Ulster speech

Diarmaid O Muirithe is senior lecturer emeritus in Irish at University College Dublin and the author of a weekly column in the Irish Times.  I came across the following helpful quote in his book The Words We Use:

The influence of Scotland has crossed the waters of the Moyle into Ulster, in language as in other matters.  But the late John Braidwood sounded a warning note when he wrote of 'the pusillanimous notions of correctness and good taste hammered into kids in school, deterring their progress along the highway of their native tongue, the byeways being prohibited.'  My friend Benedict Kiely has also written about the equally malign influence of radio and television, and there are many who believe that the dialect that owes its richness to Scots is very much endangered.

Here O Muirithe notes the influence of Scots in Ulster and this of course is heard in both Ulster-Scots and the strong Scottish influence in Ulster dialect.

He also notes the influence of education, which tends to standardise speech and erode regional differences, in the interests of 'correctness', and the 'malign influence of radio and television'.