ИСТИНА

Nowadays the Irish language is mostly studied by school pupils and university students rather than acquired in a natural way. In most cases, however, learners never speak Irish outside educational institutions, English being the general (and most natural) means of communication in their everyday life. Other speakers, whose command of Irish becomes confident enough, are labelled in linguistics as L2 speakers with English as their first language, or L1. The latter are supposed to be able to use the language when necessary without any hindrance (in Gaeltacht areas, on radio and TV etc), though unlikely on a daily or weekly basis. This non-native variety of Irish is characterised by the same phonetic inventory as the dialects (i.e. distinction between palatalised and non-palatalised consonants, long and short vowels as well as the vibrant [r] sound), however, particular sounds do not appear to be distributed in speech in a proper, dialect-like way. This subject has been largely neglected by linguists so far, yet it might present an interesting case of study, especially when the possible reasons for the existing phonetic deviations are concerned.