Is Irish a dead language?

cyclopath2001

Trenchman wrote: »

Newspapers: Foinse and Gaelscéal. You're spot on, Foinse did fail a few years back.It's now a free supplement in the Indo each Wednesday and it's thriving since it's relaunch.

Foinse can hardly be described as thriving if it is so unpopular that nobody will pay for it and it has have to be given away with an English language, right wing publication that struggles to achieve journalistic mediocrity. As for GaelSceal, that seems to be surviving on the government money originally set aside for the failed Foinse? these are hardly demonstrative of an energetic, productive Irish language movement, rather it's a sad display of cultural welfare.

Trenchman wrote: »

Your TG4 comment is also correct.They show a lot of English content to drive advertising

Which shows what a poor business case Irish is, being so unattractive to advertisers.

We're discussing the lifeblood of Irish language culture, and the examples you have given show it surviving on transfusions of money from English speaking culture.

The Irish language seems to be so feeble that it does not have the vital signs of self sustaining media.

Grudaire

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

We're discussing the lifeblood of Irish language culture, and the examples you have given show it surviving on transfusions of money from English speaking culture.

The Irish language seems to be so feeble that it does not have the vital signs of self sustaining media.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the pulse of the language - you may be looking in the wrong places after all!

Look at what the Irish Speaking community has managed to do without any state funding - A useful wikipedia project. translations for several computing programs (Microsoft also provides some products as Gaeilge) including Firefox, Linux (yup an entire operating system as Gaeilge!) etc etc. The Ceol CD's are of high enough quality to raise money for Charity.

Anyway - more to the point I'm amazed that you both have the patience to keep this argument going - neither of you are budging, and it's turned into an impressively long thread. Don't you guys have anything better to be doing? :pac:

cyclopath2001

Cliste wrote: »

translations for several computing programs (Microsoft also provides some products as Gaeilge) including Firefox,

Have you sales numbers for the Irish language Microsoft products?

Cliste wrote: »

Linux (yup an entire operating system as Gaeilge!)

Linux was not written in Irish nor by Irish speakers. simply, a file containing text labels, messages an prompts was translated. How many people use this version?

Cliste wrote: »

The Ceol CD's are of high enough quality to raise money for Charity.

Once a charity is involved, many people will buy anything. the Cd itself was supported by many English speakers. Have you sales numbers and duration of the sales? Was it just A seasonal success, or is it still selling?

Cliste wrote: »

Anyway - more to the point I'm amazed that you both have the patience to keep this argument

I am quite sure that Irish language enthusiasts would prefer if their exaggerated claims were not subject to scrutiny.

Trenchman

Cyclopath,
What do you want from us?!
If we did provide sales figures, what difference would it make? I couldn't care less that there is an operating system completely in Irish. I am just happy that people make the effort to promote the language. At no stage have I criticized those that have no grá for the language nor have I overstated the importance of the language for a lot of people in the country. The plain and simple fact of it is - a lot of Irish people just don't care about Irish either way. And as I've previously said, that is completely fine. But if people are willing to use Irish in the media or create Irish products, people like me will want to engage with those efforts.
You're well entitled to your opinion and I commend you for at least engaging in debate on this, but just because the language is irrelevant for 95% of the population doesn't mean you deprive the 5% from enjoying a language they love.

Lord TSC

I'm going to say I agree with Trenchman here Cyclopath.

You have my backing on the optional/compuslory aspect of the subject in school. You have my backing on the biasness of some of the polls and surveys put forward. And you have my backing on how some parts of the promotion of the language are a waste of money (ie the government documents having to be in both languages where there is no one able to speak irish that can't speak English).

However as far as the rest goes, if people want to learn Irish, speak Irish and deal with Irish, then that's up to them and they should not be tormented for that. If people feel the language is important, no matter how valid or invalid their reasonings, then they should not be attacked for wanting to partake in it.

I still stand by my view that if people do not want to learn Irish or if they feel another subject is more important, they should have the choice, but so too should people have the choice to proceed as they want with the language.

The language isn't dead. It is a minority language but that does not mean it's dead nor is it dying. It strikes me the main problem with this debate stems from the fact that neither side wants the comprimise and let people place their own priority on language, culture, etc. And sadly, I don't think this topic is ever going to change that fact. Still, the least we can do is respect each others differing opinions.

dubhthach

As someone who did a bit of translation of GNOME into Irish back in the early 2000's (when I was in college), I can definitely say that it's not a simple file with strings. There are 10's of thousands of strings to be translated across multiple programs/libraries. If you were to pay a company to do translation it would cost an awful lot, instead you got volunteers offering their free time to do unpaid work.

Full translations are currently available for Openoffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, KDE (desktop environment in Linux) alot of the GNU toolchain. All of these were provided by volunteers without costing the taxpayer any money.

You also be surprised at some of the free software that has been developed in the linguistics space by Irish speakers.

An Gramadóir -- Grammer correction program, analyses text input to make sure it's grammatically correct. It started out with support purely for Irish it now supports Afrikaans, Akan, Cornish , Esperanto, French, Hiligaynon, Icelandic, Igbo, Languedocien, Scottish Gaelic , Tagalog, Walloon, and Welsh

Crubadan -- builds corpus of online texts in minority languages, basically crawls the internet gathering all online texts in selected minority languages. Very important especially for creation of dictionaries as well as collection of dialectial words etc. -- it has built Corpuses for 487 languages

accentuate.us -- provides plugin for web-browser allowing input of special characters on any computer without requiring special characters, for irish speakers this would included áéíóú ċḋḟġṁṗṡṫ ⁊ ɼ ſ for african languages like Lingala ( 2million native speakers, 20million second language speakers) this would include characters such as: ɠ ɣ ɦ ɟ ɔ -- supports 115 languages. It basically adds back in the diacritics (accents) which without makes the text basically meaningless. For example if writing in vietnamese on an Irish keyboard it will autocorrect: "Moi nguoi deu co quyen tu do ngon luan va bay to quan diem,” -> "Mọi người đều có quyền tự do ngôn luận và bầy tỏ quan điểm”

Those three are free software, the writer doesn't make a dime from them. They started out based around the Irish language let now they are used with multiple languages across all continents (some of the african languages supported have 10-20million speakers and no proper computer support for input etc from commercial companies)

cyclopath2001

The work of the volunteers is admirable. but we're still waiting for the most important facts - how many people have bought the Irish language version of Office, how many use Irish language versions of Gnome, Firefox and Linux? Statistics like these would help us know how many people use Irish as an integral part of their daily lives and would promote the use of facts in this discussion.

Trenchman

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

The work of the volunteers is admirable. but we're still waiting for the most important facts - how many people have bought the Irish language version of Office, how many use Irish language versions of Gnome, Firefox and Linux? Statistics like these would help us know how many people use Irish as an integral part of their daily lives and would promote the use of facts in this discussion.

Facepalm
This guy is a bigger buzzkill than Buzz Killington!
As we've said, we don't have sales figures. As we've said, the sales figures don't matter. Do you genuinely believe that however many people have bought Linux or Office as Gaeilge is a good barometer of where the Irish language is at? Are these really the 'most important facts'? Of course not.
I don't know what you want us to say here. A good few posters here on boards love the language. I don't see why we should be asked for irrelevant sales figures or readership numbers. I don't care how many people read Foinse or Gaelscéal. I just want to have the option of reading them each week.

kaji

I just stumbled across this thread and read this page. I'm a native Irish speaker and I couldn't care less if other people hate Irish. It's so funny seeing people write that 'billions' have been spent on keeping the language alive. Well I've yet to see any of those €s!! My friends from college are always giving out about Irish in front of me, saying its dead etc, but they can't rise me. I don't give a **** about what they think about it, and I know that annoys them. Its the same as this forum, I think people just need something to give out about. Also, with respect to the Govt wasting money supporting the language- the Gaeltachts probably bring in more revenue than they get back in the form of grants, iniatives due to all the revenue they receive from tourism- tourists coming to see some culture. Who wants to go to some town in Ireland where the people are disgusted by the fact that they can be compared to British people, but might as well be since they have been so anglicised and don't even know it.

cyclopath2001

Trenchman wrote: »

A good few posters here on boards love the language. I don't see why we should be asked for irrelevant sales figures or readership numbers.

err...to backup their arguments?

The thread is about the vitality of Irish, agreeing a way of accurately measuring the languages's health would a good way of reaching the truth. Sales and usage figures for Irish language products would be a good indicator. Why be so evasive? If you're right, these numbers will vindicate your opinion.

Trenchman wrote: »

I don't care how many people read Foinse or Gaelscéal.
I just want to have the option of reading them each week.

At whose expense?

dubhthach

I don't believe Microsoft sell Office in Irish. In general with Windows XP there was a downloadable locale that was about 1GB in size if memory serves me right. With Windows 7 Irish language support is built in. When you install I believe you get the option to select Irish as your language.

Regarding how many downloads/ machines use a specific language, well you'd have to ask Microsoft about that. They don't provide any statistics in general on most of their stuff as they regard it as confidential. In general though I would assume they could easily gather figures from people connecting to Windows Update. For example if your browser provides a language string. So for example someone using an irish browser will show up with string "ga-ie". If you've ever used Google Analytics on a website you run ye can look at browser languages. (from memory at last company I worked at we did have hits from browsers that were in irish as well as in welsh!)

The same goes for Linux install. If you download Ubuntu/Redhat etc the initial screen asks you in english what language you wish to use (they don't provide disks that have this question localised). Likewise if you install it in English you can switch language through the localisation tab. However none of them collect any statistical usage regarding what users are running on their machines.

I would think if we asked someone in Mozilla we'd probably get details on data for downloads of localised version or of language packs. I know one of the tools I use alot is: Litreoir Gaelspell do Mhozilla.
It currently has been downloaded over 91,000 times, does an average of 67 daily downloads:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/statistics/addon/3090

dubhthach

Doing some googling it would seem that Ubuntu users have a choice to participate in a statistical gathering. They have to turn it on though. Currently about 1/7 of all Ubuntu users take part (1.8 million out of 12million installed machines). Of these 3,800 have the language-pack-ga package installed.

Of course couple questions would apply:

• What percentage of Irish computer users use Ubuntu -- personally I would think 1-2%
• the figure of 3,800 is out of data pulled from only 1/7th of all ubuntu users, how many of the remaining 6/7 have Irish language locale installed
• in total only 36% of Ubuntu is fully translated, how many people are defaulting to English for consistency who would otherwise use Irish in their day to day life

To put the last point into context. My OH is filipina. There are over 90million plus speakers of Filipino languages (over 120 languages) however very few people use Microsoft Windows in Filipino (official language based on Tagalog) which has 25 million first speakers and close on 90million speakers in total. They all use english language versions of software.

In general outside of about 6-7 languages most languages aren't that well represented in the world of computer software. English been the dominant language of computer science.

Trenchman

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

err...to backup their arguments?

The thread is about the vitality of Irish, agreeing a way of accurately measuring the languages's health would a good way of reaching the truth. Sales and usage figures for Irish language products would be a good indicator. Why be so evasive? If you're right, these numbers will vindicate your opinion.

At whose expense?

The question posed at the start of the thread is 'Is Irish a dead language?'
I'm merely saying that it is not dead. There are thousands of people who speak the language. This is the only fact that matters. I'm not being evasive with you wrt sales figures and circulation.I just think it's irrelevant in the context of this argument.
I like Irish.Others like Irish. Not a lot, but enough to prove that Irish is not a dead language. That's what this whole thread is about. You are completely missing my point, or else you're a massive WUM.

cyclopath2001

Trenchman wrote: »

The question posed at the start of the thread is 'Is Irish a dead language?'
I'm merely saying that it is not dead. There are thousands of people who speak the language. This is the only fact that matters.

That being the simplistic answer, you'd wonder what was the motivation of the OP in putting the question?

Milk & Honey

dubhthach wrote: »

How many troops can Custume barracks accommodate? I see from a quick Google that there is 430 men based there at the moment (300 from 6th battalion and 130 from 4th Calvary), the city tribune says there's 234 troops based in Renmore.

Your research skills need to be updated.
In Athlone, besides the 6 inf bn and the 4 cav sqn there is a military police unit, a transport unit, an ordnance unit, a hospital unit, a coms unit , 4 bde hq, logs bn hq, an engineer unit, and a few reserve cadres as well.

dubhthach

Milk & Honey wrote: »

Your research skills need to be updated.
In Athlone, besides the 6 inf bn and the 4 cav sqn there is a military police unit, a transport unit, an ordnance unit, a hospital unit, a coms unit , 4 bde hq, logs bn hq, an engineer unit, and a few reserve cadres as well.

thence me saying a quick google :rolleyes:

Milk & Honey

dubhthach wrote: »

thence me saying a quick google :rolleyes:

Obviously a quick google didn't produce reliable information. As for there being 234 troops based in Renmore, a full battalion strength is about 500. The 234 includes troops other than those of the 1 inf bn. This means that there isn't even a half strength battalion in Galway. One company of the 6th inf Bn is based in Cavan meaning the 6 inf Bn has about double the numbers of the 1 Inf Bn.
The whole thing is a military and linguistic farce.

Oasis_Dublin

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

That's a hysterical straw man argument.

After 80 years, you'd think the Irish enthusiasts would relate better to their fellow citizens and allow them to choose what language they and their children can speak. instead, we just get more of the same but with a 'reformed curriculum'.

I'm merely using the rhetoric of the "we hate everything Irish" brigade. It is perfectly reasonable to do so.

There is no point discussing the language with people who don't understand its significance.

cyclopath2001

Oasis_Dublin wrote: »

I'm merely using the rhetoric of the "we hate everything Irish" brigade. It is perfectly reasonable to do so.

A brigade of straw men? When I hear the word 'brigade' used like this, it's usually when the likes of Clarkson or Myers are lining up a fictitious target for the amusement of their readers.

Oasis_Dublin wrote: »

There is no point discussing the language with people who don't understand its significance.

So, instead of using reason, just impose the language on the 'unbelievers'?

Has it occurred to you that the significance of Irish is not infinite and might have limits?

Lord TSC

It's not that there's a "We hate everything Irish" brigade. And it's not that we cannot recognise the significance of Irish culture. The problem lies in the difference of opinion as to the importance of said culture and language.

Again I say, I recognise there are a lot of people out there to whom the Irish language is very important, but so too must people realise there is a large body of people to whom it is of very little importance. Personally, I do understand the significance of the language when it comes to studying Irish history and the struggle involved with gaining the freedom to celebrate that culture. However, I just question the importance of the culture in this day and age...

There is a big difference there. And I resent the "we hate everything Irish" jibe since it's lazy debating; rather than deal with logical points being brought up, you try and make it personal, trying to dismiss people's points as horrible hate-filled symantics, rather than actually continuing to use logic and facts. I realise both sides have laid out the facts and both sides have disputed them but that's no reason to start generalising about people's beliefs...

theredletter

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

The work of the volunteers is admirable. but we're still waiting for the most important facts - how many people have bought the Irish language version of Office, how many use Irish language versions of Gnome, Firefox and Linux? Statistics like these would help us know how many people use Irish as an integral part of their daily lives and would promote the use of facts in this discussion.

Do it yourself comes to mind. Those of us who support the placing of the Irish language in the State have given you a lot of information - we've given you more information than you've given us. Give me numbers. I want to know how many people in the Republic of Ireland feel about the following:

1) Irish as a core subject to Leaving Cert
2) The industrial development of Gaeltacht regions
3) Grants offered to Irish-speaking households
4) State-support of the Irish language

We can give you census records (although they're not exactly the most accurate, as we all agree), linguistic studies and comparative socio-linguistic research to prove that the State has managed to keep the language dying out. The merit of that language as a cultural signifier is definitely of major importance to the country, this argument would accept that those who ticked 'Yes' in the question 'Can you speak the Irish language?' agree that it is important. The anti-Irish language side claim that people ticked yes purely for patriotic reasons proving that the language is STILL important to the Republic. If and when this changed, the State will reconsider.

A lot of work has been put in by Irish language activists, native speakers, politicians, linguists and enthusiasts to get the language to the place it is today. It is your human right to not agree with how money is being spent and it is your human right to speak your opinions. It is also your right to work as hard as those on the pro-Irish language side to de-link state funding with language planning. If you do as much work as those on the pro-side you will see results, believe me. However, demanding statistical information on boards isn't going to get you far. I don't have to teach you how to be an activist, but more can be done than what you're doing. If a movement were to come to the fore, they'd be met with bitter opposition and will likely be a small operation and would probably fail. But then again, that's just speculation. Give it a go!

cyclopath2001

theredletter wrote: »

Do it yourself comes to mind.....I want to know how many people in the Republic of Ireland feel about the following:

When you know the answers, then maybe you can justify your policies.

theredletter wrote: »

. The anti-Irish language side claim that...

This is an outrageous slur and has no place in a reasoned discussion.

theredletter wrote: »

A lot of work has been put in by Irish language activists, native speakers, politicians, linguists and enthusiasts to get the language to the place it is today.

You forgot to mention the taxpayers whose hard earned money paid for this? Nor do you justify the huge expense, paid out over 80 years, of achieving such a minuscule amount of Irish speaking. Do you think we got value for money?

It's clear that there is a small and enthusiastic element of the population who enjoy speaking Irish. Can we not find a way of assisting them at less expense and waste?

Abandoning the 'Main Aim' would be a good start.

theredletter

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

When you know the answers, then maybe you can justify your policies.

This is an outrageous slur and has no place in a reasoned discussion.

You forgot to mention the taxpayers whose hard earned money paid for this? Nor do you justify the huge expense, paid out over 80 years, of achieving such a minuscule amount of Irish speaking. Do you think we got value for money?

It's clear that there is a small and enthusiastic element of the population who enjoy speaking Irish. Can we not find a way of assisting them at less expense and waste?

Abandoning the 'Main Aim' would be a good start.

First of all, how much exactly was spent on the Irish language? Last year? Since the foundation of the state? I want figures, not sweeping generalisations. Also, please compare those figures to other services. How much did the state spend on the arts? Isn't theatre subsidised heavily by the state too? And would more or less people be interested in theatre and go to the theatre regularly?

And you obviously have no idea what a slur is. I was not in any way being insulting. Through this entire thread the main argument of the Irish-language side has been 'There may be good census figures for the Irish language, but no one speaks it!'. How is this a slur? I was merely commenting on this argument.

If a properly organised movement comes to the fore that wants to logically discuss the Irish language I hope they don't make the mistake in taking on people who know nothing about socio-linguistics or education.

RandomName2

theredletter wrote: »

We can give you census records (although they're not exactly the most accurate, as we all agree), linguistic studies and comparative socio-linguistic research to prove that the State has managed to keep the language dying out.

I think you meant to say the opposite there.

Freudian slip FTW!

theredletter

RandomName2 wrote: »

I think you meant to say the opposite there.

Freudian slip FTW!

No I didn't and no it wasn't.

RandomName2

theredletter wrote: »

No I didn't and no it wasn't.

Okay. In that case I agree with you that the state has facilitated the decline of the language. All official records show that between independence and c.1990 there was a year-on-year decline in Irish speakers despite a very rigorous and (hitherto) draconian policy of attempting to promote the language.

The fact that the language is not in currently in such terminal decline (as in- that's its stabalised at 2-4% speakers ) might possibly be due to the government stepping back somewhat from over-interfering.

RandomName2

Just as an aside - I notice that so many of the Seanad contestants are mentioning the Irish language in their manifestos.

Most interesting perhaps is Paul Lynham's - he argues for the subject to be split into two (oral... a compulsory subject; and literature/historical..... an optional subject)

I would just have two quibbles with the above suggestion. First, the oral should be optional and the literature/historical should be compulsory (if anything is going to be compulsory the area that relates to a shared cultural inheritance should obviously get precedence; not merely attempting to increase fluency) and the other thing is that it would allow students to obtain up to c.250 points just by learning Irish (as opposed to a maximum of 100 points for learning english).

At the moment you can only obtain up to 150 points for learning Irish.

theredletter

RandomName2 wrote: »

At the moment you can only obtain up to 150 points for learning Irish.

I must be misunderstanding you... Irish Higher Level can get you 100 points if you achieve an A1 standard, at Ordinary you can get 60. It's the same as every other subject.

dubhthach

RandomName2 wrote: »

Okay. In that case I agree with you that the state has facilitated the decline of the language. All official records show that between independence and c.1990 there was a year-on-year decline in Irish speakers despite a very rigorous and (hitherto) draconian policy of attempting to promote the language.

The fact that the language is not in currently in such terminal decline (as in- that's its stabalised at 2-4% speakers ) might possibly be due to the government stepping back somewhat from over-interfering.

Well that and population of west of Ireland stopped plummeting. The population of Donegal decline by about 36% between 1911 and 1966, Galway by 19%, Mayo by 39%, Kerry by 30%. In comparison the population of the state (26 counties) fell by only 8% during this period. Each of those 4 counties have very large Gaeltacht's which all suffered the highest population declines of any districts within their constituent counties.

RandomName2

theredletter wrote: »

I must be misunderstanding you... Irish Higher Level can get you 100 points if you achieve an A1 standard, at Ordinary you can get 60. It's the same as every other subject.

Up to 100 points for higher level Irish and up to (what, another 10 points?) per subject done through Irish (excluding Irish of course)