patrickjwalsh wrote:
Weefalorieman, textbooks aimed at learners should be in English - these things are all put into Irish as a kind of "achievement of the language movement", regardless of the impact on learners. Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne - all in Irish, and all in CO Irish - so clearly the message is that they want you to learn the CO, not any dialect. Stair na Gaeilge - if you're interested in the history of Munster Irish, you'd better read the CO. Even things like Gnás na Gaedhilge - it's the same thing - a good book on Syntax, in Irish for those speak enough Irish to not need such a book. The longer version of the Christian Brother's Grammar - in Irish for those who already have mastered the CO. Books like Séadna - produced with a long introduction in CO Irish, just in case anyone is reading the book hoping to learn Munster Irish...
Ah, now I see why there are virtually no learning materials in English for someone who is trying to learn Munster Irish – only books written entirely in Irish for people who, apparently, can already read and write proficiently in Irish!
patrickjwalsh wrote:
I think they forgot about teaching Irish a long time ago. It's become a private little club for the professors who speak fluent Irish and like to produce their "in" material for themselves. Even things like Scéal mo Bheatha by Dónall Bán - you guessed it - the glossary is Irish-Irish. For example the entry describing fuíoll in that glossary says:
fuíoll = farasbarr. Fuíoll bruitíní .i. lagachar croí nú cléibh ' fhanfadh ar dhuine t'réis éagruais na bruitíní do chur de.
Got it?
[Fuíoll = "residue". Oddly enough glossed as farasbarr, which seems a rarer word than fuíoll!!!!!! Fuíoll bruitíní - the after-effects of the measles.]
Hah, that is a hilarious example that illustrates your point very well!
Dáithí Mac Giolla. wrote:
I wonder would there be the demand for a decent enough course ( say basic 2,000 words ?) with audio, which is then just changed for each dialect.
There must be at least some demand in materials for dialects since they produce books of dialects once you already know CO Irish.
If there were learning materials in Munster Irish, people would use them. "Learning Irish" by Mícheál Ó Siadhail is probably (in my opinion) the most tedious boring book ever written in the history of the Earth, but people bought it and tried their best to learn from it because, for many years, there was pretty much nothing else out there for people who wanted to learn actual Gaeltacht Irish. The people who make Irish language courses deliberately choose to teach "standard" instead of an actual living spoken dialect of Irish; for reasons that are beyond my understanding, they consider "standard" more worthy of being taught.