Is Irish a dead language?

MysticalRain

deise go deo wrote: »

Would you be including me in that remark?
Do you think it would make any difference to the average tourist if a place uses An Irish version of the place name?
Have you anything to support this?

So because 98% dont speak Irish on a daily basis they must therefore side with you?
Or do you think not speaking Irish on a daily basis makes place names As Gaeilge Incomprehenciple to them?

I dunno, why don't you state what your political stance is when it comes to all things English?

I happen to be one of the 98% percent of the population who doesn't care enough about the Irish language to bother speaking it. So yes, you can quite easily divide the population into 2 camps - those who give a fcuk and those who don't. The fact is successive generations of Irish people have been consistently rejecting the Irish languange for the last 150 years or so.

Yes, to any reasonable person, it is obvious that printing road signs in an obscure foreign language besides English is inevitably going to confuse tourists.

Permabear

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deise go deo

MysticalRain wrote: »

I dunno, why don't you state what your political stance is when it comes to all things English?

You seam to think I have one, I dont really see the English langauge as something ''Political''

I happen to be one of the 98% percent of the population who doesn't care enough about the Irish language to bother speaking it. So yes, you can quite easily divide the population into 2 camps - those who give a fcuk and those who don't. The fact is successive generations of Irish people have been consistently rejecting the Irish languange for the last 150 years or so.

Well I am also part of the 98% who dosent speak Irish every day.
This dosent mean I dont give a fcuk. So dividing the population down like this may sound good, but dosent work in reality.

Yes, to any reasonable person, it is obvious that printing road signs in an obscure foreign language besides English is inevitably going to confuse tourists.

The signs in this country are Bi-lingual. Tourists who come here can look at the English part of the sign.

If I go to Germany, I understand they speak German (primarily) and I prepare for this appropriately

For Gaelthachts where signs are Irish only, they speak Irish there, If you are a tourist going to visit this area it is not unreasonable for you to know this.

There are genuine differences, and then there are artificial ones.

As for BÁC being artificial, so is vagas, but that is still popular with tourists.

deise go deo

donegalfella wrote: »

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I tought your figures on that were shown not to stack up?

Permabear

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aDeener

SeanW wrote: »

I disagree, this "uniqueness" is totally artificual and manufactured.

And as to the tourists in an earlier post, they would not likely have been impressed by the whole thing, for the simple reason that they're English speakers who had come to Ireland on the understanding that we spoke English also.

If I go to Germany, I understand they speak German (primarily) and I prepare for this appropriately. I also expect to come across things like Munich/Munchen. Those two tourists who came here did not (and should not have been expected to) have this understanding.

err there is nothing artificial about the native irish speakers of corca dhuibhne, connemara etc....

:rolleyes:

being from longford its hardly surprising you wouldnt appreciate uniqueness anyway considering there is nothing of note there at all....

nuac

I suggest road signs should be bi-lingual throughout the country.

aDeener

donegalfella wrote: »

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did you not claim before that people lie on their census forms.......?

deise go deo

aDeener wrote: »

being from longford its hardly surprising you wouldnt appreciate uniqueness anyway considering there is nothing of note there at all....

.

Only slightly better than Roscommon.

Of course its artifical, sher dont they all get paid in gold from taxpayers money by the word....:pac:

Permabear

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deise go deo

nuac wrote: »

I suggest road signs should be bi-lingual throughout the country.

They are except for the Gaelthacht.
Why do you think English should be put on the signs there?

Permabear

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deise go deo

donegalfella wrote: »

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I live a few miles from the Waterford Gaeltacht,
Any time I talk in Irish to someone there they have no problem talking back As Gaeilge.

The Ciorcal Comhrá I am in went for a trip there 2 months ago, We met lots of people there who like speaking Irish, Maybe you just live in a weak Gaeltacht.

aDeener

donegalfella wrote: »

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i believe your claim that they lied had nothing to do about grants rather normal people's level of irish which would include non gaeltacht areas, so it would be of no benefit of them to lie.

but of course they would be lying when it suits your argument and likewise telling the truth when it suits..... :rolleyes:

aDeener

donegalfella wrote: »

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which would have zero viewers only for sports, american imports, films........ lol

Enkidu

deise go deo wrote: »

I tought your figures on that were shown not to stack up?

The figures donegalfella quotes for the 1851 census are completely correct.
The only thing is that there is no reliable statistics before this. Of course simple arithmetic with any assumptions will show that Irish could not have been the majority language before the famine.(As donegalfella has done)

From 500 B.C. until 1607 some form of Irish was the language of over 95% of the population. 1607-1800 we have no real estimate on, anybody giving confident figures for this period is just plain lying. Then in 1851 we have an explicit census, which would allow us to make a good educated guess back to about 1820.

deise go deo

dlofnep wrote: »

I've seen the figures you've claimed, I actually have them in a book at home titled "The death of the Irish language: A qualified obituary" By Reg Hindley which covers a few studies, and indeed reflects on the decline of the language.

One thing you'll notice is that the figures provided in these studies don't really add up. For example - a study in 1799 by stokes claimed of a population of 5.4 million, 2.4 million spoke Irish placing Irish as a minority language as far back as 1799. 13 years later, another study by Wakefield put the figure at 3 million Irish speakers out of 5.9 million, putting Irish as a majority language in 1813.

Anderson then did a study in 1814 where this number amazingly dropped to a perfect 2,000,000. A convenient number, wouldn't you say? 7 years later, he did a combined study with Graves and placed that number at 3.7 million out of a population of 6.8 million - placing Irish still as the majority language.

A study by Lappenberg in 1835, placed the number at 4 million out of a population of 7.7 million - Irish still maintaining a majority language status. Anderson re-took his study in 1841, with 4.1 million Irish speakers, out of a population of 8.1 million - placing the Irish language, still as the majority language as recent as 1841.

The Irish famine then hit in 1845, which any subsequent studies saw an immediate drop off in Irish language speakers. So when I state that the famine had a huge impact on the Irish language, and that the language was still strong in the first half of the 1800's, I'm not wrong.

Did the language start to decline in the east in the late 1700's to early 1800's? Absolutely, but it was still strong in the south, east, and north-eastern parts of Ireland right up until the famine.

If you're going to cite the works of one person from 1799 as the de facto figure, then be my guest.

This is what I was talking about,

I dont dispute the accuracy of the 1851 census.

Enkidu

deise go deo wrote: »

This is what I was talking about,

I dont dispute the accuracy of the 1851 census.

Oh, I know. I was just emphasising that it is the 1607-1800 period that is dubious as dlofnep was saying.

nuac

Regarding those studies of numbers of Irish speakers prior to 1851 census how reliable are they

i.e were there teams of enumerators etc as in a census?

Were returns compiled by any authority - RIC or schools etc.?

Wasn't Garrett Fitzgerald doing a study of this some years ago?

BTW enkindu since downloading the interesting article on the Celts I came across in my library ( pile of books in a spare room ) my copy of Philips' Atlas of the Celts of which barry Raftery of UCD was consultant editor. Gives a very good overview.

deise go deo

Well concidering what a major social upheval the famine was I dont think it would be wise to make any estimation on the situation in the country as regards the language before the famine, especially concidering the seaming inaccuricy of the survays done leading up to it.

Donegalfella made the claim that the majority of the country had rejected Irish Well before the Famine, Personally I dont think a few quick sums bassed on a tally of deaths during the famine dose enough to show this beyond doubt.

Most Irish people were monoglot English speakers well before the Famine.

It is possible that the famine destroyed Irish as a comunity language in many places so when 1851 came around people who could speak Irish nolonger did.

There have also been suggestions that some people hid their ability to speak Irish out of shame because of the perception of it as a ''poor'' language.

Enkidu

Perhaps some idea of what things were like fifty years before the famine is provided by "Promenade d'un Français dans l'Irlande" (A Frenchman's walk through Ireland) by Jacques de Latocnaye covering the years 1796-1797.

According to the book most people could speak Irish to some degree. The author is somewhat vague but I got the impression that true fluency existed over virtually all of Connacht and Munster. However bilingualism in the midlands gave way to English monoglots in Leinster and Ulster.

It is possible that this is what leads to some confusion. Irish was a fully living language in a large (for the time) community. However the island also supported another (English) language community at the time. So it's possible that after the collapse of the Gaelic order that the country sort of split in half, with one component becoming English speaking and the other staying Irish speaking. However the part that became English speaking contained a greater population. Eventually the economic realities of English began to slowly eat away at the Irish part. The arrival of the famine probably functioned as a massive catalyst for this process. However I would still say it is likely that a large component of society had already switched to English due to the collapse of the Gaelic order and the economic realities brought one by that.

The book also mentions something interesting. The author, apparently, couldn't really distinguish Southern Wexford society from Flemish society. At the time Yola (an Anglo-Frisian language) was being spoken there. This would have meant that Southern Wexford, for centuries, had a purer Anglo-Saxon heritage, both in language and customs, than England itself!

So my rough picture of Ireland at the time is:

Excluding Ulster and Southern Wexford, English culture and language exist in the east with Gaelic influence, this balance slowly shifts into Gaelic culture and language with English influence in the west (mid-west?) until you get to almost total Gaelic culture in the extreme south and west. (e.g. in Muskerry, Cork they still speak a dialect very similar to Bardic/Classical Irish)

In Ulster you get essentially the same mixture except replace English with Anglo-Scots.

Finally you have Southern Wexford which is basically Anglo-Saxon:

Jacques de Latocnaye wrote:

The inhabitants of the Barony of Forth, near Wexford, are the descendants of the first followers of Strongbow. They have never mixed with the Irish, and still speak a singular language, which is more akin to Flemish than to modern English.
They are like the Flemish also in manner, and marry among themselves. Their houses are cleaner and more comfortable than those of the other inhabitants, and they are also so much more clean in person that they appear quite as a different race.

Or maybe I'm talking nonsense?

SeanW

aDeener wrote: »

being from longford its hardly surprising you wouldnt appreciate uniqueness anyway considering there is nothing of note there at all....

HA. I love this.

Something I've learned on boards is that whever I dig in to a controversial topic with a controversial viewpoint (as you can guess I have more than a few) the probability of someone bringing my Location: into the debate approaches 1. Often with an insult. Kinda like a lame version of Godwins Law.

"There must be lots of construction activity in Longford"
"I'm sure you'd love a nuclear power plant out there in Longford"
... and a few others.

I really have to ROFL when it happens.
Back to the topic at hand:

For Gaelthachts where signs are Irish only, they speak Irish there, If you are a tourist going to visit this area it is not unreasonable for you to know this.

err there is nothing artificial about the native irish speakers of corca dhuibhne, connemara etc....

If you had noticed before responding to my post you would have known that I was referring to an earlier post about two tourists who tried to get to the Central Bus Station in Dublin, only to find out they had to go to Busarus, Baile Atha Na Cliath instead.

Nowhere near your gaeltachts.

menoscemo

I haven't read this whole thread, just the title and the first few posts, but it is quite obvious that the Irish language is not dead. In fact the prevelance of gealscoileanna in Ireland is helping revive the Irish language to levels it has never seen before.

It is ridiculously sad that Irish people are willing to slag of their own heritage, culture and language and say things like " Irish means nothing to me". Apart from the fact that people died to protect your identity ( In KNow, I know :rolleyes:) it is completely impoverishing to the world to kill off a language and culture and if you kill off a language, you undoubtedly kill off a culture.

To all those people slagging off the Irish Language- have you ever been abroad? have you never had the opportunity to expalin to foreign people about the Irish Languange and Culture? If not you really need to live a little.

cyclopath2001

menoscemo wrote: »

It is ridiculously sad that Irish people are willing to slag of their own heritage, culture and language and say things like " Irish means nothing to me". Apart from the fact that people died to protect your identity....

The way you're putting things, you seem to think that there is only one Iriish identity and it is an Irish-speaking one?

Ireland has been a multi-cultural country for hundreds, of years.

Would you slag off an Italian-speaking Swiss for not knowing any German?

deise go deo

Enkidu wrote: »

The book also mentions something interesting. The author, apparently, couldn't really distinguish Southern Wexford society from Flemish society. At the time Yola (an Anglo-Frisian language) was being spoken there. This would have meant that Southern Wexford, for centuries, had a purer Anglo-Saxon heritage, both in language and customs, than England itself!

Iv heard of yola before, apparently there are still some speakers down in Wexford, Maybe this is why the wexford accent sounds so unusual compared to its neighbours?

deise go deo

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

The way you're putting things, you seem to think that there is only one Iriish identity and it is an Irish-speaking one?

Ireland has been a multi-cultural country for hundreds, of years.

Would you slag off an Italian-speaking Swiss for not knowing any German?

Irish is a major part of our identity, not the only part, but a big part.
The version of english spoken here has been influenced by Irish.

You seam to think that Irish speakers want to destory the English speaking culture here, This simpily is not true, A bi-lingual society is aimed at.

Is it possible to be ''Irish'' and only speak English? Yes,
This dosent mean that Irish is meritless or any less a part of who we are.

Permabear

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cyclopath2001

deise go deo wrote: »

Irish is a major part of our identity, not the only part, but a big part.

One question is 'how big?'

deise go deo wrote: »

The version of english spoken here has been influenced by Irish.

More correctly, the English spoken here has been influenced not so much by the Irish language as by the the character of where and how we live and our history.

deise go deo wrote: »

You seam to think that Irish speakers want to destory the English speaking culture here, This simpily is not true, A bi-lingual society is aimed at.

You mean that everyone here would be required to speak both langauges? Or, more likely, that everyone here would be required to pay the costs of two official langauges with Irish being spoken by a small, smug elite?

deise go deo wrote: »

This dosent mean that Irish is meritless or any less a part of who we are.

One question is 'how much a part'? I suspect its importance has been grossly exagerated by people with an economic interest in the business of Irish.

It's a free country, people should be able to speak whatever langauge they prefer, even if their ancestors never spoke it. But, the cost (to the taxpayer)) needs to be controlled or it will become just another waste of money.

deise go deo

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

One question is 'how big?'

More correctly, the English spoken here has been influenced not so much by the Irish language as by the the character of where and how we live and our history.

I was talking more about words and phrases from Irish that have directly Influenced the form of English that is spoken here. It is known ,I beleive as ''Hiberno English''

You mean that everyone here would be required to speak both langauges? Or, more likely, that everyone here would be required to pay the costs of two official langauges with Irish being spoken by a small, smug elite?

You cant ''require'' someone to speak a language in their daily lives,
you can however educate people and promoat a Bi-lingual society.

Just to be clear by ''Bi-lingual society'', I mean that I would like to see the majority of the population being able to speak both Irish and English

What do you base this grose (and totally unfair) generalisation on?

One question is 'how much a part'? I suspect its importance has been grossly exagerated by people with an economic interest in the business of Irish.

Do you expect me to put a number on something that exists in Peoples hearts and minds?
If so I think you are going to be disapointed.

Well I dont know about the people you have come accross that are intrested in Irish, but personally the vast majority of people I know who are intrested in the language do not do it for any kind of financhal reward.

It's a free country, people should be able to speak whatever langauge they prefer, even if their ancestors never spoke it. But, the cost (to the taxpayer)) needs to be controlled or it will become just another waste of money.

Of course people should and are allowed to speak the language(s) they chose. Dose this mean that Irish cannot be promoated or that the idea of a Bi-lingual society be furthered?

P. Breathnach

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

... More correctly, the English spoken here has been influenced not so much by the Irish language as by the the character of where and how we live and our history....

So our use of English is more influenced by our landscape than by our Gaelic heritage? That's bollocks.

Much of the syntax of Hiberno-English can be traced to Irish; some of the vocabulary can, but that is less important.

Our interaction with the world is mediated by language, and the use in Ireland of a distinctive form of English makes us different, and marks us as different.