Supplementary Irish Gaelic support for Pronunciation Practice

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Dia dhaoibh a chairde.

Today I wanted to provide some Irish language support resources for you, while also bringing to attention an area of caution that may be hindering your Irish language journey.

Irish Gaelic is among Europe’s oldest living languages. It outdates French, Spanish, English, German, Italian, Dutch and many other languages. It has been spoken in Ireland for 2500 - 3000 years. The first evidence of it in written texts dates from as early as the 5th century in the form of Ogham characters. Irish is one of SIX CELTIC LANGUAGES used in Western Europe today, with a vast treasury of texts available online.

While there are many excellent ways to practice and learn these languages nowadays, there is still NO SUBSTITUTE for hearing and emulating a NATIVE speaker’s pronunciation. Unfortunately, we don’t all have access to native speakers so putting our trust in having modern apps and good AI voice synthesis that are doing the best to support our learning is paramount, ESPECIALLY for minority languages. Unfortunately, good quality pronunciation is not getting enough attention.

What do you mean by good quality pronunciation?
Unfortunately, it seems that the default synthesised voice for many language apps that we are using at the moment are all created by the same company, VERBATIK. The following links show how the same WRONG IRISH speech is in use across many platforms, and SHOULD NOT be replicated. In terms of Irish speakers, these all sound like a Hiberno-English speaker from somewhere near Dublin speaking Irish as a second language, rather than that of a person who actually speaks Irish as their first or native language.
Orla - Irish Female Voiceover
www.fliki.ai/voices/irish
www.play.ht/text-to-speech/irish/
Generate Irish Gaelic speech with text-to-speech. (ga-IE)

***NOTE: The above are all EXACTLY the same AI currently being used by DUOLINGO, LINGQ, and many of the most profitable language apps on the planet - ALL TEACHING WRONG IRISH PRONUNCIATION.

Luckily though, LINGQ also provides some wonderful recordings of a native Irish speaker, but is it enough? and are there other apps teaching CORRECT NATIVE IRISH too ? The answer is YES! … and they are FREE …

ABAIR (Native Irish-focused AI synthesis)

Séideán Si (Native Irish-focused AI synthesis)

https://www.doegen.ie/ (Native Irish recordings)

Repository of Irish Dialects (Native Irish recordings)

RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta (Live Native Irish)

TG4 Television | TG4 Player | Irish TV | Irish Language TV | Gaeilge | Súil Eile (Live Native Irish)

I hope this article helps learners of Irish to steer clear of popular apps that are providing incorrect pronunciation, and supports better and more regional tools that are not receiving the same attention.

Go raibh míle maith agaibh, agus go n-éirí go geal libh bhur dturas Gaeilge!

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Go raibh maith agat a John as ucht na foinsí sin a roinnt agus as ucht an foláireamh tábhachtach sin a thabhairt do lucht foghlama na Gaeilge.

Thanks John for sharing those resources and for the important warning for those who are learning Irish.

To add a few more resources to the list, focloir.ie and teanglann.ie (two of my go-to online Irish dictionaries) provide recorded pronunciations for the majority of words. They provide an option to hear the pronunciation of native speakers of Connacht, Munster or Ulster Irish.

Here is an example from both for the word “conas”
https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/how

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Míle buíochas a Kevin, is aoibhinn liom na haipeanna seo a n-úsáid chomh maith, an oiriúnach, grma!!

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I can’t make a new post so I hope I may add here.

Irish, ministory 55
seems to start out with the character Saoirse which the native speaker pronounces See-or-sha and the AI pronousnces Seer-sha.
Later, the text shows Seoirse (SEoirse).
Could someone confirm that the character should be Seoirse to match the native speaker and that the AI might then pronounce it in the same way?
Bascially, there are two names and the text isn’t matching the audio as well as changing half way through the story.

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Well spotted, a chara !
That is a spelling mistake.

After checking the original text, it should refer to Seoirse (the Irish name for George), so I’ll update the spelling of that now if possible.

Also, Pádraig’s (the native Irish speaker) pronunciation is accurate for this.

The AI for Seoirse is WRONG. You can check in Teanglann and in Abair.
In fact, it doesn’t exactly appear in Teanglann, but you can hear some close variants - Bunachar Foghraíochta: Seoirseach

However, the AI pronunciation for Saoirse (freedom/person’s name) is similar to what you’ll hear in Teanglann - Bunachar Foghraíochta: saoirse, and in Abair: ABAIR

Míle buíochas duit :slight_smile: