The whole thing is a complete load of shite -methodologically, clicking windows is no introduction to dyadic communication (speech) and phonologically, Irish and English are different languages.

You don't see people talking by tapping on photos and you don't see Germans sounding like they are mono-lingual speakers of Armenian

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Also, the poster, 'Pillow Pillar', is not making himself clear and making it sound like it's just down to his preference, which in a world where 'everyone's opinion is equal' will get you nowhere.

The argument should me made clear -the girl is NOT a native speaker and I suspect, apart from Bríd, if she's involved in this project, NONE OF THE REST of the Irish people associated with it are either. Subsequently, her speech is not 'influenced' by English or 'heavily based' on it -IT IS ENGLISH plain and simple.

This makes it wrong. Period.

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I'm glad that you and others have explained it so well to them. Hopefully the duolingo bosses will take heed. The course moderators should already know that but are ignoring it. I doubt they will change the voice at this stage. The important thing is that the learners are aware of it. Some of the international learners have never heard Irish spoken before so they don't know what to expect.

I don't think people previously expected perfection from any of the voices, as they are all TTS. Apparently some of them are fairly bad. I do the French course myself to re-learn what I've forgotten from school (I did a bit of Spanish too). The French TTS is not very clear and hard sometimes to make distinctions. It doesn't bother me as I already know the proper pronunciation from school and other sources. Otherwise I do find the French course very helpful, I liked the Spanish course too (I was a total beginner there but I go to youtube videos to hear the proper voices-nice Mexican girl on Butterfly Spanish actually). I think most of the Duolingers will go to other sources too for the proper pronunciation of whatever languages they are learning as they don't expect perfection from the TTSs. With Irish it's different, they know it is a real voice recording, and the voice itself is clear, so beginners will expect it to be accurate.

No Jay Bee, I don't have anything to do with the course itself. But I am going through it and pointing out some errors through the "report" function.
An Lon Dubh is being very helpful, fair play to him.

11,000 learners of Irish already on it ?
It seems a utter shame that they will be learning incorrect pronunciation etc, when with just a little more effort they could improve it immensely.

I find those sort of online courses great for keeping you going, as you can do a bit every so often, keep track of what your doing and motivate yourself to do just one more level/question/ session etc.

Unfortunately I have never seen one where I was happy with the content .

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Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

Well fair play to An Lon Dubh for pushing it. I'm just saying no wriggle room should be offered, but then again (on this topic), I'm not diplomatic

They won't change it now as they've paid their money. The fact they got a bullshitter makes no odds to them

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Dia dhaoibh,
I'm pillowpillar from the thread (Bríd might remember me as raic or Seaghán). I read through this and appreciate Jay Bee's statement that I haven't been forceful enough so I just made another comment in reply to Lancet trying to be clearer. I also linked this thread in the comments so the mods can see there are more people who can back me up on this.

I hope they are able to admit when its less than perfect and amend it. with 11,000 people interested it would be a shame if they all miss learned Irish. Would hate to see it become another missed opportunity .

Of course it wouldn't be easy to tell the original speaker her pronunciation isint up to scratch , especially if she really feels she is a native speaker

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Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

If she was indeed paid then she has her money and she can suck it up and live with it. We shouldn't put the potential hurt feelings of one woman above the needs of tens of thousands of learners. I know what's not what you're suggesting, of course, but I just thought I'd mention it.

It's sad to say that the Irish Duolingo course in Beta is probably better than a large proportion of Irish teachers in the country. I find Duolingo incredibly helpful with Spanish and I hope that many people will at least get a grasp of Irish through this course. However, as ye all pointed out there is a major problem with the speaker, it's even worse than just using the English sounds as sometimes she completely omits the slender pronunciations.

However, even if this problem is not fixed, at least we should be able to alert new learners about the faults of the speaker and try to direct them to proper speaking materials. As Bríd mentioned with the Spanish and French courses, the audio is far from perfect, but we can still use resources such as Destinos (http://www.learner.org/series/destinos/). That said, there are numerous native Irish speakers who would gladly volunteer their time to perfect the audio and give the world a good grasp of Irish.

It's still in Beta so there's still ample time to perfect the course, providing that the moderators heed the constructive criticism.

I wouldn't agree at all, as a concept its a great way to get introduced to a language, the course is all laid out, you can see your progress. You also will learn a good basic vocabulary and become familiar with the grammar. It's also interactive, so youre testing yourself , while at the same time enjoying yourself.

I dont think it would make you a fluent speaker by any means, but its a great way to build up a foundation .

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Bíonn rudaí maithe mall