Irena wrote:Cainntear wrote:which means that for all those non-native speakers, the utility of Irish as a tool of communication is actually enhanced by - butchering Irish.
Again, that's typically of the excuses used by Anglophones for failing to learn Irish. But the argument has no value because if you're looking for a language that maximises its utility as a tool of communication, just stick with English. Bad Irish has less utility as a tool of communication than English.
There you go: I'm right.
No, you're wrong.
What I said was a perfectly natural consequence of having an order of magnitude more non-native speakers than native ones (and worse: having practically all those non-native speakers have the same native language) is in fact happening, en masse, according to you. And it'll continue to happen, as long as this arrangement persists.
The reason I say you're wrong isn't that I say your facts are wrong, so pointing out that I prove your facts right doesn't mean I'm proving you right.
I think I have made it pretty clear that what I object to is a choice between two absolutes, and your refusal to accept that there's a whole spectrum of possibilities.
Oh, and "A-vey voow day freets" would be perfectly fine French - if you expected to use French first and foremost with native English speakers, and only very rarely if ever with native French speakers.
OK, so imagine if France lost a nuclear war and was wiped off the planet.
Imagine that the rest of the world says "we must preserve the French language in their memory" and learnt French en masse... badly. Should the surviving minority living in other countries feel grateful that they did this? Perhaps. Would the surviving minority be well-served by being unable to understand or be understood by a worldwide majority of learners? I reckon not.