If you heard people in a pub, restaurant etc speaking Irish....

Latchy · 30-12-2010 08:03PM

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

I took Irish for my degree and work in a Gaelscoil. I would be delighted to hear anyone speak Irish and use every chance I get to use it too.

One of my friends, ( now deceased ) a Dubliner who lived in England 30 odd years and a frequent visitor to the Gaelteact , was a fluent speaker of the Irish , old verse and modern and also had a degree in It to, so fair play to dee .

RMD · 30-12-2010 09:45PM

Dionysus wrote: »

:rolleyes: I look forward to my next trip to France when the natives will happily converse with me in my chosen tongue. And nice to know that 'English speakers' are paragons of manners and linguistic respect wherever they are in the world, just dying to speak the local lingo and not expecting the natives to speak English. Oh no. :rolleyes:

It's easy to see how singling out Irish speakers as unique in this respect makes you more comfortable in your own anglophone prejudices. When it comes to sheer arrogance and unmannerly behaviour in communicative languages, English speakers and French speakers are infamously ill-mannered. But let's make Irish speakers your little bogey. :rolleyes:

That's a ridiculous point though. He's not singling out Irish speakers, he's singling them out because there was a person there who spoke the same language as them yet they continued on in a different language leaving that person out of the conversation, if a bit of manners were shown they'd speak english.

How would you feel if you spoke French, went to France to see a friend and ended up out with their friends and they all started speaking Breton or another lesser known dialect? It wouldn't be rude at all would? You've learned their main language, you can hold a conversation with them in their language, yet they decide to speak in a barely known language and leave you completely out of the conversation? Suppose that'd be perfectly fine with you though?

Toyota_Avensis · 03-01-2011 01:10AM

Happened me today actually in Arnotts... I was the one speaking the Irish to a friend who was with me.. As we wondered passed staff, we were overheard and a member of staff began laughing and asked the other what I had said.. I'm well used to encountering this kind of behaviour when I speak Irish among other speakers.. I'm in agreement with the rule of not speaking Irish when in company with people who don't have a strong command of Irish.. We must be one of the only countries in the world, where when citizens speak the first language of the state, they are subject to funny looks & remarks... It doesn't bother me though.

annieire · 03-01-2011 03:04AM

Toyota_Avensis wrote: »

Happened me today actually in Arnotts... I was the one speaking the Irish to a friend who was with me.. As we wondered passed staff, we were overheard and a member of staff began laughing and asked the other what I had said.. I'm well used to encountering this kind of behaviour when I speak Irish among other speakers.. I'm in agreement with the rule of not speaking Irish when in company with people who don't have a strong command of Irish.. We must be one of the only countries in the world, where when citizens speak the first language of the state, they are subject to funny looks & remarks... It doesn't bother me though.

Really, does this happen?! If i heard Irish when i was in a foreign country then i would definitely look and see who was speaking it. In Ireland, i wouldn't even react, sure we all did it in school.

jill_valentine · 03-01-2011 03:08AM

I have to say, it generally catches my attention. Not in a "JESUS, WHAT KIND OF FREAKS ARE MAKING THAT CRAZY NOISE?!?!" kind of way, it's just unusual to hear 'round these parts.

Star Bingo · 03-01-2011 03:11AM

i'd say u wot.. u wot u wot u wot.. u wot.. that tables reserved for one gary wilmot

xsiborg · 03-01-2011 04:04AM

i happened to be in a lift one day in a shopping centre when a lady wheeled in with a baby in a pram, the baby happened to be crying and the lady goes "stop conor, stop é sin anois!". i thought to myself "ah come on now, how is a baby supposed to understand... ohhh, yeah, right!"

but the real problem as i see it is with this "modern, sexed-up" irish that you hear on rte nuacht broadcasts, where they seem to, well, i wont say mis-pronounce words, but they seem to have adopted a softer tone which completely throws out my comprehension. examples include "féa é sin", instead of féaCH é sin", they seem to not want to annunciate the, well, "phlegmy" for want of a better word, or they seem to shorten or mis-emphasise intonation in their speech.

now when i was in secondary school ('90 - '95) i used watch the nuacht regularly, and i was actually credited with a fainne for fluency in irish, but to listen to the "nua" (nuaCHT) now, i almost find it incomprehensible!

also in primary school, i was taught the munster dialect (im actually originally from leinster). i verified this with my mother who was a primary school teacher at the time, but while talking to a recently qualified Mary I. student, she had no idea what i was talking about at first, and then once i explained, she told me that all that has been done away with!

i really don't know what they're learning in school these days but it sounds to me like a language that's been stripped of all it's passion and meaning!

jill_valentine · 03-01-2011 04:29AM

Careful balance to strike though. I was taught Irish with far too much passion altogether*, which was one of the things that put me off it.

*Ooh er missus.

annieire · 03-01-2011 04:37AM

I'm not from the Gaeltacht or fluent but i do think that Grainne Seoige over emphasises certain things, like the word Blathnaid!! Maybe its just her pronunciation?

old_aussie · 03-01-2011 04:43AM

How would I know they're speaking Irish?

Jesus Wept · 03-01-2011 04:47AM

old_aussie wrote: »

How would I know they're speaking Irish?

It would sound like a horrible phlegmy type of German.

xsiborg · 03-01-2011 04:54AM

annieire wrote: »

I'm not from the Gaeltacht or fluent but i do think that Grainne Seoige over emphasises certain things, like the word Blathnaid!! Maybe its just her pronunciation?

yes that was a point i think was raised in another thread here a few nights back, her pronunciation as "bláthnidge", thats exactly what im talking about, even the way most rte people seem to silence the "gh" at the end. its BláthnaiD Ní ChofaiGH! throaty and gutteral! :rolleyes:

Toyota_Avensis · 03-01-2011 02:19PM

annieire wrote: »

Really, does this happen?! If i heard Irish when i was in a foreign country then i would definitely look and see who was speaking it. In Ireland, i wouldn't even react, sure we all did it in school.

Indeed this does happen, and quite regularly. Anywhere I've spoken it outside the Gaeltacht, I've been met with that behaviour, people seem to be genuinely shocked to hear it.. It's great though out foreign because it helps to draw the attention of Irish people and in a weird sense, brings them a 'touch of home' when out abroad.. It really helps in making great holiday friends which are Irish when on holidays. I'm well used to the funny Fockers who follow their initial shock and amazement with 'An bhfuil cead agam dul go dti an leithreas?'... It never gets old!

mickdw · 03-01-2011 02:43PM

I love to hear or see the genuine native speakers using irish naturally in their community with the local accent etc. Seeing a group of assholes in a posh restaurant speaking irish in a D4 accent and having names like fiachra etc and thinking they are great makes me sick tbh. I doubt they would even be able to speak to a native speaker.

smug · 03-01-2011 02:49PM

Sick of people saying its our "national" language. It WAS our national language, hundreds of years ago. Now ENGLISH is our national language. Get over it. The version of Irish spoken now is a bastardised mishmash of different dialects and comes from a lame attempt to revive virtually dead old Gael after the "Gaelic revival" in the 1880s which was a pathetic attempt to create a cheesy fake national "identity" out of thin air in order to further the political ambitions of certain individuals.

Translating documents into Irish, that are then never read, has cost us billions over the years, all to satisfy the twee notions of the gaelgorie lobby with their shoe grants and extra leaving cert points. Their crowning glory was to get this dead language accepted by the EU, meaning even more millions down the toilet to pointlessly translate every EU meeting, live, into Gaelic, for no fukcin reason at all.

Irish speakers think they are "more Irish" than the rest of us and look down their noses, like we give a damn. It time we stood up to their bull5hit and their sacred cow of the "national language". First thing we should do, scrap this translation nonsense for all government documents. Then scrap the department of the gaeltacht. No more grants.

Put it in a University, make it optional in school.

Cue gaelgories telling me it was never a dead language because it was alive in Connemara and a few Leinster pockets.

annieire · 03-01-2011 03:44PM

Toyota_Avensis wrote: »

Indeed this does happen, and quite regularly. Anywhere I've spoken it outside the Gaeltacht, I've been met with that behaviour, people seem to be genuinely shocked to hear it.. It's great though out foreign because it helps to draw the attention of Irish people and in a weird sense, brings them a 'touch of home' when out abroad.. It really helps in making great holiday friends which are Irish when on holidays. I'm well used to the funny Fockers who follow their initial shock and amazement with 'An bhfuil cead agam dul go dti an leithreas?'... It never gets old!

I'm sure you've heard the line 'ciunas bothar cailin bainne' too!!

salamanca · 03-01-2011 03:47PM

mickdw wrote: »

I love to hear or see the genuine native speakers using irish naturally in their community with the local accent etc. Seeing a group of assholes in a posh restaurant speaking irish in a D4 accent and having names like fiachra etc and thinking they are great makes me sick tbh. I doubt they would even be able to speak to a native speaker.

Should Irish only be spoken by poor people wearing torn aran jerseys?

Toyota_Avensis · 03-01-2011 04:22PM

mickdw wrote: »

I love to hear or see the genuine native speakers using irish naturally in their community with the local accent etc. Seeing a group of assholes in a posh restaurant speaking irish in a D4 accent and having names like fiachra etc and thinking they are great makes me sick tbh. I doubt they would even be able to speak to a native speaker.

There is a minority of families living outside the Gaeltacht who do use Irish as a family language on a daily basis. It is harsh to call these people ''non native'' speakers if they're in fact brought up through Irish. Personally, I see it as a new 'modern' dialect of Irish, which sounds very different to that of the Gaeltacht. This is because the 'modern' Gaelgoirí are being brought up in an English speaking world, whereas the Gaeltacht Crowd are brought up in an Irish speaking community, born to genuine native speakers with the 'blás.' Language preference and usage is down to ones own choice, the only people seeing them as 'elitists' are those who listen in awe, labeling them as ''arseholes.''

Krusader · 03-01-2011 05:14PM

xsiborg wrote: »

yes that was a point i think was raised in another thread here a few nights back, her pronunciation as "bláthnidge", thats exactly what im talking about, even the way most rte people seem to silence the "gh" at the end. its BláthnaiD Ní ChofaiGH! throaty and gutteral! :rolleyes:

That's how you pronounce the name (properly) in Conamara, it is after all a Gaelic name and Gráinne is a native speaker, as for An Nuacht, there's a couple of Donegal speakers doing it now and That Irish is somewhat softer than Connacht and Munster Irish, they usually don't pronounce the 'ch' at the end of words, along with some other differences
They would say Taoiseach like Tee-shuh instead of Tee-shukh
Perfectly natural in their dialect

slimjimmc · 03-01-2011 05:19PM

xsiborg wrote: »

i happened to be in a lift one day in a shopping centre when a lady wheeled in with a baby in a pram, the baby happened to be crying and the lady goes "stop conor, stop é sin anois!". i thought to myself "ah come on now, how is a baby supposed to understand... ohhh, yeah, right!"

but the real problem as i see it is with this "modern, sexed-up" irish that you hear on rte nuacht broadcasts, where they seem to, well, i wont say mis-pronounce words, but they seem to have adopted a softer tone which completely throws out my comprehension. examples include "féa é sin", instead of féaCH é sin", they seem to not want to annunciate the, well, "phlegmy" for want of a better word, or they seem to shorten or mis-emphasise intonation in their speech.

now when i was in secondary school ('90 - '95) i used watch the nuacht regularly, and i was actually credited with a fainne for fluency in irish, but to listen to the "nua" (nuaCHT) now, i almost find it incomprehensible!

also in primary school, i was taught the munster dialect (im actually originally from leinster). i verified this with my mother who was a primary school teacher at the time, but while talking to a recently qualified Mary I. student, she had no idea what i was talking about at first, and then once i explained, she told me that all that has been done away with!

i really don't know what they're learning in school these days but it sounds to me like a language that's been stripped of all it's passion and meaning!

When I was taught Irish in school (fadó fadó) we would have used "stád" instead of "stop" and "gluaisteán" instead of "carr". Sad to see how Irish has become even more Anglicised.

Krusader · 03-01-2011 05:52PM

slimjimmc wrote: »

When I was taught Irish in school (fadó fadó) we would have used "stád" instead of "stop" and "gluaisteán" instead of "carr". Sad to see how Irish has become even more Anglicised.

Car comes from an old celtic word which was used to mean chariot, we have cairt aswell
Cat is another Irish word robbed off us by the english

Stad is still used alot especially up north

Raic · 03-01-2011 06:06PM

slimjimmc wrote: »

When I was taught Irish in school (fadó fadó) we would have used "stád" instead of "stop" and "gluaisteán" instead of "carr". Sad to see how Irish has become even more Anglicised.

Believe it or not "carr" was in use way before "gluaisteán" ("moving thing") and "stop" has been around a long time. Peadar Ua Laoghaire used it and he was born in 1839 and it's in Dineen's dictionary (first edition 1904).

As far as word borrowings go Irish isn't actually that bad. English is far far worse.

Crosáidí wrote: »

That's how you pronounce the name (properly) in Conamara, it is after all a Gaelic name and Gráinne is a native speaker, as for An Nuacht, there's a couple of Donegal speakers doing it now and That Irish is somewhat softer than Connacht and Munster Irish, they usually don't pronounce the 'ch' at the end of words, along with some other differences
They would say Taoiseach like Tee-shuh instead of Tee-shukh
Perfectly natural in their dialect

Also can't thank this enough. Pronunciations vary depend on dialect. If someone was taught Munster Irish and hears a native Ulster speaker pronounce a word in a way they would not that is no reason to assume it's incorrect.

annieire · 03-01-2011 06:24PM

Raic wrote: »

Also can't thank this enough. Pronunciations vary depend on dialect. If someone was taught Munster Irish and hears a native Ulster speaker pronounce a word in a way they would not that is no reason to assume it's incorrect.

True, like the word raibh

fontanalis · 03-01-2011 06:33PM

Take the word maith. I'm from donegal and would pronounce it like "might" with a silent t, much to some peoples amusement. Is that a dialect difference or was I making a ball$ of the pronunciation.
Also as far as I can tell with Ulster Irish words with an "aw" sound tend to be pronounced with an "ah" sound. Again is this correct or down to an error on my part?
I'm not a native speaker but things like this popped up in general conversation.
Also dubh; I think it's pronounced more like "dooh" in Ulster and dove in other places.

jill_valentine · 03-01-2011 06:33PM

Raic wrote: »

As far as word borrowings go Irish isn't actually that bad. English is far far worse.

It's tendency to "borrow" words is one of the things English has going for it, IMHO. I can see why that might be a problem with a minority language like Irish or Welsh, where English words are kind of intruding and supplanting existing ones, but as an English speaker I enjoy the way it rolls up French, German etc words as convenient, like a dirty great language Katamari. It's a big living mongrel of a thing in that regard, it's one of it's few advantages as a language.

Krusader · 03-01-2011 06:46PM

fontanalis wrote: »

Take the word maith. I'm from donegal and would pronounce it like "might" with a silent t, much to some peoples amusement. Is that a dialect difference or was I making a ball$ of the pronunciation.
Also as far as I can tell with Ulster Irish words with an "aw" sound tend to be pronounced with an "ah" sound. Again is this correct or down to an error on my part?
I'm not a native speaker but things like this popped up in general conversation.
Also dubh; I think it's pronounced more like "dooh" in Ulster and dove in other places.

Yes, They are all characteristics of Gaeilge Thír Chonaill

maith - my
tá - taa
dubh - doo

which gives it a softer sound,
if you watch Ros na Rún listen to John Joe speak thats Ulster Irish

Raic · 03-01-2011 06:50PM

jill_valentine wrote: »

It's tendency to "borrow" words is one of the things English has going for it, IMHO. I can see why that might be a problem with a minority language like Irish or Welsh, where English words are kind of intruding and supplanting existing ones, but as an English speaker I enjoy the way it rolls up French, German etc words as convenient, like a dirty great language Katamari. It's a big living mongrel of a thing in that regard, it's one of it's few advantages as a language.

I know where you're coming from. I guess I should have clarified what I meant by "worse"; all I was really saying is that it has happened more in English than Irish.

fontanalis wrote: »

Take the word maith. I'm from donegal and would pronounce it like "might" with a silent t, much to some peoples amusement. Is that a dialect difference or was I making a ball$ of the pronunciation.
Also as far as I can tell with Ulster Irish words with an "aw" sound tend to be pronounced with an "ah" sound. Again is this correct or down to an error on my part?
I'm not a native speaker but things like this popped up in general conversation.
Also dubh; I think it's pronounced more like "dooh" in Ulster and dove in other places.

Don't worry, you're not messing up those pronunciations. As far as I can tell from your descriptions those are all common traits of Ulster Irish. As you mentioned a long a (á) is often pronounced like a short one (a) in Donegal. An example of this can be found with the substantive verb. Ulster speakers tend to say "Ta" rather than "Tá" (which sounds like taw).

I am by no means an expert on the dialect, however. My own dialect is that of Munster.

*Edit*
Apologies to Crosáidí - I keep cross-posting with you!

jill_valentine · 03-01-2011 06:52PM

Raic wrote: »

I know where you're coming from. I guess I should have clarified what I meant by "worse"; all I was really saying is that it has happened more in English than Irish.

Ah, yeah. Rereading that it's actually pretty clear what you meant, my bad.

mcmoustache · 03-01-2011 09:06PM

annieire wrote: »

I'm not from the Gaeltacht or fluent but i do think that Grainne Seoige over emphasises certain things, like the word Blathnaid!! Maybe its just her pronunciation?

It's her pronunciation. We all speak like that in Connemara.

There are three main native dialects plus the mish-mash that's on the curriculum. The three dialects are very different. In fact, I had a bit of difficulty understanding native speakers from Cork and Kerry for a while. I still have problems with the Ulster crowd.

mcmoustache · 03-01-2011 09:12PM

xsiborg wrote: »

yes that was a point i think was raised in another thread here a few nights back, her pronunciation as "bláthnidge", thats exactly what im talking about, even the way most rte people seem to silence the "gh" at the end. its BláthnaiD Ní ChofaiGH! throaty and gutteral! :rolleyes:

The 'gh' at the end is not pronounced in the Connemara dialect. I don't think the Ulster speakers pronounce it either. The Kerry people do and so do the non-native speakers.

If you heard people in a pub, restaurant etc speaking Irish....

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