@Truman Overby:

"At any rate, it's pretty much a dead language that has no relevance today. A few scholars are interested in it. But other than that, it's dead, is it not?"

[yawn]
I'm also curious how many speakers a language needs for you to consider it "not dead". And while you're at it, could you also explain what you mean exactly by a "relevant" language -- it's a new concept for me.

@Truman Overby, I may be wrong but I think Wikipedia does not include "the entire school-age population of the Republic of Ireland" into this "a small minority of Irish people speaking Irish as a first language" category. As far as I know, outside the Gaeltacht districts they learn it at school as a second language. But anyway, I wouldn't call the language in which people my age and younger give concerts and make cover-versions of the songs by Pink, Adele, Taylor Swift, Hozier, Chainsmokers, Macklemore and other respectful people I hear almost every day, dead. Endangered - yes, of course, but dead? How many speakers do you need to call a language "not dead" then? :)

*whispers* actually, I'm pretty sure you can find a couple of Irish learners even in your own state! Google says there's Indiana Celtic Community somewhere in Bloomington.

@K P, yes, the ch/j pronunciation of slender t/d is typical of Donegal, and there is a gradient from north to south (which continues into Scotland where ch/j is also heard). The Russian soft r in your link sounds quite different to the Irish slender r which is more fricative (it's closer to Czech ř or Polish rz, but in some areas, such as Gaoth Dobhair, where Clannad and Enya come from, it can be close to a y sound between vowels).

@Kseniia, as you can probably imagine, I'd be more on the Gaeltacht Irish side of the argument. Though this new kind of Irish might indeed be better than nothing, I think it makes no sense not to learn the indigenous pronunciation while there is still that option available to learners (many languages undergoing a revival don't have the good fortune to still have living native speakers). What's the point of learning a language if you're not going to learn it properly?  I think this idea of "Irish DNA" is part of the problem: if you're Irish you're assumed to instinctively know how to pronounce the language, so therefore there's no need to teach pronunciation.

@Truman Overby, the entire school-age population of the Republic of Ireland is learning Irish, for a start; here on italki you can find many Irish learners (including some taking part in this very discussion).

@Kseniia, what Patrick is referring to isn't just people having a bit of an accent (i.e. pronouncing some phonemes in a slightly anomalous way), which is reasonable enough, but rather the breakdown of whole the phonological system of the language (i.e. systematically confounding distinct phonemes and thus eliminating important lexical and grammatical distinctions). It really is a big problem in Irish, but it's a problem caused by Irish people; don't worry, your Russian accent is probably a benefit as Russian has much more in common with Irish phonologically than English does.

@K P, to answer your question on slender "t", it's a sound that varies quite a bit between dialects. The "t" in the recording you linked to could certainly be used as an Irish slender "t" (in some areas it would be more palatalised, or rather palatal, similar to English "ch" in "cheese", in other areas it would be slightly less palatalised, more like the English "t" in "tea").