IarlaiṫMar 9

RE: https://mastodon.ie/@IrishStewPodcast/116198927902617393

She always does such a great job of understanding and articulating the problems we have with the language, whether as individual learners or as a society. She's not a native speaker, but she is an absolutely excellent teacher.

Show threadIrish Stew PodcastMar 13

@IarfhlaithO

I’m curious about the term “native speaker”.

I recognize the importance of supporting the #Gaeltacht. Folks there have been raised in the teanga and are part of an unbroken line of #IrishLanguage usage

That said, I aspire to be a competent #caighdean speaker. I like to think that is a noble aspiration - call me deluded 😜

I guess non-native speakers, such as myself, will never have the blás, but I think it is a distinction that may not be helpful

Martin

#Gaeilge

Show threadIarlaiṫ
@IrishStewPodcast I'm a learner too, but grew up near native speakers/a Gaeltacht so that will always sound more authentic and less stilted to me to what we were approximating in school. Languages change and the caighdean is probably the most realistic goal for most considering the resources we have to work with.
Mar 13 at 2:01pmWeb
Show threadsilmeth 🇺🇦Mar 13

@IarfhlaithO @IrishStewPodcast

1. The caighdeán is _not_ an effect of natural language change, it’s a convention existing beside it.
2. There are great resources for many Irish dialects, from beginner friendly teaching materials to documentation in academic monographs and countless recordings.
3. Those resources are generally much higher quality than anything targeting non-dialectal caighdeán.

And then the caighdeán has no pronunciation – so one can’t actually just “speak the caighdeán”.

Show threadsilmeth 🇺🇦Mar 13
@IarfhlaithO @IrishStewPodcast (One of course can speak using caighdeán vocabulary and following the rules of the caighdeán – but whatever pronunciation one uses it’ll be either pronunciation of a specific dialect of Irish, or some foreign pronunciation to some extent trying to approximate one or another dialect – but it will never be “standard pronunciation” as such a thing does not exist)
Show threadsilmeth 🇺🇦Mar 13
@IarfhlaithO @IrishStewPodcast There’s also a system called Lárchanúint which is not widely know which is a caighdeán-based pronunciation system designed for Foclóir Póca – which does aim to sound like something between Connacht and Munster dialects – but even this isn’t a fully phonetically developed pronunciation system, and I’m not aware of _anybody_ actually using it.