Can Irish be saved?

New_Departure06

Mary Hanafin plans to invite in experts to save the Irish language. http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=147691780&p=y4769z36x

Is it going to work? Can it work? Can anything work at this stage? 240,000 were native speakers in 1921 now its probably 15,000. Clearly policies since the foundation of the State have made things worse not better. So something needs to be changed. But what?

Here are my ideas:

A: While the summer camps are a good idea (my irish improved greatly when I was 12 and went to a Summer school for a few weeks but I lost it after finishing the course due to lack of practice of oral Irish in the schools and society), the real issue is the need to revamp the Irish curriculum to purge the 17th century poems about cupboards, and devote most of the class time to oral Irish rather than written Irish. I agree with teachers who have suggested that in primary schools, text books should not be introduced until much later on, and that Irish classes should be solely oral affairs until say 5th class. To be fluent in a language, you actually have to able to speak it and understand it to hear - not just writing it. Someone should have told Dev and his successors that.

B: The government needs to provide for interaction with state agencies, govt departments and courts via Irish. More fluent Irish speakers should be appointed to the judiciary to help facilitate the latter. People should be able to make tax-returns, applications for planning permission etc. in the Irish language. This is important because while Gaelscoilleanna are supposed to be good at creating fluent Irish-speakers, some then lose it due to the lack of opportunities to use it. It is unfortunate then that in 1927 or 1929 the Cosgrave government rejected a recommendation of a commission it had set up on the language, that called for Irish to be restored as the language of the courts in Irish-speaking areas.

C: Citizenship-applications from immigrants fluent in the Irish language should be treated more favourably.

Non-Irish speakers should be restricted from buying houses in Irish-speaking areas (there are only a tiny number left so this should not be too much to ask). The Plantations started the decline in Irish so it is important native speakers be given some space to preserve it in their areas.

E: Change the Census question on Irish to ask about fluency and whether it is the main language in the household. We need real data on fluency and native-speaker numbers to assess the extent of the language decline. The current Census question is a bit of a joke.

Agree or disagree?

FlutterinBantam

Wasting her time is Miss Mary.... wasting her time......

Ba mhait liomsa an teanga a sábhail.....but wasting her time

DublinWriter

12 years of combined primary and secondary level Irish in school and I can just about ask permission to go to the toilet using our 'National Language'.

I'd say no, unless you appoint Hector as Minister for Education and Ginger Awareness.

Maskhadov

I think irish can be saved..... just look at the poor state of welsh.. a big turn around in recent years and now its so widly spoken..

We need to change the way we learn the language (more emphasis on converstational skills) and how we think of the language. We have to think of it as European language and not some diddly diddly leprechaun language.

Dirk Gently

This is a massively ambitious goal. To teach the nation to speak our native language. Many people see Irish as a dead language and see it as a communication barrier as English seems to be the language of business worldwide. I am not one of these people.

As a practical example of duel language societies it seems to work well in Holland. When over there I noticed Dutch people predominantly speak Dutch in their day to day lives and were also able to communicate perfectly in English when necessary.

I think the problem lies with the education standards in our schools. While in primary school I was exposed to alot of Irish and was well capable of communicating in the language. From 9am till midday classes were held in the Irish language and all questions were put to the teacher in Irish. After lunch we then had lessons communicated in the English language. As young as I was this was not at all confusing to me and was quite easy to take in. Ironically the older the person the harder it is to adapt, as when children and students we are constantly learning and adapting to new information. This process lessens the older we get as we settle into working routines with set guidelines and we simply work within those guidelines, often not seeking out information as actively or as frequently as we did as children.

My problems started in secondary school. I am from a disadvantaged area shall we say, and the number of teachers and the range of subjects was not as great as would be in some more well off areas. These schools tend to focus on a small range of subjects and get the most out of the students with the limited resources they have to offer. An example of this is when I had to take up history and construction studies my self in order to do those subjects in the leaving cert as we had not got the options to study these subjects due to lack of teachers and resources. Irish too was put on the back foot. I went into secondary school with a high level of Irish but while studying in secondary school, was only thought foundation level Irish as there wasn’t enough teachers to hold separate classes in foundation / ordinary / higher level Irish. So a basic foundation level of Irish was the strategy in order to get as many passes as possible in the leaving certs. As a result I became less interested in the Irish language and ended up seen it as an annoying necessary evil, in the way of my other subjects. Needless to say I left secondary school with very poor Irish and can just about fill out one of them postcards they get you to write in the exam. I actually got de programmed in secondary school and ended up with less knowledge of the subject than I had in primary school.

Not sure about your point about non Irish speakers not been allowed to move it Irish speaking areas. Surely a healthy mix of culture is in order. An English speaker moving into an Irish speaking area will develop there Irish skills a lot better in that environment. Hence the reason why students take a year out to go to Spain / Germany /France in order to learn the language of those countries.

I would like to be able to speak everyday in the Irish language but these needs to be done in a way which isn’t a barrier to communication but rather something to be proud of and culturally diverse. Let’s not go down the road of minister mc dowel when he sometimes addresses the senate in Irish in a deliberate attempt to confuse his audience and translation is often a long process and not accurate. Of course he will say Irish is the first language of the state and he has a right to do so. I see it as been/being (spell fascists educate me) undemocratic and smug on his part. This is an example of a communication breakdown and the dangers involved. Hopefully with a well thought out and practical approach to education and promotion of the Irish language it can be seen as a national asset and not a negative aspect.

Or maybe im wrong and I just have an unhelpful and not very progressive view to want to right a wrong where by the Irish language was forcibly stamped out by our former English masters.

lostexpectation

you went to a school that didn't have a leaving cert history teacher/class available?????

hmm when I think history Lc i think a sore hand from writing so much
and as ever Irish means exams and big stress headache

Dirk Gently

yup, after transition year we had no choice of subjects to study for the leaving. we were just given business and accountancy. i dropped accountacy and studied history and construction studies on my own time and got the teachers in those subjects to give me sample papers and correct my work. got into a **** load of trouble for refusing to go into the accountancy classes but i wore them down in the end. other students had similar problems with science and art as they were taken off the leaving cert programme as well in our school. we ended up just studing the subjects we wanted on our own and refusing to take part in the ones which we would have origionally had choices about taking if there were more teachers. i dont blame the school as they done all they could giving the funding they got.

we had a history teacher, he just also happened to be the business teacher and he was fully booked up teaching business. He ended up been / being very helpful in giving me material to read and correcting my work i done at home. Was a bit of a pain in the arse doing the extra subjects but glad i did as i got good results in them and most of the lads failed accountancy anyway, which im sure i would of as well because i had no interest in it. if i didnt do the construction studies i wouldnt have been able to go on and do architecture in college so all worked out. I ****in hate accountancy. its just wrong.

which brings me back to the irish question. we need new ideas and methods of teaching. get them young and they will learn and take it in their stride. Have a **** education system and they will resent it and do only the minimum to pass the exam.

flogen

Irish still has a chance but even with the most progressive of initiatives we won't see a turn around until the next generation, or even the one after that.

A few ideas I think will help:

Revamp the education system to encourage the use of Irish as a language and not as a subject.

Make Irish language courses more accessable in Urban areas and put more money into providing free services.

Enforce existing regulation on Irish language speakers in Public service jobs, so that people who can speak Irish gain a better chance of promotion etc.

Encourage Irish in commercial areas; bonsus' (tax breaks?) for companies that employ a fluent Irish speaker and make their services accessable to people who want to do so in Irish only (signs, automated phone lines, websites etc.)... if the government tried hard enough they could make it possible for Irish to be usable on a daily basis...

Re-think public signage, It's defeatest of the country to have Irish second on road signs etc., but perhaps its practical, either way the Government should either admit it considers Irish to be secondary or else do something to prove otherwise.

Encourage a drop in the classification of "native" and "fluent" speaker, or at least encourage people to stop treating them as different... my Irish teacher in school was a "native" speaker but refused to recognise other teachers as the same despite the fact that they were Irish and were fluent in the language, it seemed like elitism to me which was counterproductive... surely we should be delighted that anyone speaks it?

Finally they should announce a Referendum which would alter the status of the language and make our first language English... everyone knows the best way to mobilise the Irish is to threaten them with a loss of something (look at the whole EU language status thing... suddenly everyone gave a fúck).

Let's not be silly though, if the tables were turned and Irish was at 100% while English was at the levels of Irish today the country would suffer, it would be nice to see Irish be more popular, out of the danger zone and even one day on a par with English speaking.

I think the number of Irish speakers will increase over the coming years though, Irish schools are becoming more and more popular and there seems to be an underlying wave of nationalism in the country, it's small at the moment (and was starting before the whole 1916 thing), but I think after years of prosperity people in the country are looking for something more... perhaps that's just a fad though, but I think some people are either using their wealth to do things they never did in the past or else realising that all the money in the country is robbing it of its individuality.

Oh, and another thought, the last generation (our parents) had very low education levels, I know of many people and relatives from then that didn't go to school or ended up going back to do their junior/leaving cert. Outside of Gaeltacht areas school was the only place to learn Irish, so they never had a chance... maybe increased education levels will have an effect in years to come, but the sylabus needs to be changed too.

ateam

What is so good about the Irish language that we have to preserve it?

New_Departure06

ateam wrote:

What is so good about the Irish language that we have to preserve it?

A: Part of our heritage. A language as old as Latin and older than English. It would be a great achievement to preserve such a language. It would show that in one respect, Cromwell etc. did not win. It would show that Britain failed to wipe out the culture completely.

B: Part of our identity. It was the Gaelic Revival of the late 19th-early 20th century which - together with 1916 - aroused the people to defend their separate identity by making them more aware of it. The Irish language may serve us well again if (god forbid) we ever end up under colonial rule again in the 26 counties in the future. It can help us resist assimilation by foreign invaders, and the reminder of its relevance of its existence to our identity can help rouse us to acts of resistance if we are ever invaded again (unlikely but not impossible - we were caught off guard in 1169). NB: "Resistance" does not include killing innocent people.

C: Reminding us of what makes us different from other countries helps inspire us to resist the EU Constitution and further acts of European integration. The men and women of 1916 would be turning in their graves seeing the efforts to create a Federal Europe where small nations become as powerless as Ireland was in the Union - only worse as we were 20% of the House of Commons but only 3% of the European Parliament. I support the EU but do not want any more of these treaties.

SeanW

Why the hell should we keep the ancient Irish language on Life-Support, which is the present status.

The language is in the state it's in because the people don't give a toss about it, the people have spoken - in English. The government should stop interfering in the language question.

A: So it's part of our hertiage? So is the fammine, but we don't starve ourselves death and emigrate by the millions? Should we do this because "it's part of our heritage?" no of course not. Times change, and by and large they have changed for the better.

It's all well and fine to speak Gaeilge if you're farming cows or spuds in Conemarra 60 years ago, but in todays society languages such as French, Spanish German etc would be infinitely more valuable to one's career prospects. What's more, on the streets of Ireland one is more likely to hear Polish or Chinese or some African or ex-Iron Curtin language being used among real people than Irish, which makes a ridiculous cultural statmement on roadsigns or gives McDowell a way to eliminate parlimentary debate about controversial issues, but other than that it serves little use except to the people making craploads of money translating, tutoring etc or ogling Sile Seoige.

B & C: So you hate the Brits and haven't moved on from Cromwell, and don't want to see any more close working with Europe.

Can you name a single other soveirgn European nation that maintains official multilingualism just for the sake of it?

Dirk Gently

SeanW wrote:

Can you name a single other soveirgn European nation that maintains official multilingualism just for the sake of it?

If you’re talking about countries with more than one language in daily use then just about most if not all European nations with the exception of England.
Scotland and especially Wales have two languages; with Scotland alot like ourselves as in not having a large number of native speakers.
On the European continent most countries speak their national language with english and or another European language as a secondary language. I think Switzerland has about four languages in use in the different regions of that country. All these countries appear to function quite capably with multiple languages, keeping their own traditions and culture alive while communicating effectively with others. We in Ireland are an exception to this pattern in the E.U. with our weak use of our national language.

New_Departure06

I think if we let the language die we are betraying the men and women of 1916, specifically Pearse who called for an Ireland "not only free but Gaelic as well".

Zombrex

clown bag wrote:

If you’re talking about countries with more than one language in daily use

Thats hardly "for the sake of it" ... if Irish was used daily by a sizable portion of the country there would be no problem. The problem is that it isn't. It is used by a tiny tiny proportion of the country and then only infrequently. I know a few people from places like Donegal who are fluent, but then they never speak it because no one they know is fluent down here in Dublin.

I am all for totally revamping the way Irish is taught in schools, at the moment it is criminal and is harming the lanuage more than restoring it. There is obviously something terribly wrong with the system when everyone is taught Irish for 12 years but hardly anyone one can manage to speak it properly after that time.

But we shouldn't kid ourselfs the Irish is the same as the secondary European languages. It isn't. More people speak Esperanto (a lot more)

BuffyBot

What is so good about the Irish language that we have to preserve it?

It's not so much that we "have" to preserve it, but whether we should preserve it, and how much an effort we, as a nation, should put in to it's preservation. While a language isn't as tangible as say the GPO (which most people would probably argue shouldnt be knocked down to be the site of a new apartment block, just because we need more housing), it still is a part of "Ireland" as a nebulous whole.

I think if we let the language die we are betraying the men and women of 1916, specifically Pearse who called for an Ireland "not only free but Gaelic as well".

As they are dead for about 90 years, I doubt they'll care too much.

netwhizkid

As a person who was suspended from National School over my refusal to learn Irish, the emphasis that was put on it was unreal. I know people now that would have trouble reading simple books like "The DaVinci Code" and who do not know how to do long division. Irish was always at the fore-front on learning and the attitude was beat it into you. f*ck that. Irish I reckon should be easy to learn, however like most thing in our stupid school system theory rules. theory is crap like it is well and good to know how to for instance build a dog-house on paper it very different when you go to do it with a hammer and saw. Burn the books and put people speaking it. I was on a Bus from Killarney to Cork last year and two strangers in their early twenties male & female started chatting in Irish!! They held yapping for a whole hour. I was bemused by it and really enjoyed the experience of it. I would love to speak & learn Irish but people will never be able to do this because it is taught all wrong. English is one of the hardest languages to learn for non-nationals and they can manage it. Why can't we learn Irish??

Logos

A language is a living thing and at the risk of stating the obvious, unless you have a constant supply of new speakers then it will eventually die with the relatively few native speakers left. People only speak a language because they are born into it - or need to know it. If we sentimentalise Irish then it has no chance for growth in the future. We are one of the most open economies in the world and this has had huge implications for society here.

We need to rediscover what it means to be Irish and salvage something of our history and culture from planet MTV. Just maybe if this happens (only maybe) will we be able to bring Irish back into the hearts and minds of ordinary people. Because it will be ordinary people who are the key to saving Irish - not Professors or Politicians.

SeanW

clown bag wrote:

If you’re talking about countries with more than one language in daily use then just about most if not all European nations with the exception of England.

No, I was talking about Independent soveirgn countries that maintain multilingualism with a near-dead language purely for cultural and ceremonial reasons.

Belgium has official multilingualism but that's because the country is split down the middle with one half the population speaking French, the other, Dutch. Similar story in Switzerland. In the other countries their people speak one language, but English is required for international business and tourism so again, it's multilingualism by pure need.

It can help us resist assimilation by foreign invaders, and the reminder of its relevance of its existence to our identity can help rouse us to acts of resistance if we are ever invaded again

So the Swiss don't have "their own" language. Neither do the Americans. That would explain why these countries were the first to be knocked over by the Hitlers 3rd Reich in WWII right? Wrong. Language doesn't help you resist invasion - a good army does. Ironically, France and Poland, some of the 2 countries that were taken over in the first stages of WWII are both countries with their own language ... oh dear ... what does that do for your argument?

RedPlanet

We are flogging a (mostly) dead horse.
I knew an English fella of Irish extraction that had been trying to learn Irish.
Moved somewhere around Spiddal and was actively taking courses and such.
But when he approached the locals and spoke Irish to them (albeit broken and simple) they always just replied in english.
That about sums it up for me.

New_Departure06

As they are dead for about 90 years, I doubt they'll care too much.

Shame on you. They gave their lives for our freedom. We owe them to strive to realise their ideals.

The raising of the dead language Hebrew from thousands of years of extinction in Israel proves that whatever the state of Irish, it can be saved with enough imagination and determination.

Sand

The raising of the dead language Hebrew from thousands of years of extinction in Israel proves that whatever the state of Irish, it can be saved with enough imagination and determination.

Yeah but why?!?

Whats so fantastic about Irish that a language of 15000 people and falling has to be maintained? If it vanished completely tommorrow would anyone notice apart from the celebrations of students not forced to learn the most stupidly pointless subject in the whole system?

And no, "getting one back at dem damned brits!!!" or "In case Pearse and the boys return from the dead" isnt a good enough reason tbh.

DublinWriter

New_Departure06 wrote:

Shame on you. They gave their lives for our freedom. We owe them to strive to realise their ideals.

The real problem is that it's not being *thought properly* in our schools. Capice? As I said, 12 years of first and second level tutition DAILY and I can just about ask to go to the toilet in the language.

Politics and rivers of blood and dead martryed generations aside, I'll give you a couple of real and concrete reasons why it should be thought.

In the late 1980's I was doing summer work around London with a few other Paddy students, sharing a big apartment type house in Lambeth with a couple of Middle-Easterns, French and a few Austrians.

One summers day, we all decided to use the communal back garden for a BBQ. As the drink flowed we all went into our national groupings. Everyone else there was yaking away in their national languages except for us. As everyone spoke English, we couldn't have the same private conversation that the others were having.

We tried an abortive attempt to speak os Gaelgae le ceile (ar nos na gaothe!), but failed miserably, and it was only then that I wished that I'd have payed attention to auld Peig a little more closely.

Secondly, it's a well researched fact that kids growning up in a bi-lingual environment grow up to be a hell of a lot smarter.

Example? Look at the difference in educational standard between your average British\American 12 year old and German 12 year old.

Having lived in Belgium for a couple of years, I can honestly say that they're some of the smartest and humanitarian people I've met, most are bi and tri lingual.

The resources are already in place to make Irish a living thing again. What's wrong is the miserable cirriculum.

Although I hate the word, Irish needs to be made 'cool' again. Hector did more for the Irish language in a couple of years than Peig did in a hundred.

DublinWriter

...and what's freaky, I just noticed the time on the edit of my last post in this threat.

Maybe baby Jesus agrees with my points?

flogen

Sand wrote:

And no, "getting one back at dem damned brits!!!" or "In case Pearse and the boys return from the dead" isnt a good enough reason tbh.

Fighting to save a language on the basis of revenge or fear of being judged by those before us aren't good enough, but I think the vast majority of people who want the language to survive don't think like that.

Why do I personally want to see Irish survive? Because it's part of the countries history and it's not something that should be destroyed lightly; I mean for some time Irish wasn't going to die, it was being killed, of course we can't blame anyone else now if it does disappear. I'd like to see it stay and grow because it's a part of our heritage and our national identity, it (should) help define us from other countries (along with other things) and in the age of the EU superstate that can't be a bad thing. If it so happens that Irish dies then so be it, even if it dies out of laziness or lack of necessity... while I think the government isn't doing enough I am realistic enough to know that the language will live or die on the actions of the people.

LostinBlanch

It's not a zero sum game. We don't have to learn Irish at the expense of English? I think we are (or can be) more mature in expressing pride in our nationality and what makes us unique rather than simply defining ourselves in terms of being anti English.

As Dublin writer has pointed out early learning of two languages has an effect on the brain that makes it easier to learn subsequent languages. Also there is the theory that language and thought are intertwined to such an extent that giving up our own language means giving up some thought processes that help to differentiate us from others (ditto them from us). This is all tied in directly to our environment, the example usually given here is the eskimos/inuit have apprximately 30 words for snow, that define it's particular qualities whether it's slushy. drifting, melting, freezing etc. To us it's just snow, but to them in their environment the difference implied in the different words could be the difference between life and death.

Not that I'm saying learning Irish is going to save your life, but then again you never know! :rolleyes:

Anyway there is no need to take the Kevin Myers line that Irish is a waste of time. He is suspicious of, and hostile to anything indigenous in my view. The reversal of using Irish as a means of being anti British, he uses the failures in teaching it as being a reason to be anti Irish!

AFAIK the plans are for increased use of oral Irish in primary school and then introducing formal grammar and writing in secondary school. So they could be getting it right at last.

My tuppence worth

ateam

flogen wrote:

Fighting to save a language on the basis of revenge or fear of being judged by those before us aren't good enough, but I think the vast majority of people who want the language to survive don't think like that.

Why do I personally want to see Irish survive? Because it's part of the countries history and it's not something that should be destroyed lightly; I mean for some time Irish wasn't going to die, it was being killed, of course we can't blame anyone else now if it does disappear. I'd like to see it stay and grow because it's a part of our heritage and our national identity, it (should) help define us from other countries (along with other things) and in the age of the EU superstate that can't be a bad thing. If it so happens that Irish dies then so be it, even if it dies out of laziness or lack of necessity... while I think the government isn't doing enough I am realistic enough to know that the language will live or die on the actions of the people.

How is it part of our history? In the east of Ireland and other parts, English has been spoken for centuries, so I don't see it as a part of our history.

the_syco

As someone once said to me: no, 'cos the Irish we're taught today is a bastar.dised version that has been taught to us since Parnell (I think) thought it'd be a good idea to revive the Irish language:rolleyes:

TBH, I was taught poems in Irish class. When I was taught French, I was taught about the language, how to speak the language, who to converse the language. I can now speak a little French, but no Irish. Why? Because poems are pretty damn useless, and doesn't help at all when speaking it.

luckat

Sure we can save it, *if* enough people want to. Plenty of countries have revived dead languages - the Finns, the Israelis and the Czechs, off the top of my head.

I'd love to speak Irish every day - but it's hard to find people to speak to.

The way Irish is taught is ludicrous - it's as if it's taught purely to make people feel guilty and miserable. (In one school I know a teacher (a Northern Protestant, as it happens) had one class of 20 for *one year* and made them love Irish and learn it, by the simple method of having an Irish-language cafe in the classroom instead of formal lessons, so they talked about things that interested them and drank tea and coffee and ate biscuits. Most of them had failed at Irish every year before that.)

I'll make one promise here - I'll give a €20 book token to the next person I hear speaking Irish in public.

Diorraing

luckat wrote:

I'll make one promise here - I'll give a €20 book token to the next person I hear speaking Irish in public.

I'd be a feckin billionaire if everyone else was like you.

flogen

ateam wrote:

How is it part of our history? In the east of Ireland and other parts, English has been spoken for centuries, so I don't see it as a part of our history.

If your definition of Irish history only goes back 800-900 years then there's no use in arguing the point with you..

SeanW

flogen wrote:

If your definition of Irish history only goes back 800-900 years then there's no use in arguing the point with you..

So that's really what it all boils down to, the ancient Gaels 1000+ years ago spoke Gaeilge so we should all speak it now in 2006 and have the present government ramm it down everyone's throats?

Forget 100 years, Ireland has changed in the last millenium. Times have changed and some things belong in the past.