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So how come in the movie they use ‘d’? And in the subtitles it’s all d’ and everyone is clearly NOT saying ‘t’?
As a test, I searched google for “le d’athair” and “le t’athair”. The latter reveals a total of 9 results, whereas the former yields over 50 thousand. I have a hard time believing this is the typical proportion of Munster/Connacht speakers to Ulster speakers. If you’re saying that they “sometimes” do this in Munster and Connacht, I believe you. If you’re saying it’s the default way, I am going to have to disagree with you.
Well, the spelling with “t’” has pretty much been replaced by the standard “d’” in writing, unless explicitly dialectal. I myself usually write “d’” unless it’s a pretty informal situation (like chatting, emailing friends, &c.), although I always say “t’”.
I’ll be re-watching my copies of Cré na Cille and Poitín when I get home from work… I remain very skeptical about how standard this is, no offense.
So how come in the movie they use ‘d’? And in the subtitles it’s all d’ …
Most people write with “standard” spelling even when it doesn’t match the way the words are actually said. That would explain the spelling in the sub-titles.
… and everyone is clearly NOT saying ‘t’?
Maybe some of the actors aren’t native speakers. Or maybe they learned their lines from a script that was written in “standard” spelling and they are merely reciting their lines as written, not as they would actually say them. The people who made the movie probably aren’t interested in actual spoken Irish in Munster and Connacht; based on what you are saying, they certainly weren’t interested in the dialect of the writer who was indeed, a fluent native speaker from the Gaeltacht.
If you’re saying that they “sometimes” do this in Munster and Connacht, I believe you. If you’re saying it’s the default way, I am going to have to disagree with you.
It is the default way if you are a fluent native speaker from a Gaeltacht in Munster or Connacht. It is also the default way if you are trying to learn to speak Irish like a fluent native speaker from Munster or Connacht.
I remain very skeptical about how standard this is, no offense.
Of course, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I am trying to learn Irish as it is spoken by fluent native speakers in Munster. I really have no interest in whether or not their speech is considered “standard”, though I believe that adhering to “standard” Irish only serves to further marginalize native speakers.
Both these movies purport to be cast with native speakers, and Poitín in particular is supposedly all actors from that region.
I’m not trying to insult anyone or cause problems, but I do have a problem with lack of consistency in general (in life). When I say “standard”, that may be misleading – I mean attested to by the majority of native speakers in those respective dialects. I just honestly have a very hard time believing this is true – I have been studying Irish and listening to speakers from different parts of the country for years now, most of which has been a mix of Connacht and Munster (the last few months I’ve been trying to expose myself to more Ulster), and I’ve never NEVER heard a “t” prefixed that way unless it is after an article, i.e. “an t-athair”. I understand that I’m not always listening to true native speakers, but I would think in that period of time I would have heard at least ONE person do that if it were as common as you’re saying it is.
And as far as native speakers having their dialects marginalized – apparently they need no one’s help to do that. Again, don’t mean to be insulting, but every time someone opts to use a CO form where they could use a dialectical form, they are actively participating in this. If you speak a dialect, it’s no one’s job but your own to keep that alive. I’ve seen many Irish writers who aren’t afraid of writing the way they talk (i.e. “a’am”, “th’éis”, srl) so there is little excuse for native writers needlessly conforming to the official standard and then complaining that their dialect isn’t appropriately represented in the Irish corpus. Likewise, I would think that if the “t” were such an important point, then one of the many books and/or lessons I’ve read on Irish (many of which discuss and provide examples of how points of grammar vary from dialect to dialect) would have devoted at least one sentence to the subject. They haven’t.
I don’t know if the majority of people in Munster and Connacht say t’athair, but that is how it is taught in ALL of the books (and the online class) that I have been using. I am in contact with a few people from Múscraí and one person from Corca Dhuibhne and they also say t’athair – I don’t know if the books, the online class, and the people who I happen to know from the Gaeltacht, represent the majority of native speakers, but I know that this is the way that native speakers from Munster speak Irish. If I were learning Connacht Irish, I think it would be wise to emulate the speech of Máirtín Ó Cadhain (the person who wrote Cré na Cille); he is a fluent native speaker though he doesn’t necessarily represents the majority.
As for the marginalization of native speakers, I was merely stating a fact.
Could you link me to some of these online classes and/or books? Or at least provide titles? Apparently all the ones I’ve used don’t teach much dialect stuff.
As far as my goals, I don’t desire to speak a particular dialect, in the strictest sense – my personal beliefs are that the future of the language is a somewhat increased homogeneity. However, I do desire to be able to understand as many of the dialects as possible, so if there’s something I maybe will hear in the future, I do want to be aware of it. So far I’ve been genuinely unable to find many compelling examples. Even skimming through my copy of “Barbed Wire” (the only O Cadhain book I own), I couldn’t find any examples (I haven’t read the book yet though, so they may be in there; my scanning revealed nothing though).
I wasn’t aware that they used t’ before vowels in Connacht also, until Lughaidh mentioned it, but when I got home today I checked Ó Siadhail’s “Learning Irish” (Cois Fhairrge), and, sure enough, there it is on page 40. The http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/gram.htm web site mentions it as well, although they only mention it in regard to Connemara.
Yeah Aislingeach, that web-site is great – It mentions almost everything, from every dialect!
If he ever decides to publish it as a grammar book, I would definitely but it.
* edit: Héilics, the link that was posted by Aislingeach will give you a pretty thorough explanation of grammar points from different dialects.
my personal beliefs are that the future of the language is a somewhat increased homogeneity.
I don’t think this will ever happen, because dialects always appear. Look at what happened with Hebrew, it was only a liturgy language, when Israel was created, all immigrants learned it (the same Hebrew, although everybody would pronounce it with the accent of his country) as a vehicular language, and now, 60 years later, there are dialects in Hebrew: people from Tell Aviv don’t speak like those from Jerusalem etc. Because it’s in “humane nature”, people develop a specific language within their small community, even in developped countries where people may communicate with people from other places, dialects remain or new dialects appear etc.
And even in very small places: in Tory island, there are differences between the dialect of the 2 villages.
That’s why there’s no reason to promote standard unified forms of language (or at least, to want people to speak it rather than their natural dialect): dialects will always develop. Btw there are dialects in the Sign Languages, and even in computer languages 🙂A sad truth I learned from Lughaidh is that many learning materials, while purporting to be a particular dialect, teach standard grammar, although the vocabulary may be dialectal.
I can attest to sign languages having dialects. I am fluent in American sign language, but many of the signs I have are specific to my area. Even in fingerspelling, I use what is laughingly referred to as a “Jersey E” because only in New Jersey is the “e” shaped that way.
my personal beliefs are that the future of the language is a somewhat increased homogeneity.
I don’t think this will ever happen, because dialects always appear. Look at what happened with Hebrew, it was only a liturgy language, when Israel was created, all immigrants learned it (the same Hebrew, although everybody would pronounce it with the accent of his country) as a vehicular language, and now, 60 years later, there are dialects in Hebrew: people from Tell Aviv don’t speak like those from Jerusalem etc. Because it’s in “humane nature”, people develop a specific language within their small community, even in developped countries where people may communicate with people from other places, dialects remain or new dialects appear etc.
And even in very small places: in Tory island, there are differences between the dialect of the 2 villages.
That’s why there’s no reason to promote standard unified forms of language (or at least, to want people to speak it rather than their natural dialect): dialects will always develop. Btw there are dialects in the Sign Languages, and even in computer languages 🙂To some extent I would agree with this, but the problem is that Irish Gaelic, even as a living language, has reason to envy the number of “speakers” of an officially dead language like Hebrew was. Dialects are an inevitable thing, but so is convergence. If what you were saying was true in the strictest sense, there wouldn’t be a rapidly decreasing number of languages spoken in the world. These things operate in periods of flux, and I personally believe that Irish is in a state of almost necessary convergence right now. I actually prefer the “saibhreas” that is woven into Gaeltacht Irish and I hope that this alternate mode of thinking is maintained, rather than a trend that can be seen of using Irish to expressed Anglicized constructs. But that doesn’t change the fact that the CO may be Gaelic’s best shot at actually surviving. Hebrew hasn’t had much trouble generating a healthy population of several million native speakers. It would be a virtual miracle if Irish were to meet the much smaller goals as outlined in the 20 year strategy.
I didn’t meant that Irish will have the same success as Hebrew had, I wanted to say that even if the current dialects of Irish disappear and if only standard Irish survives (which would mean to me that Irish will have become a dead and then revived language, as Manx or Cornish, because I don’t think any Gaeltacht speaker would ever switch completely to standard Irish and teach it to his/her children, and anyway it wouldn’t be a real natural transmission since Standard Irish isn’t a natural language), new dialects will develop sooner or later, simply because those who’ll speak it don’t live in the same place and won’t live all together, so local differences will appear.
So since the “uniformisation” of the spoken language will never work (or never last), since there will always be dialects, why not simply transmitting the existing Gaeltacht dialects? at least they are a part of the heritage of the Irish people.That’s precisely why I prefer to learn to understand all the dialects and use those in my own Irish. I don’t advocate at all a strict adherence to a prescribed form of a language. I prefer that individuals express themselves in the way they choose, which in any language, often involves making your own version of the language, so to speak. Some of the most interesting writers are the ones that are criticized by others for going too far with their language.
Your question of why not transmit the existing dialects, I would answer that that is exactly what will happen, assuming the language continues to be spoken. But they will all be transformed, of course. And C0 will persist, I believe, regardless of how I or others who like Gaeltacht Irish feel about it. Because there are simply a limited number of native speakers who are instructing others. To make a serious recovery of a language you inevitably need to employ a teaching structure where students are then teaching new students. It’s simple numbers, I believe.
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