So, I was reading Languages of the Night by Dr. Barry McCrea (really interesting so far), and he quotes Dinneen (36-37) as saying,



The funny thing is, it appears the State still hasn't learned the lesson. Sadly, you hear so many good things about all these people who are using what is essentially English in funny word orders, while native speakers continue to shed the language. To be honest, as much as I love this language and would love to study her academically and such, I can't truly be optimistic about her future...

What do y'all think?

I agree with you and with Dinneen.


I'd love Breton activists to read this. ANd the Breton that's spoken by "students" has few in common with the native language, it's much worse than in Ireland.
In Ireland, thank God, many learners still go to the Gaeltacht to improve their Irish. However it's a pity that Irish is in decline in the Gaeltacht ; native speakers should be proud, and aware that only them have the right language, and should transmit it to their children.
It's also a pity that most young people in the Gaeltacht switch from Irish to English and vice-versa all the time, the problem is that they are often much more proficient in English than in Irish, they would have difficulty to speak Irish without using a lot of English in it (I'm not talking about the English words used in technical contexts, but even everyday things - I remember hearing young native speakers from Donegal who didn't know how to say "furniture" in Irish, nor "enjoy").

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

Enjoyáil. Nach mar sin a deirtear é?

Cad chuighe ar thóg siad an focal Béarla nuair a bhí focal Gaeilg ann, atá ar eolas ag achan nduine, ie. "sult a bhaint as"?

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

The language ultimately stands or falls in the Gaeltacht, I think.

I completely agree, but I feel the issue is that many (most?) don't see it that way. They see the increasing numbers of students attending Gaelscoileannaí and think that the language must be on the rise. This is despite the fact that 90% of them don't have a very deep grasp on Irish, or even use it outside of school. It seems that a lot of those who claim it's 'growing' really have thrown the Gaeltacht to the wind and said "Yeah, non-natives are just as good. It's not like their Irish is any different."



He said he was in Donegal, not Galway



Honestly, if it's worse than Ireland, I really do fear for the future of the Breton language. Which is sad, because the few times I've heard it it's always been almost hauntingly beautiful, and I'd love to learn it one day. But, yeah, I don't understand why native Irish speakers are stopping speaking Irish to their kids. Especially given how prevalent English is, kids'll pick it up easily enough just from other surroundings.

Also, I really wonder how much help comes out of those Gaeltacht trips.

Ag tagairt do Dhún na nGall a bhí mé. Cé gur i modh grinn a dúirt mé "Enjoyáil", tá an focal cluinste agam i nGaoth Dobhair.

I dont necessarily agree that anyone can own a language or are the only ones to have a right to it. Plenty of people come to Ireland for example and learn English to a fluent level and adopt it as their primary language, they live the majority of their life through it. It is just as much theirs as it is mine.

Neither do many native speakers make the decision to stop speaking a language, well not too much anymore, but English gradually creeps in, and the next generation use more and the one after that more again, until you come to a generation who feel their Irish is not adequate enough to speak it with the "real owners" and then it quickly falls out of use.

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Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

as a natural language, it will clearly die in a few decades (depending on the area). Most native speakers are older than 60 (if not 70) ; almost no child speaks Breton as his 1st language (at least, when parents are native speakers themselves).
It has already disappeared in certain parishes.

Activists have deliberately chosen to replace the native language by a form of standard Breton that's an artificial language full of weird coined words, but whose syntax and pronunciation are 100% French, since they've never succeeded in mastering what is specific to Breton. So once all native speakers are dead, certain people will speak that fake Breton. I hope the other people won't believe it's a modern form of Breton, because it's really a parody of it. Even if you don't know Breton, if you hear a native speaker and then a "fake-Breton speaker" speaking, you clearly notice that those 2 languages don't have much in common.



aye but if they spend most of their life through it, one can guess they master English. While loads of non-native speakers of Irish don't master it. And even certain younger Gaeltacht speakers - because they don't use Irish enough, maybe they don't hear it enough either (if the languages they hear is 50% Irish and 50% English), and maybe they aren't being corrected by older speakers when they make mistakes.

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

This sounds almost exactly like what is happening in Ireland.