I speak Irish pretty well and Duolingo I think is a fantastic tool to get better and learn some new words that I didn't no. (Neither my dad nor I knew portán meant crab). The issue is that pronunciation in Irish is kinda varied but the lady who does it for Duolingo is on some extreme. The majority of Irish speakers would not pronounce things that way in the slightest and it would be misleading for someone who learned on the app to actually try and speak it as I'm not sure I would understand them
The lady who pronounces things for Duolingo is a native speaker. The issue with Irish is that most learners, including teachers, pronounce it horribly wrong. They're never exposed to native speakers os they just substitute English sounds in.
That said, DL's Irish course is useless for anything except a little vocab. There's tons of incorrect answers, or things that only work in certain situations, or direct translations from English nobody would say, or things that are mistranslated, etc etc.
This is a good point. Especially for minority languages like Irish, they can end up being completely dominated in mass-media by a specific group. Duolingo and TG4 (main Irish-language tv channel) mostly speak Gaeilge Cúige Connacht (the western dialect) meaning the northern and southern pronunciation and style are neglected.
