Is Irish a dead language?

dubhthach

RandomName2 wrote: »

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

Personally I don't think there should be any "bonus points" for doing another subject through Irish. However there's only about 10k students who do their secondary education through Irish (Gaeltacht secondaries and Gaelcholáiste), on a 5 year cycle that's 2,000 per year though you are probably gonna be 1600-2000 (no doubt alot of non gaeltacht schools include transition year). Even then I wouldn't be surprised that only half of this number would do all of their exams in Irish. Mainly as:

1. Figure includes schools in areas that shouldn't really be in Gaeltacht anymore, often these schools are severely under-resourced
2. Lack of resources regarding study material in Irish for leaving subjects
3. Lack of irish language grinds / revise weeks in grindschools etc

In general the whole "bonus points" is a fig-leaf in my opinion. What would really create benefit would be an increase in number of Gaelcholáiste places. Currently over 60% of children coming out of 6th class (Rang a Sé) in Gaelscoilleanna cannot attend a Gaelcholáiste as there is no space for them.

--Edit--
Regarding the 150, I'm assuming to get a full 50 bonus points you would need to get 5 A1's. In which case if you get an A1 in Irish you've already hit the 600 point max and that's without even adding in the additional 50 bonus.

theredletter

RandomName2 wrote: »

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

/facepalm

Wrong. The bonus mark for using Irish only applies to those who achieve lower marks. It's a graident. This means that those who get above a C1, for example, would be automatically disqualified from getting further marks. I got 535 in my LC and I looked at the papers. I did everything but History through Irish and I wasn't awarded bonus marks for Irish as my grades were too high to begin with.

Read this before you make completely incorrect assumptions:

http://www.examinations.ie/index.php?l=en&mc=ca&sc=im

RandomName2

theredletter wrote: »

/facepalm

Wrong. The bonus mark for using Irish only applies to those who achieve lower marks. It's a graident. This means that those who get above a C1, for example, would be automatically disqualified from getting further marks. I got 535 in my LC and I looked at the papers. I did everything but History through Irish and I wasn't awarded bonus marks for Irish as my grades were too high to begin with.

Read this before you make completely incorrect assumptions:

http://www.examinations.ie/index.php?l=en&mc=ca&sc=im

Okay - didn't know it was a compensation measure.

I mean it makes little sense to offer bonus points to people for doing a subject in a specific language. To reward them for doing it in a specific language only if they do badly? ROFLCOPTER!

So that's a maximum of say - 115 points for doing Irish (a very unlikely outcome).

No wonder the bonus doesn't make much difference.

Mark Hamill

RandomName2 wrote: »

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

Which would make the oral defacto compulsory, or do you actually expect school kids to be able to follow the literature and historical irish without being able to speak a word of the language?

RandomName2 wrote: »

(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)

"A shared cultural heritage" is something that should be entered freely or not at all, you cant force it onto kids under the assumption that they will either appreciate it or find a use for it. Not everyone cares about a shared cultural heritage, and whats more they dont have to care, its up them. Do you think french ballet dancers should embrace their cultural heritage?

RandomName2 wrote: »

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.

Why Irish, why not something useful, like maths or science?

cyclopath2001

theredletter wrote: »

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.

You want me to do research to support your position? It is for the Irish lobby to defend their policies and the huge price exacted from the Irish people by them.

theredletter wrote: »

First And you obviously have no idea what a slur is. I was not in any way being insulting.

When you say 'anti-Irish' you are casting aspersions on people who respect the language but want it supported in a fairer more cost effective way.

theredletter wrote: »

people who know nothing about socio-linguistics or education.

What about Hunan Rights or value for money are these irrelevant when it comes to achieving the Main Aim?

deise go deo

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

You want me to do research to support your position? It is for the Irish lobby to defend their policies and the huge price exacted from the Irish people by them.

From my reading of it, I think he is looking for you to do research to support your position, A clear argument that the money being spent on Irish is wasted, etc.

What about Hunan Rights or value for money are these irrelevant when it comes to achieving the Main Aim?

Human Rights? There is a right in general terms that peoples language choices be respected, but that would refer to governments not forcing speakers of minority languages to use a different language by only providing services in that other language.

Perhaps you could expand on your point about Human Rights?



The Main aim?
Who's main aim?
Are you confusing Conradh na Gaeilge with the sum total of the Irish Language movement again?

deise go deo

There is an interesting point raised about value for money.

I am sure some posters will remember the story of Clare county council spending over €30,000 translating a document.

It would seem that the newspaper that ran the story was exagerating a little, the true figure was €10,112, less than a third of what it was reported as.

The newspaper also failed to mention that the English version cost over €350,000.

Of the amount of money spent on that document, 97.3% was spent on the English version and 2.7% was spent on the Irish version.

An Coimisinéir Teanga

He noted that the full cost of translating Clare County Council’s draft development plan for the six-year period between 2011 and 2017 was €10,112 – less than one-third of the amount suggested in a media report.
However, an investigation by his office found it cost over €350,000 to prepare such a document in English. “This equates to 97.3 per cent of the budget for the English version and 2.7 per cent for the Irish version,” he said.
Very few official documents were required by law to be provided bilingually, he said. Current legislation allowed for publication electronically rather than in print form, as long as both official languages were treated equally.

It would seem claims of vast amounts of money being 'wasted' on translating documents into Irish, Like most claims made by those that wish to attack the languages position in this country, do not stand up well to scrutiny.

RandomName2

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Why Irish, why not something useful, like maths or science?

Hey man, you're preaching to the choir here!

astrofool

deise go deo wrote: »

There is an interesting point raised about value for money.

I am sure some posters will remember the story of Clare county council spending over €30,000 translating a document.

It would seem that the newspaper that ran the story was exagerating a little, the true figure was €10,112, less than a third of what it was reported as.

The newspaper also failed to mention that the English version cost over €350,000.

Of the amount of money spent on that document, 97.3% was spent on the English version and 2.7% was spent on the Irish version.

An Coimisinéir Teanga




It would seem claims of vast amounts of money being 'wasted' on translating documents into Irish, Like most claims made by those that wish to attack the languages position in this country, do not stand up well to scrutiny.

The English version had to be made, the Irish version, quite evidently, did not.

The Irish version was a complete waste of money, and this is without going into documents that aren't created in the first place due to the need for them to be needlessly translated.

deise go deo

astrofool wrote: »

The Irish version was a complete waste of money, and this is without going into documents that aren't created in the first place due to the need for them to be needlessly translated.

-Why?

-Source?

astrofool

deise go deo wrote: »

-Why?

Because no one requested the document in Irish, and those that do request it in Irish, can speak English anyway

-Source?

The indo did a piece on it, if I remember correctly, I've quoted it before as well (probably on this thread).

dubhthach

Regarding costs of education I thought I'd do some calculations based of the 2006 Current budget for Department of Education:

Primary

• Total Wages/Superannuation: €2,292 million
• Salary paid during 37 week school year: €1,630.85 million
• Percentage of school week spent teaching Irish: 3.5 hours -- 14%
• Total teacher salary paid for teaching Irish: €220.94 million

I did a calculation over 37 weeks as this is number of teaching weeks in the year (minimal of 183 days). Teachers receive full pay for the remaining 15 weeks of the year when they are on holiday. However when on holiday they aren't obviously teaching Irish (or any other subject)

This figure is purely based on the salaries paid to teachers during time they are teaching Irish. If Irish was banned tomorrow in primary school there wouldn't be any saving as the teachers would continue to be paid their full salary.

Now there are around 480,000 primary school students so going by a figure of €220.94 million then the following can be implied:

• Cost of Irish teaching salary per student: €460.29 a year
• individual cost for each student per teaching week (37) : €12.44 per week

Personally I buy the Irish times 6 days a week, this costs me €11.70, if I was given the choice between giving up the paper or having my son learn Irish in school I'd give up the paper.

It's alot harder to repeat the same for secondary mainly as in primary all teachers have to teach Irish (jack of all trades), in secondary most teachers wouldn't teach irish as teachers are hired on a per subject level (english and history, physics and chemistry etc.)

Cakes.

Secondary school teachers are also payed more the longer they have been in the job AFAIK

cyclopath2001

deise go deo wrote: »

From my reading of it, I think he is looking for you to do research to support your position, A clear argument that the money being spent on Irish is wasted, etc.

What research is needed to prove that after 80 years of subjecting every child in the country to compulsory Irish lessons for 14 years of their lives, the vast majority of the population choose to use English as their common language?

deise go deo wrote: »

Human Rights? There is a right in general terms that peoples language choices be respected, but that would refer to governments not forcing speakers of minority languages to use a different language by only providing services in that other language.

Majorities have human rights too, even if they speak English. As for Irish, it is not an infringement of the human rights of Irish speakers, if they are fluent native English speakers. You are confusing constitutional rights and human rights.

deise go deo wrote: »

The Main aim?

The main aim of the organisation of which you are an active committee member and supporter -Reinstating Irish as the Common Tongue of Ireland.

dubhthach

Cakesofrice wrote: »

Secondary school teachers are also payed more the longer they have been in the job AFAIK

Well the figures I'm using is the capital budget so it's the headline figure for all teachers no matter how they've been working. What would be more accurate is if we knew the following:

• Number of primary classes in the country -- ergo number of teachers actually in teaching posts
• Average salary of primary teachers per hour excluding principals
• Number of secondary classes in the country -- each class should map to at least one Irish teacher
• Average salary of secondary school teacher per hour -- excluding principals

Thinking of it the figure I'm doing my calculation off probably includes the following:

1. Principals
2. Teachers on sick leave/career leave

In Primary schools Irish is thought 3.5 hours a week over the course of 8 years this adds up to about 936 hours. The total average over secondary school is: 452 hours. This adds up to 1388 hours over 13 years.

To put this into context

For example, in 1977, the Ontario Ministry of Education in Canada set down three basic levels of competence which may be achieved from second language programmes (Swain, 1981: 490). The ‘basic’ level of competence is considered to be achievable in 1,200 hours, a ‘middle’ level in 2,100 hours and a ‘top’ level in 5,000 hours.
A ‘basic’ level indicates that a learner has acquired “a fundamental knowledge of the language, the ability to participate in simple conversations, the ability to read simple texts and the ability to resume the study of French in later life”. A learner who has reached the ‘middle’ level should be able “to read newspapers and books of personal interest with help from a dictionary, to understand radio and television, to participate adequately in conversation and to function reasonably well in a French-speaking community after a few months’ residence”. The ‘top’ level, should enable the learner to “continue his or her education using French as the language of instruction at the college or university level, to accept employment using French as the working language, and to participate easily in conversation”.

Students in majority of Irish schools only receive enough hours to just about get into basic level for language. As you can see above they regard this as been able to read "simple texts" etc. In comparison if you went to both an Irish medium primary/secondary school your total number of "language contact" hours is: 10,700 hours

dubhthach

In general I think the main issue we have is at secondary school. I reckon I had worse Irish leaving secondary school then I had when entering it. The question is "why is this the case?"

Going by the guidelines from Ontario I reckon part of the issue is the heavy emphasis placed on literature/writing in secondary school. It's assumed that you basically know how to speak Irish from primary school and they proceed into doing poetry/plays/books. Most students will only have had about 936hours of Irish at this stage (2/3rds of requirement for a basic level of competence). Now a "Basic Competence" should enable the learner to read simple stories etc (newspaper articles etc.) instead in Ireland you are expected to read and critique poetry/literature. It's no wonder that there is a huge switch off. If we had 80 years of teaching french or german the same way there would be the same result if you ask me.

Regarding the last 80 years of education. Most people forget that only a small minority of population entered secondary school up until 40 years ago. Up until the mid 1960's all secondary schools were fee paying. As a result the vast majority of children left school at age of 12-13. Due to this we have huge issues in general regarding literacy/education among the older generations. Mainly as they never completed their education to an adequate level. This affects all subjects not just Irish. We also have quite a low spend on education in general. On average OECD countries spend 6.2% of their GDP on education. We spend 4.6% in comparison figure is 7% in US and 12.8% in South Korea.

It also seems that the breakdown between the levels is: "For every €5 spent at primary, €7 is spent at second level and €10 at third. Half of the nation's children are being educated at primary level on less than one third of education expenditure".

Mark Hamill

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

What research is needed to prove that after 80 years of subjecting every child in the country to compulsory Irish lessons for 14 years of their lives, the vast majority of the population choose to use English as their common language?

How about the fact that TG4 only has a 3% viewership share in Ireland, with the biggest shows being sports and English language films (Westerns)?

Godge

deise go deo wrote: »

There is an interesting point raised about value for money.

I am sure some posters will remember the story of Clare county council spending over €30,000 translating a document.

It would seem that the newspaper that ran the story was exagerating a little, the true figure was €10,112, less than a third of what it was reported as.

The newspaper also failed to mention that the English version cost over €350,000.

Of the amount of money spent on that document, 97.3% was spent on the English version and 2.7% was spent on the Irish version.

An Coimisinéir Teanga




It would seem claims of vast amounts of money being 'wasted' on translating documents into Irish, Like most claims made by those that wish to attack the languages position in this country, do not stand up well to scrutiny.

Did the Irish Language Commissioner really put that into his report? Of all the twisted logic I have seen here or elsewhere to justify resources spent on the Irish language, that beats all.

OK, you need to produce a draft devlopment plan. You have council meetings, you have submissions from the public, you have a further draft, you have more council meetings etc. etc. And all of the costs of this should be allocated to the English language version only!!! Laughable. The fact that in all of that lengthy process, which for most councils, takes over 18 months and involves a lot of work, the cost of the Irish language translation was as much as 2.7% of the cost is a disgrace.

To think that a state organisation stands over this. What sort of incompetents work in the Commissioner's Office? Have they nothing better to do?

Finally, even if you are to take the Commissioner's view (I know, I know) 100% of the copies sold were the English language version so the 2.7% of the cost spent on the Irish language version was a complete waste.

dubhthach

Mark Hamill wrote: »

How about the fact that TG4 only has a 3% viewership share in Ireland, with the biggest shows being sports and English language films (Westerns)?

The sports shows are in Irish though, no subtitles for live matches etc they tend to show a huge amount of both GAA (club matches) and Rugby, helps that they were one of winning bids for Magner League tv coverage (along with BBC Alba, S4C, BBC NI and RTÉ). They also show the Tour de France and Wimbledon (exclusive coverage in Ireland) and had a fair bit of live coverage of Volvo Ocean race when it was in Galway.

In general I find the programming produced for TG4 to be alot better quality then what RTÉ produce and that's on a smaller budget.

To put it in Context RTÉ2 has about 10% of the total share of viewership (9.8%) when you remove advertising revenue in both stations the spend on programming in RTÉ2 is about 3.6 times that in TG4. Total spend on sport in RTÉ2 is about 60% of programming budget as opposed to 25% in TG4 and works out at about 15x the amount.

cyclopath2001

dubhthach wrote: »

To put it in Context RTÉ2 has about 10% of the total share of viewership (9.8%) when you remove advertising revenue in both stations the spend on programming in RTÉ2 is about 3.6 times that in TG4. Total spend on sport in RTÉ2 is about 60% of programming budget as opposed to 25% in TG4 and works out at about 15x the amount.

How much of this is the cost of broadcasting rights? I would guess that Irish language rights costs would be less than for English, given the likely smaller audience and advertising exposure.

dubhthach

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

How much of this is the cost of broadcasting rights? I would guess that Irish language rights costs would be less than for English, given the likely smaller audience and advertising exposure.

That's a good question. I wouldn't imagine though that it's due to the "language cost rights", if TG4 were to buy games from the premiership and have the commentary in Irish I don't think they'd get any discounts. Also even if the commentary was in Irish I can imagine alot people tuning in if their was big premiership teams on tv every week without requiring a Sky Sports subscription. I'm assuming majority of RTÉ2 sport budget goes on:

• Six Nations
• Heineken Cup
• Premiership Coverage
• All Ireland Hurling/Football championship
• World Cup/Olympics/European cup/ryder cup etc.
• Celebrity pundits wages
• Horse Racing

In total they spend about €55million a year on sports programming in RTÉ2.

Regarding GAA I don't think most of matches that TG4 show (Woman's football/ club matches / minors etc.) were shown on RTÉ except as highlights.

cyclopath2001

dubhthach wrote: »

That's a good question. I wouldn't imagine though that it's due to the "language cost rights",

TG4 could be profiting from the 'long tail', picking up viewers by covering a number of small niche audiences rather than going for high cost popular events. Another possibility is that they outsource and use casual contractors more than RTE.

faobhar

If all we're going to do is look at the binary oppositions in this debate (cost v. return, pro- v. anti-, statistical v. anecdotal) then we're going to get absolutely nowhere.

Something which I feel all those engaged in this current discussion (both 'pro' and 'anti', if you want to use those terms) need to acknowledge is that language is something that cannot be 'valued' or expressed in quantitative terms.

Some trends associated with the language can be evaluated, such as the obvious ones i.e. number of speakers, as well as some other socio-economic trends, i.e. income from industries which carry out a significant part of their work through the language, may be measured statistically. The vast majority of values which a people attach to a language, however, and here I think of think of how a language is related to things like national or ethnic identity; class; prestige; culture; authority etc., cannot be expressed terms of percentage figures or numerical sums. This is why, quite presumably, an overbearingly large proportion of Irish people tend to express identification with Gaeilge, despite perhaps not possessing much fluency in the tongue, when presented with vague census questions along the lines of 'Can you speak Irish?', it being the only opportunity they are afforded to articulate their views on the subject.

And yes, no or almost no speakers = a dead language, but there is nothing to indicate that Irish is near approaching that in the short term.

Focalbhach

dubhthach wrote: »

Going by the guidelines from Ontario I reckon part of the issue is the heavy emphasis placed on literature/writing in secondary school. It's assumed that you basically know how to speak Irish from primary school and they proceed into doing poetry/plays/books. Most students will only have had about 936hours of Irish at this stage (2/3rds of requirement for a basic level of competence). Now a "Basic Competence" should enable the learner to read simple stories etc (newspaper articles etc.) instead in Ireland you are expected to read and critique poetry/literature. It's no wonder that there is a huge switch off. If we had 80 years of teaching french or german the same way there would be the same result if you ask me.

This is a point I've made before, and one that I think gets near the root of the disconnect between the large number of people who say they value Irish (or variations on that theme) and the relatively small number of people who can comfortably speak Irish.

deise go deo

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

What research is needed to prove that after 80 years of subjecting every child in the country to compulsory Irish lessons for 14 years of their lives, the vast majority of the population choose to use English as their common language?

Was that what was asked?

Majorities have human rights too, even if they speak English. As for Irish, it is not an infringement of the human rights of Irish speakers, if they are fluent native English speakers. You are confusing constitutional rights and human rights.

Of course they do, but you are avoiding the question, how is that relevant to this discussion? Are you claiming that human rights have been infringed in some way?

The main aim of the organisation of which you are an active committee member and supporter -Reinstating Irish as the Common Tongue of Ireland.

I have reported you for this, stop trying to turn this into a personal discussion about me.

Godge

faobhar wrote: »

If all we're going to do is look at the binary oppositions in this debate (cost v. return, pro- v. anti-, statistical v. anecdotal) then we're going to get absolutely nowhere.

Something which I feel all those engaged in this current discussion (both 'pro' and 'anti', if you want to use those terms) need to acknowledge is that language is something that cannot be 'valued' or expressed in quantitative terms.

Some trends associated with the language can be evaluated, such as the obvious ones i.e. number of speakers, as well as some other socio-economic trends, i.e. income from industries which carry out a significant part of their work through the language, may be measured statistically. The vast majority of values which a people attach to a language, however, and here I think of think of how a language is related to things like national or ethnic identity; class; prestige; culture; authority etc., cannot be expressed terms of percentage figures or numerical sums. This is why, quite presumably, an overbearingly large proportion of Irish people tend to express identification with Gaeilge, despite perhaps not possessing much fluency in the tongue, when presented with vague census questions along the lines of 'Can you speak Irish?', it being the only opportunity they are afforded to articulate their views on the subject.

And yes, no or almost no speakers = a dead language, but there is nothing to indicate that Irish is near approaching that in the short term.

Why do both sides "need" to acknowledge that language is something that cannot be 'valued' or expressed in quantitative terms? Nobody speaks Etruscan, it is dead, it only has value to historians and linguistic students. That can be expressed in quantitative terms.

faobhar

Godge wrote: »

Why do both sides "need" to acknowledge that language is something that cannot be 'valued' or expressed in quantitative terms? Nobody speaks Etruscan, it is dead, it only has value to historians and linguistic students. That can be expressed in quantitative terms.

Because any language carries with it a whole score of intangible values & associations - languages interact directly with identity, culture and politics (things which are very difficult to assess in quantitative terms).

Sure, it's certainly easy to talk about a dead language in quantitative terms. And a dead language is a dead language, it's gone. Hence why I felt the need to point that Irish is not in immediate danger of that yet, and therefore why it's necessary to consider other factors.

Take Finland. How many people outside of Scandinavia speak Finnish? What's it worth to Finland that they would speak Finnish rather than one of the other more dominant neighbouring languages, say Swedish or German? Very little, in quantitative economic terms. Yet Finland is held up as an exemplar in terms of R&D and their education system. Clearly there is another value system at work here.

cyclopath2001

deise go deo wrote: »

Was that what was asked?

The amount of Irish fluency possessed by the average Irish person after 14 years of compulsory lessons is far less than the amount of English spoken by a Spanish student after a couple of months in one of our English schools. There is no justification for so many lessons over such a long period of time. it's simply wasteful.

deise go deo wrote: »

Are you claiming that human rights have been infringed in some way?

Don't you think that forcing someone to speak a language other than their native language is a breach of their human rights?

deise go deo wrote: »

I have reported you for this, stop trying to turn this into a personal discussion about me.

Joining an organisation whose Main Aim is the Reinstatement of Irish as the Common Tongue of Ireland is an expression by you of a personal opinion relative to that aim. You come here to express your personal opinions, so expect to have them criticised.

deise go deo

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

The amount of Irish fluency possessed by the average Irish person after 14 years of compulsory lessons is far less than the amount of English spoken by a Spanish student after a couple of months in one of our English schools. There is no justification for so many lessons over such a long period of time. it's simply wasteful.

So the main problem is the poor standard of Irish after people leave school?

Surely then the solution would be to improve how the subject is taught?

If results were poor in other subjects, would you advocate that they be abandoned in school or improved?

Don't you think that forcing someone to speak a language other than their native language is a breach of their human rights?

Forcing someone to speak a language other than their native language? You mean exactly what happens when Native Irish speakers are forced to use English when dealing with the government?

As for Compulsory language learning, to suggest that this is somehow in breach of human rights is delusional. How many countries in Europe do not have compulsory language learning as part of their education system?:rolleyes:

Joining an organisation whose Main Aim is the Reinstatement of Irish as the Common Tongue of Ireland is an expression by you of a personal opinion relative to that aim. You come here to express your personal opinions, so expect to have them criticised.

I have outlined my opinion on the matter, several times, you have consistently refused to accept what I have said.

Every time you try to misrepresent my opinions and turn this into a personalized discussion about my membership of CnaG I will report you. Stop now.

metrovelvet

Can I ask the pro Irish people something? Why do you want to force other people to learn this language who don't want to learn it?

Isnt it a bit of a vanity project at this stage where science and math and other things can be learned instead of Irish and Religion?

Maybe an afterschool program for kids is more appropriate?