Ó, ná habair go bhfuil an teanga marbh go fóill beag, a Benjamin, mar tá muid á húsáid fós. (Don't declare the language dead just yet, Benjamin, we're still using it.)


Some more good materials including native sound files at different levels:

http://www.teg.ie/gaeilge/teagasc.htm

Thanks to Saoirse and Mick for bringing teg to our attention.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

I use the TEG lesson plan with my teacher at present. She is in Dún Phádraig and gives me 1 lesson a week on Skype using the teg.ie lesson plan. It is really good course material. It is a VERY comprehensive website.

Thanks for the input! Stirred up some conflict didn't I?

Sorry if it's insulting, that's not what I wanted to do.
Anyway, those who dedicate their lives to Irish in towns don't all speak bad Irish, do they? So that's different. I guess there are even Gaeltacht speakers who do.

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

She has excellent Irish and is from Belfast originally, she speaks exactly like someone from Tory island. You are really lucky to have Máire as a teacher.

A lot of 'urban' Irish speakers learn their Irish from Gaeltacht people, a lot of the teachers from in the Gaelscoileanna are from the Gaeltacht, and while I think it's important to learn good language I think if the language is to grow, and it is outside the traditional Gaeltacht, then we need more 'urban' speakers, and of course outside influence is going to come into it, thats inevitable, thank god we've a living language that will morph and change - just like any language.

Like Ben said the Irish in the Gaeltacht has a long history of decline, if we marginalise the Irish outside the Gaeltacht then we might as well call it a day because I believe the future of Irish rest's in these Urban revivals. Most of them will learn their Irish from native's, who will in turn pass it on while at the same time bringing in Dublin, Belfast (etc) influences. Adult learner's who use courses such as Bitesize are in the minority, most of the revival centres around Gaelscoileanna so I wouldn't be too worried about the quality of Irish, but regardless of whether their teachers are from the Gaeltacht or not their Irish is still going to be influenced by their area, upbringing etc and it will change the language over time.

OK I take the point that as non-Gaeltacht Irish grows it may dilute the 'purer' Gaeltacht Irish, but English is very simplified compared to what it was, the difference being English has millions of native speakers, Irish does not so the changes may be speeded up with the mixing of say Dublin English and Irish. But I don't see that as any different to when English became the majority language of Ireland, it got mixed with Irish and you could say the English initially spoken wasn't correct English, but because it's been here for centuries now it's considered native. In 200 years, the descendants of the children in Gaelscoileanna now will have what is considered native Irish by your Gaeltacht deifnitions (though I consider them to have native Irish already). It will be different from say Conamara Irish today (Conamara Irish will be different too!), but I don't see that as a bad thing as much as I love Conamara Irish I want to see people speaking everywhere without fear, before I worry about how the "r's" have changed.

For those of us unfortunate to not learn Irish as children, its a difficult task to learn it as an adult and most of us will never get to Gaeltacht fluency, so I say have fun learn what you can and bí ag caint. I dont think adult learners will be the making of Irish, bringing children up through Gaelscoileanna etc will.

but languages don't change through the speech of learners.
What we need, is more people who do their best to speak like Gaeltacht speakers.
The people who don't care about pronunciation and grammar, just pretend to speak Irish. I mean, Irish is a language so it has a pronunciation and a grammar and if you don't care about them, you don't care about Irish.



oh yeah, more than 100 years ago (or even 200), people say that Irish is going to die etc. But it is still alive.



not only. I'm happy there are people who speak Irish in towns, what I don't like, is people who pretend to speak Irish but who don't care about what Irish is made of, ie. pronunciation, grammar, expressions, vocabulary. I mean, if they don't care about Irish, they'd better speak English, like.



if there's no continuation from Gaeltacht Irish, it will become somewhat artificial, as speaking Cornish or Latin. It won't be the same thing, something has been broken.



once again, it isn't the mistakes of the learners that make the language evolve naturally. The mistakes made by French or Spanish people learning English, doesn't make English evolve. It's the speech of native speakers that does.



it will be another language then. You should give it another name.



Once again, Hiberno-English isn't simply English mixed with Irish, because in Hiberno-English there are things that are neither "English" nor Irish (eg. pronunciation stuff: they don't pronounce like English people but they don't pronounce at all like native Irish speakers would do. The English spoken by old people from Donegal Gaeltacht is completely different from native Hiberno-English as it is spoken in the Gaeltacht).



I'm sorry but your native language is not a language you learn at school... It's the first language you learn, from your parents.



hoping their teachers speak properly.

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

I disagree with virtually all of that, a child who is brought up through Irish to me is a native Irish speaker, so therefore to me they are not learners and you can see where'd I'd be going with regards to the rest of your argument.

Going off subject a little, 98% of Ireland live outside of the Gaeltacht, if Ireland is to increase the number of speakers it must rely heavily on the 98%, and a child from Dublin growing up with Irish as their first language will NEVER speak Conamara Irish, even if their mammy can be from Spiddal, their Teacher from Inis Oirr, they will never attain 100% Gaeltacht Irish, they will be influenced in the school yard, by the people they meet etc, therefore Irish will undergo change, and we need this change, if their is no change it will show no growth or development of Irish outside the Gaeltacht.

If we want Irish speakers to increase in Ireland, as I do, we have to accept this 98% will never, with the exception of a few people with an aptitude for languages, be able to mimic Gaeltacht Irish, it will evolve and develop by outside forces, as Irish in the Gaeltacht has and always will.

So viva le evolution I say. If you don't think it's Irish then I'm sure you'll continue to have a great time in the Gaeltacht, but for those of us who may only ever visit on holidays, we will primarily speak Irish in our communities with these infected speakers

why not?
In my area (western Brittany) there are English people whose children are growing up here, surrounded by French and some Breton. And these children speak English at home and I don't see why they would never speak proper English.



níl Inis Oírr i gConamara



why not? I know people who began to learn Irish as teenagers and who speak Gaeltacht Irish, you wouldn't even hear a difference.
Do you want to persuade other learners not to make efforts to speak proper Irish because you think they'll never manage to speak properly anyway? Sounds like that! lol



do you mean the number of Irish speakers can only grow if people don't speak Gaeltacht Irish? I don't understand the link between these.



I speak and write Gaeltacht (Gaeltacht-like, anyway, I do my best) Irish with native speakers and non-native speakers, if I met non-native speakers in Dublin I would talk to them in Donegal Irish, and their Irish wouldn't influence mine. You don't always get influenced by the people you're talking to.
If you think Irish with non-Irish pronunciations, non-Irish grammar and non-Irish idioms is ok, is cuma liomsa. To me, the reference is Gaeltacht Irish and I wouldn't change my mind even if I were the last one on earth who speaks Gaeltacht(-like) Irish.

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

I don't mean Irish will only grow if people speak non-Gaeltacht Irish but what I am saying is it is inevitable it will evolve differently the more non-Gaeltacht children and adults there are growing up with the language, there isn't a chance that everyone outside the Gaeltacht learning Irish will speak some perfect form of Gaeltacht Irish your referring too. Not possible, my own brother was brought up in a non English speaking country and he doesn't have my Dad's accent, he doesn't have his mothers accent, he has a mixed accent from the people he interacted with - He went to an International English speaking school and picked up parts of English, Irish, South African, American, Welsh accents etc, and his grammar would be mixed, he wouldn't have one dialect of English. So yes I am saying a child growing up in Dublin will not have a Gaeltacht accent, it will depend on all the people they meet and interact with in their lives.

So my point is, Irish will never no matter how much you may want it remain the same as it is spoken in the Gaeltacht today. I am agreeing they are the focal point but I don't agree that Gaeltacht people are the only fluent speakers, and even if they were there is no chance on this earth that an 'urban' revival with keep Irish 100% Gaeltacht.

Put it this way, 2% of Irish people live in the Gaeltacht, god knows what percent of them speak Irish, between 40-60% (overall? i know some areas are 90% and some 10% etc), so let's say 1% of the Irish people speak Gaeltacht Irish. 10% of all Irish children go to Gaelscoileanna, it's easy to see where the future of the Irish language is on a national level, and I am sorry to say that there is no way they will speak Gaeltacht Irish. Of the 10% I dont know how many attend both bunscoil and meanscoil, but I bet by age 16 there is a bigger number of them than Gaeltacht children coming out at 16 speaking Irish. In couple of generations these children will be in all levels of society and will vastly outweigh those Gaeltacht children. And they will have been taught by people from the Gaeltacht, supported by their family, have friends who speak Irish etc and I would call their Irish fluent, even if they have had other influences in the language.

I think it's great you picked up Gaeltacht Irish and that you have devoted yourself to learning a dialect well, good for you absolutely, but people just dont have that level of dedication generally and they will learn it naturally as it comes to them, and if thats through a mix of teachers from Conamara, Donegal or Dublin I dont think matters, what matters to me is speaking the language. I just spoke to my driving instructor who is a native Irish speaker from Belfast (and by this I mean his parents taught him it who learnt it themselves from courses in Donegal and work in their community), and his Irish is great, definately fluent. He doesnt sound like hes from Donegal, he sounds like hes from Belfast and thats brilliant in my view.

Back to the original question, I'd call Eoin fluent, he'd be a great teacher, go for it.