A Chara, – Dick Flanagan is quick to castigate Irish television newsreaders and presenters for Anglicised and Americanised pronunciation (July 26th), but offers little by way of an alternative.
Much Hiberno-English gets its accent under the influence of the local Irish dialect (most of the western counties are examples of this), and since the majority of the population now no longer speaks Irish, this influence is likely to die out, leaving the local English dialects open to influence from other sources, principally foreign radio and television.
Those Hiberno-English dialects not heavily influenced by Irish, such as the Dublin accent, are already examples of foreign influences (Dublin, for example, was always an English enclave, and has most recently been heavily influenced by Lancashire speakers, through Irish Sea trading routes with Liverpool).
Although I have lived abroad since 1992, I visit the country up to three times a year, and can confirm Flanagan’s observations. Irish-English is being replaced, rather quickly, by an Anglo-American melange of no great linguistic interest.
On the other hand, this is no more than the expectable side-product of globalisation in a small western country. Is mise,