Making the future of Irish multi-lingual.

The Corinthian

Dannyboy83 wrote: »

The language always seemed dead, there was nobody to speak it to.

There are a few, but in my experience, and generation, they often tend to be the sort of people you wouldn't want to speak with in any language.

This might be changing, ever since sending your kids to a gaelscoil became the in-thing, but fifteen or twenty years ago, the only really fluent Irish speakers were chucks and Catholic Talibans. No thank you.

Edit: Yeah, and a few civil/public servants, although many of those really had a 'working knowledge' rather than fluency.

Dannyboy83

K4t wrote: »

I'm in the system atm so I can tell you what it's like from my own experience. I was one of the better students at Irish in primary school but a bad start to secondary school resulted in me doing ordinary level Irish for the LC. I can honestly now say that I would rather have done higher level (and failed miserably) than go through this course. It is hell. We have 6 forty minute classes a week in which we mostly spend our time taking down notes off the board (which we can barely understand) and then learn them. Pages and pages of complete bull ****.
For example, just last week we started doing some oral work. Now oral work is considered a positive aspect of the Irish cirriculum, even among critics. But what some of you may not know is that there is a reading section in the oral where the student must read a passage from a story in the exam for a few minutes. We got our 5 passages (of which you are asked to read one in the exam) and our teacher went through it and told us how the words should be pronounced.
I waited and waited for her to explain the passage. I asked her to but she said you don't need to understand it.
6 forty minutes classes a week of that, compared to every other subject except maths where we only have 5 classes a week.
And just to rub it in our faces, most of us have the same standard of Irish (or even lower in some cases) than we did in Junior Cert.

Oh and the reason we are not a multi bilingual country is because students are introduced to french/german etc. too late. If you go into most french LC classes in the country you'll find no more than five or six students will have a passion for the subject. This is because of a number of factors.

1. French is only introduced to Irish students in secondary school. Although the cirriculum is far superior to the Irish one, it is still too late.

2. French LC classes are of mixed ability compared to Irish which has seperate classes for higher and ordinary. Mixed ability classes (in the majority of cases) means that half of the class are trying to learn a language while the other half are trying not to do anything and cause as much disruption as possible.

Basically, the whole system is completely f**ked.
They've been arguing this topic since the 1940s so we shouldn't get our hopes up. One sometimes thinks that the gaelgeoirs prefer being the only Irish speakers and want to keep it that way!

This 3% figure has been used frequently in this thread. I think it represents the amount of households in which Irish is spoken. I can tell you one thing, the other sane 97% see Irish as a dead language. It's been dead for a long time too.

I may be wrong but I got the impression that you're still at school learning Irish.

If thats the case, and you're obviously not enjoying it, just hang in there until its over. Just figure out how to pass the exam.

There is nothing as demoralising as learning a mandatory subject which you detest.
And be prepared for the fact that the graders of the papers are Nazis.
Just make sure you get your pass and when you done, you need never bother with it again.

(BTW, I was much like you with not seeing the logic or the sense, although I did honours, and to be honest I thought I'd never enjoy learning a language, but now I speak 2 slavic languages quite well and wouldn't mind learning a different language to be honest)

Dannyboy83

One thing I meant to add but forgot is the ridiculous expectations of Irish teachers.

I've spoken 4 extra languages over the years, 2 were self taught.

With all of these languages, I HAD to be surrounded by people who spoke the language, have tv and newspapers in these languages or at the very least have some sort of comparitive and explorative base to work off.

It simply doesn't exist for the Irish language, and this is why I find the expectations so ridiculous.

If they wanted to make Irish widely spoken, they would have to adopt a system similar to what was used in Israel with Hebrew.
Personally, I'd consider that a step backward though.

We already had the good sense to learn the global language.

Permabear

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Dannyboy83

donegalfella wrote: »

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Cracking post mate, some great points there.

T runner

The Corinthian wrote: »

This might be changing, ever since sending your kids to a gaelscoil became the in-thing, but fifteen or twenty years ago, the only really fluent Irish speakers were chucks and Catholic Talibans. No thank you.

My parents and family are Irish speakers and none fit in to this category.
I'm not a Catholic either. What an idiotic, insulting post.

donegalfella wrote: »

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You are quite wrong, as long as it is still spoken it is a living language.

It should be taken off the state-funded endangered languages list and allowed to fade into the past, where it belongs.

I think wishing languages to die is like wishing books to be burned.
All of the centuries of words, phrases, sayings and placenames from a language (The only language apart from Scottish Gaelic) that grew solely out of Ireland is not something that should be thrown on the bombfire lightly.

Knowledge of classical Latin and Greek was once considered essential for any person who wanted to count himself among the intelligentsia—but this is no longer true.

I think knowledge of Latin was useful for people studying science (as German for people studying Mathematics). Describing Latin and Greek as languages solely for people who wanted to count themselves among the intelligentsia is quite unfair and untrue, and forgive me, but is ignorant.

This is as true for languages as it is for architecture. Irish belongs to our pre-nineteenth-century past; English is our present and our future. The Gaelgeoirs will just have to make their peace with that fact

.

Yes and Irish evolved over the millenia in Ireland (unlike English) and can be rightly described as the native tongue to Ireland.

You are suggesting that Irish speakers cease speaking their native language and "make peace" with their future i.e English?

Firstly, Irish was spoken by a large majority of Irish people until after the famine in the mid 19th century so your statement is factually incorrect. Your argument may be true for a language that is already dead, like Cornish but arguing this for Irish simply doesn't make sense.

Would you also tell Welsh speakers to make their peace with English, tell them to embrace their mother tongue?
If the Finnish, for example, had done as you suggested when their language was facing extinction then that would be another indiginous tongue lost. It is now spoken as the first language by nearly all Finns. Swedish is still spoken by many but is, in fact, a foreign language. People with two languages culturally, intellectually and creatively will always have the advantage over people with one.The Finns must therefore embrace innovation themselves think out their own ideas instead of blindly following the Swedes,a nd the result is greater innovation, new ideas, and benefits (to the Swedes also).


Irish has not evolved to its current position naturally. It has been pushed there by being wronly associated with ignorance and by anyone who tried to speak it being alienating and less face it persecuted. Not much has changed.

If you want to throw the Irish language in the bombfire then throw all Irish literature, poetry, songs, placenames, geological, geographical words, folklore, culture, and the many Irish speakers in there also. Throw every Irish word (which describes an idea) in also. And when your finished don't claim you did it because the Irish language was ignorant. History will show that the people who sought to destroy it over the centuries were the ignorant ones.

The Corinthian

T runner wrote: »

My parents and family are Irish speakers and none fit in to this category.
I'm not a Catholic either. What an idiotic, insulting post.

I'm afraid I've never met your parents, so what you say may well be the case, but I can say I was already over thirty before I met anyone who was both genuinely fluent in Irish and not in one of the aforementioned categories. My post was not meant to offend your family, but unless you are on serious drugs, it should not have escaped your notice that fluency in Irish did up until a few years ago attract a certain type of nutjob.

BTW, I note that you cited your parents as being in neither category and you as not being in only one. Am I correct then in assuming that you are in fact in the other, given this omission?

You are quite wrong, as long as it is still spoken it is a living language.

Well, not really. If you want to define a language like that, then you would need to admit that Latin, Aramaic and even ancient Egyptian are alive and well. Hell, there are plenty of Klingon speakers out there!

I think wishing languages to die is like wishing books to be burned.
All of the centuries of words, phrases, sayings and placenames from a language (The only language apart from Scottish Gaelic) that grew solely out of Ireland is not something that should be thrown on the bombfire lightly.

I agree, but you can hardly deny that it is on life support. No one needs to throw it on a bonfire, all we need do is pull the plug.

The reality is that, jingoism aside, it has become irrelevant to the vast majority in Irish society. It's inclusion as an official EU language benefited no one other than a few Gaelgores who were able to secure translation jobs and contracts. The whole thing has become little more than the Irish equivalent of the Holocaust industry (Brendan Behan would probably find this amusing).

Unless that changes, the Irish language will die. Not on a bonfire, but by increments, as the life support tubes and wires are disconnected: Budgets will be cut, language requirements will be dropped and financial incentives reallocated.

When that happens, it will still not die by your definition as some will still speak it, just as some still speak Latin, but it will by most other definitions. I do think that will be a sad day, but I also think that unless the majority of Galegores take their collective heads our of their arses and take note of this, it will happen.

nesf

The Corinthian wrote: »

This might be changing, ever since sending your kids to a gaelscoil became the in-thing, but fifteen or twenty years ago, the only really fluent Irish speakers were chucks and Catholic Talibans. No thank you.

You're ignoring the majority of Irish speakers in the Gaeltachts who wouldn't fit into either category. But then if you haven't spent much time in those far flung rural places then you wouldn't have met them.


You need to draw a distinction between those born into the language and those who took it upon themselves to become fluent due to their political ideology.

Permabear

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nesf

donegalfella wrote: »

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How much of a background in Irish literature have you that you fell able to make such a claim? I ask simply because having done it for the Leaving wouldn't give a person any more perspective of the breadth and depth of literature in the language as would doing English for the Leaving.

Permabear

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nesf

donegalfella wrote: »

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Ah but Modernist Literature isn't the half of it and you know that.

Permabear

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Daroxtar

i'll probably get slaughtered for saying this but a great reason (IMO) for learning irish would be so we irish could speak about non irish people privately in the same way as they do about us. and dont say they dont, having sat in plenty of building site canteens over the last decade i can tell you they do and that we are the butt of the abuse. this is not paranoia, just observation.
its also a good reason to learn polish, russian and philipino.
i distinctly remember going onto a new site in the docklands area about 3 years ago and a black safety officer from south africa giving a safety induction to myself,4 poles and their translator. midway through the induction he stopped, asked me if i spoke polish, i didnt, and then proceeded to speak fluent polish to the 5 guys before telling them in very clear english that if he ever heard them refer to him using the terms they had been using that he would have them removed from site and the gards called. being multi lingual worked for him. and the horror on the faces of the other 5 was beyond words when they realised they were caught out.

P. Breathnach

The Corinthian wrote: »

... I can say I was already over thirty before I met anyone who was both genuinely fluent in Irish and not in one of the aforementioned categories. ... it should not have escaped your notice that fluency in Irish did up until a few years ago attract a certain type of nutjob.

I suspect that you did not get out much before the age of thirty. I have been fairly fluent in Irish (as a second language) since childhood, and the same applies to many of many of my friends and acquaintances. I don't think I'm a nutjob of certain or uncertain type, nor do I think that many in my circle are.

P. Breathnach

donegalfella wrote: »

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It's a fairly common phenomenon that great literature is "distinctly parochial", and it is not necessarily a bad thing -- as Kavanagh says, Gods make their own importance. Joyce himself was parochial, intentionally so. And to point out that there is no Irish-language Proust or Rimbaud is pretty well meaningless: they came from a different cultural milieu. There is no English-language Proust or Rimbaud either.

Permabear

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T runner

The Corinthian wrote: »

I'm afraid I've never met your parents, so what you say may well be the case, but I can say I was already over thirty before I met anyone who was both genuinely fluent in Irish and not in one of the aforementioned categories.

Did you by an chance go to a gaeltacht in this time? If you had done so you would see that they are just ordinary people who speak a different language to you.

My post was not meant to offend your family, but unless you are on serious drugs, it should not have escaped your notice that fluency in Irish did up until a few years ago attract a certain type of nutjob.

What rae you talking about?People were "attracted" to being fluent in Irish because their parents were fluent in Irish.
And whats this: if you dont see it my way you must be on drugs. A liottle self righteous no?

BTW, I note that you cited your parents as being in neither category and you as not being in only one. Am I correct then in assuming that you are in fact in the other, given this omission?

No, am I rigfht to assume you are anal for even asking that?

Well, not really. If you want to define a language like that, then you would need to admit that Latin, Aramaic and even ancient Egyptian are alive and well. Hell, there are plenty of Klingon speakers out there!

None of those languages are by definition alive. They are not spoken as a living working language.

I agree, but you can hardly deny that it is on life support. No one needs to throw it on a bonfire, all we need do is pull the plug.

It's inclusion as an official EU language benefited no one other than a few Gaelgores who were able to secure translation jobs and contracts.

Thats crap and again insulting to Irish speakers. Its included to reflect the fact that its a spoken european language.

Unless that changes, the Irish language will die. Not on a bonfire, but by increments, as the life support tubes and wires are disconnected: Budgets will be cut, language requirements will be dropped and financial incentives reallocated.

The Irish language is still alive inspite of poor alocation of Finances.

but I also think that unless the majority of Galegores take their collective heads our of their arses and take note of this, it will happen

Again you are insulting to Irish speakers. You seemed to ahve learned a hatred for Irish somewhere.

I've merely stated two basic realities—first, that nearly 120 years after the official "language revival" movement began in this country, only 3 percent of the population speaks Irish in any part of their daily community or family life.

That is incorrect. The amount of children attending Irish schools is the highest in a hundred years.

Second, the de facto native language and first language of this country is English, and to pretend otherwise is to deny evident reality.

English is not the native language of Ireland. How many words and phrases from that language were created as the results of Irish experience or Irish ideas. Compare that with Irish. You will understand a lot more about Irish people by learning Irish than by learning English.

You dispute that until comparatively recently, it was considered obligatory for any educated person to be versed in Latin and Greek? I don't think so. As recently as 1965, someone could not go to Cambridge or Oxford without an O-level in Latin.

Thats a falsehood. Dont misrepresent me. I stated the reason they learned those languages was because until recently it was necessary for their studies of Mathematics, Science etc. I disputed your ignorant condescending reasoning that they learned them solely to belong to some intelligensia.

I'm a pragmatist. As far as I'm concerned, the "native tongue" of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Ireland is English. It is the first language of the vast majority of people who live in those Anglophone nations;

But Ireland isnt an Anglophone nation.

it is the language of business, government, the media, and general societal conversation; and it is the language that I would expect to use when I am in those places. You can make whatever points you want about the historical importance of Cherokee, Irish, or the many indigenous Australian languages—but they are not the "native tongues" of the vast majority of people who live there.

Neither was Finnish in Finland but it is now to the benefit of all in Finland. A successful revival of Irish has to be to the benefit of ireland as the Finnish example proves.

But we could do with fewer self-styled "Gaelgoirs" accusing people of speaking in a "foreign tongue" when they are using the first language of their own country.

That is your own fabrication and typical of a prejdicial statement made by some to try and oppress a language and a culture.

No, it isn't. The 1841 census showed that slightly less than half of the population of Ireland spoke Irish. By 1861, the percentage had dropped to a quarter. It has continued to decline steadily since then, and is now estimated by the most optimistic and generous of statisticians at 3 percent.

But you said it was gone in the 18th century!!!!!
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Irish has devolved to its current position because it is foisted upon a reluctant public by a state that wants to take us all back to some prelapsarian linguistic golden age. We should be educating our children in modern European languages, not Irish.

But we are educating our children in modern European languages.
Do you want to have your children copy English ideas all the time? Or develop new ideas in their own language.
You quoted the demise of Irish from 1841-61. This was this caused by Irish speakers being alienated and economically deprived.

I am not trying to "destroy" Irish any more than I want to "destroy" ancient Greek or Latin.

They are not spoken by people in everyday life.

You're free to keep your Irish literature (not that much of it is any good, though; all of Ireland's best writers have written in English—and French, in the case of Samuel Beckett).

How would you know, have you read any?

You are free to huddle together with your Gaelgoir friends and converse all you like.

A typical cowardly despising comment of the anal conservative who despises art, language and culture taht is not his own.

P. Breathnach

T runner wrote: »

English is not the native language of Ireland. How many words and phrases from that language were created as the results of Irish experience or Irish ideas. Compare that with Irish. You will understand a lot more about Irish people by learning Irish than by learning English.

You have opened quite a can of worms here. A land does not have a native language; people have. For the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland, their native language is English -- a particular version of English sometimes referred to as Hiberno-English. You can indeed understand Irish people better if you understand the nature of Hiberno-English, and if you appreciate how it has been shaped by the Irish language (and, to a lesser extent, by other languages, including the Scandinavian heritage the Vikings left us).

But Ireland isnt an Anglophone nation.

It is, to a greater extent than, for example, the USA.

You quoted the demise of Irish from 1841-61. This was this caused by Irish speakers being alienated and economically deprived.

There is truth in this, but the conversion to speaking English had a great deal of voluntarism about it: it was seen as economically useful. As emigration became an important feature of life for the poor, the acquisition of English became more important. By the end of the nineteenth century one could find large numbers of native speakers of Irish who had learned English in school and who were literate in English but not in Irish.

nesf

T runner wrote: »

English is not the native language of Ireland.

Irish may be the language native to Ireland but that does not mean it is the native language of Ireland, which is to say the native language of the people. No more than any of the Native American languages are the native language of US etc.

Permabear

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The Raven.

donegalfella wrote: »

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Now, now, Donegal! I can’t let this one go. I’m a composer and painter, and I was born and bred in Ireland. Are you saying that we Irish artists are inferior to those of other nations :rolleyes:??

I have just found the time to read this thread from the beginning, and I note that the cultural aspect of the Irish language is being much maligned and trivialised. All languages have an essence that reaches beyond the immediate functionality of commonplace communication. The inherent aesthetic qualities of the Irish language could not be fully appreciated by a non-Irish speaker, especially through translation into a different language. It is not much use to me as a painter, but as a composer, I find it particularly rich and sensitive in my lyrics. I use various languages, and they all work in different ways.

What does it matter whether or not we refer to either English or Irish as our ‘native tongue’? We have two beautiful languages, apart from any others, which we are free to learn. Why not enjoy both?

It is difficult to decide whether Irish should be compulsory in schools in Ireland. I hated it when it was forced on me as a child. If I was given the choice, I don’t think I would have learned it, but now I’m very glad I did. I availed of the 10% extra marks for doing other subjects through Irish in the Leaving Cert, but it caused problems in other subjects, especially geography!

Given the rebellious nature and stubborn resistance of the Irish race, I would suggest that the only way to revive the Irish language is to ban it :eek:!!

Kevo

yeah it's rediculous. It would be so easy to teach a second language to children if we got rid of teaching the, near dead, language of Irish and taught Spanish or French to our children from a young age instead.

I'm hoping that Fine Gael will get in on the next election and will make Irish optional for the leaving cert. It's the first step in making it fully optional. I really think it's time that we stopped focing our children to learn a useless language and instead taught them one which could actually benefit them.

LordSutch

T runner wrote: »

But Ireland isnt an Anglophone nation.

This says everything about your mindset and your parochial arguments!

If you really believe that Ireland isnt a Anglophone nation then you still have some growing up to do, (and I dont mean that in a nasty way), but the older you get the more you will come to understand just how much Ireland is part of the Anglosphere )

My main contribution is Post 76.

T runner

P. Breathnach wrote: »

You have opened quite a can of worms here. A land does not have a native language; people have. For the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland, their native language is English -- a particular version of English sometimes referred to as Hiberno-English. You can indeed understand Irish people better if you understand the nature of Hiberno-English, and if you appreciate how it has been shaped by the Irish language (and, to a lesser extent, by other languages, including the Scandinavian heritage the Vikings left us).

Yes but to understand Hiberno-English you need to understand Irish.
Hiberno-English is a kind of English translation of Irish. Unfortunately like our placenames it is a poorer substitution than the original.

There is truth in this, but the conversion to speaking English had a great deal of voluntarism about it: it was seen as economically useful. As emigration became an important feature of life for the poor, the acquisition of English became more important. By the end of the nineteenth century one could find large numbers of native speakers of Irish who had learned English in school and who were literate in English but not in Irish.

The vast majority of people who emigrated and died in the famine were native Irish speakers. In Ireland around the famine the facts were if your children spoke Irish they were likely to die of starvation. Irish was not acceptable for any form of employment outside farm labouring.
Is it really volunteering when you have absolutely no choice?

donegalfella wrote: »

No, it is very correct. See this official government statement on the Irish language from 2006: "Irish is the main community and household language of 3% of the country’s population."

You misleadingly said it was not spoken in any way on a daily basis by more than 3% of the Irish people. A lot of my extended family would speak English more but would speak Irish daily also when dealing with other Irish speakers.
By your definition there may be upwards on 10% who speak it in some form regularly even though its not their everyday language as they may live outside the gaeltacht.

So all the ideas that have ever come out of the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or South Africa have been "English ideas"? I don't think so.

None of these countries are bordering the UK. It is too easy for a country of our size right next to England to copy their ideas and stagnate.
That is what drove the "pragmatic" Finns to revive their own language.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I also don't think that the Gaeltacht has a reputation as a fertile hotbed of original new thinking.

TG4 is probably the most creative station on Irish TV. They cant really copy English ideas you see and any they do have to be translated through a different prism allowing a different perspective is a help to radical and lateral thinking.

I have the utmost admiration for art and culture from other nations—to the point where I believe that the artistic and cultural achievements of many other nations far supersedes those of this small island. That's more than you'd get a typical cultural nationalist "Gaelgoir" to concede

Im not suprised to see your Inferiority complex extend to Arts and culture.
Your obvious condescention towards the Irish language and the men, women and children who speak it are the ugly remnants of an culturally inferiority bred in by a colonial culture. Your denigration of Irish Arts and culture, smacks of an inferiority in your blinkered vision rather than in any widespread Irish inferiority in the real world.

asdasd

OK, Here's one for you Cliste, why is the Welsh Language doing so well?

Two reasons:

1) There were greater concentrations of native speakers there anyway.
2) It is not historically forced on people.

2) is important. We need to remove compulsary Irish, this means that people who cant speak it cant give the I was "bullied" in school argument. Let the sleveens be sleveen, and join the ranks of deracinated Americanized Dublin apartment dwellers ignorant of history of their own people ( well, stay, not join). So when their Polish friends ask them what exactly Teach Tabhairne means they can say " I could have learned the native language of this country but I learned French so badly I can't order a menu, and I have no clue".

Removing the compulsory element will make it cool(er) with the kids.

The question is about Identity. Why hold onto Irish being as it is : useless? For the same reason as all and any beleaguered tribes hold onto any language: scots gaelic, basque, welsh, cherookee etc. None will fully die while their descendents live on, despite the desire of sleveens for the simpler linguistical purity of the superior imperial tongues.

Permabear

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T runner

Camelot wrote: »

This says everything about your mindset and your parochial arguments!

If you really believe that Ireland isnt a Anglophone nation then you still have some growing up to do, (and I dont mean that in a nasty way), but the older you get the more you will come to understand just how much Ireland is part of the Anglosphere )

I misunderstood the meaning of the word anglophone. Misunderstanding a word doesnt make me parochial, need growing up etc. does it? Anybody can misunderstand the meaning of one word, even yourself?

Your arguments are interesting. The Welsh value their language more because it is part of their culture which is not an English culture.
Their cultural situation in the Anglo-dominated UK requires that they fight for it or lose it.

They see the value of having their own language and they see the value of English also. This is similar to the situation in Belfast where there is a lot of Irish spoken.

Unfortunately, after independence people in the 26 counties lost sight of the real need for Irish.
The huge advantages to having two languages enjoyed by Finland have been lost to us thus far.


From asd...

1) There were greater concentrations of native speakers there anyway.
2) It is not historically forced on people.

3) it helps keep their Welsh identity in an English dominated UK.

Permabear

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ChocolateSauce

Compare that with Irish. You will understand a lot more about Irish people by learning Irish than by learning English.

How on earth can you understand more about a people if you speak a language they don't?