I guess those who have learnt English as a second language are better equipped for this:
almost nothing we see written really matches expectations, when we hear it. 
And even when we think we’ve figured it out, we meet a first language speaker from a different area and it’s all completely different again! 
So with Welsh it just takes a little time to stop perceiving mutated versions as different words (with brain expecting different meaning for each one). But it’s relatively easy, once you know that some letters just do that and that there is a pattern, which just becomes familiar after a while.
As far as producing the correct sounds, I admit that Irish and Gaelic seemed quite a bit more complicated to me in my mild and failed attempts at learning them.
But just like with violin, I’m sure, an effective method could bring big results pretty fast, also for adult learners.
Of course there is always people with a better ear and, let’s say, “talent” or maybe just more experience with languages, who are going to improve faster than others but I believe it’s very much about finding the effective method.
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Victor Bayda, the Russian guy who ended up as an Irish language officer in Gaeltacht Kerry, says he used to record Raidió na Gaeltachta on tapes (it wasn’t available online back then) and listened them on repeat until he could decode everything. His Irish is considered indistinguishable from L1 now. I quite admire his persistence. If I remember correctly he speaks the whole Celtic family and a few more languages. L1 Russian is a bonus though. We already have phonetic equivalents of most broad/slender consonants, they are called differently (soft vs hard consonants) but in principle it’s similar variation. Learning English phonetics should have been difficult, but it was more than twenty years ago, so I don’t remember the feeling. It feels so natural now I don’t really notice letters don’t quite match sounds.
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Wonder what “labhraím Gaeilge go han-mhaith” actually expresses. “Labhraím” is a tense form that says I speak something on regular basis (like present simple in habitual sense), ability would be normally expressed by agam (tá Gaeilge agam), so what would “labhraím Gaeilge go han-mhaith” mean? That I usually speak Gaeilge well (as an answer to accusations of butchering it)? Hm.
It would be actually most likely system issue with the translation, if it was done word by word instead of meaning for meaning. Especially if the translator is L2 speaker that’s only native in the sense of being an Irish citizen, but also if the translator is L1 Irish with dominant English, which would happen if the translator speaks English more often, or if the translator isn’t a professional translator and just does their best on the task they are not qualified for. (For example most published translations English-to-Russian suffer from having Russian words with English syntax to some degree.) It would also be invisible for somebody with L1 English, because English syntax would feel natural. I read carefully through the list of common mistakes in kids from Irish-medium schools, mistaken forms with English syntax intrusions feel normal to me and occasionally they feel more normal than what actually is right. Hence persistence.
Incidentally, I could also say Tá Gaeilge agam, ach ní labhraím í, which would imply I could speak the language, theoretically, but never actually do that, and that’s what half a million people in Ireland told about their Irish, according to census.
We have a similar issue with Welsh, in the Census vs the Annual Population Survey. One asks “Can you speak Welsh?” and the other “Do you speak Welsh?” (can’t remember which way around off the top of my head) - a subtle difference that yields quite different responses.
I think most monoglot English speakers are blind to the difference between “I speak” and “I am speaking” that becomes very apparent when one starts to learn a Celtic language (I know I was before I started learning Welsh, despite being an English-language editor and knowing a couple of other, non-Celtic, languages).
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Russian has at least three variations. I’d say I know a language (знаю английский) or know it a bit (немножко знаю английский) pretty much in the same sense as tá Gaeilge agam, I’d say I speak the language (говорю на английском / по-английски) to express that I specifically have oral speech in it, but I could also say that I own a language (владею английским) to say that I’m reasonably proficient in it, generally. The last is grammatically similar to tá Gaeilge agam, but not semantically, you can own a few words in Gaeilge and it still would be expressed as ownership, but you have to own a reasonable portion of language in Russian to express it like that 
And it gets even funnier. Russian has direct equivalent of agam (у меня есть…, “there’s… at me”), which expresses ownership, and I could apply the construction to house, cat or a husband (у меня есть дом, кот, муж), but not to a language, I have to use more formal expression of ownership if I talk about a language. Apparently in Russian it’s a more serious business!
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