Leinster Irish [split from Random language thread]

[linguoboy]

It's possible that I'm egregiously misunderstanding this discussion, but what exactly is wrong with there being some standard dialect of Irish? This phenomenon is most notable with Arabic but is also present in English (the urban, upper-class, Midwest/East Coast variant is preferred). As long as the other dialects aren't oppressed completely, why isn't it a good idea?

The problem lies with that caveat. As Ciarán's remarks show, the people of the Gaeltacht are not in a strong sociolinguistic position with regard to other inhabitants of Ireland. Nobody in the USA thinks more highly of themselves than New Yorkers, and yet even they are known to go to dialect coaches in order to reduce the strength of their local accents. How much more pressure is there on the inhabitants of rural peripheral areas of Ireland to assimilate to the mainstream in order not to be looked down upon?

So promoting a standard form of Irish with a normative pronunciation without steamrollering the remaining pockets of native speech would be a tricky prospect indeed. That's why proponents of native traditional Irish tend to be lukewarm on the idea at best, and many oppose it vehemently.

Some of the people on that forum were saying that literature written in dialectal forms gets standardised before being published. I had no idea, and I was just as appalled as they were.

Yeah, just you try finding an edition of Peadar Ua Laoghaire's Mo sgéal féin (to name one Munster classic) that hasn't been recast into CO. There's not much of a market for such works outside of the educational system, and educators don't want texts that are too dialectal lest they "confuse" students.

[Lur]

A foreign accent is a foreign accent.

And I don't have one.

Maybe "foreign" isn't the word. Or maybe it is, depending of how convenient is it to bring up the question of identity. I don't think the accent of an Aragonese speaking Catalan would be foreign, they're right there, but it wouldn't be one of the accents of native Catalan.

B) Not only is having a non-native accent okay, in this case it is desirable. The last thing I want is for someone to think I'm from the Gaeltacht, I'm not, and I'm proud to where I'm from, so why shouldn't I sound like I'm not from there?

I'm not proud of where I'm from, I didn't choose it. But let me tell you, if this Andalusian speaking ever managed to learn Basque to the point of making people believe that I'm from Gipuzkoa, THEN I'd be proud!

The question is: what did Leinster Irish sound like?

I just resist the idea that I should be forced to speak like their ancestors.

Well, for those learning their dialects, that would be fitting. Maybe not for those learning Leinster Irish. Maybe if one's trying to approach the whole language one should be able to switch, like the Arabs do to understand other dialects. Or maybe that's too much to ask from the poor learners Which variant of the language do you study, by the way?

I wouldn't know since I don't know the first thing about Irish, but reading the article it seemed to me like he was talking specifically about English-influenced pronunciation patterns that you won't find with someone who speaks the language natively.

But how do you distinguish that from native Dublin Irish? I pronounce things differently from people who grew up in Gaeltacht areas not because just of the influence of English, but because we are from two completely different areas with different dialects.

Wait, I thought native Dublin Irish had died out? Or did you research Leinster pronunciation? Maybe I don't understand what you're saying, but if people there basically speak English and no one speaks Leinster Irish, their way of using the remaining dialects or the standard will be influenced by English, not by Leinster. Or am I missing something?

English is a foreign language to you, Irish is not a foreign language to me. My dialect of English uses an Irish accent, so if anything it's my English that's incorrect as I'm using an Irish accent to speak English rather than Irish.

Again, the word foreign is what makes things difficult.

I don't see a reason to consider your English incorrect, by the way.

I mean, what if one just writes Irish on the Internet.

People shouldn't be ashamed to speak it either.

I had no shame in mind, at all! But if I learnt Irish, that would end up inevitably as my main activity with it.

Irish seems to have had every possible pattern of language degradation and decline on it. I don't learn Irish, and I'm not sure if I have any say about it, but to me the preservation of a language and avoiding the semi-speakers problem are the same thing. If Irish ends up as a language with no native speakers and a bunch of people who are learning it at school and speak it like I speak English (or worse, due to the lack of exposure to media by native speakers), then it will be a failure.

No, it will be a failure if the native dialects die out and people like Webb have poisoned everybody against the language so much that they don't want to learn it at all. So no Irish of any kind.

Well like I said, that would be a failure.

What level of influence?

The point of becoming a creole, or the point where the language is absorbed into English anyway and disappears.

I would have them learn Neo-Leinster Irish in Leinster, Connacht Irish in Connacht, Munster Irish in Munster and Ulster Irish in Ulster. Everybody wins, nobody has to lose their traditions or identity, the language flourishes and, importantly for me in this scenario, people from Leinster get there heritage back.

+10000

Whilst I get what you mean, you have to confront those inconsistencies if you want to mount any kind of argument. In the case of Spanish, you have the luxury of having this blended variety of Arabic and Castilian, but there are other less Arabic influenced varieties and closely related languages so the essential identity of the language is not threatened by this influence. I don't understand why this can't be the case for Irish - Leinster Irish can have a heavier English influence without this affecting the more traditional language of the Gaeltacht. Why must one variety be forced on the other?

No, actually I'd say that the lexical influence of Arabic is widespread in the language everywhere. Kind of like French to English, but not that much. (If anything, it was Hispanic Arabic that was threatened and effectively died out, while incorporating words into Castilian just like I imagine Irish did to English.) But I'm going to stop using this Hispanic paralell because there's no way it can wholly work.

As for not forcing a variety on another, I totally agree.

And now I'll shut up, because I'm making this thread boring.

[linguoboy]

Maybe I don't understand what you're saying, but if people there basically speak English and no one speaks Leinster Irish, their way of using the remaining dialects or the standard will be influenced by English, not by Leinster. Or am I missing something?

As I understand it (and this is an argument I've heard from more than just Ciarán):

Irish English accents are the outcome of native speakers of Irish fitting English to the phonology of their native dialects. Therefore, transferring the phonology of a local Irish English accent back to Gaelic will give you an approximation of the native dialect of that place.

There are, of course, numerous holes in this argument. The first is that, to the extant such a transfer did take place, it was extremely "lossy". That is, there are many distinctions common to all forms of Irish which are absent from all varieties of Hiberno-English, chief among them the distinction between broad and slender (i.e. non-palatalised/palatalised) consonants.

The second is that there are more phonological influences on Hiberno-English than just native Irish. One has to take into account the origins of those who taught English speech in Ireland and those non-Gaelic-speaking communities who were settled next to Irish-speakers, often with the express goal of assimilating them. (The Plantation of Ulster comes immediately to mind, of course, but there were other examples, too, such as the Palatinate Germans in Tipperary and Kilkenny, the Flemish in Carlow, etc.)

Thirdly, Irish English has been evolving separately from native Irish since the moment it first came into being. Dublin hasn't been an Irish-speaking city since the Anglo-Norman conquest in 1171, and this shows in the diversity of accents which can be heard there (as many as in the whole rest of Ireland, I would wager). Which of these reflects the "native" accent of the city? Well, all of them and none of them, depending what your working definition is.

I think Ciarán has a point when he says that Dublin should have a local variety of Irish which reflects its unique identity. But where I think he goes off the rails is thinking that he's in a position to invent that dialect himself. A dialect is the language of geographically continguous community. If you're the only one who speaks it, it's not a dialect; it's an idiolect.

Since Dublin attracts Irish-speakers from everywhere (not just within Ireland itself), it's ideally suited for the creation of a koiné which could serve as a neutral form of communication between speakers of different traditional dialects. So far, though, I haven't seen much evidence that such a variety is beginning to form, and even less that it has the characteristics which other Irish-speakers object to in Ciaran's speech (such as his use of [ɹˠ], a sound not recorded in any Irish dialect before universal education in English). Just listen to how Dara Ó Briain (a native speaker of Irish from Dublin) speaks the language: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WaKdIIdiFg.

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Just listen to how Dara Ó Briain (a native speaker of Irish from Dublin) speaks the language:

At first hearing, his Irish sounds like his English, but with a few non-English sounds here and there.

Is that the neo-Leinster Irish?

[Ciarán12]

Maybe I don't understand what you're saying, but if people there basically speak English and no one speaks Leinster Irish, their way of using the remaining dialects or the standard will be influenced by English, not by Leinster. Or am I missing something?

As I understand it (and this is an argument I've heard from more than just Ciarán):

Irish English accents are the outcome of native speakers of Irish fitting English to the phonology of their native dialects. Therefore, transferring the phonology of a local Irish English accent back to Gaelic will give you an approximation of the native dialect of that place.

There are, of course, numerous holes in this argument. The first is that, to the extant such a transfer did take place, it was extremely "lossy".

I'm angry that nobody seems to accept that it's even valid to look at the English spoken in those places and try to study them for substrate features. It doesn't even seem to be a debate, it's just Irish = Connemara, Dingle, Muskerry, Gweedore and that's it, end of discussion.

That is, there are many distinctions common to all forms of Irish which are absent from all varieties of Hiberno-English, chief among them the distinction between broad and slender (i.e. non-palatalised/palatalised) consonants.

I do make those distinctions, I just prefer to use different phones from those used by speakers from the Gaeltacht.

The second is that there are more phonological influences on Hiberno-English than just native Irish. One has to take into account the origins of those who taught English speech in Ireland and those non-Gaelic-speaking communities who were settled next to Irish-speakers, often with the express goal of assimilating them. (The Plantation of Ulster comes immediately to mind, of course, but there were other examples, too, such as the Palatinate Germans in Tipperary and Kilkenny, the Flemish in Carlow, etc.)

Fair enough, but again, this isn't even being examined in any sort of a constructive way, as far as I can see. If that much is known about the influences of these other sources on Hiberno-English, it should be all the easier to extract the bits that are exclusively the effect of Irish. I've never heard of anyone trying to to this (with a mind to reconstructing some of what Leinster Irish was like), because as I said, for far too many people it's simply a matter of Irish = Gaeltacht.

Thirdly, Irish English has been evolving separately from native Irish since the moment it first came into being. Dublin hasn't been an Irish-speaking city since the Anglo-Norman conquest in 1171, and this shows in the diversity of accents which can be heard there (as many as in the whole rest of Ireland, I would wager). Which of these reflects the "native" accent of the city? Well, all of them and none of them, depending what your working definition is.

Dublin is certainly diverse with respect to accents, but I think you're going a bit overboard there. Most accents in Dublin fall somewhere on a scale between this (particularly the first guy) to Dara Ó Briain (whom you have already linked to). There also is a newer "D4" (posh) accent that is said to have developed since the 1970's.

I think Ciarán has a point when he says that Dublin should have a local variety of Irish which reflects its unique identity. But where I think he goes off the rails is thinking that he's in a position to invent that dialect himself.

I've never said I could. I'm learning the Caighdeán Oifigiúil (Official Standard), I'm hardly pioneering a new dialect, I'm just using many of the features native to my Dublin accent (which is what most Dubliners do when speaking Irish). If there is no reconstructed for of Leinster Irish for me to speak, I have to make the language my own somehow; I didn't decide to learn Irish so that I could lose some of my identity in the process, I wanted to gain some.

A dialect is the language of geographically continguous community. If you're the only one who speaks it, it's not a dialect; it's an idiolect.

I speak something that is within the (very wide) boundaries of "Irish as it is spoken in Dublin". This ranges from people who attempt to mimic Gaeltacht Irish, through people who try to make a compromise and, ultimately, to people who have no idea what Gaeltacht Irish sounds like. There's little consistency to the way Irish is spoken in Dublin, I don't think mine counts as outlandish.

Since Dublin attracts Irish-speakers from everywhere (not just within Ireland itself), it's ideally suited for the creation of a koiné which could serve as a neutral form of communication between speakers of different traditional dialects.

We don't want to speak something neutral, we want a dialect as different from the others as the are from each other and which is clearly our own. Why can't CO act as the lingua franca, and we can work on establishing our own dialect?

So far, though, I haven't seen much evidence that such a variety is beginning to form, and even less that it has the characteristics which other Irish-speakers object to in Ciaran's speech (such as his use of [ɹˠ], a sound not recorded in any Irish dialect before universal education in English). Just listen to how Dara Ó Briain (a native speaker of Irish from Dublin) speaks the language: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WaKdIIdiFg.

I'm not sure what you point is here. As far as I can tell you saying that A) there is no consistent dialect forming in Dublin and that B) the Irish spoken there doesn't contain the phone [ɹˠ], which is something others have objected to and which I say I use. Well, perhaps I transcribed the sound wrong, I seem to do that a lot. As for Dara Ó Briain, what specifically are you saying about his Irish?

[Ciarán12]

Just listen to how Dara Ó Briain (a native speaker of Irish from Dublin) speaks the language:

At first hearing, his Irish sounds like his English, but with a few non-English sounds here and there.

Shouldn't it? His accent in English is an Irish one, what's wrong with using an Irish accent to speak Irish?

Is that the neo-Leinster Irish?

No. Neo-Leinster Irish, as I use the term, is a theoretical reconstructed and revived version of the Irish spoken in Leinster before it's complete Anglicisation (or as near as we can possibly get to such a language).

[kevin]

At first hearing, his Irish sounds like his English, but with a few non-English sounds here and there.

Shouldn't it? His accent in English is an Irish one, what's wrong with using an Irish accent to speak Irish?

Of course it shouldn't. I like the sound of other accents I've heard much better.

But seriously, I can't see what's wrong with allowing English influences in some Irish variety. Language develops, and other languages have seen changes in pronunciation as well, they have seen English influence as well, so why would it be wrong that a city with a long history of English influence sees changes as well?

Of course, if you really wanted to gain identity, the wide diversity of accents that you describe for Dublin isn't helpful. I would always support the idea that the Dubliners get to define their dialect, and noone else, but obviously this requires that "the Dubliners" as a homogeneous group even exist. And forcing them to become a homogeneous group may be as wrong as forcing a different dialect on you.

[linguoboy]

I'm angry that nobody seems to accept that it's even valid to look at the English spoken in those places and try to study them for substrate features. It doesn't even seem to be a debate, it's just Irish = Connemara, Dingle, Muskerry, Gweedore and that's it, end of discussion.

If that's what you think, then you haven't been following the discussion very well. Several people in the ILF, for instance, suggested resources for historical attestations of Leinster Irish. They are just sceptical of the possibility of recovering native Leinster features from contemporary dialects of Leinster English--and rightly so.

I do make those distinctions, I just prefer to use different phones from those used by speakers from the Gaeltacht.

Right--phones such as [ɹˠ], which several people have tried to tell you is not found in native Irish anywhere, despite being widespread in Irish English. Only very conservative dialects of English in Ireland have [ɾ]. The extremely retroflex [ɻ] now gaining ground in Dublin can be shown to have originated within the past two decades.

So if the Irish were able to learn a new type of /r/ (and they demonstrably were) instead of importing [ɾˠ] from their native speech, then it calls into question the wisdom of trying to make any determinations about their accent in Irish on the basis of the current varieties of English spoken in Ireland.

Fair enough, but again, this isn't even being examined in any sort of a constructive way, as far as I can see. If that much is known about the influences of these other sources on Hiberno-English, it should be all the easier to extract the bits that are exclusively the effect of Irish. I've never heard of anyone trying to to this (with a mind to reconstructing some of what Leinster Irish was like), because as I said, for far too many people it's simply a matter of Irish = Gaeltacht.

The problem isn't what's known about that influence, it's what's unknown about it. It's not a simple matter to separate what came through imported varieties from what was present before because we don't have reliable records of how people spoken hundreds of years ago. It's a game of reconstruction, and as such it's going to miss a lot--particular on the level of phonetic detail.

I think Ciarán has a point when he says that Dublin should have a local variety of Irish which reflects its unique identity. But where I think he goes off the rails is thinking that he's in a position to invent that dialect himself.

I've never said I could. I'm learning the Caighdeán Oifigiúil (Official Standard), I'm hardly pioneering a new dialect, I'm just using many of the features native to my Dublin accent (which is what most Dubliners do when speaking Irish). If there is no reconstructed for of Leinster Irish for me to speak, I have to make the language my own somehow; I didn't decide to learn Irish so that I could lose some of my identity in the process, I wanted to gain some.

You are gaining some; each language you learn is like a new personality. But it doesn't have to be an exact mirror of your existing personality. You don't need to worry about emphasising your identity as a Dubliner; that would come through even if you were speaking Japanese. Consciously importing features of your English is unnecessary, given that, as a learner, you'll be unable to suppress them completely anyway.

Since Dublin attracts Irish-speakers from everywhere (not just within Ireland itself), it's ideally suited for the creation of a koiné which could serve as a neutral form of communication between speakers of different traditional dialects.

We don't want to speak something neutral, we want a dialect as different from the others as the are from each other and which is clearly our own. Why can't CO act as the lingua franca, and we can work on establishing our own dialect?

Who is "we"? Are there a lot of Dubliners who share your sentiments? Like I said, you can't come up with something on your own and call it a "dialect". It has to be the preferred variety of an active community of speakers.

I'm not sure what you point is here. As far as I can tell you saying that A) there is no consistent dialect forming in Dublin and that B) the Irish spoken there doesn't contain the phone [ɹˠ], which is something others have objected to and which I say I use. Well, perhaps I transcribed the sound wrong, I seem to do that a lot. As for Dara Ó Briain, what specifically are you saying about his Irish?

(B) is a misstatement of what I said. You will find Irish-speakers there who use [ɹˠ], but that is either because they have learned the language imperfectly or they're imitating speakers who have learned it imperfectly (which is apparently starting to happen among native Gaeltacht speakers, is mór an trua).

Dara's Irish is fluent but non-traditional (he spoke it in the home, but his father was not himself a native speaker) and, though he's from Dublin, it doesn't sound like yours. I'm sure he's every bit as proud of being a Dubliner as you are (he's said as much in interviews and appearances), but he doesn't feel the need to artificially alter his accent in order to emphasise that fact.

[Ciarán12]

I'm angry that nobody seems to accept that it's even valid to look at the English spoken in those places and try to study them for substrate features. It doesn't even seem to be a debate, it's just Irish = Connemara, Dingle, Muskerry, Gweedore and that's it, end of discussion.

If that's what you think, then you haven't been following the discussion very well. Several people in the ILF, for instance, suggested resources for historical attestations of Leinster Irish.

A few people on a forum suggesting the same 2 resources (one of which I have) is not the same as proper academic attention. Koguryo, for example, is barely attested at all, but its Wikipedia page lists four academic sources dedicated to it (one of which I have, and it's a substantial book), and there are many other books on Japanese and Korean that mention it. How come Leinster Irish (a language with better sources which died much more recently) gets no such attention?

They are just sceptical of the possibility of recovering native Leinster features from contemporary dialects of Leinster English--and rightly so.

I'd be more inclined to believe you if I read some extensive academic studies of the dialects that showed it to be impossible.

I do make those distinctions, I just prefer to use different phones from those used by speakers from the Gaeltacht.

Right--phones such as [ɹˠ], which several people have tried to tell you is not found in native Irish anywhere, despite being widespread in Irish English. Only very conservative dialects of English in Ireland have [ɾ]. The extremely retroflex [ɻ] now gaining ground in Dublin can be shown to have originated within the past two decades.

But the distinction is still made, thus there is no change to the grammar, the only change is a slight superficial change in choice of phones for those phonemes, and if that's the only influence from English there is, how is it justified to say it's destroying the language? Is all that make Irish unique really just the use of [ɾ] over [ɹ]? If that's the influence from English they're afraid of, I don't think they've properly grasped what really matters here.

So if the Irish were able to learn a new type of /r/ (and they demonstrably were) instead of importing [ɾˠ] from their native speech, then it calls into question the wisdom of trying to make any determinations about their accent in Irish on the basis of the current varieties of English spoken in Ireland.

...

The problem isn't what's known about that influence, it's what's unknown about it. It's not a simple matter to separate what came through imported varieties from what was present before because we don't have reliable records of how people spoken hundreds of years ago. It's a game of reconstruction, and as such it's going to miss a lot--particular on the level of phonetic detail.

I'd sooner settle for our best guess than be forced to sound like Gaeltacht speakers. Anyway, as I've said, if some of the phonological influence of English or these other languages gets into the reconstruction, well, it's all part of the history of the language in that area. It's not like we're taking bits of phonology from languages that have nothing to do with Leinster, anything that has affected the way we speak English in Leinster has contributed to the linguistic identity of the area, maybe that should be represented in our dialect of Irish.

I think Ciarán has a point when he says that Dublin should have a local variety of Irish which reflects its unique identity. But where I think he goes off the rails is thinking that he's in a position to invent that dialect himself.

I've never said I could. I'm learning the Caighdeán Oifigiúil (Official Standard), I'm hardly pioneering a new dialect, I'm just using many of the features native to my Dublin accent (which is what most Dubliners do when speaking Irish). If there is no reconstructed for of Leinster Irish for me to speak, I have to make the language my own somehow; I didn't decide to learn Irish so that I could lose some of my identity in the process, I wanted to gain some.

You are gaining some; each language you learn is like a new personality. But it doesn't have to be an exact mirror of your existing personality. You don't need to worry about emphasising your identity as a Dubliner; that would come through even if you were speaking Japanese. Consciously importing features of your English is unnecessary, given that, as a learner, you'll be unable to suppress them completely anyway.

When I speak Japanese I am consciously trying to sound like I'm Japanese, which, whether or not I end up sounding Japanese, is not something I should have to do when speaking Irish. Even if I did sound like a Dubliner from a Kerry-man's perspective, it would still feel contrived from my perspective.

Since Dublin attracts Irish-speakers from everywhere (not just within Ireland itself), it's ideally suited for the creation of a koiné which could serve as a neutral form of communication between speakers of different traditional dialects.

We don't want to speak something neutral, we want a dialect as different from the others as the are from each other and which is clearly our own. Why can't CO act as the lingua franca, and we can work on establishing our own dialect?

Who is "we"? Are there a lot of Dubliners who share your sentiments? Like I said, you can't come up with something on your own and call it a "dialect". It has to be the preferred variety of an active community of speakers.

I don't think this debate (specifically with the points I've made) has gotten enough attention for a lot of Dubliners to have an opinion on it, or at least have their opinion heard by more that those immediately surrounding them. I've heard many complain that the reason they don't learn Irish is that they are put off by the elitism of it, which is what I think Webb et al. embody.

I'm not sure what you point is here. As far as I can tell you saying that A) there is no consistent dialect forming in Dublin and that B) the Irish spoken there doesn't contain the phone [ɹˠ], which is something others have objected to and which I say I use. Well, perhaps I transcribed the sound wrong, I seem to do that a lot. As for Dara Ó Briain, what specifically are you saying about his Irish?

(B) is a misstatement of what I said. You will find Irish-speakers there who use [ɹˠ], but that is either because they have learned the language imperfectly or they're imitating speakers who have learned it imperfectly (which is apparently starting to happen among native Gaeltacht speakers, is mór an trua).

By the criteria by which you judge people to be native speakers, there are no speakers of Irish in Dublin and everyone speaks it imperfectly, so (B) is tantamount to what you said. Let me ask you this; What, in your opinion, of the way Dubliners speak English should they be allowed to transfer into their Irish? If nothing, they you are saying that Hiberno-English as it is spoken in Dublin is in every way as foreign to Irish as London English is, which I don't believe, and you know what? - even if it is, I'd still rather speak that corrupted form of Irish and keep the Dublin identity present in it than speak Gaeltacht Irish. The dialect's specificness to Dublin is its most important facet, "properness" and even historical linguistic accuracy is in fact less important (though I would like to see it be as accurate within those confines as possible).

Dara's Irish is fluent but non-traditional (he spoke it in the home, but his father was not himself a native speaker) and, though he's from Dublin, it doesn't sound like yours. I'm sure he's every bit as proud of being a Dubliner as you are (he's said as much in interviews and appearances), but he doesn't feel the need to artificially alter his accent in order to emphasise that fact.

There's nothing artificial about the way I alter my Irish. The difference between me and Dara is, he isn't trying to justify why he says things the way he does to a forum full linguistics experts, he just speaks and doesn't give a shit. There are many reasons why his Irish doesn't sound like mine (and for the record, it does sound a lot more like mine than most Gaeltacht dialects). Perhaps his father favoured a certain dialect that my teachers didn't. His dialect of English is (marginally) different to mine, so its influence on his Irish is going to be different.

[Kenny]

I'd sooner settle for our best guess than be forced to sound like Gaeltacht speakers.

That's called chauvinism. And I don't see how modeling your Irish on your English is going to strengthen your identity as a Dubliner or why you'd even need to strengthen it in the first place.

[Ciarán12]

I'd sooner settle for our best guess than be forced to sound like Gaeltacht speakers.

That's called chauvinism.

How is wanting to speak in a way identifiable as being from where I'm from chauvinistic? Surely it's the Gaeltacht speakers who are chauvinistic, as they wish me to sound like them because they believe they're way of speaking is inherently better.

And I don't see how modeling your Irish on your English is going to strengthen your identity as a Dubliner or why you'd even need to strengthen it in the first place.

Because I'm Irish and I speak English. I have a problem with that.

[Lur]

But you're going to sound inevitably like you're from Dublin. Either in your native English or in your Irish. You don't need to do anything about it. What's more, these Gaeltacht speakers you talk about might soon speak like you, at this rate.

This fixation on identity is so strange to me.

[Ciarán12]

But you're going to sound inevitably like you're from Dublin.

The problem is that it is stigmatised. I may sound like I'm from Dublin even if I'm trying not to, but in that case my Dublin accent is something "incorrect" about the way I speak.

What's more, these Gaeltacht speakers you talk about might soon speak like you, at this rate.

Which is no less of a shame. I certainly don't want their way of speaking to die out either.

This fixation on identity is so strange to me.

You speak your hereditary language, I don't expect you to understand.

[Lur]

I think we're hijacking this thread, we could move somewhere else.

This fixation on identity is so strange to me.

You speak your hereditary language, I don't expect you to understand.

Woah, there! My hereditary language? Which one? The language of my parents I guess. But is it that simple? I think I do understand.
For example, my mother doesn't speak the dying language of her area (Aragonese).
For example, last summer I went back to Granada, where I was born, and visited the Alhambra again. I'd always loved the place, I considered it "mine". And I was struck by the fact that I didn't understand the Arabic writings on the wall. I thought, why are we not bilingual or something? Under further investigation it turned out that not only the local Arabic had indeed been persecuted and exterminated (between 500-400 years ago), but that there was a local Romance substratum that had ended up being absorbed by Arabic. And so on. When playing back the history of the place in my head I realized that whenever a local culture and language flourished it ended up displaced by a different language. It was odd, when comparing it to places in Northern Europe. So many "hereditary languages", and impossible to learn almost anything of most of them.

But you're going to sound inevitably like you're from Dublin.

The problem is that it is stigmatised. I may sound like I'm from Dublin even if I'm trying not to, but in that case my Dublin accent is something "incorrect" about the way I speak.

And here lies the question. I'm going to ask it with my own example, so you can see what I mean. If I learn northern Moroccan Arabic, how "valid" (not sure if it's the appropiate word) would be my obviously non native pronunciation? I think it would be a "foreign accent" (well, maybe not geographically), but not due to stigmatization, but simply due to history, and my own limitations. And I suppose Andalusi Arabic would be no less of a challenge, starting with the lack of recordings and information. Sure my accent in either Spanish or even my hyphotetical Arabic wouldn't be "foreign", but I don't think it would be quite the same thing. What is the relevance of modern Andalusian Spanish when trying to understand the phonology of Andalusi Arabic? I don't think much. The essential difference I see with the case of the Irish is that here, nobody gives a damn, and Arabic is not taught at school. Still not a complete paralell.

I can see where you come from, but I think Linguoboy is making more sense (about the Irish features on Leinster English). By the way you people describe it, I'd say your Dublin accent isn't "incorrect" per se. It is what it is, and not more. You like Irish, but you can't quite let your mother tongue go. Which makes sense. Now, if you pick up and research what you can of Leinster Irish, the pronunciation you'd have to indicate wouldn't be "the way I do it", but "the way we think it was" (which I bet sounded like a different Gaeltacht Irish accent, logically). And the pronunciation others would pick up would be "the way they do it", some more like you than others, but not necesarily the way you do it. For that vey same reason: why would they pronounce it your way? So if you start teaching neo-Leinster, or even raising native speakers, the logical thing would be to look at what it was (as far as we can tell), and not to decide subjectively a particular degree of anglization of the language in order to keep an "identity" people already have because they speak actual English. Because that would be conlangish, and raises the question about if one's trying to resurrect it with the most possible fidelity or simply modify it to suit some interests. I guess what would happen is that the anglization would happen sooner or later anyway to the speech of the people that would learn this Neo-Leinster.

There's something I have to ask. Would Neo-Leinster be more archaic, grammatically, than the surviving dialects? Would it have to be artificially modernized in the style of the surviving dialects?

In the end, should we mix the question of identity and languages so much? How specific is that identity supposed to be anyway? I've been thinking that the things of others can be just as oneself's if one cares about them and wants them to be so. Be it other people's dialects or languages or food or music or etc. And real personal identity, is probably a different thing that these.

[Ciarán12]

This fixation on identity is so strange to me.

You speak your hereditary language, I don't expect you to understand.

Woah, there! My hereditary language? Which one? The language of my parents I guess. But is it that simple? I think I do understand.
For example, my mother doesn't speak the dying language of her area (Aragonese).
For example, last summer I went back to Granada, where I was born, and visited the Alhambra again. I'd always loved the place, I considered it "mine". And I was struck by the fact that I didn't understand the Arabic writings on the wall. I thought, why are we not bilingual or something? Under further investigation it turned out that not only the local Arabic had indeed been persecuted and exterminated (between 500-400 years ago), but that there was a local Romance substratum that had ended up being absorbed by Arabic. And so on. When playing back the history of the place in my head I realized that whenever a local culture and language flourished it ended up displaced by a different language. It was odd, when comparing it to places in Northern Europe. So many "hereditary languages", and impossible to learn almost anything of most of them.

You're situation is similar in some ways, but different in other important ones. Are the Andalusians the descendants of Arabic speaking people who lived there before and who learned Spanish as a
second language and passed that language onto there children? Because that would make Andalusian Spanish a language formed out of the broken L2 Spanish of native Arabic speakers, who then passed said broken L2 Spanish on to their children as their L1. In that case, it would likely have significant Arabic influences in grammar, vocabulary and above all phonology. And how long was Arabic spoken there? And who by? And would you say that the Arabic world had a particularly large influence on Andalusia after Arabic stopped being spoken there? You also have to see how while Hiberno-English was spoken in Dublin it coexisted on an island which for the majority of its history was far more Irish speaking than English speaking (which you cannot say of Andalusian Spanish).

But you're going to sound inevitably like you're from Dublin.

The problem is that it is stigmatised. I may sound like I'm from Dublin even if I'm trying not to, but in that case my Dublin accent is something "incorrect" about the way I speak.

And here lies the question. I'm going to ask it with my own example, so you can see what I mean. If I learn northern Moroccan Arabic, how "valid" (not sure if it's the appropiate word) would be my obviously non native pronunciation? I think it would be a "foreign accent" (well, maybe not geographically), but not due to stigmatization, but simply due to history, and my own limitations.

As I've said above, the histories of the two situations are different, which is what makes it valid for me to use a Dublin accent in Irish and not so valid for you to use an Andalusian accent in Arabic.

What is the relevance of modern Andalusian Spanish when trying to understand the phonology of Andalusi Arabic?

Much less than the relevance of modern Dublin English to Leinster Irish.

I can see where you come from, but I think Linguoboy is making more sense (about the Irish features on Leinster English).

I've heard linguoboy and others say that there's not much of Leinster Irish left in Leinster English, but I have yet to see anybody tell why they think that or back it up with any studies.

By the way you people describe it, I'd say your Dublin accent isn't "incorrect" per se. It is what it is, and not more. You like Irish, but you can't quite let your mother tongue go. Which makes sense. Now, if you pick up and research what you can of Leinster Irish, the pronunciation you'd have to indicate wouldn't be "the way I do it", but "the way we think it was" (which I bet sounded like a different Gaeltacht Irish accent, logically).

I would think it logically should have sounded somewhat like Leinster English. Where did all the unique features of Leinster English come from if not Leinster Irish? So far it has been suggested that they may be:

- conservative features of English (that existed in English dialects of English previously)
- features from other languages spoken by those who taught English to the Irish (I had never heard this before, and it seems a bit bizarre. Anyone have any concrete info on this?)

But for some reason the suggestion that they could have come from the language native to the area before it was Anglicised is being considered ridiculous. Why?

And the pronunciation others would pick up would be "the way they do it", some more like you than others, but not necesarily the way you do it. For that vey same reason: why would they pronounce it your way?

Why would native speakers of other dialects speak like Leinster speakers? They wouldn't, and I'm not asking them to.

So if you start teaching neo-Leinster, or even raising native speakers, the logical thing would be to look at what it was (as far as we can tell), and not to decide subjectively a particular degree of anglization of the language in order to keep an "identity" people already have because they speak actual English.

They only reason to do any of this is for identity's sake. It's not like we need it for communication. And of course, if I was researching Leinster Irish I would make every effort to reconstruct as much of what it was like as possible, but Anglicisation is naturally going to get in, both because people now speak English, but also because the Leinster Irish we'd be researching was probably Anglicised itself to some degree. By that token, you might as well try to eradicate every word of English origin in any of the dialects, whether "real" or not.

Because that would be conlangish, and raises the question about if one's trying to resurrect it with the most possible fidelity or simply modify it to suit some interests.

I suppose there is something innately conlangish about reconstruction a language anyway. At least this language is a dialect of a language with three other living dialects, so we shouldn't be too far off the mark.

There's something I have to ask. Would Neo-Leinster be more archaic, grammatically, than the surviving dialects? Would it have to be artificially modernized in the style of the surviving dialects?

I don't think it would need to be artificially modernised, but there are records of Leinster Irish being spoken as recently as the 1930's, so by the time it died completely it was pretty modern already. The problem would be trying to use the most modern sources for it we can find, given that the sources are already so limited.

In the end, should we mix the question of identity and languages so much?

If we didn't no-one except Unilangers and the like would speak Irish. People, on the whole, don't just learn languages for linguistics' sake.

How specific is that identity supposed to be anyway?

As specific as possible. The way I speak English identifies me as not only Irish, not only from Leinster, not only from Dublin but from a certain socio-economic group within Dublin, and a certain age group at that. So with all the specificity that that carries, maybe you can see how a choice between three dialects, all of which are spoken on the parts of the island furthest away from me, is just not good enough. I'd settle for something that's from my own province at this point, and in time maybe sub dialects could develop.

[linguoboy]

A few people on a forum suggesting the same 2 resources (one of which I have) is not the same as proper academic attention. Koguryo, for example, is barely attested at all, but its Wikipedia page lists four academic sources dedicated to it (one of which I have, and it's a substantial book), and there are many other books on Japanese and Korean that mention it. How come Leinster Irish (a language with better sources which died much more recently) gets no such attention?

Whatever the reason, it's not due to some nefarious anti-Leinster conspiracy. Funding for academic attention is limited even in the best of times, and these are not the best of times in Ireland. What resources there are for the study of Irish dialects is being focused chiefly on keeping the living ones from dying out rather than trying to revive ones that are already dead. Is that sort of pragmatism really so inexplicable?

They are just sceptical of the possibility of recovering native Leinster features from contemporary dialects of Leinster English--and rightly so.

I'd be more inclined to believe you if I read some extensive academic studies of the dialects that showed it to be impossible.

I'm not sure they exist. After all, the burden of proof is not on those who claim that Leinster Irish can't be accurately reconstructed on the basis of Leinster English, but on those who say it can.

What definitively convinced me of the serious flaws of trying to reconstruct a substratum from the living varieties it influenced was work done on other languages, chiefly an essay (if I can find a citation, I'll post it) comparing what we would be able to reconstruct about the Prussian language based on the traces it left in in German and Polish with what we actually know of the language from direct attestation. I've seen that demonstration corroborated elsewhere, which is why I think it's reasonable that the burden of proof rests where it does.

But the distinction is still made, thus there is no change to the grammar, the only change is a slight superficial change in choice of phones for those phonemes, and if that's the only influence from English there is, how is it justified to say it's destroying the language?

Nobody here said that or is trying to defend the person who said that.

Is all that make Irish unique really just the use of [ɾ] over [ɹ]? If that's the influence from English they're afraid of, I don't think they've properly grasped what really matters here.

So what is it that "really matters"? (And why couldn't reasonable people disagree on what it is?)

I'd sooner settle for our best guess than be forced to sound like Gaeltacht speakers. Anyway, as I've said, if some of the phonological influence of English or these other languages gets into the reconstruction, well, it's all part of the history of the language in that area. It's not like we're taking bits of phonology from languages that have nothing to do with Leinster, anything that has affected the way we speak English in Leinster has contributed to the linguistic identity of the area, maybe that should be represented in our dialect of Irish.

There's an argument to be made there, but as it pointed out before it begs of the question of there being something which could be called a "Leinster dialect of Irish".

I don't think this debate (specifically with the points I've made) has gotten enough attention for a lot of Dubliners to have an opinion on it, or at least have their opinion heard by more that those immediately surrounding them. I've heard many complain that the reason they don't learn Irish is that they are put off by the elitism of it, which is what I think Webb et al. embody.

I think it may be time to introduce you my notorious "name six" test.

IIRC, DelBoy was a Dubliner. I don't remember him expressing himself one way or the other on this topic.

By the criteria by which you judge people to be native speakers, there are no speakers of Irish in Dublin and everyone speaks it imperfectly

Not at all. Gaeltacht speakers have been settling in Dublin for as long as it's been legal for them to do so. Brian Ó Cuív, my chief source for West Muskerry Irish, was born in Dublin and for most of his life was a professor a UCD and DIAS. But his father was a native speaker of the dialect who immigrated from Cork, which is how he came to speak it natively as well (although for his research, he didn't rely on his own speech but went and interviewed informants in West Muskerry).

Let me ask you this; What, in your opinion, of the way Dubliners speak English should they be allowed to transfer into their Irish? If nothing, they you are saying that Hiberno-English as it is spoken in Dublin is in every way as foreign to Irish as London English is, which I don't believe, and you know what? - even if it is, I'd still rather speak that corrupted form of Irish and keep the Dublin identity present in it than speak Gaeltacht Irish. The dialect's specificness to Dublin is its most important facet, "properness" and even historical linguistic accuracy is in fact less important (though I would like to see it be as accurate within those confines as possible).

There are other ways of expressing your identity than simply through linguistic markers. Or are you trying to tell me that if you spoke perfect London English, then no one would ever be able to tell you weren't from there?

[linguoboy]

How is wanting to speak in a way identifiable as being from where I'm from chauvinistic?

You rather gave the game away with your disparging comments about "hicks" from the Gaeltacht earlier. I know you disowned them later by saying they were "spoken in anger", but, to paraphrase the ancients, in ira veritas.

When I was your age, I was adamant about not sounding like a "hoosier". (That's my hometown slang for what others might call "rednecks" or "white trash".) Now that I've matured I find I sound more and more like them and less like the city slickers around me.

How specific is that identity supposed to be anyway?

As specific as possible. The way I speak English identifies me as not only Irish, not only from Leinster, not only from Dublin but from a certain socio-economic group within Dublin, and a certain age group at that. So with all the specificity that that carries, maybe you can see how a choice between three dialects, all of which are spoken on the parts of the island furthest away from me, is just not good enough. I'd settle for something that's from my own province at this point, and in time maybe sub dialects could develop.

I'm puzzled why you find this as desirable as you do. When I speak German with other Americans, they don't necessarily identify me as a Midwesterner with mixed petit-bourgeois/farmboy roots. That's not a bug to me, it's a feature. As I said before, every new language is an opportunity to assume a new personality--one influenced and informed by your current identity, to be sure, but not one absolutely identical to it. I just can't quite fathom what drives this desire to be pigeonholed so narrowly on every occasion.

I would think it logically should have sounded somewhat like Leinster English. Where did all the unique features of Leinster English come from if not Leinster Irish? So far it has been suggested that they may be:

- conservative features of English (that existed in English dialects of English previously)
- features from other languages spoken by those who taught English to the Irish (I had never heard this before, and it seems a bit bizarre. Anyone have any concrete info on this?)

But for some reason the suggestion that they could have come from the language native to the area before it was Anglicised is being considered ridiculous. Why?

Again, I think you are mischaracterising the arguments which have actually been advanced. Nobody said that it was "ridiculous" to think that any feature of Leinster English could be derived from Leinster Irish. They were contesting the notion that the features of Leinster English derive solely from Leinster Irish. And I in particular was emphasising that we can't separate with certainty which features of the local English dialects were derived from Irish, and that this uncertainty clouds the possibilities of reconstruction.

Imagine you were trying to reconstruct an extinct local breed of dog based on some historical mentions of it, the knowledge that it was derived from the Irish wolfhound, and mutts collected from the streets of Dublin. You know that its ancestors had the opportunity to breed with everything from Viking elkhounds to English spaniels. How could you be certain your efforts at "breeding true" had netted you the right collection of features? You couldn't.

[kevin]

As I've said above, the histories of the two situations are different, which is what makes it valid for me to use a Dublin accent in Irish and not so valid for you to use an Andalusian accent in Arabic.

Here I believe your reasoning starts to become inconsistent. If you really think that an accent is only valid if it is exactly what was historically spoken, then I probably misunderstood you before and it's very likely that to this standard your Dublin accent is plain wrong.

The way I see it and that makes your accent "valid" (though I find it silly to call anyone's language invalid...) is that history doesn't matter all that much, that all languages develop and get external influences in varying degrees, and it's all about how people speak today and with which accent they identify and feel at home. That could very well be something with a much greater influence of other languages like English or Spanish. If you argue this way and Andalusia was to reintroduce Arabic, then their accent in Arabic would be just as valid as yours in Irish.

I would think it logically should have sounded somewhat like Leinster English. Where did all the unique features of Leinster English come from if not Leinster Irish? So far it has been suggested that they may be:

So I'm curious, which are these features? I only read all the time that people disagree where they come from, but never what they really are.

And would you the say conversely that any feature that Leinster English and other English accents share are invalid for use in Irish?

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

http://www.emigrant.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64252&Itemid=297

An Ending for the Leinster Dialect |Saturday, 09 August 2008

I was surprised to read today of the death of the last Leinster dialect speaker in the world. I summarize from The Telegram – the Newfoundland daily newspaper.

‘The last man who could speak a dialect of the Irish language died Wednesday morning. Aloysius “Allie” O’ Brien was 93.

O’Brien, a St. John’s farmer, spoke Leinster Gaelic – or the Irish of the Books – a dialect now extinct in Ireland, which was passed down from his Irish-born grandmothers. He is thought to be the last person in the world who could speak the language.

O’Brien spent much of his life working to preserve Irish history and language and instructed classes in “The Gaelic”.

O'Brien received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Memorial University in 1982 for his efforts. With his late brothers John and Michael he operated a 188-year-old farm on O’Brien’s Hill off Mount Scio Road. Jeremy Carter who works on a nearby farm would often stop by the O’Brien farm where he and O’Brien would talk about agriculture, but also issues ranging from history to climate.

“He had quite a breadth of knowledge. He had almost a century of observing climate and agriculture, Carter said he was a lovely fella. I found him a real engaging character. He was a real nice fellow to know and be around.’

This was less than five years ago, and if there are recordings of people like him, then the phonology and intonation of Leinster Irish might be reasonably easy to get a general outline of, without having to resort to derivations from English.

[Llawygath]

Maybe I shouldn't be posting here, but I do have a few things to say.

- [ɹ] and company have no business in any language other than English. I fail to see why it's important to Ciaran, or anyone, to have English r's in Irish. There is no question that they are English r's, is there now?
This is actually part of the reason why I don't want to learn Cornish, and it may be the reason why I decide to strike Irish from my profile (though I haven't decided any such thing yet). In my view, having [ɹ] in a language is an unmistakable mark of an English accent and has no more place in Dublin Irish (assuming you can make up your minds as to what it is) than in, say, Latin. If there are native Irish speakers with [ɹ], I am wrong, but if not then my statement still stands. Notice I refuse to say that Irish speakers/learners with [ɹ] are 'sloppy'; they are not. They have only made or been taught a choice that seems to lack logic.
- Don't try to look at the accent question in black and white. Nobody ever said that you couldn't recover any features of Leinster Irish from Leinster English, only that to try to do so was not a perfect solution and should not be regarded as one. Yes, it may get you somewhere, nobody denied that, but don't try to make it take you all the way because it won't. Of course the genesis of the Irish accent in question was lossy. English can only take on so many features.