What do you think Ireland would be like if we all spoke fluent Irish?

We would be bilingual like most Europeans.....

Fabulous but as Gaelige

Our economy would suffer as one reason international company's come here is we speak English ,English is the international language used in America and many Eu citizens speak English as well as the native language

I see no upside to everyone speaking Irish

One of the reasons Irish culture movies TV and music is popular is that we all speak English would U2 enya the corrs be so popular if they sang in the Irish language

I don't understand why google even offers search in Irish as basically everyone born here is fluent in English

One example Terry Wogan went to the BBC in the 70s and became a very popular DJ due partly to his neutral acccent. He did not sound posh but he also did not sound common ,his accent was acceptable to everyone

Our country would be less of a draw for companies to invest in and tourism would suffer too.

it could be a major drawback or just slightly a drawback …. It’s unquantifiable….

That would mean no colonisation by Britian so I would assume more built hertitage as we wouldn’t have been treated as an Agricultural District of Britian to supply them with food at the expense of our progress and a very unequitable land ownership policy. No plantations. No Normans either, so no castles at that stage.

Very hypotetical question. I would assume more well off . More built heritage. Older buildings : more houses of a higher standard. Stronger singing/music tradition perhaps. Hurling would probably be more widespread in the country. We would have proper historical records, annals, genealogy unbroken.

Who knows. We might have taken part in WW2.

A European country with a greater sense of itself.

Does the OP imply we only spoke fluent Irish or that along with English we all could speak Irish? There's a huge difference in the two scenarios.

If it such wasn’t a cultural, social and political hand grenade…. You’d have people in politics questioning it’s relevance as a compulsory leaving cert subject… ok, if you are of a certain demographic you can apply for an exemption from studying it… immigrant to the country being one qualifier…

but I’d imagine somewhere as a result of that … in time a more easy and less hardline outlook will emerge regarding the compulsory nature of Irish in schools….

over a dozen languages can be studied now for the leaving….so id say that will be the beginning of the sounding of the death knell for Irish… it’s not an easy language, has little value in the community and employment sphere barring niche businesses like TG4 or if you want to teach it etc…

Dutch is very like German, in fact Dutch is Deutsch. So, right there you have a common overlap with another language. Nothing like that exists for Irish, except other "dead" languages like Breton. Plus Holland is surrounded by other nations that are very close to them. It's easier to be influenced to learn another language and their command of English comes out of a certain necessity, because it's the dominant language around Europe, especially in the business world.

We're an Island, on the other hand, and while we might be better at learning languages these days (I'd question just how good we are though still), we have always been pretty lousy at picking up other tongues. Even our own past language we've been awful at learning. So, if I take the OP's meaning as Irish being our primary tongue and English an optional endeavour, then I can only see that as a detriment over all to the country.

Whether we like it or not, the fact that we speak English as a our first language has really opened a lot of doors for this country. Doors that would otherwise be shut because, going on our historical difficulties with learning other languages, I don't see a situation whereby we, as a nation, would be "fully fluent" in both English and Irish. In fact I could see us struggling to learn English in a very real way.

Now, the flip side to all of this is that because we do speak English as our national language, it may have made us somewhat lazy in respect to learning different languages. In other words, why bother if there's a good chance of a foreigner being able to speak English as well? I know very, very, few people with a good level of conversational language in a foreign tongue.

It ought not to be embarrassing. Irish is useless to everyone other than as a dilettante pursuit. There's no point to learning it for any real world reasons. It's a nice feather to have on one's cap, but nothing more. However, the foreign people you work with speak English as a practical necessity. The know it's a requirement in the world of work and that it's the dominant tongue. I work with people all over the world and they all have a very good command of English. Because they have to. But they're all from nations that have English taught to them from primary level and their countries have had a long history of being bilingual. Speaking English to a high degree means a better job, with better pay, for people in Europe and elsewhere.

But we don't have that history and we've been pretty much monolingual for hundreds of years. And also, we've been in a kind of isolated position in many ways. It's hard for us to picture now, especially if one is of a certain age, but Ireland was very insular up until probably the 90's. That too has rendered us with a difficulty with picking up second languages. I grew up in the 80's and the only other foreign language widely available to learn in most schools was French and the Irish, as a nation, had a very low key view of ourselves on the world stage.

As for languages being similar, I don't think they need to be either. But it does help immensely. If someone can speak English, they'll find learning German much easier, because English is a Germanic language. But that doesn't mean it would be impossible to pick up a romance language.

Children may grow to see the utility of learning an instrument, music is international, it can be fun, you can engage with people from all over the world, perhaps earn fame and a decent living from it.

With Irish you can talk to a handful of hobby language enthusiasts, maybe get a job as an Irish teacher or a translator of things no-one will read and that's about it.

Speaking Irish can be fun too, there is international Irish language scholarship etc. Most music lovers do not try to present music as "utilitarian", it just is.

As I said I don't object to Irish being taken off the syllabus.

But it's a part of history now and has harmed no one.

I mean the language itself has harmed no one.

You have had nothing good to say about Irish itself. You said it was no fun (a matter of opinion) and effectively useless at loading you up with material advantages (not the fundamental purpose of education).

Spoiled libertarians, southern unionists and empty-brained "educated" liberals who loathe native culture are the only people who speak about Irish with real bitterness.

Bonus points if you were a thwarted 12 year old careerist on the make who would be an international CEO by now if you could have taken some German classes instead.

Education, especially for a young child, is not a simple "What's in it for me materially?"

The problem is that Irish is/was not taught properly as a conversational language. Apart from that it is not, like Latin or Shakespearean English, in any need of justification.

All just my opinion of course.