to not want school to teach my kids how to speak in the way the teachers wants?

[bellabreeze]

Having irish accents the teacher of some of my kids has told me they would do little speech classes so they speak different.. its not the accent but its things like saying 'ting' not 'thing' and dat not that and stuff like that really.. I think.. I don't think it is important enough to waste time doing? But maybe I am wrong?

Thanks cailin.

I do think what seems angry, and I am sorry if I've offened her, but I wish she'd just explain why she thinks I'm wrong, instead of attack me as a person.

Caillin - When you say "Why is the Irish way automatically wrong?", it sounds like you believe all Irish people pronounce "th" as "d".

Otherwise, you would have said "Why is the way some Irish people pronounce it wrong?"

Ok, so why is the a-lot-of-the-Midlands-and-also-parts-of-the-South-West-Irish way wrong?

Does she not mean 'the Irish way' as opposed to 'the English way'? Because these children are Irish children in an English classroom. If they were in an Irish classroom where the teacher wanted them to use a different accent, we'd be comparing two Irish accents, but here we're comparing one Irish one and one English one.

Yes, it sounds like that, but if you had read my other posts you would see that that's not the case. I expect in a conversation for people to follow the thread of what I'm saying and not take a single sentence in isolation then extrapolate an unrelated argument from it. If every poster had to make every single thing they meant clear in every single post for the benefit of others who couldn't be bothered to read the thread it would get boring pretty fast.

floggingmolly I understand that, but surely knowing this goes some way to explaining why the ?d? sound instead of the ?th? is the default pronunciation for many Irish people. And it?s certainly is very difficult to consciously change your natural pronunciation.

I find it hard to say the word ?film? in one syllable. I can do it but it takes more effort than saying fil-lum. Also, I don?t feel the need to say it the ?correct? way.

I would imagine it's vanishingly rare for an Irish person to be unable to say 'th'.

But in some languages, which have no contact with English, people who don't learn to say that sound may never learn it. My in-laws can't do it. In the same way, I can't say all the sounds in their language.

Some people are better at this than others - I know someone who's a professional singer, who can pick up pretty much any language's sounds if he wants to - but mostly, it is an ability we lose as adults. habbibu made this point earlier.

I hesitate to mention his name but Bertie Ahern, former Taoiseach of Ireland, says "de" for "the" and "dis" for "this." He also says "turty" for "thirty" and so on. Incidentally he's from Drumcondra in Dublin. An example .

I didn't say she was 'angry with the world'. I asked why she had the anger of the world on her?

Quite different. At no point did I say her opinion wasn't valid, I just didn't understand her anger.

Oh God, not Bertie!

An example of "dat" is at 3:28.

I know, sorry squoosh, but I just find it a bit bizarre that Irish people are saying "I don't know anyone who says that" when the former leader of the fecking country says it!

Didn't Bertie over emphasise his 'dese' and 'dats' to make himself seem more of a 'ordinary Dub'?

Sorry that should be 3:25

Perhaps but even if he did over emphasise it, why would he do that if it wasn't the typical way of speaking in his area?

Ah no did we have to bring that scut into the conversation. Maybe he is saving up all his 'th's in his bank account

Oh yeah, he wanted to portray himself as Mr Drumcondra, salt of the earth, professional northsider etc. The d pronunciaton is widespread in Dublin.

Ah it's good to hear the word scut. Although when I called my DS a scut someone told me it was really bad My mother called me a scut all the time - what the feck does it mean?

I love the word scut! Usually preceded with 'dirty'.

I really can't be arsed reading 18 pages of arguing about this, but I am amused at the idea of teaching phonics being a problem.what do you think we use in Ireland?

Ah urban dictionary tells me it's a mild form of "shit." Thanks mother.

Ya dirty scut!

This makes sense

Scut would have been shortened from scutter which as any farmer will tell you is not a pretty sight out the backside of an afflicted cow (terribly bad liquid diarrhoea). So when your ma was saying 'you're some scut,' 'you little scut,' or 'come here you scut ya,' she was calling you a shit or a shite but in the nice clean way.

I still like it :) It was always said in an affectionate way, usually as a precursor to tickling, sort of a telling off and punishment to a comedy offence like farting or stealing the last biscuit.