Making the future of Irish multi-lingual.

The Corinthian

dlofnep wrote: »

I'm well within my rights to add my two cents to the end of a debate, especially when I'm not responding to anyone in particular. Don't dictate to me what thread I can and cannot post in. I'll post in whatever thread I see fit, especially when I feel I have something valid to add to it. Got that champ?

Wah... Wah... my rights... Wah... Wah...

Of course you're well within your rights to add your two cents, it's simply that most would have at least bothered to even read the last two or three pages to see what was currently being discussed, rather that drag the discussion off, and even raising points that had been dealt with several pages ago - as you have in your last post. It's simple etiquette, and when people tend to breach that on the net they tend to get flamed.

And I, just like P. Breathnach, are just as entitled to our opinions of your opinions too. You should remember that, the next time you feel the need to whine about your rights, or for that matter, contribute your opinion without really making an effort to listen to anyone else's.

Permabear

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asdasd

No liberal would ever think of making any particular language "mandatory for everybody."

English is mandatory. Lot's of things can be mandatory with invoking the spectre of the evil "far right" - science is, and should be.

Permabear

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asdasd

Many foreign nationals in this country speak little or no English, and no authority is forcing them to learn it.

I think we are talking about schooling here. Do keep up.

Permabear

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T runner

The Corinthian wrote: »

What you have written is bordering on delusional.

Ireland relies upon trade with (and tourism from) other nations, so you don't need to "work in these countries" to find languages such as French and German useful.

The best way to understand place names is to look it up in a book, as a translation alone will not explain why a place is called something.

Would you need a book to understand the meaning of NewCastle, or Newport? or Portsmouth?

All of which is before you have to really ask yourself why you would go to the trouble of learning a language just so you can then understand place names?

It is one of the reasons why preserving Irish is of value.

donegalfella wrote: »

Preserving languages is one thing. Insisting that the state should have the power to decide which language is taught, spoken, translated, printed, and broadcast on our airwaves—all at the public's expense—is another.

I beg your pardon? They are state stations! If you are suggesting we privatise our stations then taht is a seperate argument. The two languages mainly broadcast on our airwaves are the two languages most popularly spoken by the citizens of Ireland.

Donehalfella: We don't need two official languages in this country. If we decide that we do, it only makes sense to recognize English as the country's first language and instate Polish as a second.

We do as it helps us avoid stupidly dumping a whole language because mannabe elitists with an inferiority complex believe English is better and mistakenly conclude that destroying Irish should be the natural outcome of thie opinion.

English and Irish are the two most common languages spoken by the citizens of Ireland.




I am encouraging multilingualism. I'm saying that we should make Irish one educational option among many, stop pumping state money into its advancement, and let the Irish people voluntarily choose which languages they and their children wish to learn and use. Why not adopt that multilingual approach?

Is it because voluntary choice won't be enough for the "Gaelgoir," who wishes to use the power of the state to shove "his" language compulsorily down everyone else's throat?

If you have an issue with how the state spends its money then bring it up with your local Government party TD. Dont blame Irish speakers for this though.

The Irish name for our capital is "Baile Átha Cliath," which means "Town of the Ford of the Hurdles." I'm not any more the wiser, honestly.

Thats because its a translation and you arent familiar with different types of Fords.

The name Dublin is an anglecised deprecation of Dubh linn, meaning black pool. A question for a young Irish speaker might be why is Dublin called Black pool and where is this black pool? A young Irish person with no Irish will miss these educational oppurtunities.

Slightly off topic, but it is interesting also that the Vikings name Dyflin is also a deprecation indicating possibly that a large proportion of the population were Irish.

I am a natural-born citizen of Ireland, a citizen of the European Union (by virtue of the Maastrict Treaty), and a citizen of the United States (by virtue of naturalization). Who are you to tell me where the limit of my country or countries lie? Who are you to dictate what my relationship to Chaucer, Proust, Dante, Whitman, Cervantes, or Yeats should be?

Dont know what you mean there to be honest but your irrational caning of the Irish language and irish arts hints at an inferiority complex on your part.
This ridiculous psychosis among many Irish people about all things English especially among people with a unionist political agenda who are in fact the gombeen men they seek to ridicule. Two sides of the same coin. No true "liberal" would restrict him/herself with this type of backward thinking.

Imagine claiming that Irish speakers and people who dont want to destroy Irish must be supporters of the IRA?

Imagine using the word "Irish" to describe something as being stupid?
What a backward way to approach a problem. These people tell us we (including their own children) are stupid by virtue of our nationality. This unfortunaely renders the particular issue in question unsolvable (unless we move or change nationalities). They tell us we are backward and yet they use a derogatory word from the liberal and open minded lads of Victorian public school England to define their own people as stupid. What a crowd of hopeless losers. By their own definition calling a problem "irish" is "a bit irish".

Lets stop associating language speakers with political ideologies and lets stop being stupid in our appraisal of whether or not a language deserves to be kept.

donegalfella wrote: »

No, it isn't. Many foreign nationals in this country speak little or no English, and no authority is forcing them to learn it.

Nor is there any authority forcing them to speak Irish. As national languages both are mandatory in schools.

The Corinthian

T runner wrote: »

Would you need a book to understand the meaning of NewCastle, or Newport? or Portsmouth?

Yes. New castle, is meaningless. It just means a "new castle" - whoopee fücking do! It does not explain that it was named after a castle that was built there in 1080 to replace the one that was destroyed in a rebellion.

It is one of the reasons why preserving Irish is of value.

Kind of scraping the barrel for reasons, TBH.

dlofnep

The Corinthian wrote: »

Wah... Wah... my rights... Wah... Wah...

I stopped reading after the first wah.. If you don't mind, I'd rather not converse with you from here on in. If somebody not having time to read 12 pages annoys you that much, then I doubt I could have any sort of production or positive conversation with you.

donegalfella wrote: »

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English is mandatory.

No, I think we're talking about something far beyond schooling—pay attention!

No we're not. We're talking about a mandatory curriculum. English is mandatory. Irish is mandatory. And now since your original argument has fallen flat on it's back, you're now backpeddling.

Tell me exactly how a language becomes mandatory outside of education? People running around hitting people with sticks if they don't use a language? Prison perhaps? Oh that's right.. Absolutely not. We were talking about Irish being a mandatory language in school.

As a previous chap said - Do keep up.

The Corinthian

dlofnep wrote: »

I stopped reading after the first wah.. If you don't mind, I'd rather not converse with you from here on in. If somebody not having time to read 12 pages annoys you that much, then I doubt I could have any sort of production or positive conversation with you.

So you responded to me just to say that you're not going to respond to me...

Heh, you gotta love the earnestness of youth.

P. Breathnach

The Corinthian wrote: »

So you responded to me just to say that you're not going to respond to me...

Heh, you gotta love the earnestness of youth.

I'm just posting to say that I didn't read the post to which I am responding.

Permabear

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dlofnep

Any chance we can get back on topic? Thanks.

Permabear

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dlofnep

I wasn't referring to your post. I was referring to the other posters who have consistently tried to take the thread off topic after my original post. I was the one who originally tried to take it off-topic, remember that. I'd just like to get the thread back on track instead of piddling about with red herrings.

Well said. As I've said before, if Irish cannot thrive after being propped up by the state for the better part of a century, then let us be realistic about its future.

I would blame this soley on the process of education, where as I've already stated - not enough focus is placed on conversational Irish. Time is irrelevant if the method is systematically flawed from the beginning.

The Corinthian

dlofnep wrote: »

I wasn't referring to your post. I was referring to the other posters who have consistently tried to take the thread off topic after my original post. I was the one who originally tried to take it off-topic, remember that. I'd just like to get the thread back on track instead of piddling about with red herrings.

And here was I thinking that we had gone back to the topic and that it was your need to get the last word in (but not replying, mind you, not at all.) that had derailed it again. Go figure.

dlofnep

Would you get over yourself and just drop it. Either debate the topic at hand, or find another thread to take off topic. I was responding to a comment made. Not once have I attempted to take this thread off topic - I am responding to those who are - IE: you, donegal and p.b.

Secondly, if you looked at that same post - I was attempted to get the topic back on topic by responding to a post that is in relation to the said topic, but yet again - you attempt to take it off course. Can't we just debate about the Irish language?

Thank you.

The Corinthian

This boy is a serious glutton for punishment.

GuanYin

Guys, stay on topic and stop the trash talk please.

ChocolateSauce

English is mandatory in schools, but this is justified because English is actually the language spoken by the crushingly huge majority of the population.

Now, this might be because I'm an Irish-hating, south-Dublin unionist west brit prod, but I can safely and without exaggeration say I have never heard Irish spoken by anyone outside an academic environment, including during my time in the Gaeltacht or the weeks I spend in the midlands.

Our great national poet W.B Yeats once told the Senate that he thought it was intellectually dishonest to pay Irish lip service and pretend we all speak it when in fact none of us do. It should be taken off life support and left to itself.

O'Morris

Not being able to hold a conversation as gaeilge after spending almost ten years learning it in school is a sign of average intelligence. Even if a man has no interest in Irish he would still have made an effort to get a good result in the subject in the leaving cert. The really intelligent people in my class in secondary school all did honours level Irish for the leaving cert. That included people who didn't have no gra for the teanga.

P. Breathnach

GuanYin wrote: »

Guys, stay on topic and stop the trash talk please.

Most of the on-topic stuff is pretty rubbishy, too. People are divided into two camps and there seems no reasonable possibility that anybody will make any concession to anybody else. It's a pin-your-colours-to-the-mast event, not a debate or a discussion.

The Corinthian

O'Morris wrote: »

Not being able to hold a conversation as gaeilge after spending almost ten years learning it in school is a sign of average intelligence.

That must make Ireland a nation of retards.

Even if a man has no interest in Irish he would still have made an effort to get a good result in the subject in the leaving cert.

Now you're confusing intellect with effort.

The really intelligent people in my class in secondary school all did honours level Irish for the leaving cert. That included people who didn't have no gra for the teanga.

Depends on your age. In my mother's generation, you had to pass it or you failed your LC. My generation, you still needed it to get into an NUI college. Nowadays I think even this requirement has been dropped.

The nature of the LC and CAO, while not bad in general, has it's flaws. There are a few requirements for certain courses (honours maths for Engineering, for example), but for the most part it is simply a case of maximising points. That's why all those Rugby playing boys in Gonzaga and Blackrock used to do Home Economics, or why combinations such as maths/physics/applied maths are so popular.

As many people tended to do seven subjects in my day, but you could only get points for the top six (AFAIR), so it was not uncommon to concentrate on six of the seven of them and scrape a pass in the last, of which Irish was often the one singled out.

None of which is a terribly good indicator of intellect, but then again academics are not really meant to be a good indicator of intellect - just ask Einstein.

T runner

The Corinthian wrote: »

Yes. New castle, is meaningless. It just means a "new castle" - whoopee fücking do! It does not explain that it was named after a castle that was built there in 1080 to replace the one that was destroyed in a rebellion.

(Youre quite vulgar arent you) No but it might make the question be asked.

Kind of scraping the barrel for reasons, TBH.

Not really, placenames are of historical and contemporary importance. As is literature, poem, music, dialect hell everthing that makes up a language.

It just makes the point that the loss of the gaelic language is the loss of a language relevant to Ireland and not useless and irrelevant as posted on this thread.

O'Morris

The Corinthian wrote:

That must make Ireland a nation of retards.

We do have one of the lowest average IQ scores in Europe. Instead of blaming the education system maybe we should be blaming ourselves and focusing on our own inadequacies. Maybe we just don't have the intelligence to be bilingual.

The Corinthian wrote:

Now you're confusing intellect with effort.

An unintelligent man has to put more effort into learning things than an intelligent man has.

The Corinthian wrote:

None of which is a terribly good indicator of intellect

I think it is a good indicator of intelligence. If a man has been exposed to a language for almost a decade and still can't hold a conversation in that language then I think it's fair to conclude that that man is not the brightest of sparks. Regardless of how much effort he put into learning it he should still have more than a cupla focail.

The Corinthian

T runner wrote: »

No but it might make the question be asked.

No need for the vulgarity. Not really, placenames are of historical and contemporary importance. As is literature, poem, music, dialect hell everthing that makes up a language.

It just makes the point that the loss of the gaelic language is the loss of a language relevant to Ireland and not useless and irrelevant as posted on this thread.

You've just presented the arguments for the preservation of an academic language such as Latin or classical Greek, not a modern spoken language.

T runner

donegalfella wrote: »

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You hear Polish being spoken by Irish Citizens do you?

I have no problems with people speaking Irish, Polish, Lithuanian, or Swahili, for that matter—so long as my tax money isn't going to support their linguistic preferences.

As a national language that is second only to English in the amount of people who speak it and as an indiginous language surely it should not by in the category of "Polish, Lithuanian, or Swahili" as you imply. Your deprecation of Irish adds fuel to a suspicion of a national inferiority complex on your part.

As a national language it is entitled to state funding, especially if it means giving much needed valuable employment in these areas.

Since when did young people become so interested in toponymy?

Since they started asking questions. Unforunately they wont get answers to these questions if the indiginous language that the places are called in, has been destroyed.

But I'm not going to pretend that Ireland has produced a distinguished pantheon of artists, composers, architects, and intellectuals—because it simply isn't true.

You certainly didnt pretend that. You tried to compare Irelands artistic output with those of imperial powers like Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Britain to prove that we it was inferior. Hardly a rational comparison.

I don't know what delusion you're labouring under here. Admiring the work of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, or Donne amounts to a "ridiculous psychosis"?!

Implying that people who support the Irish language are supporters of the IRA is the product such a psychosis.

Please calm down and spare us these incomprehensible rants.

"A bit Irish" was it perhaps? Perhaps thats a phrase you like to use?

Well said. As I've said before, if Irish cannot thrive after being propped up by the state for the better part of a century, then let us be realistic about its future.

Has anyone accepted on this thread that the state has supported Irish in an intelligent way? The governments poor handling of the Irish language is not reason tp destry it.

You don't see any contradiction between those two sentences?

But youve already answered this yourself. You said English "wasnt mandatory" for immigrants while accepting it was mandatory in schools. Exactly the same for Irish.

T runner

The Corinthian wrote: »

You've just presented the arguments for the preservation of an academic language such as Latin or classical Greek, not a modern spoken language.

I think I made the argument for both. You in your vulgar way intimated that the meanings of placenames are unimportant which is obviously false.

The Corinthian

O'Morris wrote: »

We do have one of the lowest average IQ scores in Europe. Instead of blaming the education system maybe we should be blaming ourselves and focusing on our own inadequacies. Maybe we just don't have the intelligence to be bilingual.

In which case I vote to keep the one that is the global lingua franca.

An unintelligent man has to put more effort into learning things than an intelligent man has.

That still does not make them the same thing.

I think it is a good indicator of intelligence. If a man has been exposed to a language for almost a decade and still can't hold a conversation in that language then I think it's fair to conclude that that man is not the brightest of sparks. Regardless of how much effort he put into learning it he should still have more than a cupla focail.

I think you need to read up a bit more on intelligence.

Academic scores are attributable to numerous factors, of which I.Q. is only one. Quality of education is highly influential - otherwise no one would be clambering to get into certain schools over others - as is aptitude and ability to focus or accept deferred gratification. Indeed, the last two have repeatedly been put forward as the two most important qualities to have.

And given that after ten years of education, the Irish educational system consistently produces people who have little more than cupla focail (less so a decade later as they never use the language), yet somehow manage to do excel in other subjects that they will have done for even less time, would tend to invalidate your theory and point more to some deficiency in how the language is taught or promoted.

Still, I do enjoy hearing your more off the wall theories, from time to time, O'Morris.

The Corinthian

T runner wrote: »

I think I made the argument for both. You in your vulgar way intimated that the meanings of placenames are unimportant which is obviously false.

I think you'll find that I questioned the need for an entire nation to learn an entire language just so that we can do a literal translation of a place name. I will put this down to it being one of your misunderstandings.

Are you going to say 'vulgar' again, btw? You might try 'boorish' next time for variety.

Anglophone yesterday and today boorish. Education is never a waste.