evidence: Indeed, the utility of speaking Irish is, at the moment, negated by the fact that all its speakers also speak English. I had one of my first transactional monolingual Irish conversations with a bookstore employee only because her colleague in their other branch told me that she was a fluent speaker. It’s really quite funny how if you are learning a language that doesn’t see much daily use in most areas, you are likely to learn the words for "lenition" or "verbal noun" before you learn how to ask how much something costs. Speaking English is perfectly enough to fulfill one’s communicative needs in Ireland. [...] Another thing of note for Irish is that it has three different dialects. It’s amazing how such a small country has three dialects. But what was truly surprising to me is that dialect differences do not divide people. I haven’t heard anyone say that the other dialects are wrong. For beginners, that does create difficulties, since they need to get familiar with every possible pronunciation. I guess I’m lucky to be hearing all three — the locals in the conversation groups speak Muster Irish, there are some people who moved here from Connacht, and the teacher in the night course in UCC is from Belfast and thus speaks Ulster Irish.