Irish Course to be dropped

Making It Bad

Fad wrote: »

Are you honestly trying to tell me that the etymology of an ancient language offends you?

*shakes head*

There's no etymology to it. The word is the exact same, the translation is the exact same, the meaning is the exact same, the word "Dia" is even capitalised to show this.

partyatmygaff

Making It Bad wrote: »

There's no etymology to it. The word is the exact same, the translation is the exact same, the meaning is the exact same, the word "Dia" is even capitalised to show this.

When you're writing a conversation in english do you not capitalise it aswell?

"Hello, My name is John"
"Hello, I'm Paul"

As Gaeilge

"Dia duit, Séan is ainm dom"
"Dia is muire duit, Is mise pól"

It's literal meaning in English is "God you" which is completely non-sensical

It's a fairly trivial thing, nothing to get so worked up about.

wasssuuup

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Some people just look for reasons to get offended


That's not true to reality to be honest.

At most 3-5% would have Irish as their native language.

I think you're confusing native language with indigenous language,

Native language is (According to a few dictonaries)

• Typically known as a persons 'mother tongue'. It is often the first language an individual learns, but it may also be someones 'dominant language' if they are multilingual.
• primary or first language spoken by an individual
• the language that a person has spoken from earliest childhood

Now I'm fairly certain very few people living in Ireland today spoke Irish before English.

The truth is that the native language of Ireland is now English with an Irish minority.

Well its the language thats native to our country is what i mean.. no need to get the dictionary out. Anyway why do people always say that about Irish that we'll never speak it again and hardly anyone speaks it these days. How many people in Ireland speak fluent french/german everyday but you need that to go to uni still. And how many people need to know the processes of erosion and deposition to survive?! We'll never use Irish poetry or stories again probably but we wont use English poems or Shakespeare again either. Make studying the English language optional too so!! p.s i dont even like irish that much at school but I'd rather be studyin somethin IRISH than @#$@#$@ ENGLISH!!

Lawliet

wasssuuup wrote: »

We'll never use Irish poetry or stories again probably but we wont use English poems or Shakespeare again either. Make studying the English language optional too so!! p.s i dont even like irish that much at school but I'd rather be studyin somethin IRISH than @#$@#$@ ENGLISH!!

But studying English has practical applications, seeing as how we live in an English speaking country and all. It's important that people leave secondary school with a high standard of reading and comprehension skills, not to mention spelling and grammar: you'd be amazed at the amount of the sixth years who use abbreviations in essays and don't properly capitalise. I don't even want to know how bad it would be if English wasn't mandatory.
Sure Shakespeare and poetry might seem pointless, but at least its broadening student's cultural horizons and encourages them to think about the use of language and the meaning of the piece.

Irish on the other hand seems to largely consist of a teacher giving you a page or two of notes on a poem, quickly going over what it means in English and then telling you to learn it of.

randylonghorn

partyatmygaff wrote: »

"Dia duit, Séan is ainm dom"
"Dia is muire duit, Is mise pól"

It's literal meaning in English is "God you" which is completely non-sensical

Actually, it's "God be with you".

And Making it Bad, the English word "Goodbye!" originates from "God be with ye" as well, indeed most of the "Good ______" in English originated from phrases like "God give you a good _____", so maybe we should abolish all those as well?

partyatmygaff

wasssuuup wrote: »

Well its the language thats native to our country is what i mean.. no need to get the dictionary out. Anyway why do people always say that about Irish that we'll never speak it again and hardly anyone speaks it these days. How many people in Ireland speak fluent french/german everyday but you need that to go to uni still. And how many people need to know the processes of erosion and deposition to survive?! We'll never use Irish poetry or stories again probably but we wont use English poems or Shakespeare again either. Make studying the English language optional too so!! p.s i dont even like irish that much at school but I'd rather be studyin somethin IRISH than @#$@#$@ ENGLISH!!

You would rather study Irish than "@#$@#$@" English?

Every subject in the LC can have some practical purpose and there is the chance you might use the information again. Irish no longer has any practical purpose, it's a novelty language that's taught as if it were our main language. It takes up far too much time and needs far too much work despite having no purpose anymore in modern day Ireland except for novelty. That would be ok if we were learning conversational Irish and grammar but as it stands today a huge part of the test is just memorising essays and phrases for you're oral. All that work for a language you will never ever need to use again.

English is different because it is in actual fact our main and native (Native as in it's the langage we learned first from birth) language. Studying your main language in depth is a must and the only way to do that is to study the work of those who excelled in the language like Shakespeare. That is enough purpose for me tbh.

Ask yourself this, can you really call Irish your mother tongue or native language? Did you even hear a word of Irish before primary school?

wasssuuup

The native tongue of my country!!
That is so stupid saying that the Irish language is a novelty just cos your bad at it or something, Id hate for anyone of another country to see an Irishman say his country's native language is a novelty. People can have an opinion but I guarantee if you said that anywhere public you would be laughed at. Its never gonna be dropped anyway with like 500thousand daily speakers and nearly 2 mill who can talk a bit. (wikipedia) Im finished with this btw..

wasssuuup

"despite having no purpose anymore in modern day Ireland except for novelty"
LOL
because nobody speaks Irish in Ireland?
That was meant to be my last post but I missed that bit
LOL "no use" its like you just made that up to prove your point

Evan93

I like school. I like the idea of the Irish language. I just don't like the way it is thought. The course is designed for people who like literature and are willing to write about it in irish. Sadly not many people like this. I would like to say Irish take the approach of that of French or German. Where the exam is designed to test your basic knowledge of french/german, not to ask you to regurgitate an essay on a poem. I take pride in the fact we have our own native language. The Government are supposed to promote this and by polluting the course with poetry and stories which are utter rubbish they are merely turning us (students) against the language. Irish should be non-compulsory in my opinion but that is being a bit too optimistic.

ride-the-spiral

wasssuuup wrote: »

"despite having no purpose anymore in modern day Ireland except for novelty"
LOL
because nobody speaks Irish in Ireland?
That was meant to be my last post but I missed that bit
LOL "no use" its like you just made that up to prove your point

It is a novelty language, as in people speak Irish for the sake of speaking Irish. I only hear a few people I know speak the odd word and common phrases, hardly can be considered speaking the language can it? I even go down a Gaeltacht area pretty much every year and the only time I hear people speak Irish is for the first 5 minutes of mass.

The amount of people that speak Irish because they feel it's their native tongue are few and far between, most people I know that can speak Irish consider English their primary language and Irish as a secondary to be used for novelty i.e. so other people won't understand them.

felic

Evan93 wrote: »

I like school. I like the idea of the Irish language. I just don't like the way it is thought. The course is designed for people who like literature and are willing to write about it in irish. Sadly not many people like this. I would like to say Irish take the approach of that of French or German. Where the exam is designed to test your basic knowledge of french/german, not to ask you to regurgitate an essay on a poem. I take pride in the fact we have our own native language. The Government are supposed to promote this and by polluting the course with poetry and stories which are utter rubbish they are merely turning us (students) against the language. Irish should be non-compulsory in my opinion but that is being a bit too optimistic.

Agree 100%!
The only one I remember was about some guy buying curry chips and getting shot and the closing line was him dead on the ground his blood mixing with the curry!
And we were expected to write and essay on how brilliant this story was? FFS!!!

Dont even ask me to recall a single poem. I cant remember any of em.

partyatmygaff

wasssuuup wrote: »

The native tongue of my country!!
That is so stupid saying that the Irish language is a novelty just cos your bad at it or something, Id hate for anyone of another country to see an Irishman say his country's native language is a novelty. People can have an opinion but I guarantee if you said that anywhere public you would be laughed at. Its never gonna be dropped anyway with like 500thousand daily speakers and nearly 2 mill who can talk a bit. (wikipedia) Im finished with this btw..

The irish language is a novelty, that is all it is. Does anyone use Irish for business? If I went up to anyone and began talking to them in Irish they would just call me an annoying bastard. I must have said that a few hundred times in public by now, never been laughed at oddly enough. I would seriously doubt what's said in some shoddy Wikipedia article about Irish. Whoever would write an article about Irish on wikipedia would want to exagerrate the facts to make Irish seem more popular than it really is. I would even doubt that 50,000 (Let alone 500,000) are somewhat fluent in Irish. Even at that, very few of them would use it instead of english and even fewer would consider it to be their main language.

The language is dead and the situation is getting worse and worse.

wasssuuup wrote: »

"despite having no purpose anymore in modern day Ireland except for novelty"
LOL
because nobody speaks Irish in Ireland?
That was meant to be my last post but I missed that bit
LOL "no use" its like you just made that up to prove your point

Glad you found the words "No use" funny.... Each to their own I suppose...

The tiny minority of people that speak Irish on a day-to-day basis aren't monolingual. It's pretty much guaranteed they speak English and it's guaranteed they can't use Irish outside of the Gaeltacht they're living in.

Take this for example....
Can I walk into a shop and ask for something as gaeilge?
Nope

Can I call 112 and talk to them as gaeilge?
Nope

Can I use Irish for business?
Nope


What exactly is Irish used for these days? All its used for is conversation between an ever-decreasing number of gaeiligeors (Spelling?).

wasssuuup

Evan93 wrote: »

I like school. I like the idea of the Irish language. I just don't like the way it is thought. The course is designed for people who like literature and are willing to write about it in irish. Sadly not many people like this. I would like to say Irish take the approach of that of French or German. Where the exam is designed to test your basic knowledge of french/german, not to ask you to regurgitate an essay on a poem. I take pride in the fact we have our own native language. The Government are supposed to promote this and by polluting the course with poetry and stories which are utter rubbish they are merely turning us (students) against the language. Irish should be non-compulsory in my opinion but that is being a bit too optimistic.

I havent read any more responses after this one I couldnt be bothered!!! I like this persons opinion, it makes sense whether ya agree with it or not. Yeah they shud make it more like the french i suppose

christmasinjuly

its a hard language but I love irish I love it ...tiocaid ar la!!! mess too far but I love ireland

Making It Bad

partyatmygaff wrote: »

When you're writing a conversation in english do you not capitalise it aswell?

"Hello, My name is John"
"Hello, I'm Paul"

As Gaeilge

"Dia duit, Séan is ainm dom"
"Dia is muire duit, Is mise pól"

It's literal meaning in English is "God you" which is completely non-sensical

It's a fairly trivial thing, nothing to get so worked up about.

Your "muire" should be capitalized, it means "God and Mary be with you", case enough? I don't think it's trivial at all.

randylonghorn wrote: »

Actually, it's "God be with you".

And Making it Bad, the English word "Goodbye!" originates from "God be with ye" as well, indeed most of the "Good ______" in English originated from phrases like "God give you a good _____", so maybe we should abolish all those as well?

No, because those words originate from religious greetings, their meaning and thus the way they are spelt and pronounced have changed with times. The Irish words don't originate from anything as they haven't changed over the course of time, they have remained static and mean the same things which they always have, it goes to show what a dead, archaic language it is.

felic

lol.
And theres no curse words either.
Dirtiest it gets is Gneas!

randylonghorn

Making It Bad wrote: »

...they have remained static and mean the same things which they always have, it goes to show what a dead, archaic language it is.

Or that the Irish remained religious longer than the English did?

If it bothers you that much, just do what people who live in the Gaeltacht and / or use Irish as a living language do: say "Hi!" and "Cheers" and whatever comes to their head ...

You see, there's a difference between Irish as it is taught on the curriculum and Irish as she iz spoken in real life by real people ... the living language which is spoken day-to-day constantly borrows and adds to itself, just as English and every other language does. The language as it is taught in schools however tends to remain frozen and stagnant to a much greater extent.

felic wrote: »

lol.
And theres no curse words either.
Dirtiest it gets is Gneas!

0_o

I'm assuming you're being ironic!!

Richard Cranium

felic wrote: »

lol.
And theres no curse words either.
Dirtiest it gets is Gneas!

Gura tochais ar do thóin agus easpa ionga!:cool:

I think taking a knife to Paper Two and chopping out huge chunks of it (in particular Stair na Gaeilge and at least half of the poetry and prose), and making Irish optional for the Leaving Cert could be a good thing. I can't see it happening any time soon though.

There was an strategic development plan meeting yoke to plot the next 20 years of development of the language only a couple of weeks ago. I'd say if they were going to do anything as drastic as make it optional in schools it would have been mentioned then. As far as I know it wasn't though. Shame really.

When I was in 5th year my Irish teacher said he could teach us how to speak and enjoy the language or he could prepare us for the Leaving Cert exam so that we got good marks, and he was absolutely right. It's incredibly hard to do both at the same time (however being a bit of a linguistic nerd, I grew to really enjoy the language anyway). Of course, we worked at the exam, and not the language. I'd say I'm the only one from my school who would still speak Irish voluntarily.

WHirl7

I just thought of an alternative to that idea that was discussed a few pages back about splitting Irish into two subjects for the Leaving Cert.

How about making it similar to the Music course, where you have to cover each aspect of the course to a certain extent, but you choose one section as your 'elective' and you do that section in more detail and it is worth twice the marks.

The way it works in music is you do Listening, Composing and Practical, each worth 25%. Then you choose one to make up the other 25% and you have to cover that in more detail, e.g. for practical you have to play twice as many pieces.

So for Irish, the written section could be made up of 33% composing and language etc, 33% poetry and prose and the other 33% is up to the student.

Making It Bad

randylonghorn wrote: »

If it bothers you that much, just do what people who live in the Gaeltacht and / or use Irish as a living language do: say "Hi!" and "Cheers" and whatever comes to their head ...

Yeah, I can see myself walking into the Irish oral "Hi!", they'll love that I'm sure! :rolleyes:

briankirby

I think irish should be compulsory but the course is in need of reform.Get rid of all that stair and poems which are all just rote learning and focus on tape work,oral work and essays.Many students HATE irish because thay spend so long on those god awful pros.They can barely string a couple of irish sentences together at the end of 6th year,but can recite crap like "ogham" and "cuirteanna filiochta".

Lynkx

briankirby wrote: »

I think irish should be compulsory but the course is in need of reform.Get rid of all that stair and poems which are all just rote learning and focus on tape work,oral work and essays.Many students HATE irish because thay spend so long on those god awful pros.They can barely string a couple of irish sentences together at the end of 6th year,but can recite crap like "ogham" and "cuirteanna filiochta".

Agreed indeed.

I honestly don't see the point in studying poems and prose such as "Gealt?", "Cearbhach Mac Caba" and all those. It doesn't educate me. It doesn't help me in life. I can understand the point in studying the other mandatory subjects.

Maths - Improve logic
English - Enhance my ability to express my self through words. Allow me to analyse literature with an educated and valid point of view
Irish (Paper 1) - Enhance my skills at Irish

The rest of my subjects are my choice and I choose to study them in detail.

I just don't see the point in Paper 2's questions

(I am of course talking about the ordinary course)

randylonghorn

Making It Bad wrote: »

Yeah, I can see myself walking into the Irish oral "Hi!", they'll love that I'm sure! :rolleyes:

I wasn't talking about the oral as such.

I guess for that 30 seconds at the start of the oral, you are going to have to decide whether your principles or your points are more important.

Everyone faces such dilemmas as they get older, though I'll admit this particular manifestation is new to me.