I spent the day at Gaeltacht Minnesota‘s spring Irish language workshop. My group spent most of the time watching and analyzing videos of several native Irish speakers. This was extremely hard–following any foreign language in real time is a lot of work for most us, but the discussions were interesting and informative.

One of the major points of the exercise was being able to handle the various dialects of modern Irish. There are three main dialects: Donegal (north), Connacht/Connemara (west), and Munster (south), each with local variations. Caighdeán Oifigiúil (the official standard) is something of a blend. The Wikipedia article describes it as “southern Connacht”, but I have seen that disputed on the Internet. Like most Internet arguments, it is a question tending not to edification.

Some people get really worked up about Irish dialect issues, insisting that one of them is the one true Irish, and that anybody who speaks or defends one of the others is helping the language go to Hell. I do not. Dialects are a complication for language learning, but they exist in any language with a significant number of speakers. So we have to deal with it.

My parents were dialectologists: Linguists who specialize in the dialect variations of a language. In their case it was American English. I got some very clear messages around the family dinner table, including:

• Dialects are interesting!
• Dialects are fun!

. From which you have to conclude

• Dialects are good!