Irish speakers in the Irish Freestate

Rodin wrote: »

Of course.

Of course? Not!

In 1926 a total of 543,511 asserted that they could speak Irish.
In 2016 the figure was more than three times that number, at 1,774,437. Whether or not the people behind the 2016 figure actually could speak Irish (beyond lá brea and Jams O'Donnell is ainm dom) is open to question.

Del.Monte wrote: »

The 2016 figure is blatant rubbish.

The figures are from the CSO Census Returns. So if rubbish they are official rubbish. However, I agree with you. Same for French – in my experience of job interviews almost all those who claim to speak ‘fluent French’ on their CVs have a very poor level of school French, very basic at best.


The number of Irish speakers counted in the census includes schoolchildren so 14 intake years of (+/-) 70,000 pupils = 1 million and about 200k in Third Level.All would have a level of Irish (because its necessary for NUI college entry.) That brings it back to the Free State figure. Within ten years a big majority of today's speakers could not hold a basic conversation in Irish. A staggeringly amazing result when one looks at the massive amount of time and money poured into teaching a language that is about as relevant as veganism.

Deleted User wrote: »

I was trying to find out what the justification was for making it an official language and I was told there were more native speakers in the Irish freestate than there are native speakers today.

‘Today’ has nothing to do with it being an official language. Its official status is ‘enshrined’ in our Constitution. Prior to 1937 if you wanted any sort of civil service job you had to speak Irish and if you wanted to progress in it you had to be seen to speak Irish. Any taint of Britishness - like being an ex-serviceman/WW1 veteran put you on the heap. That grew out of a need to forge an identity of the ‘National’ Irish type and was – bizarrely – promoted by a bunch of foreigners/Anglo-Irish/Castle Catholics from the late 1800’s. Think of the Abbey. In the early days of the Free State they even were proposals to call judges ‘Breitheamhs’ and have them wear Celtic garb to distance them from the wigs and gowns of the law courts in London.
All politicians do not want to upset a vocal electorate, even if it is small– that is why the pubs were open at Christmas and Irish as a compulsory subject is not tackled.

That 2016 figure is rubbish. Many people might think they can speak Irish just because they learned it in school but they could not converse in it at all. They might have a few words or phrases, that's about it.
I guarantee if the question was asked in Irish the number of answers would be a lot smaller!
It's an embarrassment that after going through school where we studied Irish for about 12-14 years very few are actually fluent in it after all that time.
So little emphasis is put on speaking the language throughout our schooling, rather the focus is on learning poetry and trying to read Irish prose while only have only a rudimentary grasp of the language, these things would be much easier if we were taught how to speak the language properly first.
I've seen students studying languages in schools abroad who are much more fluent in their chosen language after 5-6 years of study than any Irish person I know is after going through the Irish schooling system 'learning' Irish.
Mosts students can barely get through the basic conversation in the Oral in the Leaving Cert, you only have to see the panic and stress it causes, with students trying to learn answers to questions they think might be asked. If we were fluent by that stage the Oral should be a breeze and as normal as having a conversation with a stranger in English.
I wish I could speak fluently but the reality is that I remember very little despite taking Higher Level to LC. I've lived abroad most of my adult life and when this comes up in conversation people are shocked to hear that most people can barely speak the language despite learning it for so long.
If it was done properly Irish children should basically grow up being bilingual.

Mick Tator wrote: »

The figures are from the CSO Census Returns. So if rubbish they are official rubbish. However, I agree with you. Same for French – in my experience of job interviews almost all those who claim to speak ‘fluent French’ on their CVs have a very poor level of school French, very basic at best.


The number of Irish speakers counted in the census includes schoolchildren so 14 intake years of (+/-) 70,000 pupils = 1 million and about 200k in Third Level.All would have a level of Irish (because its necessary for NUI college entry.) That brings it back to the Free State figure. Within ten years a big majority of today's speakers could not hold a basic conversation in Irish. A staggeringly amazing result when one looks at the massive amount of time and money poured into teaching a language that is about as relevant as veganism.

A more telling statistic would be how many completed their Census forms in Irish, not parrot a few half remembered fragments of schoolboy Irish.

"8,068 Irish language forms were completed in Census 2016 compared with 8,676 in Census 2011."

Del.Monte wrote: »

And to those like Newstalk's, Shane Coleman, who would have all our primary schools teach through Irish because it's 'our' national language

It never ceases to amuse me the way some Irish adults' way of reviving a language is to get others, i.e. children, to do the work, and every excuse under the sun why they can't, or won't, be bothered themselves.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Almost everybody recorded in the census in 1926 had been to school before the foundation of the state.

(Plus, if only because of the need first of all to train teachers to speak Irish, it was quite some time after the foundation of the state before all national schools were teaching Irish.)

The Irish language was very much a minority tongue by 1850, chiefly found on the western seaboard. In much of Munster, the less educated spoke a type of English influenced by the Irish of their forebears, hiberno-english, so perhaps could be deemed bilingual.
In the early 20th century, many people learned Irish at Gaelic league classes, they may have been small in numbers but passionate about the language and would have passed this onto the children. By 1922 every child under 11 was obliged to learn Irish, some schools started teaching it even earlier.
As compliance with the new national agenda was essential for progress especially in the public service, people would have emphasized their knowledge of and willingness to use Irish. Not withstanding the supposed secrecy of the census, nobody could be certain of it, so tended to claim a knowledge of Irish, just in case.

Deleted User wrote: »

The Irish language is not about as relevant as veganism. It was very important for putting everyone on an equal footing after independence and it still has value today. Even today, Irish citizens here have a distinct advantage in employment over people from English speaking countries given the fact it's compulsory here. If it wasn't the case, employment opportunities may not be so easy to come by. The language needs to be even more heavily enforced now that Ireland has so many foreign workers.

I think you are looking for an argument for the sake of one?

Irish citizens have a distinct advantage in employment because (a) they have a more diverse education than many other English speakers (six subjects in L.Cert compared to 2-3 A-Levels); (b) they are citizens of the EU; (c) they are more adaptable and do not have colonial baggage. Speaking Irish is meaningless in the scheme of international business. Irish has been 'enforced' for a hundred years and it is still moribund. Big sticks do not work. It would be far better and more useful for students to spend the time on another EU language

Your comments above also are totally illogical – particularly when you read your admission that you have not even used Irish for 16 years.

Deleted User wrote: »

I've studied Irish for thirteen years yet I haven't spoken a word of it since about 2005. I finished a course on Scottish Gaelic last Christmas, it took me about two months. I would say Scottish Gaelic or Gaidhlig as they call it is about 85-90 % similar to Irish. I would go as far as saying that it is the same language however it is spelled differently.

I'll give you an example; the word for sausage in Irish is ispín and the word for sausage in Scottish Gaelic is isbean. These seem like two different words however they are pronounced the same.

You need to do some research on PIE languages and how they branched.....

Thought so.

Mick Tator wrote: »

I think you are looking for an argument for the sake of one?

Irish citizens have a distinct advantage in employment because (a) they have a more diverse education than many other English speakers (six subjects in L.Cert compared to 2-3 A-Levels); (b) they are citizens of the EU; (c) they are more adaptable and do not have colonial baggage. Speaking Irish is meaningless in the scheme of international business. Irish has been 'enforced' for a hundred years and it is still moribund. Big sticks do not work. It would be far better and more useful for students to spend the time on another EU language

Your comments above also are totally illogical – particularly when you read your admission that you have not even used Irish for 16 years.


You need to do some research on PIE languages and how they branched.....

PIE is not really relevant in this case as these two languages split far more recently. They would have been part of a language continuum that stretched from the South of Kerry to the far North of Scotland up until the 1600s.

Mick Tator wrote: »

The Celtic split occurred about 3000 years ago. Scots Gaelic developed out of Old Irish about 1500 years ago. That's far back enough for most people to agree that my reference to PIE languages is acceptable.

Irish , and Celtic languages in general, share quite a few features with Semitic languages. Perhaps the PIE is not as relevant as previously thought.

Visited Scotland about 10 years ago and was pleasantly surprised how much I understood in reading signs etc. I occasionally watch BBC Alba and can understand a little of the language. And I am not fluent, I have school Irish , learned about 50 -60 years ago, and mostly forgotten now.

Mick Tator wrote: »

The Celtic split occurred about 3000 years ago. Scots Gaelic developed out of Old Irish about 1500 years ago.That's far back enough for most people to agree that my reference to PIE languages is acceptable.

It was the same language 1500 hundred years ago, albeit from what would have been the Northern dialect of Irish at the time. There would have been continuous contact between the two groups up until the 1600s so it's not as if they developed in isolation for the last 1500 years.

They are the same branch of PIE languages so hence my point about PIE divergence which happened far earlier not really being relevant.

rock22 wrote: »

The original OP is seeking information as to why Irish is an official language. Surely it was simply a matter of choice.

The OP clarified his question and got a response from me here .

I think the answers to the census question ("Can you speak Irish?", which can only be answered "yes" or "no") is probably coloured by the question which comes immediately afterwards:

"If 'yes', do you speak Irish —

- daily, within the education system

- daily, outside the education system

- weekly

- less often

- never

That possibly contributes to an understanding that a very basic level of Irish, consistent with very infrequent use, still counts as a "yes".

Also worth noting that, of the 1.77 million who say that they speak Irish, about half are accounted for by pupils in primary and secondary education, who are nearly all actively studying Irish and presumably have at least some grasp of the language. Add in another quarter of a million, say, who completed secondary education with the last five years and haven't forgotten everything yet. So that leaves roughly 650,000-700,000 who say that they have have retained the ability to speak some Irish into adulthood. The population of Ireland over the age of 25 is about 3.3 million; by this rough calculation about 20% of them are saying that they can speak at least some Irish.

Higher %

Waaaay off the truth there!! Get your facts right.

Joyce learned Norwegian to better understanf what Henrik Ibsen was saying in his writings. It had nothing to do with his view onIrish.

Your comment on Dublin being poor is equally incorrect, it is very far from that, being one of the richest cities in Europe ( and also one of the most expensive and (importantly) innovative.

I hate the way Irish was (and still is) controlled by zealots and used by some from Sinn Fein to 'prove their Irishness'. As for slum kids, none begged for a penny 'as Gaelge' - few (extremely few in the 20's and 30's) would have understood them.

But anyway, I still think forcing Gaelic Language on a unwilling population was a stupid idea & a idea who energies went into could have so much been better served controlling income inequality.

Well I wouldn't say it as a trade off, it was just a waste of time pursuing cultural issues so vigorously that had no bearing on the well being of how the state performed economically or on social issues like education or international politics. Of course the Catholic Church really decided a lot of these issues.

It's a strange contrast, the revolutions in France, Russia & Spain the church was seen as (and was) an enemy of the revolutionaries in Ireland because of it's status as a oppressed church it was seen as ally of the more "respectable" elements of the revolution.

I agree with most of that.

Another example of the church on the side of the weak is some Central American countries. Archbishop Romero of San Salvador executed by right-wing US backed death squads in 1980 & by the same sort of group at the end of decade who murdered the six Jesuit priests again n El Salvador. I'm guessing the right in Washington & Central America viewed Liberation Theology as a form of Christian Socialism.

And the Los Horcones massacre in Honduras in which 15 religious leaders executed in 1975

Also in Guatemala were dissidents were tourched, raped & murdered.

The experience of a Texas Ursuline nun Diane Ortiz sums up the horror.

[/YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3NrCYU5zNE[YOUTUBE]

Chomsky wrote a really great piece on this.... https://chomsky.info/unclesam09/

"The Crucifixion of El Salvador

Noam Chomsky

Excerpted from What Uncle Sam Really Wants, 1992

For many years, repression, torture and murder were carried on in El Salvador by dictators installed and supported by our government, a matter of no interest here. The story was virtually never covered. By the late 1970s, however, the US government began to be concerned about a couple of things.

One was that Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua, was losing control . The US was losing a major base for its exercise of force in the region. A second danger was even more threatening. In El Salvador in the 1970s, there was a growth of what were called "popular organizations"-peasant associations, cooperatives, unions, Church-based Bible study groups that evolved into self-help groups, etc. That raised the threat of democracy.

In February 1980, the Archbishop of EI Salvador, Oscar Romero, sent a letter to President Carter in which he begged him not to send military aid to the junta that ran the country. He said such aid would be used to "sharpen injustice and repression against the people’s organizations" which were struggling "for respect for their most basic human rights" (hardly news to Washington, needless to say).

A few weeks later, Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying a mass. The neo-Nazi

Roberto d’Aubuisson is generally assumed to be responsible for this assassination (among countless other atrocities). D’Aubuisson was "leader for-life" of the ARENA party, which now governs El Salvador; members of the party, like current Salvadoran president Alfredo Cristiani, had to take a blood oath of loyalty to him.

Thousands of peasants and urban poor took part in a commemorative mass a decade later, along with many foreign bishops, but the US was notable by its absence. The Salvadoran Church formally proposed Romero for sainthood.

All of this passed with scarcely a mention in the country that funded and trained Romero’s assassins. The New York Times, the "newspaper of record," published no editorial on the assassination when it occurred or in the years that followed, and no editorial or news report on the commemoration.

On March 7, 1980, two weeks before the assassination, a state of siege had been instituted in El Salvador, and the war against the population began in force (with continued US support and involvement). The first major attack was a big massacre at the Rio Sumpul, a coordinated military operation of the Honduran and Salvadoran armies in which at least 600 people were butchered. Infants were cut to pieces with machetes, and women were tortured and drowned. Pieces of bodies were found in the river for days afterwards. There were church observers, so the information came out immediately, but the mainstream US media didn’t think it was worth reporting.

Peasants were the main victims of this war, along with labor organizers, students, priests or anyone suspected of working for the interests of the people. In Carter’s last year, 1980, the death toll reached about 10,000, rising to about 13,000 for 1981 as the Reaganites took command.

In October 1980, the new archbishop condemned the "war of extermination and genocide against a defenseless civilian population" waged by the security forces. Two months later they were hailed for their "valiant service alongside the people against subversion" by the favorite US "moderate," Jose Napoleon Duarte, as he was appointed civilian president of the junta.

The role of the "moderate" Duarte was to provide a fig leaf for the military rulers and ensure them a continuing flow of US funding after the armed forces had raped and murdered four churchwomen from the US. That had aroused some protest here; slaughtering Salvadorans is one thing, but raping and killing American nuns is a definite PR mistake. The media evaded and downplayed the story, following the lead of the Carter Administration and its investigative commission.

The incoming Reaganites went much further, seeking to justify the atrocity, notably Secretary of State Alexander Haig and UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. But it was still deemed worthwhile to have a show trial a few years later, while exculpating the murderous junta-and, of course, the paymaster.

The independent newspapers in El Salvador, which might have reported these atrocities, had

been destroyed. Although they were mainstream and pro-business, they were still too undisciplined for the military’s taste. The problem was taken care of in 1980-81, when the editor of one was murdered by the security forces; the other fled into exile. As usual, these events were considered too insignificant to merit more than a few words in US newspapers.

In November 1989, six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter, were murdered by the army. That same week, at least 28 other Salvadoran civilians were murdered, including the head of a major union, the leader of the organization of university women, nine members of an Indian farming cooperative and ten university students.

The news wires carried a story by AP correspondent Douglas Grant Mine, reporting how soldiers had entered a working-class neighborhood in the capital city of San Salvador, captured six men, added a 14-year-old boy for good measure, then lined them all up against a wall and shot them. They "were not priests or human rights campaigners," Mine wrote, "so their deaths have gone largely unnoticed"-as did his story.

The Jesuits were murdered by the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite unit created, trained and equipped by the United States. It was formed in March 1981, when fifteen specialists in counterinsurgency were sent to El Salvador from the US Army School of Special Forces. From the start, the Battalion was engaged in mass murder. A US trainer described its soldiers as "particularly ferocious….We’ve always had a hard time getting them to take prisoners instead of ears."

In December 1981, the Battalion took part in an operation in which over a thousand civilians were killed in an orgy of murder, rape and burning. Later it was involved in the bombing of villages and murder of hundreds of civilians by shooting, drowning and other methods. The vast majority of victims were women, children and the elderly.

The Atlacatl Battalion was being trained by US Special Forces shortly before murdering the Jesuits. This has been a pattern throughout the Battalion’s existence-some of its worst massacres have occurred when it was fresh from US training.

In the "fledgling democracy" that was El Salvador, teenagers as young as 13 were scooped up in sweeps of slums and refugee camps and forced to become soldiers. They were indoctrinated with rituals adopted from the Nazi SS, including brutalization and rape, to prepare them for killings that often have sexual and satanic overtones.

The nature of Salvadoran army training was described by a deserter who received political asylum in Texas in 1990, despite the State Department’s request that he be sent back to El Salvador. (His name was withheld by the court to protect him from Salvadoran death squads.)

According to this deserter, draftees were made to kill dogs and vultures by biting their throats and twisting off their heads, and had to watch as soldiers tortured and killed suspected dissidents-tearing out their fingernails, cutting off their heads, chopping their bodies to pieces and playing with the dismembered arms for fun.

In another case, an admitted member of a Salvadoran death squad associated with the Atlacatl Battalion, Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, detailed the involvement of US advisers and the Salvadoran government in death-squad activity. The Bush administration has made every effort to silence him and ship him back to probable death in El Salvador, despite the pleas of human rights organizations and requests from Congress that his testimony be heard. (The treatment of the main witness to the assassination of the Jesuits was similar.)

The results of Salvadoran military training are graphically described in the Jesuit journal America by Daniel Santiago, a Catholic priest working in El Salvador. He tells of a peasant woman who returned home one day to find her three children, her mother and her sister sitting around a table, each with its own decapitated head placed carefully on the table in front of the body, the hands arranged on top "as if each body was stroking its own head."

The assassins, from the Salvadoran National Guard, had found it hard to keep the head of an 18-month-old baby in place, so they nailed the hands onto it. A large plastic bowl filled with blood was tastefully displayed in the center of the table.

According to Rev. Santiago, macabre scenes of this kind aren’t uncommon. People are not just killed by death squads in El Salvador-they are decapitated and then their heads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disemboweled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones, while parents are forced to watch.

Rev. Santiago goes on to point out that violence of this sort greatly increased when the Church began forming peasant associations and self help groups in an attempt to organize the poor.

By and large, our approach in El Salvador has been successful. The popular organizations have been decimated, just as Archbishop Romero predicted. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered and more than a million have become refugees. This is one of the most sordid episodes in US history-and it’s got a lot of competition.

"

"

Who is actually pursuing policy aiding the Irish language so vigorously? Very few people really... The Irish language is barely mentioned in the Dáil, various news publications or daily discussion. Most people don't give a s**t about the language, and a lot of people actually have disdain for it, as is well displayed by some posters here. I can't fathom why they want to live in the country if their only appreciation of it is living in a little economic bubble of services and entertainment with no bearing or concern for their own history and heritage, or that of future generations. 'Just let it die out sure, whats the point' It is both defeatist and self loathing, and no 'economic argument' can hold up to scrutiny, you cannot argue 'value' in regard to intangible cultural heritage and what is brought with it. (Of course quality of education is an issue with the language, but it is not an argument against teaching the language all together, nor greatly reducing it.)