Should Irish be an optional subject not a cumpulsory one

MysticalRain

It's a pretty big "minority" in fairness. Anything up to 40% depending on the polls posted by various proponents of the Irish language on boards.ie. It wouldn't take much to swing the populist argument in favour of removing compulsory Irish - especially now that Ireland has a large population of immigrants. It does beg the question: if the majority were against compulsion, would the Irish language lobby accept that the argument works both ways?

LordSutch

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Each government has backed its continual compulsion. FG made a fuss but dropped it. No it is not black and white. I have not made it out to be black and white. But it is a fact that the majority of people have and continue to back it as compulsory. People in general do not have a problem with it being compulsory except a minority.

But for many thinking people this is the great conumdrum! lots of us do have a problem with it being compulsory for our kids, but the status quo is very hard to break, as Enda Kenny recently found out by daring to suggest that Irish be optional for Leaving Cert students! (Kenny being a fluent pro-Irish speaker himself) but obviously warned off the subject, and the national debate that we should be having, is dead in the water again.

Its the very same thing the the religion box on the Census form, oh yes I must tick RC, (not that I am a practicing one), but I was born into the RC Church, my parents are RC, and sure isnt that part of my Irish culture, so I'll tick RC for religion, and I'll tick YES to Irish too. Cupla Focal counts as speaking Irish, doesn't it

Then, same hypothetical Irish person is asked about their kids doing mandatory Irish "Of course I want me kids to do Irish" (note I didn't say learn), sure didn't I do Irish, and me parents did Irish too, never did us any harm. I'm Irish and I don't think Irish should be dropped at all, it should always be compulsory. Sure didn't we fight for the freedom to speak Irish, and sure everybody knows you have to do Irish in school . . .

Thats the conumdrum, but how do we break the cycle in the education system? and how do we get a debate going if the Taoiseach himself is silenced?

conor.hogan.2

If you have a majority the status quo is very easily changed, you have a willing government on your side.

The thing is the majority want it to stay compulsory.

The Taoiseach is silenced? He has not mandate or major support that is why it was dropped.

LordSutch

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

The thing is the majority want it to stay compulsory.

Well exactly, on the surface yes!

Example; I have friends who have a seventeen year old daughter, and last year she asked to be sent to the Gaeltacht, (for the craic no doubt)? the parents thrilled, couldn't disguise their delight. The daughter went along, and by all accounts had a great time, (and she came back with a few Irish sentences! and she will of course 'do Irish' in her leaving cert.

Neither parent speaks Irish, and I doubt if their daughter will either, but whenever talk comes up about the language they are very protective of it, and proud that their daughter went to the Gaeltacht for the summer to do Irish. My point being, that we will never get a real debate until paople like these start to "think" about what the Irish language really is. Their daughter, like every other Irish pupil has done hundreds of hours of Irish, but to what avail??? Personally I am really annoyed at the prospect of my Children doing hundreds of hours of Irish, and coming out with what exactly? I had to do Irish, I hated it, couldn't see the point, and I have only the coupla focal to show for it, and now my kids have to go through the same rigmarole for all their school years :mad:

Make Irish a non mandatory subject for LC students I say.

PS. Didn't RTE Newsreader Sharon Ni Bheolain 'famous Irish speaker' recently come out on the non mandatory side? her theory possibly being the same as mine "Don't force feed everybody as its not doing the language any good" relax the mandatory nature, and let the language find its level, people will stop hating it then, others will continue to love it, and all of us will know that it's still there, if and when we want it?
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQZOcCdwPci6nAAaTak7bw6YWYs65gSAQCS9KpWhqxVmVCdOlT-

conor.hogan.2

Surface or not the majority do not want to make it optional. FG backtracked hard on that when they realized this.

I went to the Gaeltacht like her in school to little avail too. I learned Irish and French to little avail too. Neither of these points changes the learning experience of those two languages and subjects.

It is school I don't know any student who liked everything they did there. If you really do not want your kid to do Irish exemptions are easily gotten even without legitimate reasons.

Sharon Ni Bheolains opinion is about as valid as anyone elses, 1 of millions.

H2UMrsRobinson

You can keep it on a life support machine forever, but sometimes you just got to pull the plug and see if it can breathe on it's own!

WillieFlynn

Dostoevsky wrote: »

The average English-speaking monoglot who constitute the anti-Irish language brigade in this thread won't like this article in today's Irish Times:

Trilingual kids will never be tongue-tied

This article is irrelevant to the debate about compulsory Irish esp. at LC. As it talks about fluency in three language but not which three.

conor.hogan.2

WillieFlynn wrote: »

This article is irrelevant to the debate about compulsory Irish esp. at LC. As it talks about fluency in three language but not which three.

True. You could do English, French and German etc

But the way the LC is set up you do English and Irish and another language which is a good system.

H2UMrsRobinson wrote: »

You can keep it on a life support machine forever, but sometimes you just got to pull the plug and see if it can breathe on it's own!

A language which was smothered by a pillow for a long time and pronounced dead countless times is fairly resilient. Few would argue that compulsion is school is "keeping it on life support" considering all the media, technology and cultural happenings being conducted in Irish which have nothing to do with education.

LordSutch

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Surface or not the majority do not want to make it optional. FG backtracked hard on that when they realized this.

I went to the Gaeltacht like her in school to little avail too. I learned Irish and French to little avail too. Neither of these points changes the learning experience of those two languages and subjects.

It is school I don't know any student who liked everything they did there. If you really do not want your kid to do Irish exemptions are easily gotten even without legitimate reasons.

Sharon Ni Bheolains opinion is about as valid as anyone elses, 1 of millions.

And so the status quo continues, for another eight decades maybe? with Irish remaining (on paper) our 1st official language, while it most obviously isnt. Where we all do Irish in school, yet most of us can't hold any meaningful conversation in Irish after we leave school. NO no no, I think its time for something to change, the teaching of the Irish language has been an abysmal failure for decades, so its time to try something new, right?

Make Irish optional for LC students (even as an experiment)? What do you say to that conor.hogan.2

Wibbs

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Irish-Invented-Slang-Counterpunch/dp/1904859607

Much like anything, it can be disputed.

In the case of that tome, highly disputed. I've actually read it. I know... I can read. :eek: My humble? Square peg into round hole opinion masquerading as research.

Anyway the Irish more so retained Catholicism as part of their identity rather than language whereas the Welsh and Italians to name but two kept both in a sense.

IIRC the Welsh are either C of E or methodist? Wales is like the US in miniature, loads of Christian faiths slugging it out.

In any case you have to ask why alone among the locals and the diaspora we dropped the language? I've no idea why myself. Maybe we feel deep down that having the language as a background noise better informs the languages we choose to express ourselves in? Someone like Jimmy Joyce tried to learn the language, but was put off by his teacher, one P Pearse - Yep that one - who spent the class JJ was in berating English. Yet Joyce writes in a sound filled way that an 8th century bard would appreciate and plug right into. Hell within a generation of learning to read and write we had the huge liathroidi to actually come up with a "better" version of Latin. I kid thee not gentle reader.

TBH I always found Pearse to be both a great and woeful example of our race. A perfect example of "'tis and it 'tisnt". It's an aspect of us I damn near venerate. The "oh yea I can speak Irish" census data sums up well. Keeps the rest of the world and us guessing. Sammy Beckett another example of an Irish person that was... well.. fcuking with language. In his case French and we've had feck all of that since Strongbow got invited in. Waiting for Godot is his translation of En attendant Godot the French original. He won a nobel prize on the back of it.

For me that internal confusion of who we are, what we're supposed to be and how that comes out in the mix is a large part of our strength and unease about what it is to us. For me this small debate exemplifies that.

WillieFlynn

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

The majority back compulsion.
The importance of the language. (historical and cultural to name just two)
More languages make it easier to learn more languages.
(You can study English, Irish, French and German if you want I know people who have done it the more the better)

Going through your arguments:

Just because the majority back something doesn't always make it correct, if the majority in a country backed racial discrimination would it be OK?

While I do grasp the historical and cultural importance of Irish. However the sad fact is that for a lot of people it is questionable how big a part of their day to day culture it is, just look at how few use it daily.

The argument that more languages makes it easy to learn other languages, is fine, except it is not an argument to study a specific language.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

But the people against it have one argument and that is "100% choice" which as we all know is just simply not how school works.

That is simply not true.

I didn't want to do Irish for my LC, because I had eight other subjects to study.

The workload got so high, I would go into class and say I didn't have time to do my homework or study... Which apart from not being an nice thing to have to do, it was disruptive to the rest of the class. You can force students to attend class but not to study. If I could go back in time I would have effectively dropped out of the class much sooner.

WillieFlynn

One other point on the cultural reason for keeping Irish compulsory, why isn't the same argument extended to the two other Irish languages (Irish sign language and Cant / Gammon).

Personally I found it much easier and more interesting to learn Irish Sign Language than Irish.

WillieFlynn

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Surface or not the majority do not want to make it optional. FG backtracked hard on that when they realized this.

It was more like a very vocal minority particularly in gaeltacht areas, rather than the majority voicing their views.

conor.hogan.2

WillieFlynn wrote: »

Going through your arguments:

Just because the majority back something doesn't always make it correct, if the majority in a country backed racial discrimination would it be OK?

While I do grasp the historical and cultural importance of Irish. However the sad fact is that for a lot of people it is questionable how big a part of their day to day culture it is, just look at how few use it daily.

The argument that more languages makes it easy to learn other languages, is fine, except it is not an argument to study a specific language.

That is simply not true.

I didn't want to do Irish for my LC, because I had eight other subjects to study.

The workload got so high, I would go into class and say I didn't have time to do my homework or study... Which apart from not being an nice thing to have to do, it was disruptive to the rest of the class. You can force students to attend class but not to study. If I could go back in time I would have effectively dropped out of the class much sooner.

The majority backing it is important as it is "harming" few or no people and it has been compulsory for 70+ years without much problems with it so in this case it is a fair case of democracy in action and some people will not like democracy if it does not gel with them in certain circumstances.

Again this is not really a debate on the importance of Irish as to one person it has no importance and to another it has high importance.

You did 9 subjects? What subjects were they and why? just curious and also this is far far from the norm.

WillieFlynn wrote: »

It was more like a very vocal minority particularly in gaeltacht areas, rather than the majority voicing their views.

The Gaeltacht population is tiny and fairly spread out so it is a lot more than these who are speaking out and in favor of keeping it compulsory.

WillieFlynn wrote: »

One other point on the cultural reason for keeping Irish compulsory, why isn't the same argument extended to the two other Irish languages (Irish sign language and Cant / Gammon).

Personally I found it much easier and more interesting to learn Irish Sign Language than Irish.

I would love for sign language to be taught and less so Cant/Gammon but it being a creole/dialect it would not be highly useful except cultural reasons which are important too.

carfiosaoorl

Is it not already optional? My brother dropped it for leaving cert so did my niece.

conor.hogan.2

@Wibbs - None of that is relevant and only the first half is coherent.

carfiosaoorl wrote: »

Is it not already optional? My brother dropped it for leaving cert so did my niece.

Exemptions are very easy to get.

Wibbs

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

@Wibbs - None of that is relevant and only the first half is coherent.

Thank God/universe/fates. I was concerned you may have found it coherent and that would have reflected badly on me.

WillieFlynn

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

The majority backing it is important as it is "harming" few or no people and it has been compulsory for 70+ years without much problems with it so in this case it is a fair case of democracy in action and some people will not like democracy if it does not gel with them in certain circumstances.

In my case it forced me to do 9 subjects for the leaving and was possibly the reason I just missed out on my first choice of university course

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

You did 9 subjects? What subjects were they and why? just curious and also this is far far from the norm.

I wasn't particularly good at languages so I did Irish, English and French at lower level (passed them all).
And then as I wanted to do a high points course Electronic Engineering in UCC (ended up doing it in UCD) I needed to do six honors subjects:
Maths, Physics, applied maths, chemistry, geography and accounting (outside of school).

conor.hogan.2

Wibbs wrote: »

Thank God/universe/fates. I was concerned you may have found it coherent and that would have reflected badly on me.

Nice to see you have resorted to Trolling rather than making any coherent actual points. Luckily you mod all the forums I find boring or irrelevant.

WillieFlynn wrote: »

In my case it force me to do 9 subjects for the leaving and was possibly the reason I just missed out on my first choice of university course

I wasn't particularly good at languages so I did Irish, English and French at lower level (passed them all).
And then as I wanted to do a high points course Electronic Engineering in UCC (ended up doing it in UCD) I needed to do six honors subjects:
Maths, Physics, applied maths, chemistry, geography and accounting (outside of school).

Why did you do French if you were bad at languages?

English, Irish, Maths, Physics, applied maths, chemistry, geography and accounting would have left you with 6 honors why did you choose to do French?

Wibbs

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Nice this see you have resorted to Trolling rather than making any coherent actual points. Luckily you mod all the forums I find boring or irrelevant.

Ooooh get her. FYI, calling someone on a debate isn't trolling. It's... you know... debate. At this point you've pretty much exhausted the circular logic meme so this retort of yours is hardly unexpected. However I was hoping for and expecting better.

fkt

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

it has been compulsory for 70+ years without much problems

The difference being that we currently have a fiscal deficit of nightmare proportions and our limited resources therefore must be spent in a way which aids any hope of a long term economic recovery.

The government is raising taxes, cutting benefits, borrowing money from foreign governments - These all effect people. Does the teaching of Irish?

People do not appreciate how serious a situation we are in. We cannot afford the luxury that is Irish anymore.

conor.hogan.2

Wibbs wrote: »

Ooooh get her. FYI, calling someone on a debate isn't trolling. It's... you know... debate. At this point you've pretty much exhausted the circular logic meme so this retort of yours is hardly unexpected. However I was hoping for and expecting better.

High five you are a master debater. Such salient and well thought out points.

Wibbs

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

High five you are a master debater.

Wrong verb...

WillieFlynn

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Why did you do French if you were bad at languages?

English, Irish, Maths, Physics, applied maths, chemistry, geography and accounting would have left you with 6 honors why did you choose to do French?

Because I needed to do a modern European language in order to qualify to get into a NUI college.

In my case I didn't need to pass Irish to get into university as I was born in Wales (my parents are Irish). It is crazy that the NUI requires most students to pass three languages to get in, but that could be a topic of a whole thread by it's self.

conor.hogan.2

WillieFlynn wrote: »

Because I needed to do a modern European language in order to qualify to get into a NUI college.

In my case I didn't need to pass Irish to get into university as I was born in Wales (my parents are Irish). It is crazy that the NUI requires most students to pass three languages to get in, but that could be a topic of a whole thread by it's self.

Ah yes.
You should have got an exemption in Irish then, they are very very easy to get.

fkt

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Ah yes.
You should have got an exemption in Irish then, they are very very easy to get.

Post 872

kowloon

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Luckily you mod all the forums I find boring or irrelevant.

Getting quite bitchy there, maybe you're the troll?

Why did you do French if you were bad at languages?

I was of the understanding most school make you do a European language and a science. French and German are the most common.

WillieFlynn

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Ah yes.
You should have got an exemption in Irish then, they are very very easy to get.

My problem was that all of my schooling was in Ireland. If you start in school here before the age of 11 you have to do Irish.

In my secondary school a French classmate didn't have to do Irish but his bother who was a year younger did.

conor.hogan.2

fkt wrote: »

Post 872

Yes and removing Irish from education would gain how much money when you put a lot of the Irish teachers on the Dole?

Our fiscal problems will not be helped much by cutting down monetary support of Irish. An Bord Snip cut it down as much as they felt it was needed to be cut.

WillieFlynn wrote: »

My problem was that all of my schooling was in Ireland. If you start in school here before the age of 11 you have to do Irish.

In my secondary school a French classmate didn't have to do Irish but his bother who was a year younger did.

Ah ok, you still could have gotten an exemption. They seem very easy to get.

kowloon wrote: »

I was of the understanding most school make you do a European language and a science. French and German are the most common.

Yeah that was pointed out, I forgot that you needed that for the NUIs and possibly Trinity.

WillieFlynn

BTW It is only at LC that I didn't want to do Irish because of a very high workload. If it had been optional for the inter-cert (showing my age now), I would have most likely still done it.

fkt

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Yes and removing Irish from education would gain how much money when you put a lot of the Irish teachers on the Dole?

Our fiscal problems will not be helped much by cutting down monetary support of Irish. An Bord Snip cut it down as much as they felt it was needed to be cut.

You make it optional. Re-train the younger teachers and let the older generation teach until they reach retirement. Then you stop it altogether.

We could then focus investment on languages of the future - Mandarin, Japanese. This attracts Asian companies to set up their European operations in Ireland. Employment results - real employment.

This country could really achieve something. There is so much potential. But instead we can't get away from the "history" which quite frankly no-one will give a f*ck about when this country is in a real real crisis in fifty years.

conor.hogan.2

re-training costs money. optional could lead to some classes with 2 people and some with 30 do you pay them all the same?

Mandarin is optional in a lot of schools? Anyway, Asian companies are already doing a lot of business here and with us. These business deals happen in English, but I agree knowing their language is always nice and would help.

This was all up for cut in an bord snip and other nip/tuck budgets and it was deemed not worth it as the money spent on it is very miniscule.

WillieFlynn

kowloon wrote: »

I was of the understanding most school make you do a European language and a science. French and German are the most common.

When the push comes to shove, all subjects except Irish are optional, as the school will still get their capitation grant. Unless of course your parents have enough money to pay the school instead, then Irish suddenly becomes optional.

May be the exemptions are easier to get now. However if someone studies Irish up to the inter-cert (now the JC), I'm not sure how one could justify an exemption for the LC.

As you pointed out later the NUI entry requirement are another matter all together. I wish they would take the general requirements from the JC and then just six subjects from the LC for points, in a similar way to England with O and A-levels

Dublinstiofán

Compulsory, that is all.

conor.hogan.2

WillieFlynn wrote: »

in a similar way to England with O and A-levels

I think it is just a fundamental difference in the education systems.

We favor a system which allows for a broad range of subjects which favors a lot of people but not people who like you knew they wanted to do Engineering and doing languages was just extra pressure and hassle.

fkt

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

re-training costs money. optional could lead to some classes with 2 people and some with 30 do you pay them all the same?

Mandarin is optional in a lot of schools? Anyway, Asian companies are already doing a lot of business here and with us. These business deals happen in English, but I agree knowing their language is always nice and would help.

This was all up for cut in an bord snip and other nip/tuck budgets and it was deemed not worth it as the money spent on it is very miniscule.

Yes it would be a misfortunate short term siutaion which really needs to be undertaken for the long term benefit of the country.

Yes of course there are Asian languages taught here and there are Asian companies here. The same as in any other country in the world. However it could be taught and promoted more and more; eventually you end up with a very attractive, highly diversified workforce.

fkt

Dublinstiofán wrote: »

Compulsory, that is all.

Compelling.

conor.hogan.2

fkt wrote: »

Yes it would be a misfortunate short term siutaion which really needs to be undertaken for the long term benefit of the country.

Yes of course there are Asian languages taught here and there are Asian companies here. The same as in any other country in the world. However it could be taught and promoted more and more; eventually you end up with a very attractive, highly diversified workforce.

Perhaps. But the current government (the "alternative") will not do this though. It would certainly not further worsen our crisis, I agree and would help.

We are a bit more active in Asia than a lot of countries and not just meeting with vice-presidents. But again every little helps.

Anyway I agree the more people speaking foreign languages the better. I do not know what the Chinese LC subject is like but if it includes any character writing I can see why few pick it up it takes a lot of time, effort and patience.

But learning to speak asian languages is very important. But not going to happen in place of Irish at least not in the foreseeable future.

Anyway despite the population dominance of Chinese (mandarin and others) and Indian (generic/wrong I know) English is the global language of business so us learning Asian languages is not vital in that sense.

fkt

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

But learning to speak asian languages is very important. But not going to happen in place of Irish at least not in the foreseeable future.

Anyway despite the population dominance of Chinese (mandarin and others) and Indian (generic/wrong I know) English is the global language of business so us learning Asian languages is not vital in that sense.

What is actually going to happen is not what we're discussing though. We're not trying to predict the future. It's about what we think should happen.

English is the principal language of business at the moment. However, times are changing and will continue to do so. At no stage will the continual teaching of Irish aid us to adapt to this change. It will continue to waste our very limited resources and limit our next generation.

GaryIrv93

Enkidu wrote: »

I don't think this is very sensible. If you are supposed to speak a language, then you should be able to understand the speech of different speakers. Secondly there is no Eastern accent, as there is no native Irish speaking community in the east, outside the one in Meath, but the people there don't speak Leinster Irish (which is extinct).

No, not I said that there shouldn't be any different, difficult accents used in the aural. I've no problem with a bit of a challenge in these exams, which there needs to be, but I said there should be less difficult accents used - if I'm ever going to speak Irish to somebody else, it will most likely be to another Dubliner, or somebody from a GDA country with a similar speech that I can understand. Few people live in Donegal, Sligo, etc, not to mention that people there speak perfect English just like the rest of us, and maybe a little more Irish, making the likeliehood of speaking any Irish to anyone else in the future even less likely - which reduces the point of using hard-to-understand accents. There just should be less, not none though. Listening exams are hard enough without using difficult-to-understand speakers 95% of the time.

conor.hogan.2

fkt wrote: »

What is actually going to happen is not what we're discussing though. We're not trying to predict the future. It's about what we think should happen.

English is the principal language of business at the moment. However, times are changing and will continue to do so. At no stage will the continual teaching of Irish aid us to adapt to this change. It will continue to waste our very limited resources and limit our next generation.

I think we can all agree Irish is not going to fuel our International business potential. But no one argues this, it is important for very different reasons.

There is no reason both can not be taught. In fact they have been for years.

kingofthenerds

irish should be totally and utterly abolished. all texts books and any evidence of its written existance should be burned. such a useless language.

conor.hogan.2

kingofthenerds wrote: »

irish should be totally and utterly abolished. all texts books and any evidence of its written existance should be burned. such a useless language.

Doing so while obviously pointless and stupid would actually be quite impressive and would take a lot of time, money and effort to do considering the vast amount of it around considering its long history.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Dublinstiofán wrote: »

Compulsory, that is all.

Now there's a new argument for the thread.

Enkidu

Wibbs wrote: »

The Irish you speak/are learning/grew up with is as different to old Irish as modern English is to Chaucer. Well nearly. IIRC it's more like Latin, has extra genders and pronunciations are different. Things like TH and GH are pronounced as you would pronounce them in modern English, not the soft sound of modern Irish. Hopefully Enkidu comes along soon, he's a charm and education on this stuff.

All of this is correct. Primitive Irish was quite similar to Latin, for example:
Modern English:
“I swear by my smock(habit),” said the third man, “if you two won’t be still I’m going to leave you here in the wilderness!"
Primitive Irish:
“Tongū wo mō brattan,” esset bīrt trissas uiras, “ma nīt lēggītar kiyunessus do mū, imbit gabiyū wāssākan oliyan dū swi.”
Early Old Irish:
“Tongu tarm chulche”, ol in tris fer, “mani·lécther taue dom, ime·n-imgéb in n-ule ndíthrub airib.”
Normal Old Irish:
“Toingim fom aibit,” ol in tres fer, “mani·léicthe ciúnas dom co n-imgéb in fásach uile dúib.”
Modern Irish:
“Dar m’aibíd,” arsa an treas fear, “mura ligeann sibh ciúnas dom fágfaidh mé an fásach uile daoibh!”

Primitive Irish is quite similar to Latin, although the spelling above might not suggest it (because that spelling is completely phonetic, as the language was actually written in Ogham.) Verb tenses and noun cases were formed in a very similar way.

Old Irish, especially normal Old Irish, may look as though you could understand it from Modern Irish, but that's because this is a nice example. The grammar is much more complex. A less easy example is:
Ilar mbríathar mbláith rot-char = You have been loved by many gentle words.

As Wibbs said the pronounciation is quite different. TH like it is in English, four different R's, L's and N's and other difficulties. In general it is not as soft as modern Irish.

WillieFlynn

All the talk of exemptions, makes me think that there is a solution which will keep everyone happy

Keep Irish compulsory, but give an exemption to anyone who wants one.

WillieFlynn

Irish, English and Maths all suffer from the same problem at the LC, the subjects are too broad and need to be split in two. It is unfair that they have two exam papers each, but are only count as one subject the same as every other LC subject.

WillieFlynn

Enkidu wrote: »

As Wibbs said the pronounciation is quite different. TH like it is in English, four different R's, L's and N's and other difficulties. In general it is not as soft as modern Irish.

It is interesting that Irish at one time had a TH sound but now lots of Irish people can't pronounce TH in the standard way when speaking English:D

Enkidu, I liked your post showing how Irish has evolved over time.

Wibbs

fkt wrote: »

We could then focus investment on languages of the future - Mandarin, Japanese.

I'll bet you any money Mandarin will never become a global language "of the future". For many reasons. First "China is taking over de worrld!!:eek:". I recall the same thing being said of Japan back in the day. They were second to the US at one point. If you wanted the definition of "economic bubble" you wouldn't go far wrong with China. Watched a good programme recently on the changes to a tiny rural village that became a city over the last ten years. It was like the "Celtic tiger" on speed. People becoming landlords, estate agents and builders. The shops were nearly all building supply and home furnishing outlets. When any town has an over abundance of tile and bathroom shops look out. For some reason bubbles seem to be reflected in how expensive you want your jacks to look. This miracle city had only one factory not involved in the building industry. Sound familiar or what... We built ghost estates thinking the hammer would never fall, they're building cities. One hammer is demographics. China's looking down the barrel of a slump in young people. The same young people who drove the economic boom in the first place.

Of the language? It's not an international language like English or Spanish. In those examples many more people who aren't from England or Spain speak the language. The vast majority of Chinese speakers are Chinese.. Secondly it's needlessly complex. The written language while beautiful and all that is very cumbersome. They realised that themselves and came up with a simplified version, but it's still OTT compared to the European languages. They had printing for over a century before us, yet printed little beyond religious texts. It reaches Europe and within a generation it began one of the largest shifts in world cultural history. It's a lot easier to typeset with 20 odd letters compared to 2000 odd pictograms. The spoken language unlike the other world languages is tonal. Slightest diff in an inflection can change the meaning of a word or sentence. This means great difficulty for non natives to get this right. With say English you could have a Mexican talking in broken English with a heavy accent and he would generally understand and be understood by say a Frenchman also speaking broken English with a heavy accent. You can say the same of Spanish and French. Not Chinese though.

Ikky Poo2 wrote: »

Now there's a new argument for the thread.

It pretty much sums up the circular argument of the Irish lobby.

LordSutch

Dublinstiofán wrote: »

Compulsory, that is all.

Head in the sand :rolleyes:

Ever wonder what outsiders think of the current farce that we have here? Well from experience I can tell you that any friends that have visited me from abroad are firstly curious about the language, then shocked (and amused) that we learn Irish for all our school lives, and yet we dont speak it! "like how can that be"? I then explain that we don't really learn it, we just do Irish lessons in school so that we may pass the Irish exams, "but why if youre not going to speak it"? well because that's what expected of us . . . because of history, tradition, if you want to be in the Gardai, etc.

"So you can't speak Irish fluently after Primary school", hell NO, sure we cant even speak it after another six years in secondary school )