Is Irish a dead language?

MysticalRain

MUSSOLINI wrote: »

Not all tourists can read english. Should we have signs in every language?

No, of course not. The obvious common sense approach would be to print the road signs in English as well as Irish seeing as how English is the most common language on the planet, and most tourists are likely to have some understanding of it. The pettiness of the militant Irish crown here is astounding.

Wolfe Tone

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

A hell of a lot more speak english then irish. This is the kind of pettiness I hate about gaelgeoirs...

Would the best thing not just be to have picture signs that even the illiterate can understand?

maynooth_rules

deise go deo wrote: »

How would you have tought Irish to the students?

I know enough Irish to teach any primary school student. I did not know enough Irish to be assured of a pass in Honours Leaving Cert. If I had done Geography at pass level in the leaving, I could still have become qualified and been able to teach Geography to a primary class, but that isn't the case with irish. Stupid in this day and age

Iwasfrozen

MUSSOLINI wrote: »

Would the best thing not just be to have picture signs that even the illiterate can understand?

Seeing as one must be literate to pass one's driving theory test and thus get a licence. I wouldn't think that will be a problem.

maynooth_rules

Rebelheart wrote: »

You can easily go back and do the requisite Irish qualification at night to become a primary school teacher. It is entirely your choice not to do so. Each year you "lament" your situation, you choose not to change it. If you really wanted to become a primary teacher you would get that qualification. No excuses. No scapegoats. Take responsibility for your situation.

But, as I have said in my last message, why should doing pass Irish in my Leaving Cert bar me from becoming a primary school teacher, while doing pass English, Maths, Geography or History does not bar me. I look forward to the day that it is dropped as a compulsory subject for the leaving. This is just creating resentment in so many pupils for the language. Give the pupils the choice to do Irish, rather than continously force them to study it beyond the Junior Cert.

Iwasfrozen

peegee wrote: »

It will never die

All languages die eventually. But thank you regardless for that contribution.

Enkidu

It's very difficult to know what will happen to any language in the future. Welsh for instance has nearly died on three seperate occasions:
1. Post Roman plague + Saxon invasions.
2. Anglo-Norman Period, losing ground to both Anglo-Norman and Old English.
3. British Empire period.

Difficult to say what will happen to Irish.

P. Breathnach

maynooth_rules wrote: »

I know enough Irish to teach any primary school student. I did not know enough Irish to be assured of a pass in Honours Leaving Cert...

We have had quite a number of posts in this thread about the quality of Irish teaching, and it is considered a problem area. If your Irish is not good enough to get you through the honours level in Leaving Certificate, it is not good enough for you to be entrusted with teaching the language to children aged from four to twelve.

maynooth_rules

P. Breathnach wrote: »

We have had quite a number of posts in this thread about the quality of Irish teaching, and it is considered a problem area. If your Irish is not good enough to get you through the honours level in Leaving Certificate, it is not good enough for you to be entrusted with teaching the language to children aged from four to twelve.

But you are overlooking my point. There are primary school teachers teaching today who did, for example, ordinary level Geography. Yet they are not deemed not good enough to be entrusted with teaching that subject to children. Ditto History, English etc. Why should my inability to do honours Irish prevent me from teaching at primary level, when other peoples inability to do geography, history, english etc at honours level does not prevent them from teaching that at primary level. I havent read most of this thread so I might be mentioning an issue that has been covered all ready.

P. Breathnach

maynooth_rules wrote: »

But you are overlooking my point....

No, I am not. I am disagreeing with it.

daithicarr

maynooth_rules wrote: »

But you are overlooking my point. There are primary school teachers teaching today who did, for example, ordinary level Geography. Yet they are not deemed not good enough to be entrusted with teaching that subject to children. Ditto History, English etc. Why should my inability to do honours Irish prevent me from teaching at primary level, when other peoples inability to do geography, history, english etc at honours level does not prevent them from teaching that at primary level. I havent read most of this thread so I might be mentioning an issue that has been covered all ready.

so your making the argument that you should be allowed to be a primary school teacher even if your unqualififed for the job?

how is some one supposed to teach a language if they dont know it, the level of maths and history, geogrpahy being taught in a primary school is much lower, but it is still possible to teach basic maths. personaly id expect them to raise the standards in maths, english etc, rather than drop the ones in irish to suit the low standards in other subjects

daithicarr

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

A hell of a lot more speak english then irish. This is the kind of pettiness I hate about gaelgeoirs...

its not really pettiness, the local language is designated as irish in the gaeltacht, so there for the signs are in irish. if the language used in the community is no longer irish and they have a problem with it, they can campaign to get the area re-classified as non gaeltacht. something the goverement should be doing anyway if it is no longer a irish speaking area, instead of their wishful and deluded thinking that gaeltacht status will some how bring back the language.

if in the future chinese becomes a major world language (fairly likely) should we have signs in chinese because more of the worlds population understands that?

daithicarr

Rebelheart wrote: »

PS: In Ratoath, Co Meath at present there are more than the required number of students to justify the building of the new Gaelscoil. Yet the Department of Education denies this right to all these parents and children on funding grounds. So the kids are forced to attend the English-language school. Such situations are replicated across Ireland but nobody here would even acknowledge this reality.

its amazing to see the department still dragging their feet on opening and funding new schools. the school i went to was the first non denominational national school in my area it spent years in decrepit unsafe buildings as the department wasnt willing to fund it despite being full of students. it opened in 1989, didnt get its own premesis until 1996, and this wasnt refurbeshed to the minimum standard youd expect till 2000.
it just goes to show how seriously the goverement takes education as a whole. most the new gealscoils i have seen are in similar circumstances with poor facilitys.

Permabear

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daithicarr

donegalfella wrote: »

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makes sense, no point having teachers who dont know the subject they are supposed to be teaching, its even a bigger waste of resources if they are putting money in to something the teachers dont have the knowledge to teach. they should expect a high standard from all language teachers

Permabear

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daithicarr

so maybe they should raise the standards in those subjects too ??

or do you suggest lowering irish to the low standards required in other subjects.
its a bit like the communits making everyone equally poor, cause its easier than making everyone equally rich

deise go deo

donegalfella wrote: »

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As far as maths is concerned, the kind of maths delt with on the higher level paper will never come up in primary school.

In English they assume (reasonably enough) that any candidate will be fluent.

It has been pointed out on many occasions here and elsewhere that people can go through the whole system and after 13 years of study still not be able to string a sentance together in Irish.

So knowing this, dose it not make sence to take steps to make sure that primary school teachers will have a competent standard of Irish if they are expected to teach it?

As for haveing an oral exam. Would it make sence to have one for English?
No.
Dose it make sence to have one for Irish? Yes.

daithicarr

deise go deo wrote: »

As for haveing an oral exam. Would it make sence to have one for English?
No.
.

might do if they were taking on teachers of fergin origin ? e.g spanish, polish, latvians etc

deise go deo

daithicarr wrote: »

might do if they were taking on teachers of fergin origin ? e.g spanish, polish, latvians etc

In the case of Forrign students, Im not sure but I think they have to do a basic English test to do a course through the English language and anyway. If they can pass a course Through English Id bet they have a good enough standard of English to teach it at Primary level.

Permabear

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deise go deo

donegalfella wrote: »

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How is an oral exam going to test if they know how to use commas and semi-colons?

Have you come accross many primary school teachers who use this poor standard of English in school? I think the principle would not be doing their job if that was allowed.

Permabear

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daithicarr

as i keep saying the poblem doesnt seem to be than with the high standard of irish, but the low standard of english. however i have been to 6 different schools and never once encountered a poor standard of english

deise go deo

donegalfella wrote: »

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Would an oral exam for Fluent English speakers really be justified in terms of cost?
What would they check for, It wouldent be very hard for someone to affect a way of speaking for an Oral and then just lapse back into their normal speaking patterns afterwords.
I just dont see a one off oral exam achieving much.

Yes, I have indeed.

The question remains, then: Why should a primary teacher have to reach a higher academic standard in Irish than in English?

Well I think the main point is that as far as overall competance in a language is concerned, A person with an ordinary level English standard will be far better at speaking English than someone with an Ordinary level Irish standard will be at speaking Irish.

As far as poor English by a particular teacher is concerned, ( by which I mean I done, I seen. etc)
Then I just dont think an oral will fix the problem, You should complain to the school principle and demand that they impose better standards on their staff on a continuing basis.

Enkidu

donegalfella wrote: »

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Is it really?
Where in the world is the standard of English excellent?
I mean, I can understand that the standard might be average or maybe worse than average, but appalling? It's not like the English, Australians, Americans, e.t.c. speak using the autonomous subjunctive mood correctly, before writing sonnets on the nature of man.

You've already said that Ireland has a legacy of anti-intellectual thought, that we are terrible at mathematics, now we have terrible English. Will we next be incapable of dressing ourselves in the morning?

daithicarr

many of my freinds are english teachers who teach foergin student english, they come here because the standard of english is seen as being quite high, many of my freinds are also people who came here to learn english because they also saw the standard as being quite high. its ridiculous to assert we have a terrible standard of english

Permabear

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Iwasfrozen

daithicarr wrote: »

its not really pettiness, the local language is designated as irish in the gaeltacht, so there for the signs are in irish.

And in non-gaeltacht areas the local language is english yet that doesn't stop signs being wrote in irish aswell as english. This is the kind of pettiness I'm talking about.

daithicarr wrote: »

if in the future chinese becomes a major world language (fairly likely) should we have signs in chinese because more of the worlds population understands that?

No because, using your logic signs should only be wrote in the native language of the local populace. I assume then that you are in favour of only english language signs in non-gaeltacht areas?

deise go deo

There aren't legitimate reasons for believing these things?

If the Irish state had a legacy of respecting intellectual thought, it might not have banned books by the likes of Joyce, Beckett, Shaw, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and so on. And we might not give the cute hoor more respect than the educated person. Even today, only half of our TDs have third-level qualifications.

If our standard of English were better, we would not have John Herlihy, a vice president at Google, speaking on the radio recently about the remarkable number of spelling and grammatical errors that litter university graduates' CVs.

If our standard of mathematics were decent, we might have more than 16 percent of Leaving Cert students sitting the higher-level papers. Of course, it would help if 48 percent of our post-primary maths teachers actually had a maths teaching qualification. Alas, they don't.

Are you blameing the Irish Language for this?
Or Irish Language enthusiast?

Honestly, ud swear that Ireland was an outstanding offender for this:rolleyes:
Some people see the glass as half full, others see it as half empty.
But you my freind dont even have a glass, do you?:P