Are dialects damaging Irish?

flogen

As my previous posts have pointed towards, my Irish is quite poor, and so is my knowledge of Irish in general, for example I don't know just how different 2 dialects of Irish are, they could be slightly different or they could be totally different, maybe someone could help me out with this one.
Anyway, my question is, are dialects doing more harm than good in encouraging Irish? I mean, it all depends on how different they are, but is it possible that the lack of a cohesive single language is detrimental to some degree to the uptake of it?

I'm sure someone can answer this, I certainly don't know if it has any effect or not.

simu

Well, the best speakers of the language are ones that use a particular dialect, in my opinion. It can be tricky getting to grips with other ones but all you have to do is understand them - you don't have to be able to reproduce them all - and it's easy enough to do by listening to RnaG or watching TG4 or whatever. The amount of Irish speakers out there is too small to limit yourself to your own dialect only!

Of course, the different dialects can be tricky for a beginner but such is life.

flogen

simu wrote:

Well, the best speakers of the language are ones that use a particular dialect, in my opinion. It can be tricky getting to grips with other ones but all you have to do is understand them - you don't have to be able to reproduce them all - and it's easy enough to do by listening to RnaG or watching TG4 or whatever. The amount of Irish speakers out there is too small to limit yourself to your own dialect only!

Of course, the different dialects can be tricky for a beginner but such is life.

I suppose, in the hope that I do begin to progress in Irish I'm sure I'll just pick a dialect and run with it, but I did start to think that knowing one dialect may be useless depending on who you're talking to (well, not useless, but not as helpful as you might have thought).

I suppose I'll work on fully understanding some form of Irish before I start worrying about the details of the others!

simu

flogen wrote:

I suppose I'll work on fully understanding some form of Irish before I start worrying about the details of the others!

Yeah - one step at a time!

GaryOR

I wouldn't say damaging Irish, but I do find it a stumbling block sometimes when watching T.V or listening to the radio, and to a lesser extent reading. But you will gradually learn all 3 dialect difference (Major ones anyway) as you go along..

Sometimes it can be disheartning, as you think your Irish has improved, then you hear someone from the north speak it and it feels like being back at square one again.

Kwekubo

The dialects are Irish. Take them away and you tear out huge chunks of the language's history and development.