I found the article very interesting and informative. I began re-learning Irish about 6 years ago (not that I learned much in school in the first place) and as I now live in Co. Cork I have tried to focus on Munster Irish, but have found it difficult to access reliable resources for the dialect. Now that I have stumbled across your site hopefully that will change.

One of the greatest difficulties I see in learning a dialect instead of the standardised language is the sheer diversity of “correct” forms. Just look at the various forms of chífidh for example. It is possible to say almost anything and it could be right and wrong at the same time. It also causes no end of confusion whether speaking to either other learners (never heard of that local variant) or native speakers (not the exact variant used where they grew up).

One thing that has become obvious to me in recent years is how the caighdeán is almost universally despised by native speakers and knowledgeable/dedicated non-native speakers. It is clearly flawed and in many ways unhelpful. Our government has vowed to overhaul the education of the language, it is long overdue, but is it too late to re-assess the caighdeán?
The Irish and English languages share one thing in common; both have more people speaking the language as a second or subsequent language than native speakers. Altering the standard at this stage could cause universal turmoil.
Also, if as you suggest Cois Farraige Irish is adopted as the standard every student would want to go there to study to the detriment of the other gaelteachtaí. The vested interests would hardly stand for that.
Looking again at the standard might really open a can of worms, but then again the worms are already all over the place.

One thing in the article that I do question is how dismissive you are of books in Irish with “modern” gritty themes like drug abuse etc. In my opinion the body of literature available to readers must include subject matter relevant to their lives and environment. Otherwise the language and the literature is no more than a historical artefact, like reading fascinating Latin texts about the daily machinations of the Roman Forum. Fine for a dead language but not a living one.

Anyway, good luck with your project, I hope to revisit the site regularly and hopefully improve my Cork blás a bit.

Thanks.

i am incredibly passionate about getting back to my roots and learning Gaeilge fluently (and correctly)… but I don’t know where to start!

I am currently working through Buntús Cainte, but I think this is ‘standard’..

Should I persevere with Buntús Cainte, or switch to something else (Teach_Yourself_Irish?)

Any thoughts welcomed.

Buíochas.

Some of these books merit being re-typeset, and some merit the generation of sound files to be attached, or incorporated. I can do the re-typesetting, and sound incorporation, if someone can the sound files generated.
There is still sufficient material extant to generate a valuable orpus of Kosher Irish to stand against the Erseperanto, to which, the Galltacht are welcome.

Is mise,
le meas,
Deghebh.

I found your blog from the Daltaí forums, I am from English but of Irish ancestry. My family (grandfather) were all from Co. Kerry and grandmother from Belfast/Carrickfergus. My mother was born in Belfast and then moved to England. I am a great lover of Ireland and the language in particular and over the past year I have been learning it…though lacking time at the moment being a student. The resources I have used to learn Irish so far have been from various internet sources of all the dialects so I have a bizarre mish-mash. A friend I met in Ireland said I sounded like a Texan-Scottish-English Aristocrat-Farmer equivilant of Irish, which is not what I want!

This essay has convinced me completely not to learn Standard Irish but to focus on dialectal Irish from the start, hoping to really learn Kerry Irish but from what I have heard it is strange even to native Irish speakers of other dialects. I guess I had previous thought about learning Standard Irish and then learning a dialect, I now see that this isn’t the most sensible way!

Just reading through some of the comments on here, even though I do not understand much of what they say I can easily notice differences in the spellings of words and the grammar from the “standard”. Really fascinating to see how stupid the standard is. I can understand why there should perhaps be a form used primarily for government/official use but why didn’t they just adopt an already-established dialect?!

Many thanks again for all your good work!

Sam