Welcome to Gaia! ::

Welcome to the Irish General Discussion! This is where we discuss everything related to the Irish language, including, but not limited to:

-asking specific questions about Irish vocabulary and grammar (people who can speak Irish fluently can help answer others' questions)
-recommendations for Irish dictionaries, websites, etc
-and everything else about the beautiful langauge of Ireland! 3nodding

Please note that although speaking in Irish is allowed here, it is not mandatory.

Let's start off with a few facts about the Irish language:

Spoken in: Ireland

Total number of speakers: 1.6 million claim a knowledge of Irish, 260,000 rate themselves 'good' or 'very good' at Irish, over 70,000 use it as their principal spoken language.

Language Family: Celtic (along with Scottish Gaelic)

Regulated by: Foras na Gaeilge

i love irish accents <3

I know, it's wierd xp I've heard that some American and British people can't understand English when it's spoken by an Scottish accent surprised

It's true, but it really depends on the accent. I had a Judo instructor from Edinburgh, so I can understand Scottish accents by and large. I spoke to one girl once though and asked the person next to her what language she was speaking (literally) because I thought she was speaking some obscure Eastern European language, and got the embarrassing surprise that the girl had been speaking to me in English. Her accent was just plain so thick that it sounded nothing like English to my ears.

It depends. There are some areas with extremely different accents and vocabularies. It's not Scottish accents in general, but rather accents from more rural areas that don't necessarily have TVs and such.

My fiance has English as a second language and he has great difficulty understanding just a normal British or Australian accent. He's used to English as spoken in this area of Canada. He doesn't have enough confidence in the language yet to have that flexibility to understand something despite sound changes.

Lass is used all over Great Britain, really.

I adore the accent too. One of my friends can speak with the understandable irish accent and I make him do it every time I go see him.