltacht - regardless of how appealing the thought may be. Thus, surrounded by English every day, we do what we can.

We will give our kids as many opportunities as we can to be exposed to Gaeltacht Irish, but it's limited. And when we did go to Gaoth Dobhair, Errigal thought that meant we had to support Donegal in the football....

I guess my overall point is that while we should say whatever we want and argue the finer points of whatever we want, we need to be careful not to put people off who are sailing against the wind - more slowly than we'd like, but nonetheless (in my opinion) moving in the right direction.

We are not all native speakers and/or linguists. Some of us are just ordinary Galltacht folk doing what we can.

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My main thoughts on the subject are as follows, hopefully they're not totally moronic.

First of all, although I can see the reason for the Caighdeán, in the sense of having a standard for the language, I don't think it's necessary as Irish speakers can all understand eachother. Due to lack of exposure to other dialects I know some older Munster speakers who would have a hard time with very Northern speakers (the part of Donegal where "ch" becomes just "h"), but this is only because they had never heard them until Television and Radio with Ulster Irish speakers became wide spread. In general, especially nowadays, speakers of different dialects can understand eachother. As Bríd said above, she was able to talk to her friend in the North. So there isn't a need for a Standard on a that level.

A Standard for literary reasons I can understand, nothing wrong with that, however it should be one of the pre-existing dialects, probably a Conamara one.

The problem with the current Caighdeán is three-fold.

First of all, since it appears in schools and it is what several people see over and over again, anything that is not present in it gets erroneously labelled as incorrect. Although, in theory, you could say standard English does the same, it isn't as strong an effect. It creates the idea that certain forms are "real Irish" and other (sometimes historically more correct forms) are "wrong". This effects native speakers who are lead to think they speak Irish incorrectly, which is unfortunate and nonsensical, a standard made in an office cannot supersede the historically correct and naturally inherited forms of speech. Not that the native speakers are being nonsensical, but this attitude being forced on them, that their speech is wrong, most certainly is.

Secondly, the current standard is often part of a wider effort to make the language easier for learners. There is no problem with this, I would also like to be part of making the language easier for learners, by writing an understandable grammar or something similar. However "easier for learners" often in reality becomes "delete parts of language that are too different from English". This is pointless, if we do that we are preserving nothing. We also see books rewritten into a standard form, removing components of the original grammar, lexicon and syntax that are too non-standard. Again if you do that, what are you keeping? The basic story perhaps, but I've seen the result and too often it is a clunky mess.

Thirdly, the standard is closely linked to the idea that slender r, ch, dh e.t.c. are just "wierd" sounds that people make for no reason. I don't know how many times I've read something out only to have somebody ask what I'm doing when I say "dh". Even those from the Gaelscoileanna will tell me things like "Well I'm from place-X so why would I make those sounds, it'd be fake/wierd for me to put on those sounds as if I'm from place-Y". I don't think many people realise that these sounds are part of the language. Again I don't know what people think they're preserving if you can just choose to drop sounds. Nobody would say to themselves "I'm going to speak English without a t".

So overall, the current standard and the attitude surrounding it create a situation where novels must be edited to contain only words and noun/verb forms commonly found in school books, grammatical constructions too alien to the English-speaking mindset must be removed, and in some caes more than half the phonemes must be dropped because they're too "wierd" and only "people out in location-Z talk like that". This is utterly ridiculous.

In general I think the entire Irish language outside the Gaeltacht revolves too much around schools.

Finally well done to anybody choosing to raise their kids with Irish, if you approach it with an open mind and try to improve every day, rather than thinking that sub-standard Anglophone Irish should be seen as the equivalent of genuine Irish, then I think you're great!

That's all.

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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

All learners should emulate native speakers

Standard Irish does have it place but on signage and documents.

By the way there is no point talking about the Standard to Lughaidh, its like talking to a priest about evolution lol

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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).

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Is fíor sin

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

Fadhb ar bith a chara. Níor thuig tú i gceart mé. Bhain mé sult as an díospóireacht mar sin féin. Is maith go bhfuil dúil ár n-anama sa Ghaeilge againn agus go mbíonn muid ag caint go beosach faoi chúrsaí na teanga mar sin.

Slán go fóill,

An Braonach

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Ultach mé agus Gaeilg Uladh a labhraim go measardha maith!

I did find the answer to the question I asked - and it confirms what I thought - it's in a footnote on page 37 of Teach Yourself Irish (1961 edition).

Ah, you mean you found confirmation of the answer we gave you on page 1 of this thread, franc? Well done.


Is can't be used between adjectives either.

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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).