Leinster Irish [split from Random language thread]

[Ciarán12]

I read something today that made me so angry, I could hardly gather the mental wherewithal to deal with it. It has left me deeply depressed. I think I might give up on Irish because of it. When I think about Irish, I'm bound to start thinking about this argument and I just get so angry thinking about it, I'm not sure I have the emotional strength to handle it. I was nearly brought to tears. I'm drunk right now, because I can't think of any other way to deal with it (the guy isn't around to punch). And he had people agreeing with him. I've never been so angry in my life.

[Lur]

I read something today that made me so angry, I could hardly gather the mental wherewithal to deal with it. It has left me deeply depressed. I think I might give up on Irish because of it. When I think about Irish, I'm bound to start thinking about this argument and I just get so angry thinking about it, I'm not sure I have the emotional strength to handle it. I was nearly brought to tears. I'm drunk right now, because I can't think of any other way to deal with it (the guy isn't around to punch). And he had people agreeing with him. I've never been so angry in my life.

Don't, please.

I think you might need to give it a while to cool it down. When one is angry in this way, it seems almost impossible to get over it, because it's so intense. But after a while you might realize it was an illusion of the mind. It has happened to me before a few times. Now, these assholes will still be assholes, but random assholery without any foundation shouldn't be solid enough to really bring you down like this.

[Yasna]

I read something today that made me so angry, I could hardly gather the mental wherewithal to deal with it. It has left me deeply depressed. I think I might give up on Irish because of it. When I think about Irish, I'm bound to start thinking about this argument and I just get so angry thinking about it, I'm not sure I have the emotional strength to handle it. I was nearly brought to tears. I'm drunk right now, because I can't think of any other way to deal with it (the guy isn't around to punch). And he had people agreeing with him. I've never been so angry in my life.

What did you read?

[linguoboy]

What did you read?

This, I imagine: http://corkirish.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/stupidity-of-the-worst-kind/.

If I'd known you'd take it so hard, a Chiaráin, I never would've shown you that link. David Webb is notorious for his prescriptivist approach to Irish. One the one hand, I'm extremely grateful to him for making so much material available in precisely the dialect I'm studying (West Muskerry). On the other, I find his disdain for other dialects (notably Connemara Irish) so retrograde that I don't want to be associated with it. As Tash's comment suggests, this kind of utterly over-the-top response is typical of him. Don't take it so personally.

[Kenny]

I just read the article and I don't really see what's so upsetting about it. A foreign accent is a foreign accent. Also, who cares if you have one? Most people who learn to speak a language they haven't spoken from birth have one. So what? That doesn't change a thing. (And you can hate me all you want, but even though I'm a descriptivist 99% of the time, a language you acquire beyond, say, age 8-10 is one in which you will most likely not sound like a native and if you make mistakes, just because you live in the country where it's spoken alongside another language, that doesn't make you non-native pronunciation correct. But again, having an accent is completely okay and sometimes even pretty charming as long as it doesn't impede intelligibility.)*

*If what he (the author of the article) is criticizing about the "Dublin dialect" is not actually English influence only found in non-native speakers or is specific to some dialect other than what he speaks and considers correct, saying those pronunciations aren't correct is simply stupid. 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.

[Lur]

Oh, let see.

David Webb is notorious for his prescriptivist approach to Irish.

But if he is basing his comments on the native speakers, wouldn't that make him a descriptivist? Or do you say that because on some issues he dimisses some dialects?

I see where he's coming from. For example, English learners should not take me as a guide for English pronunciation at all. Just... no. I don't think it would be all right to take my English pronunciation as a native dialectal variation of English because that's just untrue. On the other hand, when he says one should drop the language if there's no intention to reproduce the actual sounds, I'm not so sure. I mean, what if one just writes Irish on the Internet. What if one is just incapable of producing a sound in a language, but can do everything else all right? What if you're learning an old language and you're more concerned with understanding the grammar for the time being? In my experience most French I've met have been incapable of pronouncing an alveolar trill, but I wouldn't just tell off a French of learning my language for such a thing (the one who should do that sound right is me, the native speaker).

Kenny is right. One's hability in pronouncing new languages is greatly determined by your mother tongue. You're just not likely to perfectly resemble the sound of a native speaker. However, that shouldn't stp you from enjoying the language at all. Or even from entertaining yourself trying to sound like a native for the sake of trying. For example, I've come to like German. I have a hard time with the uvular r, so for the sake of not sounding ridiculous I'm getting interested in the native dialects that use other kind of r. I'll likely never sound like a German, but hopefully that won't stop me celebrating the language and trying to speak to the Germans in their tongue.

[Dormouse559]

I just read the article and I don't really see what's so upsetting about it. A foreign accent is a foreign accent.

Part of the problem is probably that the post singles Ciarán out. The writer says that he's heard the offending argument several times, so I don't see the need to identify a specific person, unless they were going to be left anonymous.

[linguoboy]

David Webb is notorious for his prescriptivist approach to Irish.

But if he is basing his comments on the native speakers, wouldn't that make him a descriptivist? Or do you say that because on some issues he dimisses some dialects?

http://corkirish.wordpress.com/why-cork-irish/

In the case of Irish, the dialects have developed differently for centuries, but the form of Irish closest to the historically correct grammatical forms is Cork Irish, and the form furthest from them is Galway Irish. If we compare the situation with English, Cork Irish is analogous to Oxford English and Galway Irish to Cockney.

I see where he's coming from. For example, English learners should not take me as a guide for English pronunciation at all. Just... no. On the other hand, when he says one should drop the language if there's no intention to reproduce the actual sounds, I'm not so sure. I mean, what if one just writes Irish on the Internet. What if one is just incapable of producing a sound in a language, but can do everything else all right? What if you're learning an old language and you're more concerned with understanding the grammar for the time being? In my experience most French I've met have been utterly incapable of pronouncing an alveolar trill, but I wouldn't just tell off a French of learning my language for such a thing (the one who should do that sound right is me, the native speaker).

There's also the point that Irish is in a very different situation from French; native Irish is on the verge of dying out and the language could soon cease to be spoken altogether. There's a lot of debate among learners about the merits having a large number of semi-speakers (or speakers of a heavily-anglicised version of Irish) vs a small core of fluent native or native-like speakers. This helps to account for some of the strong feelings his remarks have triggered--and that's before we even get into hot-button issues of identity.

Kenny is right. One's hability in pronouncing new languages is greatly determined by your mother tongue. You're just not likely to perfectly resemble the sound of a native speaker. However, that shouldn't stp you from enjoying the language at all. Or even from entertaining yourself trying to sound like a native for the sake of trying. For example, I've come to like German. I have a hard time with the uvular r, so for the sake of not sounding ridiculous I'm getting interested in the native dialects that use other kind of r. I'll likely never sound like a German, but hopefully that won't stop me celebrating the language and trying to speak to the Germans in their tongue.

Similarly, I was talking recently about adopting Finland-Swedish norms because it saves me having to wrestle with pitch-accent and [ɧ]. As one of the other posters pointed out in the thread that caused all this fuss for Ciarán, learning a language as a non-native is all about compromises.

[Lur]

David Webb is notorious for his prescriptivist approach to Irish.

But if he is basing his comments on the native speakers, wouldn't that make him a descriptivist? Or do you say that because on some issues he dimisses some dialects?

http://corkirish.wordpress.com/why-cork-irish/

In the case of Irish, the dialects have developed differently for centuries, but the form of Irish closest to the historically correct grammatical forms is Cork Irish, and the form furthest from them is Galway Irish. If we compare the situation with English, Cork Irish is analogous to Oxford English and Galway Irish to Cockney.

Oh, dear. A lot of what he says reminds me a lot of all the fuss about Euskara batua (although the dialects chosen for batua seem a bit less controversial). And he might be probably right about his disdain to turning back to historically attested forms in favour of artificial forms. However, his absurdly prescriptive way of looking at the accents of English seems to clash with the historical descriptivism he tries to use as base for Irish. One of these English accents he seems to dish for no reason are probably more natural and historically attested than the artificial Irish he hates. But he also seems to apply the attitude for the different English accents to other dialects that aren't Cork. Maybe he'd prefer if they got back to Old Irish. It's more traditional

There's also the point that Irish is in a very different situation from French; native Irish is on the verge of dying out and the language could soon cease to be spoken altogether. There's a lot of debate among learners about the merits having a large number of semi-speakers (or speakers of a heavily-anglicised version of Irish) vs a small core of fluent native or native-like speakers. This helps to account for some of the strong feelings his remarks have triggered--and that's before we even get into hot-button issues of identity.

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. In a way, this level of influence from English can also be death for Irish. And I wonder what would happen then. Would they just drop Irish? Would the population suddenly go "oh shit"? I admit I ignore how concerned the everyday Irish is about this issue.

The only way out I can see to rebuild an Irish speaking society and resist the influence of English is repeteadly rasising children since they are born in an older, more classic form of Irish. Otherwise you end up with native speakers of the standard form (like in Euskal Herria) and this is a terrible pressure for the rest of the natives.

I'm not terribly objective about the language change of these languages that are now small. I would learn Celtiberian if I could. I'm inevitably skewed towards the old.

Actually, I can't even bring my opinions on languages to be coherent. I will bitch about the influence of English on Irish (maybe because it's the Celtic language that had managed to remain relatively isolated until a later date), but I'll cherish the influence of Arabic on Castilian during the Middle-Ages, and count many of these words of Arabic origin among my favourites. It doesn't make sense, and yet it's how I feel

[Yasna]

I hope you Irish are able to sort things out over there. Irish would be a great language to learn if it was the primary language of Ireland.

[kevin]

For example, I've come to like German. I have a hard time with the uvular r, so for the sake of not sounding ridiculous I'm getting interested in the native dialects that use other kind of r. I'll likely never sound like a German, but hopefully that won't stop me celebrating the language and trying to speak to the Germans in their tongue.

And I don't think any German would even try to correct you for your r. As you say, there are already differences within the German speaking countries, and foreigners bring more of them. And while we wouldn't consider them native, we're used to them. Possibly other non-native speakers find the "wrong" pronunciation more disturbing than we native speakers do.

I think the same is happening here: One non-native speaker of Irish takes offence at another non-native speaker's pronuncation. Which I already find kind of questionable. It doesn't really help that he gets insulting and tries to ridicule Ciarán - by pretending that he had said that using only English sounds was correct, which he never has (as far as I can tell, there's only a disagreement about the allowable pronunciation of broad r). You usually do such things if you don't have real arguments...

And then the whole thing becomes a bit more complicated because of the political dimension. The position of the Irish language is quite special in that it's supposed to be spoken in all Ireland, but doesn't exist natively everywhere any more, and I don't think it's fair to say it's the same as learning just another foreign language.

All in all, I believe that even though I don't speak any Irish (yet?), I can safely say that the article is correctly called "Stupidity of the worst kind" and should be mostly ignored. It may contain some helpful information for other people, but's it's not an appropriate response for Ciarán.


@Ciarán: In this other forum you said you hoped for a coexistence between dialects and a standard language. It's probably only possible if you avoid that they get mixed (and even then only to a certain degree, because local varities in the dialects may not survive). Not sure how much of this is universal, but I can speak dialect - or whatever is left of it - and I can speak Standard German. But what I do speak in practice is a mix, with friends it has more of the dialeect, at work work more of the standard language, and there is a smooth transition between both, depending on who's around.

This means that the standard language has a big influence on the dialect. It's interesting (and sad) to see how the dialect becomes closer to the standard with each generation. I guess in another 50 years or so there will be not much more left than a slight accent.

[Ciarán12]

A foreign accent is a foreign accent.

And I don't have one.

(And you can hate me all you want, but even though I'm a descriptivist 99% of the time, a language you acquire beyond, say, age 8-10 is one in which you will most likely not sound like a native and if you make mistakes, just because you live in the country where it's spoken alongside another language, that doesn't make you non-native pronunciation correct. But again, having an accent is completely okay and sometimes even pretty charming as long as it doesn't impede intelligibility.)

A) I am not defending every mistake non-natives make, I'm saying that they shouldn't model their Irish on dialects that were never spoken in their area and which do not represent them or thier identity. 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?

*If what he (the author of the article) is criticizing about the "Dublin dialect" is not actually English influence only found in non-native speakers or is specific to some dialect other than what he speaks and considers correct, saying those pronunciations aren't correct is simply stupid.

There are no Dublin native speakers by his definition, so it amounts to the same thing. Anyway, maybe, maybe we should accept that English has had an 800 year long presence in Dublin and that if we in Dublin speak with a somewhat English influenced dialect, that that is only fitting. That doesn't have to mean the death of the language, I still encourage anyone who wants to to learn the dialects, and I encourage them to be spoken in the areas they were traditionally spoken in, by the people who traditionally spoke them. I just resist the idea that I should be forced to speak like their ancestors.

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.

I see where he's coming from. For example, English learners should not take me as a guide for English pronunciation at all. Just... no. I don't think it would be all right to take my English pronunciation as a native dialectal variation of English because that's just untrue.

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.

On the other hand, when he says one should drop the language if there's no intention to reproduce the actual sounds, I'm not so sure.

Of course that's bullshit. It's that kind of shite that turns people from Dublin against the language. Hey, it's even managed to turn me against it - I'm used to learning languages, I like them, I'm as proud of my heritage as it gets, and he's managed to dissuade me from learning the language, think what this kind of argument would do to your average Irishman trying to learn the language.

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

People shouldn't be ashamed to speak it either.

What if one is just incapable of producing a sound in a language, but can do everything else all right?

As I mentioned many times on that forum Webb linked to in his blog post, I am perfectly capable of making the sounds, I just don't want to, because it would make me sound like a hick from the Gaeltacht, and why the fuck should I have to do that?

Kenny is right. One's hability in pronouncing new languages is greatly determined by your mother tongue. You're just not likely to perfectly resemble the sound of a native speaker. However, that shouldn't stp you from enjoying the language at all. Or even from entertaining yourself trying to sound like a native for the sake of trying. For example, I've come to like German. I have a hard time with the uvular r, so for the sake of not sounding ridiculous I'm getting interested in the native dialects that use other kind of r. I'll likely never sound like a German, but hopefully that won't stop me celebrating the language and trying to speak to the Germans in their tongue.

That's fair enough, I agree that people who can't make the sounds shouldn't be dissuaded from trying to learn the language, but more importantly, I don't think people from Dublin should be trying to sound like natives from the Gaeltacht. We need our own dialect.

I just read the article and I don't really see what's so upsetting about it. A foreign accent is a foreign accent.

Part of the problem is probably that the post singles Ciarán out. The writer says that he's heard the offending argument several times, so I don't see the need to identify a specific person, unless they were going to be left anonymous.

Yes, that was particularly venomous of him.

There's also the point that Irish is in a very different situation from French; native Irish is on the verge of dying out and the language could soon cease to be spoken altogether.

But I don't see how this is helping that situation. I'm sick and tired of making this argument, but here it goes again - I am in support of the increased use of traditional, dialectal Irish in the areas in which it was traditionally spoken, and any pressures on those dialects caused by the official standard as it is enforced by the state or by popular culture are to be fought against. That is not to say that those dialects should be forced on people in the country who have no cultural connection with them. Connemara Irish was never spoken in Dublin, so why should it be now? We should speak Neo-Leinster Irish.

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.

In a way, this level of influence from English can also be death for Irish.

What level of influence? That prick told me on the forum that I was "ruining the very essence of the language" because I choose to use [ɹ] or [ɹˠ] (now that I think about it, it's probably more of a [ɽˠ]) for /ɾˠ/, rather than, presumably [ɾˠ]. Does that seem like the level of influence that would "cause the death of Irish"?

The only way out I can see to rebuild an Irish speaking society and resist the influence of English is repeteadly rasising children since they are born in an older, more classic form of Irish. Otherwise you end up with native speakers of the standard form (like in Euskal Herria) and this is a terrible pressure for the rest of the natives.

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.

I'm not terribly objective about the language change of these languages that are now small. I would learn Celtiberian if I could. I'm inevitably skewed towards the old.

Actually, I can't even bring my opinions on languages to be coherent. I will bitch about the influence of English on Irish (maybe because it's the Celtic language that had managed to remain relatively isolated until a later date), but I'll cherish the influence of Arabic on Castilian during the Middle-Ages, and count many of these words of Arabic origin among my favourites. It doesn't make sense, and yet it's how I feel

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?

I hope you Irish are able to sort things out over there. Irish would be a great language to learn if it was the primary language of Ireland.

That'd be nice. With people like Webb around, I think it's a long way off though.

I think the same is happening here: One non-native speaker of Irish takes offence at another non-native speaker's pronuncation. Which I already find kind of questionable. It doesn't really help that he gets insulting and tries to ridicule Ciarán - by pretending that he had said that using only English sounds was correct, which he never has (as far as I can tell, there's only a disagreement about the allowable pronunciation of broad r). You usually do such things if you don't have real arguments...

I was saying we should sound different in Dublin than they do in Cork because we're from different parts of the country, with different linguistic identities, and he was saying everyone should sound like the people in Cork because they're just more Irish than everyone else, and the rest of us might as well be foreigners.

And then the whole thing becomes a bit more complicated because of the political dimension. The position of the Irish language is quite special in that it's supposed to be spoken in all Ireland, but doesn't exist natively everywhere any more, and I don't think it's fair to say it's the same as learning just another foreign language.

THANK YOU! I hate making that argument again and again and again...

All in all, I believe that even though I don't speak any Irish (yet?), I can safely say that the article is correctly called "Stupidity of the worst kind" and should be mostly ignored. It may contain some helpful information for other people, but's it's not an appropriate response for Ciarán.

Like linguoboy said, the guy does help disseminate resources for a specific dialect, which is useful and commendable, but his belief that everyone else should try to emulate him is sickening.

@Ciarán: In this other forum you said you hoped for a coexistence between dialects and a standard language. It's probably only possible if you avoid that they get mixed (and even then only to a certain degree, because local varities in the dialects may not survive). Not sure how much of this is universal, but I can speak dialect - or whatever is left of it - and I can speak Standard German. But what I do speak in practice is a mix, with friends it has more of the dialeect, at work work more of the standard language, and there is a smooth transition between both, depending on who's around.

This means that the standard language has a big influence on the dialect. It's interesting (and sad) to see how the dialect becomes closer to the standard with each generation. I guess in another 50 years or so there will be not much more left than a slight accent.

As I've said on that forum, if it's a case of dialect vs standard, I'm on the dialect's side. We should be thinking about how to allow them both to coexist. And if Webb wants to have a go at anyone, maybe it should be the natives - if I spoke Irish natively I'd make sure I used it, and I'd make sure my children did too, and I would impress upon them the importance of not letting the standard interfere with their own dialect. I also wouldn't tell learners living on the other side of the country that they were wrong if they didn't sound exactly like me.

Finally, maybe this should be moved to a new thread, it's gone a bit off topic.

[Kenny]

@Ciarán: if there are native speakers (speakers who grew up speaking the language) who pronounce Irish that way then he has no right to say that it's incorrect (the "endangering the language" part is another issue entirely, I don't agree with the guy on that either way). If however only non-natives do that, I would argue it is incorrect (the same way using an English /r/ or a uvular /r/ is incorrect in my native Hungarian, the latter exists though as a speech impediment ). If only non-natives use those pronunciations, I would consider them incorrect until English influence reaches the point where native speakers of any Irish dialect start using them.

[linguoboy]

The last thing I want is for someone to think I'm from the Gaeltacht

Why is that? I mean, I'm proud of my hometown as well, but if someone mistakenly thinks I'm from somewhere else (and I've been taken for a Canadian and an Englishman before, as well as a Dutchman and a German), I'm amused rather than offended.

Later on, you say that using traditional Irish pronunciation would "make me sound like a hick". But then you conclude by saying, "if I spoke Irish natively I'd make sure I used it, and I'd make sure my children did too, and I would impress upon them the importance of not letting the standard interfere with their own dialect." I don't think you quite realise the contradiction you're embodying.

[Kenny]

Besides, he could create his own dialect. All he has to do is speak to his kids in it and make sure they produce plenty of offspring later on in life and if the tradition of using Irish within the family is upheld, there will be plenty of native speakers who'll speak that way in just a couple of centuries from now . (Okay I realize this would be nearly impossible since the kid(s) would get input from other places which if they are more exposed to it then they are to their dad's Irish would most likely override the input coming from their father. And if they are not, I'm not sure only having one person using it with them would be enough to make them competent native speakers.)

[Ciarán12]

The last thing I want is for someone to think I'm from the Gaeltacht

Why is that? I mean, I'm proud of my hometown as well, but if someone mistakenly thinks I'm from somewhere else (and I've been taken for a Canadian and an Englishman before, as well as a Dutchman and a German), I'm amused rather than offended.

Later on, you say that using traditional Irish pronunciation would "make me sound like a hick". But then you conclude by saying, "if I spoke Irish natively I'd make sure I used it, and I'd make sure my children did too, and I would impress upon them the importance of not letting the standard interfere with their own dialect." I don't think you quite realise the contradiction you're embodying.

I do. Those words were said in anger. I recognise that it is no better to be from Dublin that from the Gaeltacht, but the argument I was fighting against was that it was in fact better to be from the Gaeltacht, and showing that we in Dublin think just as little of them as they do of us is a good way of pointing out that we no more want to sound like them than they do like us. They wouldn't like it if we told them that the only way to speak correct Hiberno-English was to mimic a Dublin accent, so maybe they should think about that when trying to advocate that we mimic them in Irish. And it would be more amusing if it wasn't as serious an issue.

[kevin]

I think the same is happening here: One non-native speaker of Irish takes offence at another non-native speaker's pronuncation. Which I already find kind of questionable. It doesn't really help that he gets insulting and tries to ridicule Ciarán - by pretending that he had said that using only English sounds was correct, which he never has (as far as I can tell, there's only a disagreement about the allowable pronunciation of broad r). You usually do such things if you don't have real arguments...

I was saying we should sound different in Dublin than they do in Cork because we're from different parts of the country, with different linguistic identities, and he was saying everyone should sound like the people in Cork because they're just more Irish than everyone else, and the rest of us might as well be foreigners.

Oh yes, I understand that this is the real conflict. I was trying to avoid taking a position here, because it's really not my business to say how Irish should be spoken... If I must, I think I tend to agree with you, though. As I said, the position of Irish is somewhat special, so probably all my attempts at making comparisons aren't totally valid, but neither do I speak clean Standard German, nor do I speak exactly like my ancestors did a hundred years ago. (And, shockingly, I probably make much more use of anglicisms!) So I can't see why you should have to speak the one true Irish dialect nor why you should speak exactly as Irish was spoken in earlier times.

THANK YOU! I hate making that argument again and again and again...

Then don't.

I mean, really, who's this Webb guy? He's not even a native speaker himself. Why does his opinion mean anything to you? You should do what you think is the right thing, and if someone writes an offending article about you, call him an idiot and be done with it.

As I've said on that forum, if it's a case of dialect vs standard, I'm on the dialect's side. We should be thinking about how to allow them both to coexist.

Saying to be on the dialect's side is easy. The second part is the hard thing - how to make it actually happen?

[Ciarán12]

@Ciarán: if there are native speakers (speakers who grew up speaking the language) who pronounce Irish that way then he has no right to say that it's incorrect (the "endangering the language" part is another issue entirely, I don't agree with the guy on that either way). If however only non-natives do that, I would argue it is incorrect (the same way using an English /r/ or a uvular /r/ is incorrect in my native Hungarian, the latter exists though as a speech impediment ). If only non-natives use those pronunciations, I would consider them incorrect until English influence reaches the point where native speakers of any Irish dialect start using them.

But differences in Irish dialects are not just down to the influence of English, there are whole dialects that no longer exist. I say that if there are sounds, words or grammar structures being used in parts of Ireland that have no native dialects of Irish anymore and those features can be proven not to come from England, then they must have come from the Irish spoken there before that area's dialect died out. Those features should be revived. And like I said before, even if some of the features of Irish as it is spoken can be traced back to English, maybe that's okay (so long as it doesn't affect the Irish spoken elsewhere), English has a long history in Dublin, it would be a lie to try to erase it. I'm not talking about all features that can be traced back to English - for example, I don't think it's right to import idioms and phrasal verbs into Irish wholesale - but if a feature of English has been present in Dublin English for a long time (and especially if this feature is now unique to the English of Dublin (presumably having died out elsewhere)), then I don't think it's application to Dublin Irish would either destroy the language nor would it be inappropriate.

[Ciarán12]

I mean, really, who's this Webb guy? He's not even a native speaker himself. Why does his opinion mean anything to you? You should do what you think is the right thing, and if someone writes an offending article about you, call him an idiot and be done with it.

I suppose you're right. If someone told me they were going to stop learning Irish because of something like this, that's exactly what I'd say to them. Still, it's going to take a while before I've calmed down enough about it, and I fear I might clash with him or people who think like him again, and I'm just not up for having the argument over and over, I get too emotional.

As I've said on that forum, if it's a case of dialect vs standard, I'm on the dialect's side. We should be thinking about how to allow them both to coexist.

Saying to be on the dialect's side is easy. The second part is the hard thing - how to make it actually happen?

I'd like to get everybody (or at least the vast majority of people) just to agree to that, then we could talk about what can be done. Allowing people to use their native dialects for official and academic purposes would be a start, and increasing the amount of media available in dialectal Irish would be another idea. 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.

[johnklepac]

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?