Aontaim leat, a Lughaidh. I have no use for the C.O.; I wish to learn real Irish. I will learn the C.O. whether I wish to or not, simply because it is so ubiquitous. But my time and effort will be spent studying real Irish.

Nice work!

Go raibh míle maith ad as ucht na moltaí a Chian.
Tá fáilte roimh thuairimí nua i gconaí.

That's great, Cian.

I was only just thinking, "we need to get those links together and place them in the Nascanna/ Naisc Úsáideacha section", but work as been busy. I was going to ask Saoirse to do it for me, but you've saved her a lot of work.

I knew you weren't going to be to far behind with a comment

I agree with you in so many ways, I personally dislike the Caighdeán for what it is doing, as you know I'm an avid supporter of Gaeltacht Irish, but I can see in some part that it was necessary. I was trying to be diplomatic. The caighdeán was meant only to be a mode of writing rather than a mode of speech, it doesn't provide guidelines for pronounciation. For instance you don't get penalised for speaking dialectal Irish in the Irish Oral State Examination's test. You do however get penalised for writing in your native dialect, which I believe is wrong. But one of the objectives of the caighdeán was to ensure teachers from Donegal and Dublin could correct and understand people from Munster and vice- verse.

This came about because there wasn't enough authoritative teachers to correct Irish in their individual dialects. How often has there been a debate about a mistake on here?, only to find out its a dialectal variation. Even today I think there is only 2 or 3 teachers that are able to correct history tests that are taken through Irish

As Irish doesn't have a speaking and pronounciation standard; the caighdeán was therefore never meant, at the beginning, to replace the dialects that were there. But as the Gaeltachts are weakening they are slowly turning away from the Irish being spoken as the language of the home and the community and therefore Irish is not being learned through a natural process, instead Gaeltacht children are learning their language in an artificial school setting where their only example to follow is an artificial language. What a shame!

The main problem with the language is not entirely the Caighdeán its the way its being thaught and who its being thought by. Personally I believe a lot of teachers are to put it bluntly "shite!", I know there is a culture of just blaming teachers but believe me I've seen it myself. Don't get me wrong there are also some brilliant teachers, we have one here . These "bad" teachers are themselves victims of bad teaching practices. Pronounciation in school is awful to put it mildly. Our school system is not designed to fix the problem i.e actually communicating. Lately there has been a "big change" well it looks like there has been a big change from the outside in.

The Irish oral is now worth 40% of the Irish marks. Great you might say to yourself, but when you actually dissect it, there is no major difference or benefit. It is actually just a "dumbing down" of the language in order to fix the bell curve, as the written test has changed dramatically as well as the amount and standard of the literature to be studied. The oral before the "amendments" was 15 min long, where at least 8 mins was spent on speaking the language. Now its still 15 min but the time spent conversing in Irish has actually decreased because during the exam students must read a paragraph or two from a a possible 5 poems they have studied throughout the year. That takes about 2 min, then they must have a "conversation" learned off from a possible 20 picture diagrams. The student and examiner then interact by answering and asking each other 2 questions each based on the pictures- that's at least 5min gone.

This amendment is not fare to the students, who were taught and designed to process large amounts of literature all through the school system i.e primary to secondary and then all of a sudden they find themselves sitting a test that they were not built or taught for. That is not fair on them either. Its also going to turn them off in the end, I believe, a modern day Peig Sayers. For this to work, teachers need to be of a standard that they feel comfortable themselves in conversing through Irish (its no secret that some teachers conduct their class through English ) and the curriculum is going to have to change from the bottom up not just from the top and then expect students to adapt to the leaving Cert test that they have been preparing for all of their school lives!

I personally don't like the Caighdeán, but it is not correct in entirety to blame it for replacing dialects. If the dialect remained the spoken language of the home and community the Caighdeán should not have affected her, and as I said above Gaeltacht children are having to learn Irish in school and therefore they learn school Irish. That said Gaeltacht children are very proud of their own dialect and the differences within their dialect. BUT, they can't be proud of the dialect the ancestors used to have when their parents/ grandparents have failed to pass it on. And that is the truly sad thing!

When I was told in 2nd year (of secondary school), after class from my Irish teacher, that we were not learning or speaking proper Irish I got extremely angry to which I asked her "why the fuck have I spent 11yrs of my life studying shite and why aren't we taught proper Irish, the way they speak in the Gaeltacht and the way it was suppose to be spoken?"- to which she had no reply. I remember feeling so angry, I actually felt betrayed! And ever since then I have questioned everything.

My opinion of the Caighdeán has slightly improved since then, when I learned it wasn't too difficult to switch, the main problem was with pronounciation and to run away from Béarlachas and directly translated English. So, ya, I basically had to re- teach myself again.

I have personified Irish as a person who was in a car crash (the accelerated decline of Irish before and immediately after the famine). Irish had two choices- die or be confined to a wheelchair (Caighdeán or revival). Their is also the emotional trauma that occurs due to a crash like this which can mirror the traumatic effects of language shift. As it is clear from written sources that the Irish loved their language. Irish might never walk or run/ be what it once was. My true fear is it will become just a means of translating English, as Manx has become. Although, miracles do occasionally occur and it is down to people (such as many on this form) to make this miracle happen. Through the speaking of Irish as the language of the home and of the community and I think people like Saoirse should be commended to the high- heaven for bringing their children up with Irish. Hope this analogy doesn't offend, it really wasn't meant to.

We have kinda gotten away from the point of the thread, but a good argument merits a good discussion.

I was only just thinking, "we need to get those links together and place them in the Nascanna/ Naisc Úsáideacha section", but work as been busy. I was going to ask Saoirse to do it for me, but you've saved her a lot of work.

I have personified Irish as a person who was in a car crash (the accelerated decline of Irish before and immediately after the famine). Irish had two choices- die or be confined to a wheelchair (Caighdeán or revival).

So, the dialects should be taught, and used for translations etc, and there was no reason to create an artificial dialect.

As soon as Irish was mentioned in the constitution as the "first official language," An Caighdeán Oiffigiúil was needed. When you're dealing with official records and legislation, you need vey precise and consistent language. You can't have judges from different parts of the country overruling each other because the law has different shades of meaning in each dialect.

to me it's as simple as this: Irish should remain as it always was, ie. dialects transmitted from generation to generations. So, the dialects should be taught, and used for translations etc, and there was no reason to create an artificial dialect. And to me, local texts should be written in the local dialect, and national stuff should be translated into one of the dialects, in a way that is understandable for most (if not all) Irish speakers.

Btw in RnaG, people speak in their dialect and they all understand each other, so it shouldn't be too difficult. And I guess most people would be happy with that. Because nowadays, many people don't like standard Irish. Most people who use standard Irish, in my opinion, use it because they don't have choice (because they couldn't learn a dialect because most books are in the Standard, or because they think the standard is better... because it is standard, but if the standard were Connemara Irish, they'd be as happy or happier with it, etc).
After all, the historical language of Ireland is Irish as it has been spoken in the Gaeltachtaí for centuries, it's not Irish as it was created in offices 60 years ago...