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 threadCaoimhínMar 13

@IrishStewPodcast @IarfhlaithO Don't believe the lie that you can't have the blas! It's entirely possible for learners to have good pronunciation if they are willing to put in the work. Most don't have it simply because they don't even care.

And it doesn't even take much work to be above average. Simply acknowledging that a different language comes with different sounds and that you don't have all of them in your English, and just trying to make the right sounds already puts you above average.

Show threadCaoimhín
@IrishStewPodcast @IarfhlaithO The part that you'll probably never have, though, is the native speaker's intuition about how things are phrased most naturally, and the finer details about things that aren't grammatically wrong or anything, but just don't sound quite right anyway. You can get quite far with this one, too, but probably never to the level that you have in your own native language. (It's definitely true for my English, even though I'm using it daily at work.)
Mar 13 at 2:20pmWeb
Show threadIrish Stew PodcastMar 13

@caoimhin @IarfhlaithO

Here’s the thing, perfection is impossible, but traveling along the route to betterment is gratifying.

A decade of competition in Track and Field taught me that lesson, often brutally. I came to understand that improvement was there for the taking and had its own pleasures, especially when I stopped worrying how others perceived me and my failures.

Bainfidh mé taitneamh as an turas nua seo

#Gaeilge

#Gaeilge