I could not open the 101 post thread to post in it. So here is my reply:

I know Róman realizes that use of the dative plural is sporadic even in Munster - but it is used (sometimes as a nominative and sometimes as a dative).

The point is however that use of the dative plural will not strike a Munster speaker as wrong. It is like listening to someone saying "to whom": this form may be used occasionally in English, but is still seen as correct, and even "high style", and not wrong, and a learner who wants top-notch English may learn it.

It is possible for an Irish learner to try to emulate the speech of seanchaithe: the best Munster speakers... and I believe that is what Róman is doing...

Well there's a news presenter on TG4 news called Tomás and you commonly here him use dative forms...

quote:

I know Róman realizes that use of the dative plural is sporadic even in Munster - but it is used (sometimes as a nominative and sometimes as a dative).

The point is however that use of the dative plural will not strike a Munster speaker as wrong.

These inconsistencies are considered wrong only where it concerns Connemara Irish; as regards Munster Irish, they're indicative of a certain refinement. You can't be serious! But then again, you probably are.

Are there any native Munster speakers who can just answer the question authoritatively?

Our Unregistered Guest is clearly intent on flaming. Can we have some opinion from moderator?

quote:

dative plural is sporadic even in Munster

It is sporadic in Corca Dhuibhne, which has many "sporadities" in grammar. In Cléire there are no option when the word is used without article - only -ibh form is recognized. When article is present - both forms are used. I would not call it "sporadic".

You can say it's use is optional - the beginning of becoming sporadic.
Daithí

quote:

it's use is optional

After article. It is not optional without article.

quote:

optional - the beginning of becoming sporadic.

That is sadly true. That is why I don't like "options". They are usually prelude to dumbing-down of the language.

These changes bring about another changes that 'un-dumb' the language again.
People have to express their thoughts and if something useful disappears from their language they find or create another way to do it.

Daithí

They find periphrastic constructions which are more ameanable to idiomatic and semantic drift thus separating the dialects and making it harder to learn the language and further endangers the minority language

so my opinion just formed says -66% of all statistics are made up on the stop and all that

It's normal for dialects of a language to be different. What is less normal is them being similar - quite a common situation nowadays with the standard languages spreading by the mass media etc...

The situation of Irish before the 1840's was probably much more complicated than today. If we take into account that Manx, though considered another language, must have been rather similar to Irish dialects spoken on the eastern coast of the island that would have made it be just a dialect of Gaeilge, the other end of the one-time dialect continuum.

Of course, in case of an endangered language it's better that all the speakers speak similar varieties, so that they don't have to speak another language to understand each other.

Daithí