Part of the issue is that Irish is - in a large way - a reconstructed language. It was almost wiped out, and then basically rebuilt from a bunch of isolated reg

Part of the issue is that Irish is - in a large way - a reconstructed language. It was almost wiped out, and then basically rebuilt from a bunch of isolated regional dialects and extremely limited source material. A lot of Irish speaking communities historically had a largely oral tradition. A LOT of mistakes (or weird choices) were made in the standardisation of the “new Irish” back in the day, which have been made worse by the way it’s taught in most schools - it’s taught almost entirely as a written language, not a conversational language. Some suspect this might be linked to how it was reconstructed, the people “standardising” the language were focused almost entirely on it being a written language as opposed to a spoken one. There is very limited focus placed on actually speaking the language as a spoken language in how it’s taught, unless you go to an Irish language only school.