Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Is Irish a dead language?
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
Ok I'm joining this discussion a little late having only just come from a thread over on Infrastructure about Dublin Bus and it's new Real Time Information Displays.
I was in utter astonishment to see the thread derailed by one particular poster who's "outrage" that these signs did not display the Irish names for places led him to not only lodge a complaint (which is his right in fairness), but then come onto the thread in question gloating and goading other posters into various off-topic rants about the viability of the Irish language (which I'll get to in a minute don't worry!). At first I thought it must just be trolling but nope - he was deadly serious!
What's worse is that this complaint was apparently upheld, resulting in tax payer's money being spent to rewrite and test the software to accomodate this.
(Now here's where my rant starts, so get comfy...)
I can't BELIEVE that in the midst of the worst financial crisis to hit this country EVER, we are STILL wasting money to accomodate the "special interest" groups like this.
Irish (as a practical everyday language) is DEAD. It's of no practical use outside this State and very limited use inside it. I've no objection to people speaking and educating their children in/through Irish at all, but this should be done by those individuals themselves at home, or through privately funded tuition, Irish language schools etc
Speaking of children, in our increasingly multi-cultural country, why should Irish still be forced upon every child that enters the education system (unless they apply for, and are given, a special exemption by the Department).
Bearing in mind my point about its usefulness anyway, when I was a kid in the 80's we moved to Holland for a few years and I (naturally enough) attended various Dutch schools. EVERY kid in my class spoke at least Dutch and English and often another language (or 2) as well!
That doesn't mean that all these individual minority languages (from the perspective of the class as a whole) were accomodated - rather it was left to their parents to teach them (y'know, parents actually RAISING their kids and taking an interest in their education - as opposed to the "can't someone else do it?" mentallity that too many people have nowadays).
The Dutch system didn't include "religion" as a subject either for much the same reasons - but that's another thread
Those kids and the ones that followed them are the ones that are now being hired by the multinationals we're so dependent on in this country while our own unemployed get left on the dole queues and THEIR kids waste time on a language that will be of no use to 99% of them!
A much better idea would be to replace this time in classes (at Primary level) with say French or German - even Chinese would be of more value considering their rising economy!
This should (as it is now) be continued into Secondary level with extra languages brought on stream.. ideally every Irish child should finish Secondary school with English and fluency in at least 1 other primary European language.
I work in IT so let's use that as an example - have a look at most of the jobs that are on offer (what little there are). The majority of them will require fluency in another language - be it German, French, Dutch, Polish.. whatever!
Now they may not be GREAT jobs but what good is an Irish kid saying "well er I can speak English, a bit of German and I know how to curse in Irish" to one of these potential employers? Want to know why "dey tuk our jobs" :rolleyes: - because we CAN'T do them ourselves!
Irish has had it's day and the country has moved on - just as we are no longer ruled by the Church and the abuse that came with it for many people, and many other ideas that held this country back for so long.
It's time to accept it and if you wish to keep the language alive, by all means speak it at home, with friends, and teach it to your kids but stop trying to drag the country as a whole back to accomodate your unrealistic vision of a native-Irish speaking Ireland, because it just won't happen and if we are to survive as a country we need to start facing up to some harsh realities anyway.0 -
Advertisement
-
Kaiser2000 wrote: »Ok I'm joining this discussion a little late having only just come from a thread over on Infrastructure about Dublin Bus and it's new Real Time Information Displays.
I was in utter astonishment to see the thread derailed by one particular poster who's "outrage" that these signs did not display the Irish names for places led him to not only lodge a complaint (which is his right in fairness), but then come onto the thread in question gloating and goading other posters into various off-topic rants about the viability of the Irish language (which I'll get to in a minute don't worry!). At first I thought it must just be trolling but nope - he was deadly serious!
What's worse is that this complaint was apparently upheld, resulting in tax payer's money being spent to rewrite and test the software to accomodate this.
(Now here's where my rant starts, so get comfy...)
I can't BELIEVE that in the midst of the worst financial crisis to hit this country EVER, we are STILL wasting money to accomodate the "special interest" groups like this.
Irish (as a practical everyday language) is DEAD. It's of no practical use outside this State and very limited use inside it. I've no objection to people speaking and educating their children in/through Irish at all, but this should be done by those individuals themselves at home, or through privately funded tuition, Irish language schools etc
Speaking of children, in our increasingly multi-cultural country, why should Irish still be forced upon every child that enters the education system (unless they apply for, and are given, a special exemption by the Department).
Bearing in mind my point about its usefulness anyway, when I was a kid in the 80's we moved to Holland for a few years and I (naturally enough) attended various Dutch schools. EVERY kid in my class spoke at least Dutch and English and often another language (or 2) as well!
That doesn't mean that all these individual minority languages (from the perspective of the class as a whole) were accomodated - rather it was left to their parents to teach them (y'know, parents actually RAISING their kids and taking an interest in their education - as opposed to the "can't someone else do it?" mentallity that too many people have nowadays).
The Dutch system didn't include "religion" as a subject either for much the same reasons - but that's another thread
Those kids and the ones that followed them are the ones that are now being hired by the multinationals we're so dependent on in this country while our own unemployed get left on the dole queues and THEIR kids waste time on a language that will be of no use to 99% of them!
A much better idea would be to replace this time in classes (at Primary level) with say French or German - even Chinese would be of more value considering their rising economy!
This should (as it is now) be continued into Secondary level with extra languages brought on stream.. ideally every Irish child should finish Secondary school with English and fluency in at least 1 other primary European language.
I work in IT so let's use that as an example - have a look at most of the jobs that are on offer (what little there are). The majority of them will require fluency in another language - be it German, French, Dutch, Polish.. whatever!
Now they may not be GREAT jobs but what good is an Irish kid saying "well er I can speak English, a bit of German and I know how to curse in Irish" to one of these potential employers? Want to know why "dey tuk our jobs" :rolleyes: - because we CAN'T do them ourselves!
Irish has had it's day and the country has moved on - just as we are no longer ruled by the Church and the abuse that came with it for many people, and many other ideas that held this country back for so long.
It's time to accept it and if you wish to keep the language alive, by all means speak it at home, with friends, and teach it to your kids but stop trying to drag the country as a whole back to accomodate your unrealistic vision of a native-Irish speaking Ireland, because it just won't happen and if we are to survive as a country we need to start facing up to some harsh realities anyway.
Kaiser the particular serious of posts on that thread occured overnight when they were noticed the next morning a mod warning was put on the thread. The specific poster didn't make any other posts on that thread or in the infrastructure form.
Here's the official render that's on Youtube:
Regarding Education Ireland has one of the lowest spends on education per GDP in the OECD, I would be surprised if they spend 50% more on their primary education in the Netherlands then we. In comparison we spend twice as much on third level education then we do on primary which we can all agree is the building block of everyone education.
If Irish was removed from the syllabus and replaced without any changes in current education spend you can pretty much guarantee that most Irish people will continue to come out of education as English mono-linguals.
As for IT jobs after working 7 years in the IT business (having done a 4 year degree in it) the main issue in Ireland is not lack of language skills it's lack of Maths and Science skills. As well as lack of people doing Computer Science in university. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of jobs specifically in localisation and in Helpdesk/1st line support that require a foreign language (Outsourcing, call center jobs). However these are not the majority of IT jobs. Anything regarding ops/nets & comms/software engineering /programming doesn't necessary require a foreign language. Personally I've never been in a position where I couldn't apply for a job because even after 5 years of French I couldn't speak the language.
In general the issue in the IT industry is that people stop applying for IT courses in University, for several years the Bsc. IT in Galway only had 15 applicants per year even though there was 100 places in the course. (points dropped from 440 to 215 as a result) This became a major issue regarding people graduating from 2005 to 2008. As a result companies cannot find skilled staff with 2-5 years experience. Why was there such a drop off in people doing IT? Simple people applied to do courses that were connected with property development (architecture, quantity surveying, law etc.)
The company I work for has huge problems finding people with relevant experience mainly as the pool of skilled developers is so small in Ireland due to people deciding there wasn't "fast money" in IT in the early 2000's (after Y2k).0 -
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
Kaiser2000 wrote: »What's worse is that this complaint was apparently upheld, resulting in tax payer's money being spent to rewrite and test the software to accomodate this.
Very simple really, the NTA Broke the Law, a complaint was made and the NTA will have to fik their error.
Hopefully they will be more mindfull of legislation in future and the same mistake will not be repeated.Irish (as a practical everyday language) is DEAD. It's of no practical use outside this State and very limited use inside it. I've no objection to people speaking and educating their children in/through Irish at all, but this should be done by those individuals themselves at home, or through privately funded tuition, Irish language schools etc
Irish is not dead in any sense of the word.
It can as a matter of fact be used inside and outside the state.
Perhaps the same should apply to all education, Why should Tax Payers who want their kids to learn Irish in school be descriminated against?
Why whold they have to pay twice for their childs education?A much better idea would be to replace this time in classes (at Primary level) with say French or German - even Chinese would be of more value considering their rising economy!
This should (as it is now) be continued into Secondary level with extra languages brought on stream.. ideally every Irish child should finish Secondary school with English and fluency in at least 1 other primary European language.
This would almost certainly be open to a constutional challenge. I doubt very much there will ever be enough support fo anything like this being done.Irish has had it's day and the country has moved on - just as we are no longer ruled by the Church and the abuse that came with it for many people, and many other ideas that held this country back for so long.
Had its day
Irish is a growing language.It's time to accept it and if you wish to keep the language alive, by all means speak it at home, with friends, and teach it to your kids but stop trying to drag the country as a whole back to accomodate your unrealistic vision of a native-Irish speaking Ireland, because it just won't happen and if we are to survive as a country we need to start facing up to some harsh realities anyway.
Any evidence to show that Irish is holding this country back, any studies, reports, anything?
You may think it is, but can you support your opinion?
This may be of some interest to you. Contexts and Contests, The Irish Language and Ireland's Socio-Economic Development0 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O73QKzxmUWs
This discussion has been closed.
Advertisement