The creeping prominence of the Irish language

The Conamara man is the past, correct, but he's our past and he also explains our present.

He is the reason why irish language rights exist. To ignore the existence of those rights is to ignore his legacy while also ignoring his living descendants who still champion the language today.

Now we are getting closer to why so many Irish people are attached to a language they are not fluent in themselves.

That is great you want to support kids speaking Irish, the difference between us is that I also want to support adults speaking Irish.

Irish, as languages go, has very consistent spelling and pronounciation rules, but celtic languages with their verb-subject-object structures have "barriers to entry" that don't help their case unfortunately when competing against the world's lingua franca.

The English language word 'Gaelic' for use to describe language originates in 18th century Edinburgh as a means of describing Scottish Gáidhlig in Scots/English instead of using the more traditional Erse (Irish in Scots) which had become perjorative by that time. This ties in with wider movement which saw formalisation fo aspects of Scottish Gáidhlig and the formal translation of Bible (instead of using the 'Early Modern Irish' version from early 17th century). It derives from combining the word Gael with the English language suffix -ic (compare: Slavic, Slavonic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic etc.). This just happens to be a homonym for Gáidhlig/Gaedhealg.

Up until this time the name of language in Ireland was always some form of 'Irish' when speaking in English. For example Queen Elizabeth I's Irish primer.

We only start to see the use of 'Gaelic' in and Irish context post 1800 when Irish became a minority language in Ireland.

In context of Donegal Irish there is a conflation of the English word 'Gaelic' (Gael + ic) and the word Gaeilic/Gaeilig which is derived from the old Nominative Gaedhealg -- Gaeilge derives from the genitive case which was Gaaedhilge and it's use in modern standard is reflective of Connacht Irish.

So when Donegal speakers say Gaeilic they basically using modernised spelling form of the nominative that just happens to sound identical to the word Gaelic (in english -- they are homonyms). This is like the way in Scotland they use Gáidhlig (nominative) / Gáidhlige (nominative)

Re: Census

Those numbers are very overinflated Having reread the latest census question regarding Irish it doesn't have any indication of ability, only frequency.

Re: Other Services

Such as?

Don't know, I tried a google but didn't find any information.

Not a lot.

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

"Be the change you want to be"

If you ever listen to entrepreneurs talking they are always talking about the supports and incentives out there for start up businesses. They talk about Ireland's "pro-business climate" and these are all buzzwords for a country that supports people who want to start businesses.

It's easy for a government to say "be the change you want to be, we're not going to stop you"; but it's another to provide the cash to support business.

There are a lot of enterprising Irish speakers out there you know and the same principles apply. Here's a nice shortcourse on foraging and yoga with Irish just as an example. https://www.wildirishretreat.ie/diseart-na-casca

But it's a lot harder to do your ECDL through Irish.

That said, the cold shoulder being shown by some on this thread would make you wonder why some people have this mission to denormalise Irish in Ireland (yet again!).

Why the switch from daily interactions and classes to businesses? I'm assuming you can speak Irish fluently, you could offer your time to teach a class or start club or any number of things through Irish.

I never said the onus was on you to provide state services. Government Irish language facilities should be available and if they're not I'm pretty sure you could take you local authoruty to court over it if you wanted to, but you want someone else to do it. Same with courses in whatever, bemoaning that they're not offered through Irish but being unwilling to do something about it yourself because someone else should.

It's no win with you! Unless I'm giving ecdl courses in Irish I'm lazy or passing the buck. So I need to take a court case to have a basic conversation in Irish with a state service, like wtf? And if I did you'd be calling me a crank 😉

You're entitled to take them to court if they're not providing the service they're supposed to. I think those services through Irish are pointless because everyone speaks English but that's irrelevant, you do you. You could even have the case argued in Irish too if you wanted to.

If you want courses or activities through Irish but are unwilling to do it yourself you are passing the buck. If every Irish speaker has the same attitude I think we've figured out why they're not widely available.

Depends - what specific services are you requesting?

Edit- it appears you answered, so:

Pay bills - yes

Apply for planning permission - yes (although I though you could do this anyway?)

Do a course in Irish - not unless there's demand.

Copies of docs stamped by guards - again, thought this was available anyway?

USe Irish in local.library - id be in favour of having one irish-speaking librarian in every library. If this person is not available, up to you whether you want to wait or deal with the issue in English.

I don't think anyone's standing around crying while you're doing something through Irish.