I've been wondering about this for a while.

I didn't go to school in Ireland. I am a native speaker of Irish, but that's because my relatives brought it over from a specific region of Ireland and kept it when they emigrated a long time in the 1960s or so, but my grandmother was born in 44. Therefore, I speak an old and rare, very nonstandard dialect. A random sample sentence from my dialect:

"Ní thangbhuigheas ar aoinne annseo do bhí Gaedhealaing ar a thoil aca i rith mo shaoghail go léir, do b'as mo sheana-dhaoinibh muinnteardha amháin a d'airighinn í." vs Caighdeán: "Níor tháinig mé ar éinne a bhí Gaeilge acu le linn mo shaoil go léir, ní chuala mé ach as mo sheantuismitheoirí í" (I learned how to write Irish from the Internet, a book called An Gleann is a Raibh Ann and some others like Mo Sgéal Féin)

A lot of the individual vocabulary that I use the teachers wouldn't understand. The older obsolete words. Take my username for example, means "thatching" (I know strange, just the first random rare irish word that i could think of because almost every irish word was already in use for usernames) or at least the word I know for it. SO

If I hypothetically went to school in Ireland, would I get put in an Irish class being a native speaker? I am aware you can opt out somehow, but would I be in the first place? Sorry if that's a stupid question.

Also, would I constantly be marked off for using my dialect and have to adhere to the standard or what? I think that's a great way of finishing off regional forms if so.

Probably all ridiculous questions. Sorry about that.

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I recommend to learn Irish pronunciation on doegen.ie
Scottish Gaelic pronunciation on tobarandualchais.co.uk

Well, it is only the Gaeltacht schools and special Gaelscoileanna in the Galltacht that teach through Irish. In most parts of Ireland you would just go to the English-language school. There have been articles in the Irish press about native speakers in the Gaelscoileanna -- sometimes the teachers, teaching the Caighdeán Oifigiúil, can't understand native speakers of a Gaeltacht dialect. There was an article where the teacher insisted she couldn't understand Conamara Irish. Unfortunately, this amounts to social pressure to dilute the dialect in school. Even in Muskerry, I have been told that some of the children speak excellent Munster Irish.. until they go to the local Gaeltacht school. There they meet children who don't speak Irish as well, and their Irish is watered down and replaced with English phonemes, like the English r.

By the way, what R's do you have? How do you pronounce the word "barra"? A lot of younger Irish native speakers pronounce the way we say "borough" in England, with an English r in the middle. How do you pronounce words like Éire with a slender r in the middle? Do you use English r's for both broad r and slender r in Irish, or do you have the original Irish r's?

There is a native speaker of Conamara Irish here, Bríd Mhór, although she hasn't been on the site for some months. She has pronounced thousands of words for forvo.com. All six phrases with "barra" in on forvo are pronounced by her at https://forvo.com/search/barra/ga/ - she doesn't have the English R in any of them. And I think her pronunciation is correct.

r leathan is rolled in my dialect, and r caol is between an r and d sound like a proper slender r. my irish is very similar to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMUtDUKgxkg. notice the r leathan is rolled. but my slender r is a bit more noticeable, more like closer to a d or j.
what i meant tho is, isnt irish class mandatory? not like other classes like history, not like a gaelscoil, irish class which is mandatory in all schools thruout ireland

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I recommend to learn Irish pronunciation on doegen.ie
Scottish Gaelic pronunciation on tobarandualchais.co.uk

Yes, Irish is on the curriculum even in English-language schools, but there are exemptions available. E.g. if you have spent years away from Ireland, you can get an exemption not to study Irish as you would be behind. The Irish on this forum would know more about that.

But yes, Decies Irish would be marked as "wrong" in the Irish education system. The CO was introduced just as a standardised system for the Irish parliament. It was never intended to replace the Gaeltacht dialects and wasn't even originally stated as a Standard for all of Ireland. It was strictly for parliamentary publications only. Then suddenly it was so uniformly rolled out that the GAeltacht dialects are now "wrong".

My bugbear is "tá sé do mo bhualadh" or "tá sé do do bhualadh". This "do mo" and "do do" are not found in a single Gaeltacht village. It should be: tá sé am bualadh, tá sé ad bhualadh.

Another thing I don't like is "ar mhuin". Ar muin na muice is right in Munster, with no séimhiú. A Shéamais, conas a déarfá-sa é, le séimhiughadh nó gan é i bhfrásaíbh mar sin?

[Agus, rud eile: má thugann tú fé ndeara aon bhotún im chuid Gaedhilge, tá fáilthe roim aon cheartughadh. Ní duine me a chuirfá trí chéile le léirmheas nó le ceartughadh.]

Bíonn "ar muin" agus a leithéid d'abairtíbh go coitchianta gan séimhiughadh i mo chuid cainnte, acht mar is dual do cainnteóirí dúthchasa aon teangadh, nín ró annamh a dhéinimíd-ne 'botúin' 'n-ár gcuid cainnte agus sinn ag labhairt go laethamhail i measg a chéile. Do chífeá láithreach san d'á n-éistfeá leis na cainnteóirí ar doegen.ie. Acht 's go nádurrtha a dhéintear é, ní dh'aimseóchthá aoinne a déarfadh "coimeád na Ghaedhealainge beó" (Ghaedhealaing séimighthe)

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I recommend to learn Irish pronunciation on doegen.ie
Scottish Gaelic pronunciation on tobarandualchais.co.uk

Níor chuir an tAthair Peadar séimhiú ar an saor-bhriathar in aon aimsir. Seo é an córas gramadach do bhí aige-sin:

Rud a glantar
Rud a glanfar
Rud a glanadh (fuaimniu: a glanag)
Rud a glanfí (le f caol)
Rud a glantí (le t caol)

[Eisgeacht éigint dob ea an módh fo-shuídhteach: nár bhuailtar a thuilleadh uímpi a fachtar i Séadna. Séadna l140: "Tá an saidhbhreas san aici le fada anois. Nár bhuailtear a thuille uimpi!"].

Ach sgríobhann tusa "a dhéintear". An mar sin adeireann tú é? Do bhíos ag brath ar "a dintar", gan séimhiú. Dar ndóigh, táid na mion-deifrigheachtaí idir Ghaedhilg Dheas-Mhúmhan agus Gaedhilg Ur-Mhúmhan....

"An obair a déintear" f
"An rud a dhéintear" m
"Na rudaidhe a ndéintear" p

ní fheadair cad ar a thaobh athá sé mar san, acht shid é mar a d'fhágann sé mo bhéil go nádurra. acht nín aon rud eile le rádh agam acht go b'fhuil an ceart agat, is deimhin go b'fhuil mion-deifrigheachtaí idir Gaedhealaing Chorcaighe (athá ag Peadar) agus mo chanamhaint fhéinig. Thá deifrigheachtaí idir na dhá canamhaint isna Déise fhéinig, (an chanamhaint a labhraightear cois fhairrge agus an canamhaint an iarthair a labhraigheadh isna sléibhte i bport láirge agus in oirthear dtiobráid árann).

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I recommend to learn Irish pronunciation on doegen.ie
Scottish Gaelic pronunciation on tobarandualchais.co.uk

Ana-shuimeamhail! Ní raibh ' fhios agam go bhfuil a leithéid d'eidir-dhealughadh in aon cheann de sna canamhaintíbh. Dáltha an sgéil: seo mar a labhraid cainnteóirí óga An Rínn an lá 'thá anois ann; http://vifax.maynoothuniversity.ie/wp-c ... rd.mp4?_=5 Is Irial Ó Ceallaigh ón Rínn a chuireann an clár aimsire i láthair annso - agus is maith liom a chuid Gaedhilge.

Yep, pretty good Irish. Har, the first weather program I can understand well! (Bíonn sé beagáinín deifir domh-sa foghraigheacht Ghaedhealainge an radio agus a leithéid a thuigsint)

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I recommend to learn Irish pronunciation on doegen.ie
Scottish Gaelic pronunciation on tobarandualchais.co.uk

Yes, you would have been required to study Irish in school. Exemptions are granted to students who demonstrate that they have some form of learning difficulty which affects their language acquisition, as well as to students who may have begun their education in a different country, making it too difficult for them to sufficiently improve their knowledge of Irish before taking state examinations.

As djwebb said, your education in Irish would likely be to a different standard depending on where you attended school, in a Gaeltacht area or outside, though it would also depend on other factors like the teacher, where they were from and their own fluency in Irish.

Schools around the country tend to teach the caighdeán Irish, but state level examinations include a listening comprehension test which requires students to listen to conversations by speakers of all three major dialects for a small portion of their grades. Pronunciation in schools is often heavily influenced by English phonetics and, as I said above, the proficiency of the teacher. As for orthography, it's entirely post-spelling reform word forms which are taught and tested. Both native and non native speakers take the same state exams. I suspect the intention is to ensure a common level of proficiency both with the caighdeán, and with comprehending other dialects, even if the execution may leave something to be desired.

It may also be worth noting that the Irish curriculum, like the English one, until recently at least, has focused heavily on the study of literature at the expense of spoken language. Proficiency in Irish is examined also, of course, but what students are taught in the classroom for the most part is more literary than linguistic, and involves reading and discussing poetry and prose. In this sense it may be more justifiable to have native and non native speakers in the one class, however, there have been calls for decades to separate the syllabus into two discrete courses; a language learning course, and a literature course.

In theory, none of this should result in a student being penalised if they use non-standard spellings or dialectal Irish so long as the Irish they use is correct for that dialect. In practice, however, this is difficult to ensure as it requires employing examiners with knowledge of specific dialects to carry out exam correction work, and ensuring these examiners get exam papers from students using a particular dialect, while also ensuring that the examiners are not acquainted with the students' whose papers they are correcting and capable of working out who they are when looking at their work. This may sound unlikely, but in some small communities of speakers I suspect it's a non-trivial issue. I've heard anecdotes from native speakers who went to school in Gaeltacht areas who claim that they achieved poorer grades than they believed they deserved because they used dialectal forms and béarlachas terms which are familiar to them instead of the prescribed dictionary terminology. I'm inclined to believe them.

Nevertheless, I've got to disagree with djwebb's assertion:



It's an unfortunate possibility, if an examiner is not proficient in the dialect, but at least in theory it should not be considered incorrect. There is an appeals process for state examinations, and I suspect if native speaker communities were more proactive about demanding reassessment where necessary, it would do a lot of good for the teaching and examination of Irish all around the country.