Why is the Irish Language refered to as Gaelic abroad?

languagenerd

Tombo2001 wrote: »

i meant it to complement your post, not to disagree with it.....sorry if that wasnt clear.

Sorry, that was me misinterpreting it!

(After Hours does that to you, you think everyone's out to start a fight :pac:)

Tombo2001

Pherekydes wrote: »

No, that's wrong:

given the many students I know that attend gael scoils, I'd be doubtful that this amount, if put to the pin of their collars could speak Irish fluently.

anyway.....30'000.....50'000.......70'000..so what...its a tiny amount of actual speakers, if you are talking about "we should expect foreigners to know that its called Irish and not gaelic"...

No we shouldnt expect that. We are a small nation, and less than 5% of the population speaks the indigenous language fluently.

I wouldnt hear a person speaking Irish on the streets of dublin more than once a year.

Dont get me wrong, I think the Irish language is a valuable cultural resource......valuable to us as a people......but expecting foreigners to know the ins and outs (or anything at all) of our indigenous language is in my view borne out of a misplaced sense of entitlement about Irelands importance in the world.

NegativeCreep

paky wrote: »

Whenever I convert with people on my travels the topic of languages often comes up. Usually it starts with a question such as ''Do you speak your own language in Ireland?'' and I usually respond with ''Yes we do, we speak Irish aswel as English but its a minority language.'' The unassuming person often replies with ''Oh...Irish, is that Gaelic?'' and I often reply with ''No, its not''.
It's very annoying when this happens, imo, tecnically speaking, Gaelic is not a language but a collective term refering to a set of langauges in Britain, France and Ireland, so refering to Irish as being Gaelic is technically incorrect.
So why is it people refer to Irish as Gaelic when as far as understanding goes, I have never met a person who spoke Irish that could understand Scots Gaelic or let alone speak it?

:eek: How dare they not know everything about our dead language! The cheek!

1ZRed

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

Cád?

I hate this. It's "Céard", nothing worse than hearing people go around pronouncing "Cád", "cod".

I'd be more worried about the standard of Irish and it's pronunciation than what people call it abroad tbh

opti0nal

1ZRed wrote: »

I'd be more worried about the standard of Irish and it's pronunciation than what people call it abroad tbh

There's Irish and then there's the pidgin dialect of 'Cooplafockal' which is mostly English with a few phrases of Irish or 'the cupla focal' thrown in.

This is sometimes mistaken for actual fluent Irish speaking and is distorting official statistics.

Pherekydes

Tombo2001 wrote: »

given the many students I know that attend gael scoils, I'd be doubtful that this amount, if put to the pin of their collars could speak Irish fluently.

anyway.....30'000.....50'000.......70'000..so what...its a tiny amount of actual speakers, if you are talking about "we should expect foreigners to know that its called Irish and not gaelic"...

No we shouldnt expect that. We are a small nation, and less than 5% of the population speaks the indigenous language fluently.

I wouldnt hear a person speaking Irish on the streets of dublin more than once a year.

Dont get me wrong, I think the Irish language is a valuable cultural resource......valuable to us as a people......but expecting foreigners to know the ins and outs (or anything at all) of our indigenous language is in my view borne out of a misplaced sense of entitlement about Irelands importance in the world.

No matter the reasons for posters trying to water down these figures, the reality is that they are very much higher.

If 3000 kids start Gaelscoil now another similar figure ceased full-time education in June. These kids didn't suddenly lose their ability to speak Irish. These school-going kids also have families (surprisingly) and some of these families speak Irish too.

Fuinseog

paky wrote: »

Whenever I convert with people on my travels the topic of languages often comes up. Usually it starts with a question such as ''Do you speak your own language in Ireland?'' and I usually respond with ''Yes we do, we speak Irish aswel as English but its a minority language.'' The unassuming person often replies with ''Oh...Irish, is that Gaelic?'' and I often reply with ''No, its not''.
It's very annoying when this happens, imo, tecnically speaking, Gaelic is not a language but a collective term refering to a set of langauges in Britain, France and Ireland, so refering to Irish as being Gaelic is technically incorrect.
So why is it people refer to Irish as Gaelic when as far as understanding goes, I have never met a person who spoke Irish that could understand Scots Gaelic or let alone speak it?

I speak Gaelic. in Gaeilge. its not a batty boy language as Ali G would imply. i do not speak Celtic.

when you say you speak Irish some people believe that to be hiberno English.

Fuinseog

Badly Drunk Boy wrote: »

What wrecks my head is when they pronounce 'Gaelic' as 'Gallic'. I've heard it a lot from seemingly intelligent people on BBC programmes. BBC!!!

Gallic people were from France...

no quite, they are referring to Scots Gaelic and Gaelic tends to be pronounced Gallic is Scotland.

Fuinseog

Fromthetrees wrote: »

People speak Irish outside of school?

I wish I could meet one of these people.

you should spend some time outside the Pale then.

DingChavez

Calling it Irish is an English speaking Irish nationalist thing. The Irish langauge and its dialects went by many names in the past. Poor Irish speaking immigrants probably lead to it being referred to by Gaelic outside Ireland. Gaelic refers specifically to the languages developed in Ireland. It is not interchangeable with Celtic or Gaulish.

paky

DingChavez wrote: »

Calling it Irish is an English speaking Irish nationalist thing.

I would've thought it was a British thing to call it Gaelic but it appears as though I'm wrong.

Davidius

1ZRed wrote: »

I hate this. It's "Céard", nothing worse than hearing people go around pronouncing "Cád", "cod".

I'd be more worried about the standard of Irish and it's pronunciation than what people call it abroad tbh

You confuse me. It was always my understanding that 'cad' and 'céard' are two different words with different etymologies which happen to mean the same thing and whose frequencies depend on dialect

Sure it will be grand

DingChavez wrote: »

Calling it Irish is an English speaking Irish nationalist thing.

:rolleyes:

I think you'll find that English academics and writers have been calling the language Irish for centuries. Erse was another common name for Irish as it was spoken across Ireland and Scotland.

Lawrence1895

It's called 'Irish' in Germany, maybe because most Germans are not able to spell 'Gaelic'

A Dub in Glasgo

It is called Gaelic in Scotland and the Scottish version is pronounced Gallic as stated earlier. I never refer to the language as Irish when talking about it with people not from Ireland

Davidius

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

It is called Gaelic in Scotland and the Scottish version is pronounced Gallic as stated earlier. I never refer to the language as Irish when talking about it with people not from Ireland

I think it's called Gaelic in Scotland to differentiate it from the Germanic Scots language of the Lowlands. The 'Gaelic' qualifier's not really necessary in the case of Irish just as 'Brythonic' isn't necessary for Welsh.