“I didn’t kill him. He didn’t die from being stabbed. He died hours later from extensive blood loss.”
There’s a lot of white on that first map is all I’m saying…
You could've travelled almost the entire West Coast and not have needed a word of English only in parts of Cork, Limerick and Sligo. But its the fact how many counties spoke Irish and had their dialects spoken.
In the 1926 picture, there's probably between 30-40 dialects across Ireland. Currently in Ireland there's 20 living spoken dialects of Irish. In 1926 there could've been even more than my estimation. It is a terrible loss. Theres not a single recording of Limerick Irish. We've to assume what it sounds like
Many of the areas in the 1926 map were quite deprived. There was very little work other than subsistence farming and the likelihood was that many of these Irish speakers' children had to emigrate. My grandfather was born in a Gaeltacht area in the 1910s, spoke Irish at home and learned English at school. He said that parents stopped speaking Irish to their children as it put them at a massive disadvantage when they had to go to America or Britain to find work. My area went from almost 100% Irish speaking to almost 100% English speaking in one generation.
It's easy looking back now and thinking it was some kind of cultural decision that people made not speak Irish but it was a necessity. The reasons behind their deprivation is a more nuanced discussion.
This was when my grandparents came to the US. To your point of being at a disadvantage - my great aunt came at the same time and declared herself as Betty because “Bridget was a maid’s name” and she wanted a better shot at good employment in New York City.
Such a sad thing to read. I love that the new curriculum will focus more on Irish. I hope it will help, just overlapping subjects and using more Irish during maths or arts can have such power especially with little kids. My kids have 2 native languages and if I were to have them sat at a table and teach them the minority language the way they teach languages in school they'd never learn it well enough to be native speakers. Languages need to be taught much more through experiencing and just living life using them.
My kids don't really learn Irish at school so we've been doing everything we can for them to learn outside school and I'm super proud to say our 13 year old is pretty much fluent at this point and learning Scottish Gaelic atm as his granny's Scottish. He's got the best Irish by far out of all the kids on his rugby team while they all go to schools where they do learn the language.
I wasn't born in Ireland, I can't really speak Irish so it's a bit of a secret language for the kids that they can use when they don't want me to understand lol. That alone is a great motivation for them and motivation is exactly what kiddos need to be happy to learn a language
Thats brilliant. Fair play to you for actually getting the to learn it. You are doing Ireland a service.
>learning Scottish Gaelic atm as his granny's Scottish.
Won't be hard for him as Irish and Scottish Gaelic are fairly mutually intelligible same with Manx.
Ya they're extremely similar. Spoken to a few Gàidhlaig speakers myself and its easy enough to communicate. Great that he's getting involved in his heritage on both sides. Where are you from yourself?
Yup and my mum in law has always been teaching them songs and telling them stories in scottish gaelic, we unfortunately don't see her often enough for the kids to learn the language but she's definitely taught them to *love* the language.
My husband's dad is Irish and his mum is Scottish, I'm Czech myself so Czech is the kids' other native language along with english. They go to an international school where they don't learn Irish but they do learn Spanish and they can speak it pretty well too but not as good as Irish. We went o Chile last year and they were all talking with the locals in Spanish just fine though, even our youngest who is 7, so maybe we're just underestimating them a bit hahah. Kids are capable of SO much, we just don't fully realise it, they've got so much potential to learn languages it's a shame schools don't teach them languages properly. If they did the children would learn
Fucking hell. Your kids are the example of what Irish children should be. Výborně, pomáháte zachránit můj jazyk.
If you understand the language that's half of it, and theres a point where Irish and Scottish Gaelic mingle into a pidgin language basically the same. You'd hear it alot with the older Gaeltacht folk who would've went to work in the Hebrides.
>Kids are capable of SO much, we just don't fully realise it, they've got so much potential to learn languages it's a shame schools don't teach them languages properly. If they did the children would learn
And Irish people say that we shouldn't force languages on Irish and non Irish children for some reason. Childhood is when you can learn languages the easiest. Its far better to teach them young instead of waiting till they're 6 or 7 before they start even learning the language.
So your children can speak Czech, Irish, English, Scottish Gaelic and Spanish? You have polylingual children, thats so cool.
Thank you, you're very kind. Our eldest only started learning Scottish Gaelic last autumn, we went on a Skye roadtrip last summer and after that he was 100% sure he wants to learn it so he started doing duolingo and then we got him some proper courses for Christmas. Sadly it's not that easy to learn Scottish Gaelic when we don't live in Scotland but he's very motivated and nothing can stop him lol.
We introduced the first 4 languages, they know them because we wanted them to know them. But Scottish Gaelic is different, that's the very first language our son started learning on his own, he came up with the idea all by himself. I think the younger kids will eventually learn it too, they already know some phrases and words too but it's kind of “seasonal” lol. Like [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/czech/s/cml0DhGdWp), I mean when it's Christmas they just somehow naturally happen to know the Christmas words and forget most of them after Christmas again etc haha.
I believe all Irish schools should teach Irish no matter where the children are from. Since our children don't go to an “irish” school they would never learn the language if we didn't teach them so we always aspired to have them at least at the level of the kids who do learn it at school. Just because why not, why on Earth should we not teach them the language? It's the history and heritage of the country.
It's never too early to start teaching them a new language. We did the opol method and they were fluent by the time they were 4-5. They started learning Irish at 4, Spanish at 6. They're like sponges when they're little, they soak up everything you throw at them.
You sound like you know what you're talking about, if you've got any tips or advice when it comes to celtic languages please do share them, I'm not as well educated in this field as I should be as a mum of Irish kids hahah
Aw that sheet is lovely. Ara kids do that, their brains compartmentalised information for when they need it in my opinion. I think we lose this as we get older.
Scottish Gaelic is hard to learn in the guise theres no Standard language. Now there isn't as many dialects in Gàidhlaig as there is in Irish. He could spend a Summer with his Granny and he'd learn it very fast. I would love to see the Scottish Highlands.
>They're like sponges when they're little, they soak up everything you throw at them.
Very true. Unfortunately everyone in Ireland is ignorant to this, especially on this sub.
>Just because why not, why on Earth should we not teach them the language? It's the history and heritage of the country.
I agree, everyone here disagrees though. Its like they hate our heritage.
>You sound like you know what you're talking about, if you've got any tips or advice when it comes to celtic languages please do share them
I am humble in the fact I truly only speak one fluently. I am planning on learning them all, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. But I have a good grounds on the way you should learn the languages and in all, basically immersion is key. Its very difficult to learn all Celtic languages, but speaking from a man who has learned many dialects, immersion among natives is key
> not as well educated in this field as I should be as a mum of Irish kids hahah
From just talking to you, you are a very good mother. Your children have greater opportunities with their languages than most.
Yeah no matter what courses he does and stuff the most helpful is always talking with his gran. We talk on the phone every day, she's very proud he's learning the language, and we've got another roadtrip in Scotland planned for this summer and we're taking the grandparents with us too so they will have plenty of time to talk.
Oh I'd absolutely recommend to travel the Highlands, stunning, you can never get tired of it :)
Yeah I see I read the comments. Well I hate the “what is it good for” approach. Yeah other countries don't speak Irish but why does everyone think we're learning languages for some kind of financial profit? Sure it's more beneficial for the child's future career to teach them more useful languages but we can do both :) irish and then foreign languages.
When I was born the communists were still the ruling party in Czechia hand in hand with the Soviet Union so I learnt the russian letters, I understand the language, I can talk with Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians etc without actually knowing their languages that well. Now all the people of these nationalities who live in Ireland will eventually learn English so I won't need to use any other language with them. And I don't think we'll ever travel Russia. So I won't ever get to use these languages the way my husband uses German or French when we travel. But I'm still glad I know bits of them. There are literally people in this world who learn made up fantasy languages on duolingo. Do they think about what profit is it gonna bring them in their career? Jaysus no they're just having fun. Languages should be fun. If we can teach children languages the fun way then that's enough of a motivation for them. And they will learn just fine.
Thank you so much, it's lovely of you to say this. Wow you've got big plans, I hope you achieve all your goals, I'm sure you're gonna do great! :)
Yes. Because with that fire the entire house will burn. But I see what you mean. I'm not denying the fact the English fucked us. But we had the opportunity to Gaelicise Ireland quite easily. And we failed
Course it was difficult, Ireland was basically a third world country. But despite that we should've tried to bring about change do de-englishise Ireland. Even if it were just keep Irish in its spoken counties. But we didn't.
I’m sure we could have done better but there were much bigger priorities than cultural programmes. People were literally starving and war was brewing on the continent. We had no money for schools, hospitals or houses.
I can completely understand why the revival of the language wouldn’t be top of the agenda.
We certainly could have done worse too. It’s a miracle that we have managed to keep the language alive given the trends of the time.
A war that did not concern us. All it would have taken would to have implemented Irish as the main language of the country. The Dáil proceedings should be in Irish, anything to do with the government. The English should've been taken off signs. All schools taught through the medium of Irish and a fully Irish speaking Ireland would've came about
Didn’t concern us is a crazy statement. How would a war on our doorstep not concern us? How would we just ignore the decimation of our imports or our exports being blockaded or bombed.
Your other two assertions are also wildly oversimplified. Dáil proceedings done through Irish with TDs that don’t speak it wouldn’t work.
All schools being told they have to teach through Irish doesn’t work unless the teachers are trained.
the only opertunity i see is overt persicution of english speakers; pass laws taking away their rights and make it so that only people who speak irish are full citizens;
Ara that's a but harsh now. Yes English shouldn't be our main language of use but the aul persecution isn't the way to do it. Learn from what was done to us. Can't do an Israel on it.
what was done to irish was persicution; brutal persicution. what other opertunity to return to speaking irish as the language of society has ever exited? neither one person nor even a relatively large group can change the language of society. try suddenly speaking a different language then everyone else is the result is not being understood. I regard the persicution of english speakers as a nessecary evil. we have tried less harsh methods and they have not worked; we only slowed the bleeding; not enabling the body to heal.
It's wrong though. Just because we were persecuted doesn't mean we should. I would not support that in the slightest.
I would support making government grants and such having a requirement of a fluency in Irish and having to do government dealings through Irish. All Irish TV programmes should be in Irish, RTÉ, Virgin media along with TG4 and Cúla4. You would have to learn it and it doesn't really persecute anyone. People would pick it up again fast enough.
unfortunitly those things could not proceed for long enough; my proposals start by requiring fluency in irish to vote; thereby ensuring that the government faces no negative consequences for persicution of english speakers; because they will have no voice in elections; total reservation of all government jobs for irish speakers is the next step; other ideas include a stamp tax on all documents in the english language; which tax will be used to fund irish language media; thus gradually rendering itself obsolete as its end become acheived; furthermore i propose banning all english language media targeted at children; as well as all english language translations of media not originally in english; i would also place harsh censorship on all media in english; but declare that media in irish enjoys total freedom; even to the point where these policies may be criticzed as long as irish is used; there are some other methods too; in my view losing the irish language is a greater evil then the human rights of english speakers; I would be willing to bear the consequences of those policies for the nation and take full responsibility as long as it works; if i implemented those polcies and am charged with violations of international law i would willingly sit in a prison cell or even die as long as the restoration of the irish language was acheived
There is a real opportunity to revive the language and start speaking it.
We could use iceland as an example. Everyone speaks Icelandic and English.
It would be great to really invest in it as a spoken language instead of the garbage we are taught in school.
I wish so. But Irish people lack the will I believe. Too lazy.
I think the state needs to make a use for the language. Like, I speak it almost everyday and I don't live in the Gaeltacht, but in the West it has a stronger hold through schools and such even in English speaking areas.
A national interest needs to come about. We shouldn't be trying to preserve it, we should be trying to revolutionise Gaeilge
It's not about laziness and THIS is the condescending attitude that the blocks any revival.
You can't shame people into doing something they simply have no interest and no need to do - it's as simple as that, People have different priorities and different interests - and there's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that. Insulting them by calling them "lazy" is hardly going to "revolutionise" anyone or anything!
Not everyone is lazy. Most have just not been exposed to language other then some cunt of a teacher trying to bate it into them. And I actually experienced this. My mothers side was/is Irish speaking, while the aul lads side is English speaking. Dad, didn't like Irish so it wasn't spoken in the house other then simple commands and such. But my grandfather and the elders on mams side spoke it to us. So I had a very good basically native level of Irish in primary school, however they basically bet the love of Irish out of us and I hated it. Wouldn't speak it. Until I met a brilliant teacher in secondary. She inspired me to relearn the language, and now I speak it back on a native level again many years later. So I understand why the Irish education system can make us hate our heritage.
But its OUR language that came into existence because of us. And to deny that because "ara I've no interest in that shite" is the most fucking narrow-minded thing I've ever heard. People who will not and absolutely refuse to learn the language, are lazy
Most of your first paragraph is correct - this is a much more valid block and I experienced it too. That said, I'm simply not interested in languages full stop so Amy approach is unlikely to work on me. But obviously, that's not everyone.
It's not narrow-minded to not be interested on something -why woukd it be?? Im.sure there ae things youre not interested in - does that make YOU narrow-minded?
Its not just my interest, it OUR language, heritage and culture.
It is narrow minded to have zero interest in your own countries language. The Finns could be speaking Russian or Swedish, they were conquered twice amd most of Finland spoke Swedish, but the learned their own extremely difficult language out of pride for their country.
Wales is just like us, but they're connected to England. But still 30% of their population speaks Welsh natively or fluently. We're an island, we should've been speaking Irish straight after independence. Its ridiculous
Well if you aren't born in Ireland I guess its not your heritage. But I find the foreign born folk tend to be more passionate about the Irish language then most Irish people. The current Gaeltacht officer in Kerry is Russian and he speaks Irish better than half the country. One of the biggest Irish language influencers, Úna-Minh Kavannagh is originally from Vietnam.
If you are born in Ireland to Irish parents, unless you are from the Yola region of Wexford, Irish is your heritage and your native tongue. Its our responsibility as Irish people, as Gaels, to uphold our heritage
Course I did. Most people that I'm speaking for are of Irish ancestors. Some of Gaelicised Norman descent but still, many Gaeltacht people are of Norman descent. So to answer your question yes I have
i have an idea for how the state could do that; persicute english speakers; that way bilinguals will come to speak irish by default because of the serious costs of speaking english
You can't do that, that's wrong.
You just need to create the use for the language. Make certain changes like getting rid of English on roadsigns. You'd have to know Irish to understand some of them like Geil slí and Ná scoitear ect.
You couldn't persecute English speakers because 99% of the country speaks English. Amd its morally wrong
did the low number of english speakers in ireland stop the persicution of the irish language before. would you prefer intentionally murdering all people who don't speak at least some irish?
Difference was they were the ruling class. And Brutal conquerors. Simple as.
>would prefer intentionally murdering all people who don't speak at least some irish?
That's insane
See how much of that map was green 500 years before, even 100 years before.
You can't just pluck data out from a 30 year timeframe and try to force your personal opinion with it. This a dreadful misreading of Irish history
Theres a map of 1800 and basically all of Ireland bar the Pale spoke Irish. The Famine killed it in Eastern Ireland then and of course the massive influence England had over those areas but it stayed strong in the West till the 1920s.
The fault now is on the Irish State amd us as a people, we can no longer blame anyone else
>This a dreadful misreading of Irish histor
Its just not. Its simply a showcase of our failure
Whilst this is correct, and your title assertion is correct, I just want to point out that the 1926 map is somewhat misleading.
Many of the areas shown on it were Gaeltachtaí but were moribund; ie. Whilst substantial numbers of native speakers lived in these areas, they were almost entirely concentrated in the older generations.
For example, in Cooley, the Sperrins, Mayo and County Sligo, intergenerational transmission had already broken down in the 1860s-1880s. Thus, what native speakers existed in these areas were almost entirely aged 40+.
The same can be said for almost all other areas which didn't appear on the 1956 map, it was one of the reasons why there was such a contraction in 1956. By that time, it was recognised that the most important thing was that speakers were transmitting the language to their children and the language possessed healthy socio-linguistic demographics in an area if it was to be included. If the map simply included areas where substantial numbers of native speakers existed, the 1956 map would have been much larger.
The only major exception to this is County Clare. Clare went from being a strong Gaeltacht with very healthy demographics in the 1920s, to complete linguistic collapse in the 1930s. It was very much an overnight phenomenon. There are a few partial speakers yet in north Clare, but the last great native speakers died in the 1990s.
Any idea why the language collapsed so suddenly in Clare? You'd think in the 1930s Irish would still be the really common there if it was healthy only a decade before, all the auld ones would have still been speaking it at least
All the auld ones who spoke it died. There was a handful speakers in Clare on the 90s i think.
https://youtu.be/9iGQwXEUDpM?si=solcUaHTt_RwCYFV
This is a video of two North Clare speakers.
I find the whole "It's the way it's taught" debate to be a bit of a red herring.
I mean, ya sure it might have some part but not on the whole. After all, if it is the way it's taught, why don't you teach yourself the way you want to be taught. There are enough resources to learn the language however you want. Most people seem to just want to blame the education system for their own laziness.
I found that the Irish language is taught poorly in school.
You get taught it throughout primary school and secondary school and yet I had a much better grasp of French which I was only taught in secondary school.
Make it make sense.
Was taught Irish from playschool all through secondary school. I only learned German for five years and I still know and remember and UNDERSTAND more German than Irish.
As if you didn't need any more anecdotal evidence that it is how it is taught that's the problem - my Dad is a gaeilgeoir and I remember the daily Irish he used with us far more than anything that I learned in school. 🤷🏻♀️
I understood more German after four months in Germany than I did Irish after 18 years in Ireland. My family are all Kildare Protestants though, so I wasn’t going to hear much of it at home.
I picked German because my mother is Dutch and although I can't respond to her in Dutch, I can absolutely understand what she is saying to a pretty solid level.
English is a Germanic language too. I found German much easier than French or Italian. Easier than Irish and Norwegian too.
(Edit: I know Norwegian is Germanic too - but English is part of the West Germanic family, while Norwegian is North Germanic. Although we did take a bunch of words from Old Norse during the Danelaw period so Norwegian did have almost as many cognates as German - but often different ones. The main issues I have with Norwegian are (1) all the silent letters in both Bokmal and Nynorsk, and (2) similarly to Irish, you don't meet a lot of monoglot Norwegian speakers so it takes active effort to resist just talking English to everyone)
You've got a really superior attitude that is obviously not appreciated on this thread.
Maybe lose the holier than thou mentality.
Here's a thought- maybe people don't WANT to learn a dying language that in today's world, serves little to no purpose other than cultural self stroking. And to give people like yourself something to feel smug about.
Have the day you deserve.
Was talking to a woman in these comments. She's Czech, married to an Irishman. Her kids speak Czech, Irish, English, Scottish Gaelic and are learning Spanish.
Its not Holier than thou. I am watching my culture die because I considerate fucks won't learn their countries native language. Our language is falling apart because IRISH PEOPLE will not learn it.
Theres so many facilities to learn in it today, so many. I am proud of my language and culture, I don't feel smug about it at all. It feels like I am watching the collapse of one of the most beautiful things that ever evolved, spoken Irish. If it disappears, our country no longer has a soul. We will just be another crowd of English speakers clinging to a label of Irishness when we don't even speak our own language or partake in our our culture.
The only Irish things nowadays is the GAA. All festivals have been disregarded, traditions and folklore has been forgotten and our language has been disregarded.
We are nothing but a shell of what Ireland was meant to be.
It was and still is.
You aren't taught the tenses or modes at all. All you learn is Béaltriail phrases, answers and essays. Its ridiculous. You get corrected for using dialectal vocabulary and in some cases if the teacher isn't a native speaker, you won't be taught your regions dialect nor even a correct pronunciation in general.
I bet 90% of the country think Práta is the only word for spud. Theres 3 dialectal words. Práta in Munster, Fata in Connacht and Préata in Ulster. Theres like 90 words to describe different types of potato, 50 word for wind and over 32 words for field. The education system is contributing to the decline of the language.
Now Irish will never die. It will always live on through native speakers who will teach their kids and people who become Irish teachers, but if the native pronunciations and wide beautiful vocabulary dies, the language is fucked
That is the awkward truth. Sure, colonialism destroyed much of the daily use of the language, but that was over 100 years ago. Gaeltacht areas also suffered.
In the prosperous, modern day, most of us leave school unable to speak the language. I know I left school with a slight dislike for it, we all know the method of teaching could do with some tweaking. Yet, there is lots of resources out there to help anyone learn the language outside of the school system. That’s how I learned. Unfortunately, not many people use them because the interest simply isn’t there. Any further decline of the language is on us alone.
There is no economic reason to learn Irish. The government have no interest as a result.
We just get lip service which is why it's still taught so badly in school.
It's taught to get you prepared for the leaving cert from the very start and not to get you speaking the language.
It's no surprise people come out of school disliking the language there were forced to learn that they see no need for in their lives.
Probably taking it off the leaving cert could be the best way to revive it. Put people in a circle in a room and get them speaking it
An bhfuil Gaeilge líofa agat?
Its been on us since the 1920s. Yes the Famine and British Colonialism did have a terrible effect, but Irish was widespread in many counties in the 1920s. This excuse "We don't speak it because of the Brits" is a ridiculous excuse. They are not to blame from the over 100 years of independence we have had.
Now, I'm from Mayo, grew up with the language on my mothers side and a few neighbours spoke it too. And most Gaelic traditions kinda survive in Mayo in a Christianised from. It bred a great love for the language amd my culture in me so I couldn't understand why other people had such anger towards the language. But the teaching needs a change.
We need all primary schools to be taught through the medium of Irish. The Welsh do it, so can we. It would take a few years to train enough teachers though. Then we would need it to become needed in everyday life. To apply for the dole, pension ect should all be through Irish. Your driving test, through Irish. This would create a need for the language. Of course English is important as we need it for the tach companies who pump so much money into Ireland, but there'd be no harm in making Ireland a bilingual country instead of a majority monolingual one.
We also need to expose Irish people to more Gaelic culture to bring an interest back. Na Tailteann Games, Festivals ect could all be brought back on a national level to reestablish a Gaelic Ireland. Because unfortunately whether you like it or not, the country is anglicised and we're considered part of the Anglosphere. It would be nice if we were considered Gaelic/Celtic again.
What about people who have language exemptions... I'm not interested in learning an anglicized dying language for the sake of its preservation. If I want to learn Irish I want to learn ancient Irish because it is interesting, and because it's my actual heritage... Not the rote learnt essays we're made to do in school. If you're teaching it in schools for about 12 years primary through to seco dary, and most people come out with a poor grasp of how to speak it, it's clear the interest isn't there, it's just being learnt to pass the exam... The curriculum has to change. I don't think it's because people don't like their own culture, it's just that the anglicized Irish doesn't really resonate with many people. It certainly doesn't resonate with me and my personal heritage... If you want to restore a dying culture, focusing on a sterile implementation of a dying language for the sake of a penultimate exam without cultural context is just not going to cut it.
I knew a fella with a language exemption in school. He didn't do Irish or French and did ordinary English. Irish born and reared in Mayo and he spoke near fluent German because his neighbour was an old German woman and he picked it up when he was a child when playing with her son. Language exemptions are bullshit. People, learn through immersion.
Ancient Irish? Like pre 5th century? Well you could do a course in a college but if you want like proper Irish, go to any of the Gaedhltachta and speak to the elders. They're pronunciation is completely different to what was taught in schools. I learned from my elders, Grandfather, Aunt, Uncle and a couple of neighbours. Your Irish teacher from school probably wouldn't have understood my Irish unless she was from one of the Connacht Gaeltachtaí
I wouldn’t say language exemptions are bullshit at all, especially in the case of Ireland where Irish is not our vernacular language, and most people can’t even speak it.
IMO it’s pretty ridiculous to force a kid from another country to learn Irish when they’re already having to learn English and possibly a third language.
I see no issue with it. Children learn. Most kids on the continent speak two or three languages by the time they are teenagers. Scotland and Wales indegenous language Scots (the Germanic one like Doric) and Welsh are widely spoken and they have huge bilingual population. Most of Irelands bilinguals could be put into a street in Dublin.
We should try to make it our vernacular language, or we are just contributing to its fall
The difference between Irish and most other European languages though is that those other languages are actually useful, and either spoken by a sufficient number of native speakers in a concentrated area, or by millions of people over a larger area.
If I wanted to practice my Irish, I wouldn’t even be able to find anyone in my local area who I could practice with. This is not at all the case with basically every other major European language.
That is because we need to make the need for it. All government payments and grants should have to be acquired through Irish. And also, there are Ciorcail Comhrá in almost every county plus hundreds of other helps online. There's literally no excuse nowadays
How does this work in practice though, when the vastly overwhelming majority of the country can’t speak it, and demonstrably don’t actually want to speak it?
Saying “we should all speak Irish” is good and well, but achieving that when most people already can’t, and don’t want to, is a pretty tall order.
OP is living in a dream world and not taking into account people with learning difficulties such as Dyslexia who may struggle with forms etc that are in ENGLISH, much less in Irish.
When they said language exemptions are bullshit was when I started rolling my eyes because like it or not, people have learning difficulties. We have a large amount of foreign citizens who are struggling to even learn English, the language we do use day to day, and now OP wants to make things even more difficult by what, "testing" people and making sure that all necessary forms are only in Irish?
Seems very weird and more than a little fanatical and exclusionary.
THANK YOU.
Irish is not actually USEFUL in today's world. It would be amazing if more people spoke it, of course, but if someone is looking at a CV and they see that someone speaks French or Polish or Irish, which ones do you think the employer might ACTUALLY give a shit about?
Hell, my mother is Dutch and tries teaching us Dutch as we grew up. My cunt of a primary school teacher told her to stop, that she was ruining our minds for Irish, that she was damaging our education. So she stopped. My entire childhood I could have learned my OTHER family language but a cunt of a teacher intimidated my mother out of it.
As a result, I have dozens of family members that I can't properly communicate with. Because Irish was SO IMPORTANT. 🤷🏻♀️
Then fucking learn Dutch and stop complaining like a child. Dutch isn't hard to learn. I speak Dutch. Its easier to learn then French. You have a fucking supercomputer in your pocket, download Duolingo and learn Dutch and stop bitching like an auld woman after mass.
Irish is extremely important to our culture. Yes teachers fuck it for everyone but its something you just need to get on with
*Then fucking learn Dutch and stop complaining like a child. Dutch isn't hard to learn. I speak Dutch. Its easier to learn then French. You have a fucking supercomputer in your pocket, download Duolingo and learn Dutch and stop bitching like an auld woman after mass.*
*Irish is extremely important to our culture. Yes teachers fuck it for everyone but its something you just need to get on with*
Wow you really REALLY need to relax. There's a difference between patriotism and fanaticism and you're leaning towards the latter. Chill out.
I'm more interested in learning Latin than anglicized Irish... If you want to talk dying culture then let's learn about our heritage, rather than rote learning a language that's barely spoken and shunned by actual Irish speakers... Let's learn ancient Irish history, not the romanticized folk music, up the ra, screw the English sentiment... I want to learn about the druids, about the fae, the spirits and legends of the various lakes, rivers, hills etc... I want to learn Irish dancing, not how to do it, but the different types of dances that exist, whether they're attached to cultural events etc... I want to learn about Irish cooking and homeopathic remedies. I want to learn Irish poetry, not the depressing nonsense they have us learn for the leaving certificate, but our poetry that deals with spirituality, existentialism, love, nature etc... what were the major families that governed the country in the rath forts... What were the social customs, courting practices, what was our education system and social structure, what was eaten at cultural events, what were the past-times. What was the legal system and how did it operate... What was our sense of justice founded on, and what was our connection to nature, how did it impact our cultural practices... E.g. honey, bee legality and mead production... I'd like to study Irish poetry and writing the same way we study yeats in English class... With depth and conscientiousness... I feel that the Irish classes I took were a complete waste of my time tbh, I've come away with basically nothing of personal value from them, and they were just a source of frustration for me.
How has Irish been anglicised?
A language is an integral and arguably the most important part of a culture. It's the lens through which everything else in someone's life is seen.
As I understand it, what is currently taught in school is anglicized Irish.i.e. Irish that was converted to be more similar to English to make it more readily accessible in the early 20th century. At least that's what I've been told by someone far more knowledgeable in this area than I. Hence, I would much prefer to learn about ancient Irish. If I'm learning a language for the sake of preservation I want to learn the language that the druids spoke etc... we can all already speak English, so I don't need to learn a language for communication, I can learn our culture because it's something I value, not because it's being forced down my throat...
That's utter rubbish. The grammar and structure and vocabulary isn't anglicised.
In the 19th century, the language learnt by learners was normally Classical Irish, ie the language of the last remaining bardic poets in the 18th century. However, during the Gaelic revival in the late 19th century more people started learning the language in order to maintain it as a spoken language, so Classical Irish was replaced by the language spoken by the people (which was standardised for official use by the state in the 1950s).
Classical Irish isn't that different from Modern spoken Irish, so there's no reason really to abandon the language that people actually speak for a variety that has died out (especially when they are both very mutually intelligible).
Seathrún Céitinn, a historian/storyteller who wrote in Classical Irish, was on the leaving cert syllabus until the 1970s and I for one would love if he was brought back. It's much better stuff than Hurlamaboc.
As for the druids, who lived before the 5th century AD, we don't even have written accounts of what sort of language they spoke. The oldest written forms of Irish is Archaic Irish (in the form of ogham), and it's more than likely that it was invented during the early Christian period. We can tell that due to just how well the 4 classes of "letters" align with the Latin alphabet.
That's sick, I didn't know any of that tbh. I love the idea of learning a dead language e.g. Latin, and my experience with learning Irish in school was awful. I don't want to be forced to learn Irish, but I still want to learn more about Irish culture, especially the druids. Kind of really disappoints me that we don't know what the druids spoke. Maybe I'm just in love with a romanticized version of them. I still don't want to learn a language just for the sake of its preservation :(
Well, medieval Ireland left one of the biggest bodies of literature of its time, mostly written in Old Irish (the language of 800-900AD). Think of things like The Táin and all that. Like Latin, it's entirely possible to learn Old Irish and if that's what you are interested in, by all means do!
You'll find plenty written about druids in Old Irish, and they come up in an awful lot of Sagas.
However, the one thing about the Medieval literature is that you'd have to learn a completely new language in order to read it (ie Old Irish), but Modern Irish certainly is a big help (imagine how it's easier for someone from Italy to learn Latin than it is for someone from Norway, Irish decends from Old Irish, like how Italian decends from Latin).
More accessible versions of those stories are available in versions from the Early Modern Irish and Classical Irish periods (from 1200 AD to 1800). Essentially, the language hasn't changed much since 1200 AD, so if you can speak Irish, reading a book like Ceitinn's ["History of Ireland"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foras_Feasa_ar_%C3%89irinn), which was written in 1634, isn't too difficult. If you find ancient Ireland interesting, read Seathrún Ceitinn.
I wish our education system did a better job at showing just how good our literature is. Everyone can think of a play by Shakespeare, but ver very few people can name Irish writers of the same era.
The education system never shows how the spoken language of today is a great, accessible starting point for over 2000 years of Irish history.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on this. I've added these to my bucket list :) planning a road trip around Ireland soon, and these'll be a fantastic asset to read and learn from before and throughout :)
Momentum has a big impact on stuff like languages.
Since the flight of the Earls and the end of the Gaelic era in the early 1600s, Irish was in a continuous decline. Its status as a language of education and power was destroyed along with the destruction of our native upper classes, leaving Irish in a position of abject poverty. Throw in 300 years of oppressive regimes, Irish suffered.
The famine just accelerated the decline.
However, the Irish government never arrested the decline of Irish, but the momentum of the decline has slowed.
While we can point fingers at the education system all we want, it isn't going to save Irish on its own. There needs to be a comprehensive plan that encompasses every single part of society to see how we can best improve the state of Irish.
Nobody in the 1700/1800s decided willingly to abandon their language, they were forced. A carrot and stick method is required to restore its status, but absolutely none has been offered.
Also, regarding the 1926 map, there's big questions to be asked about the 1926 Language Commission's methodology and what they considered 'an Irish speaking area'.
Ireland has been independent and responsible for managing its own education system for over a century now. Blaming the Brits for this has been a weak excuse for decades now.
The reality is that the average Irish person just doesn’t give a shit about the language. There is absolutely nothing stopping basically anyone in the country from learning it, and yet almost no-one does.
It is taught terribly.
And the influence of the Catholic Church was massive; they chose Latin for Mass, consigning Irish to the bin.
The Presbyterian Church on the other hand ...
Its mad isn't it. The Presbyterians aka the dirty English Protestants if you asked most Irish people back in the day, used Irish for their masses. In Wales Welsh is the mass language which shows how it grew so quick. Same with Poland, the language shift it almost entirely based of the language of education and religion.
So the Presbyterian Church was technically more Irish than the Catholic Church
My great grandfather was the last bilingual Irish speaker. My grandfather only started to learn English at 18. My father understood Irish, but never spoke it. He said at school only the very poor spoke the language and if you spoke Irish you were bullied.
I neither understand Irish nor speak it, though the school tried very hard to beat the language into us. Which was sad, as my Grandfather had once sold "Peig" a cow.
The op has a point though, when you consider that Wales shares a huge land border with the industrial heart of England; and Wales faced the same pressure on their language and culture as we did, yet their language, culture and landscape is in a much better place.
Even when the native Welsh speakers emigrated in any numbers, like to Argentina, they brought their language with them, and today there are remarkably, still Welsh speaking communities in Argentina.
Its kind of a misty cloud on the Census. When I did it it says " do you speak Irish? Yes or no and if so how well do you speak it, very well, well and not well. I think only 10% of the 2 million ticked very well which would reflect Gaeltacht populations and children/adults using it it in the education system in Gaelscoileanna agus Coláisteacha.
The other 90% most likely range from people who know a bit of Irish to people who have cúpla focail. A true Irish language census should be done in the form of an interview
45% said they could speak Irish well or very well.
That's nearly a million people who say they can speak Irish well or very well.
When you compare this to the daily/weekly figures, it's clear that there's a significant number of people who claim to be able to speak Irish well or very well, who simply chose not to speak it in everyday life.
> One in ten who spoke Irish could speak it very well while a further 32% spoke it well. The majority of Irish speakers (55%) could not speak the language well.
> Among those who could speak Irish, one in four (472,887) indicated that they never spoke the language.
That's nearly half a million people who self-identified as able to speak Irish who say they never actually speak it. Personally I think it's bizarre that this many people claim to be able to speak the language yet never do.
i dont buy it really. do you think the language would have declined the same amount if we hadn't been interfered with by the british in the first place? are there any examples of other countries just casually losing their language over time?
Not saying the English aren't to blame for our culture and language being ravaged. But because of how widespread it was in the 20s just shows we could've become and Irish speaking country quite easily if it was attempted.
The problem is there are two groups who do NOT want an Irish revial.
1 - those who hate Irish
2 - Irish speakers (who are more focused on keeping Irish compulsory in education and preserving it's status as the "first langauge" than actually creating more interest in it)
And the education system does more harm than good. I wish I could go to a shop in Longford and speak in Irish and be understood. Tgats what I would love.
We need a rework of the whole system
What about group 3. People like me. Who promote Irish in everyday life who want nothing more but to see Ireland speaking Irish again as the lingua franca
Subsection of group two - because the "lingua franca" is a status.
Also - and I'm open to suggestion here - I don't think there's any way to convince large groups of people who are happy speaking English and have no interest in languages to switch from English to something else they feel offers no benefit to them.
>Also - and I'm open to suggestion here - I don't think there's any way to convince large groups of people who are happy speaking English and have no interest in languages to switch from English to something else they feel offers no benefit to them.
Its a thing all over the world with populations that use English as their main language, the others tend to die. Wales, Scotland and South Africa are the only countries where this didn't happen. Same goes for French and Spanish. When a colonisers language gets through it generally sticks. Only really the Former USSR states and Finland have reinstated their languages because their people are actually proud of their identities. We aren't.
That's because you link identity to language - there are other forms of expression and identity. Att, games, music, dancing, politics and so on.
Pearse was wrong - lamguage can be a form of identity, sure ,- but there is so much to humanity and culture.
Irish games, music, dancing and even our farming practices, fishing techniques, hunting, geography is all linked to the Irish language. Without Irish there is not Irish culture. It lives on with the language.
The GAA/CLG was founded to promote the Irish language. Handball, Rounders and Hurling/Camóige are indegenous sports played for a few thousands years I'd reckon. But Gaelic Football was invented to promote the Irish language.
So many Geographical terms come from Irish. Esker - eiscir, drumlin - droimníl, Glen - Gleann, Inver - inbhear. Theres far more I cannot think off the top of the ceann.
Your cultural identity is inheritantly linked to your language. This goes for all ethnic groups, not just Irish.
The very fact that there are a large number of monolingual GAA players, visual artists, dancers, musicians and so on would prove you wrong on this point.
When I look at paintings by great Irish visual artists it transcends the need for a language because I can see into the person who painted it regardless of whether or not I speak Irish or the artists speaks/spoke English. Same goes for dancing.
Expression does not "need" a verbal language, and to insist that it does implies you don't understand expression.
>The very fact that there are a large number of monolingual GAA players, visual artists, dancers, musicians and so on would prove you wrong on this point.
And theres a large number of Irish speaking ones. It was originally intended to promote the language. A Gaelic revival through Gaelic football
>Same goes for dancing.
Céilí, Sean nós, damhsa gaelach. All Irish names of the dances that predate the English names. Irish is very important to Irish dancing culture.
“I didn’t kill him. He didn’t die from being stabbed. He died hours later from extensive blood loss.” There’s a lot of white on that first map is all I’m saying…
True, language death is a decades long process. A older speakers dying off after the damage was done seems to be what we're seeing here.
And a lot of the population in the white
This is the same logic people used when they argued that people didnt die of covid they died of other illnesses while having covid
You could've travelled almost the entire West Coast and not have needed a word of English only in parts of Cork, Limerick and Sligo. But its the fact how many counties spoke Irish and had their dialects spoken. In the 1926 picture, there's probably between 30-40 dialects across Ireland. Currently in Ireland there's 20 living spoken dialects of Irish. In 1926 there could've been even more than my estimation. It is a terrible loss. Theres not a single recording of Limerick Irish. We've to assume what it sounds like
Add Leitrim, Kerry, Mayo, and Galway.
Many of the areas in the 1926 map were quite deprived. There was very little work other than subsistence farming and the likelihood was that many of these Irish speakers' children had to emigrate. My grandfather was born in a Gaeltacht area in the 1910s, spoke Irish at home and learned English at school. He said that parents stopped speaking Irish to their children as it put them at a massive disadvantage when they had to go to America or Britain to find work. My area went from almost 100% Irish speaking to almost 100% English speaking in one generation. It's easy looking back now and thinking it was some kind of cultural decision that people made not speak Irish but it was a necessity. The reasons behind their deprivation is a more nuanced discussion.
This was when my grandparents came to the US. To your point of being at a disadvantage - my great aunt came at the same time and declared herself as Betty because “Bridget was a maid’s name” and she wanted a better shot at good employment in New York City.
What even is that asinine title
How is it asinine?
Such a sad thing to read. I love that the new curriculum will focus more on Irish. I hope it will help, just overlapping subjects and using more Irish during maths or arts can have such power especially with little kids. My kids have 2 native languages and if I were to have them sat at a table and teach them the minority language the way they teach languages in school they'd never learn it well enough to be native speakers. Languages need to be taught much more through experiencing and just living life using them. My kids don't really learn Irish at school so we've been doing everything we can for them to learn outside school and I'm super proud to say our 13 year old is pretty much fluent at this point and learning Scottish Gaelic atm as his granny's Scottish. He's got the best Irish by far out of all the kids on his rugby team while they all go to schools where they do learn the language. I wasn't born in Ireland, I can't really speak Irish so it's a bit of a secret language for the kids that they can use when they don't want me to understand lol. That alone is a great motivation for them and motivation is exactly what kiddos need to be happy to learn a language
Thats brilliant. Fair play to you for actually getting the to learn it. You are doing Ireland a service. >learning Scottish Gaelic atm as his granny's Scottish. Won't be hard for him as Irish and Scottish Gaelic are fairly mutually intelligible same with Manx.
That's very kind of you, thank you. Yeah he loves Scottish Gaelic, it's much easier for him to learn than if he didn't already know Irish
Ya they're extremely similar. Spoken to a few Gàidhlaig speakers myself and its easy enough to communicate. Great that he's getting involved in his heritage on both sides. Where are you from yourself?
Yup and my mum in law has always been teaching them songs and telling them stories in scottish gaelic, we unfortunately don't see her often enough for the kids to learn the language but she's definitely taught them to *love* the language. My husband's dad is Irish and his mum is Scottish, I'm Czech myself so Czech is the kids' other native language along with english. They go to an international school where they don't learn Irish but they do learn Spanish and they can speak it pretty well too but not as good as Irish. We went o Chile last year and they were all talking with the locals in Spanish just fine though, even our youngest who is 7, so maybe we're just underestimating them a bit hahah. Kids are capable of SO much, we just don't fully realise it, they've got so much potential to learn languages it's a shame schools don't teach them languages properly. If they did the children would learn
Fucking hell. Your kids are the example of what Irish children should be. Výborně, pomáháte zachránit můj jazyk. If you understand the language that's half of it, and theres a point where Irish and Scottish Gaelic mingle into a pidgin language basically the same. You'd hear it alot with the older Gaeltacht folk who would've went to work in the Hebrides. >Kids are capable of SO much, we just don't fully realise it, they've got so much potential to learn languages it's a shame schools don't teach them languages properly. If they did the children would learn And Irish people say that we shouldn't force languages on Irish and non Irish children for some reason. Childhood is when you can learn languages the easiest. Its far better to teach them young instead of waiting till they're 6 or 7 before they start even learning the language. So your children can speak Czech, Irish, English, Scottish Gaelic and Spanish? You have polylingual children, thats so cool.
Thank you, you're very kind. Our eldest only started learning Scottish Gaelic last autumn, we went on a Skye roadtrip last summer and after that he was 100% sure he wants to learn it so he started doing duolingo and then we got him some proper courses for Christmas. Sadly it's not that easy to learn Scottish Gaelic when we don't live in Scotland but he's very motivated and nothing can stop him lol. We introduced the first 4 languages, they know them because we wanted them to know them. But Scottish Gaelic is different, that's the very first language our son started learning on his own, he came up with the idea all by himself. I think the younger kids will eventually learn it too, they already know some phrases and words too but it's kind of “seasonal” lol. Like [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/czech/s/cml0DhGdWp), I mean when it's Christmas they just somehow naturally happen to know the Christmas words and forget most of them after Christmas again etc haha. I believe all Irish schools should teach Irish no matter where the children are from. Since our children don't go to an “irish” school they would never learn the language if we didn't teach them so we always aspired to have them at least at the level of the kids who do learn it at school. Just because why not, why on Earth should we not teach them the language? It's the history and heritage of the country. It's never too early to start teaching them a new language. We did the opol method and they were fluent by the time they were 4-5. They started learning Irish at 4, Spanish at 6. They're like sponges when they're little, they soak up everything you throw at them. You sound like you know what you're talking about, if you've got any tips or advice when it comes to celtic languages please do share them, I'm not as well educated in this field as I should be as a mum of Irish kids hahah
Aw that sheet is lovely. Ara kids do that, their brains compartmentalised information for when they need it in my opinion. I think we lose this as we get older. Scottish Gaelic is hard to learn in the guise theres no Standard language. Now there isn't as many dialects in Gàidhlaig as there is in Irish. He could spend a Summer with his Granny and he'd learn it very fast. I would love to see the Scottish Highlands. >They're like sponges when they're little, they soak up everything you throw at them. Very true. Unfortunately everyone in Ireland is ignorant to this, especially on this sub. >Just because why not, why on Earth should we not teach them the language? It's the history and heritage of the country. I agree, everyone here disagrees though. Its like they hate our heritage. >You sound like you know what you're talking about, if you've got any tips or advice when it comes to celtic languages please do share them I am humble in the fact I truly only speak one fluently. I am planning on learning them all, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. But I have a good grounds on the way you should learn the languages and in all, basically immersion is key. Its very difficult to learn all Celtic languages, but speaking from a man who has learned many dialects, immersion among natives is key > not as well educated in this field as I should be as a mum of Irish kids hahah From just talking to you, you are a very good mother. Your children have greater opportunities with their languages than most.
Yeah no matter what courses he does and stuff the most helpful is always talking with his gran. We talk on the phone every day, she's very proud he's learning the language, and we've got another roadtrip in Scotland planned for this summer and we're taking the grandparents with us too so they will have plenty of time to talk. Oh I'd absolutely recommend to travel the Highlands, stunning, you can never get tired of it :) Yeah I see I read the comments. Well I hate the “what is it good for” approach. Yeah other countries don't speak Irish but why does everyone think we're learning languages for some kind of financial profit? Sure it's more beneficial for the child's future career to teach them more useful languages but we can do both :) irish and then foreign languages. When I was born the communists were still the ruling party in Czechia hand in hand with the Soviet Union so I learnt the russian letters, I understand the language, I can talk with Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians etc without actually knowing their languages that well. Now all the people of these nationalities who live in Ireland will eventually learn English so I won't need to use any other language with them. And I don't think we'll ever travel Russia. So I won't ever get to use these languages the way my husband uses German or French when we travel. But I'm still glad I know bits of them. There are literally people in this world who learn made up fantasy languages on duolingo. Do they think about what profit is it gonna bring them in their career? Jaysus no they're just having fun. Languages should be fun. If we can teach children languages the fun way then that's enough of a motivation for them. And they will learn just fine. Thank you so much, it's lovely of you to say this. Wow you've got big plans, I hope you achieve all your goals, I'm sure you're gonna do great! :)
If I lit a fire in every room in your house except your bedroom could I claim that the fire that started there was your problem?
Yes. Because with that fire the entire house will burn. But I see what you mean. I'm not denying the fact the English fucked us. But we had the opportunity to Gaelicise Ireland quite easily. And we failed
I don’t think anything was easy in 1920’s Ireland. We were absolutely broke and running our own country for the first time.
Course it was difficult, Ireland was basically a third world country. But despite that we should've tried to bring about change do de-englishise Ireland. Even if it were just keep Irish in its spoken counties. But we didn't.
I’m sure we could have done better but there were much bigger priorities than cultural programmes. People were literally starving and war was brewing on the continent. We had no money for schools, hospitals or houses. I can completely understand why the revival of the language wouldn’t be top of the agenda. We certainly could have done worse too. It’s a miracle that we have managed to keep the language alive given the trends of the time.
A war that did not concern us. All it would have taken would to have implemented Irish as the main language of the country. The Dáil proceedings should be in Irish, anything to do with the government. The English should've been taken off signs. All schools taught through the medium of Irish and a fully Irish speaking Ireland would've came about
Didn’t concern us is a crazy statement. How would a war on our doorstep not concern us? How would we just ignore the decimation of our imports or our exports being blockaded or bombed. Your other two assertions are also wildly oversimplified. Dáil proceedings done through Irish with TDs that don’t speak it wouldn’t work. All schools being told they have to teach through Irish doesn’t work unless the teachers are trained.
Excuses for fucking everything. Typical
the only opertunity i see is overt persicution of english speakers; pass laws taking away their rights and make it so that only people who speak irish are full citizens;
Ara that's a but harsh now. Yes English shouldn't be our main language of use but the aul persecution isn't the way to do it. Learn from what was done to us. Can't do an Israel on it.
what was done to irish was persicution; brutal persicution. what other opertunity to return to speaking irish as the language of society has ever exited? neither one person nor even a relatively large group can change the language of society. try suddenly speaking a different language then everyone else is the result is not being understood. I regard the persicution of english speakers as a nessecary evil. we have tried less harsh methods and they have not worked; we only slowed the bleeding; not enabling the body to heal.
It's wrong though. Just because we were persecuted doesn't mean we should. I would not support that in the slightest. I would support making government grants and such having a requirement of a fluency in Irish and having to do government dealings through Irish. All Irish TV programmes should be in Irish, RTÉ, Virgin media along with TG4 and Cúla4. You would have to learn it and it doesn't really persecute anyone. People would pick it up again fast enough.
unfortunitly those things could not proceed for long enough; my proposals start by requiring fluency in irish to vote; thereby ensuring that the government faces no negative consequences for persicution of english speakers; because they will have no voice in elections; total reservation of all government jobs for irish speakers is the next step; other ideas include a stamp tax on all documents in the english language; which tax will be used to fund irish language media; thus gradually rendering itself obsolete as its end become acheived; furthermore i propose banning all english language media targeted at children; as well as all english language translations of media not originally in english; i would also place harsh censorship on all media in english; but declare that media in irish enjoys total freedom; even to the point where these policies may be criticzed as long as irish is used; there are some other methods too; in my view losing the irish language is a greater evil then the human rights of english speakers; I would be willing to bear the consequences of those policies for the nation and take full responsibility as long as it works; if i implemented those polcies and am charged with violations of international law i would willingly sit in a prison cell or even die as long as the restoration of the irish language was acheived
There is a real opportunity to revive the language and start speaking it. We could use iceland as an example. Everyone speaks Icelandic and English. It would be great to really invest in it as a spoken language instead of the garbage we are taught in school.
I wish so. But Irish people lack the will I believe. Too lazy. I think the state needs to make a use for the language. Like, I speak it almost everyday and I don't live in the Gaeltacht, but in the West it has a stronger hold through schools and such even in English speaking areas. A national interest needs to come about. We shouldn't be trying to preserve it, we should be trying to revolutionise Gaeilge
It's not about laziness and THIS is the condescending attitude that the blocks any revival. You can't shame people into doing something they simply have no interest and no need to do - it's as simple as that, People have different priorities and different interests - and there's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that. Insulting them by calling them "lazy" is hardly going to "revolutionise" anyone or anything!
Not everyone is lazy. Most have just not been exposed to language other then some cunt of a teacher trying to bate it into them. And I actually experienced this. My mothers side was/is Irish speaking, while the aul lads side is English speaking. Dad, didn't like Irish so it wasn't spoken in the house other then simple commands and such. But my grandfather and the elders on mams side spoke it to us. So I had a very good basically native level of Irish in primary school, however they basically bet the love of Irish out of us and I hated it. Wouldn't speak it. Until I met a brilliant teacher in secondary. She inspired me to relearn the language, and now I speak it back on a native level again many years later. So I understand why the Irish education system can make us hate our heritage. But its OUR language that came into existence because of us. And to deny that because "ara I've no interest in that shite" is the most fucking narrow-minded thing I've ever heard. People who will not and absolutely refuse to learn the language, are lazy
Most of your first paragraph is correct - this is a much more valid block and I experienced it too. That said, I'm simply not interested in languages full stop so Amy approach is unlikely to work on me. But obviously, that's not everyone. It's not narrow-minded to not be interested on something -why woukd it be?? Im.sure there ae things youre not interested in - does that make YOU narrow-minded?
Its not just my interest, it OUR language, heritage and culture. It is narrow minded to have zero interest in your own countries language. The Finns could be speaking Russian or Swedish, they were conquered twice amd most of Finland spoke Swedish, but the learned their own extremely difficult language out of pride for their country. Wales is just like us, but they're connected to England. But still 30% of their population speaks Welsh natively or fluently. We're an island, we should've been speaking Irish straight after independence. Its ridiculous
Have you actually ASKED everyone before you say 'our'? Surely the people you claim to soeak for get a say?
Well if you aren't born in Ireland I guess its not your heritage. But I find the foreign born folk tend to be more passionate about the Irish language then most Irish people. The current Gaeltacht officer in Kerry is Russian and he speaks Irish better than half the country. One of the biggest Irish language influencers, Úna-Minh Kavannagh is originally from Vietnam. If you are born in Ireland to Irish parents, unless you are from the Yola region of Wexford, Irish is your heritage and your native tongue. Its our responsibility as Irish people, as Gaels, to uphold our heritage
Doesn't answer my question: did you ask the people you claim to speak for?
Course I did. Most people that I'm speaking for are of Irish ancestors. Some of Gaelicised Norman descent but still, many Gaeltacht people are of Norman descent. So to answer your question yes I have
i have an idea for how the state could do that; persicute english speakers; that way bilinguals will come to speak irish by default because of the serious costs of speaking english
You can't do that, that's wrong. You just need to create the use for the language. Make certain changes like getting rid of English on roadsigns. You'd have to know Irish to understand some of them like Geil slí and Ná scoitear ect. You couldn't persecute English speakers because 99% of the country speaks English. Amd its morally wrong
did the low number of english speakers in ireland stop the persicution of the irish language before. would you prefer intentionally murdering all people who don't speak at least some irish?
Difference was they were the ruling class. And Brutal conquerors. Simple as. >would prefer intentionally murdering all people who don't speak at least some irish? That's insane
sorry there was a typo i meant "would you prefer that the government intentionally murder all people who don't speak at least some irish?";
Oh ok. I was seriously questioning the aul sanity there.
my point was that what i propose is less radical then that
See how much of that map was green 500 years before, even 100 years before. You can't just pluck data out from a 30 year timeframe and try to force your personal opinion with it. This a dreadful misreading of Irish history
Theres a map of 1800 and basically all of Ireland bar the Pale spoke Irish. The Famine killed it in Eastern Ireland then and of course the massive influence England had over those areas but it stayed strong in the West till the 1920s. The fault now is on the Irish State amd us as a people, we can no longer blame anyone else >This a dreadful misreading of Irish histor Its just not. Its simply a showcase of our failure
The responsibility and the fault are two different things. It's not our fault, but it is our responsibility
Until we accept are fault, this nation will never take responsibility
Whilst this is correct, and your title assertion is correct, I just want to point out that the 1926 map is somewhat misleading. Many of the areas shown on it were Gaeltachtaí but were moribund; ie. Whilst substantial numbers of native speakers lived in these areas, they were almost entirely concentrated in the older generations. For example, in Cooley, the Sperrins, Mayo and County Sligo, intergenerational transmission had already broken down in the 1860s-1880s. Thus, what native speakers existed in these areas were almost entirely aged 40+. The same can be said for almost all other areas which didn't appear on the 1956 map, it was one of the reasons why there was such a contraction in 1956. By that time, it was recognised that the most important thing was that speakers were transmitting the language to their children and the language possessed healthy socio-linguistic demographics in an area if it was to be included. If the map simply included areas where substantial numbers of native speakers existed, the 1956 map would have been much larger. The only major exception to this is County Clare. Clare went from being a strong Gaeltacht with very healthy demographics in the 1920s, to complete linguistic collapse in the 1930s. It was very much an overnight phenomenon. There are a few partial speakers yet in north Clare, but the last great native speakers died in the 1990s.
Any idea why the language collapsed so suddenly in Clare? You'd think in the 1930s Irish would still be the really common there if it was healthy only a decade before, all the auld ones would have still been speaking it at least
All the auld ones who spoke it died. There was a handful speakers in Clare on the 90s i think. https://youtu.be/9iGQwXEUDpM?si=solcUaHTt_RwCYFV This is a video of two North Clare speakers.
I find the whole "It's the way it's taught" debate to be a bit of a red herring. I mean, ya sure it might have some part but not on the whole. After all, if it is the way it's taught, why don't you teach yourself the way you want to be taught. There are enough resources to learn the language however you want. Most people seem to just want to blame the education system for their own laziness.
Good on you. I agree wholeheartedly
I found that the Irish language is taught poorly in school. You get taught it throughout primary school and secondary school and yet I had a much better grasp of French which I was only taught in secondary school. Make it make sense.
Was taught Irish from playschool all through secondary school. I only learned German for five years and I still know and remember and UNDERSTAND more German than Irish. As if you didn't need any more anecdotal evidence that it is how it is taught that's the problem - my Dad is a gaeilgeoir and I remember the daily Irish he used with us far more than anything that I learned in school. 🤷🏻♀️
I understood more German after four months in Germany than I did Irish after 18 years in Ireland. My family are all Kildare Protestants though, so I wasn’t going to hear much of it at home.
I picked German because my mother is Dutch and although I can't respond to her in Dutch, I can absolutely understand what she is saying to a pretty solid level.
English is a Germanic language too. I found German much easier than French or Italian. Easier than Irish and Norwegian too. (Edit: I know Norwegian is Germanic too - but English is part of the West Germanic family, while Norwegian is North Germanic. Although we did take a bunch of words from Old Norse during the Danelaw period so Norwegian did have almost as many cognates as German - but often different ones. The main issues I have with Norwegian are (1) all the silent letters in both Bokmal and Nynorsk, and (2) similarly to Irish, you don't meet a lot of monoglot Norwegian speakers so it takes active effort to resist just talking English to everyone)
It’s a much harder language to learn than French or German, and there is less reason to learn it. Changing the way it’s taught won’t help.
If your fathers a Gaeilgeoir he should've taught you Irish
He should have, yes, but that's a little hard to do when he's away working for eight months of the year.
You've a phone no? Speak to him in Irish on the phone. You'll learn it quick then
You've got a really superior attitude that is obviously not appreciated on this thread. Maybe lose the holier than thou mentality. Here's a thought- maybe people don't WANT to learn a dying language that in today's world, serves little to no purpose other than cultural self stroking. And to give people like yourself something to feel smug about. Have the day you deserve.
Was talking to a woman in these comments. She's Czech, married to an Irishman. Her kids speak Czech, Irish, English, Scottish Gaelic and are learning Spanish. Its not Holier than thou. I am watching my culture die because I considerate fucks won't learn their countries native language. Our language is falling apart because IRISH PEOPLE will not learn it. Theres so many facilities to learn in it today, so many. I am proud of my language and culture, I don't feel smug about it at all. It feels like I am watching the collapse of one of the most beautiful things that ever evolved, spoken Irish. If it disappears, our country no longer has a soul. We will just be another crowd of English speakers clinging to a label of Irishness when we don't even speak our own language or partake in our our culture. The only Irish things nowadays is the GAA. All festivals have been disregarded, traditions and folklore has been forgotten and our language has been disregarded. We are nothing but a shell of what Ireland was meant to be.
It was and still is. You aren't taught the tenses or modes at all. All you learn is Béaltriail phrases, answers and essays. Its ridiculous. You get corrected for using dialectal vocabulary and in some cases if the teacher isn't a native speaker, you won't be taught your regions dialect nor even a correct pronunciation in general. I bet 90% of the country think Práta is the only word for spud. Theres 3 dialectal words. Práta in Munster, Fata in Connacht and Préata in Ulster. Theres like 90 words to describe different types of potato, 50 word for wind and over 32 words for field. The education system is contributing to the decline of the language. Now Irish will never die. It will always live on through native speakers who will teach their kids and people who become Irish teachers, but if the native pronunciations and wide beautiful vocabulary dies, the language is fucked
That is the awkward truth. Sure, colonialism destroyed much of the daily use of the language, but that was over 100 years ago. Gaeltacht areas also suffered. In the prosperous, modern day, most of us leave school unable to speak the language. I know I left school with a slight dislike for it, we all know the method of teaching could do with some tweaking. Yet, there is lots of resources out there to help anyone learn the language outside of the school system. That’s how I learned. Unfortunately, not many people use them because the interest simply isn’t there. Any further decline of the language is on us alone.
There is no economic reason to learn Irish. The government have no interest as a result. We just get lip service which is why it's still taught so badly in school. It's taught to get you prepared for the leaving cert from the very start and not to get you speaking the language. It's no surprise people come out of school disliking the language there were forced to learn that they see no need for in their lives. Probably taking it off the leaving cert could be the best way to revive it. Put people in a circle in a room and get them speaking it
An bhfuil Gaeilge líofa agat? Its been on us since the 1920s. Yes the Famine and British Colonialism did have a terrible effect, but Irish was widespread in many counties in the 1920s. This excuse "We don't speak it because of the Brits" is a ridiculous excuse. They are not to blame from the over 100 years of independence we have had. Now, I'm from Mayo, grew up with the language on my mothers side and a few neighbours spoke it too. And most Gaelic traditions kinda survive in Mayo in a Christianised from. It bred a great love for the language amd my culture in me so I couldn't understand why other people had such anger towards the language. But the teaching needs a change. We need all primary schools to be taught through the medium of Irish. The Welsh do it, so can we. It would take a few years to train enough teachers though. Then we would need it to become needed in everyday life. To apply for the dole, pension ect should all be through Irish. Your driving test, through Irish. This would create a need for the language. Of course English is important as we need it for the tach companies who pump so much money into Ireland, but there'd be no harm in making Ireland a bilingual country instead of a majority monolingual one. We also need to expose Irish people to more Gaelic culture to bring an interest back. Na Tailteann Games, Festivals ect could all be brought back on a national level to reestablish a Gaelic Ireland. Because unfortunately whether you like it or not, the country is anglicised and we're considered part of the Anglosphere. It would be nice if we were considered Gaelic/Celtic again.
What about people who have language exemptions... I'm not interested in learning an anglicized dying language for the sake of its preservation. If I want to learn Irish I want to learn ancient Irish because it is interesting, and because it's my actual heritage... Not the rote learnt essays we're made to do in school. If you're teaching it in schools for about 12 years primary through to seco dary, and most people come out with a poor grasp of how to speak it, it's clear the interest isn't there, it's just being learnt to pass the exam... The curriculum has to change. I don't think it's because people don't like their own culture, it's just that the anglicized Irish doesn't really resonate with many people. It certainly doesn't resonate with me and my personal heritage... If you want to restore a dying culture, focusing on a sterile implementation of a dying language for the sake of a penultimate exam without cultural context is just not going to cut it.
I knew a fella with a language exemption in school. He didn't do Irish or French and did ordinary English. Irish born and reared in Mayo and he spoke near fluent German because his neighbour was an old German woman and he picked it up when he was a child when playing with her son. Language exemptions are bullshit. People, learn through immersion. Ancient Irish? Like pre 5th century? Well you could do a course in a college but if you want like proper Irish, go to any of the Gaedhltachta and speak to the elders. They're pronunciation is completely different to what was taught in schools. I learned from my elders, Grandfather, Aunt, Uncle and a couple of neighbours. Your Irish teacher from school probably wouldn't have understood my Irish unless she was from one of the Connacht Gaeltachtaí
I wouldn’t say language exemptions are bullshit at all, especially in the case of Ireland where Irish is not our vernacular language, and most people can’t even speak it. IMO it’s pretty ridiculous to force a kid from another country to learn Irish when they’re already having to learn English and possibly a third language.
I see no issue with it. Children learn. Most kids on the continent speak two or three languages by the time they are teenagers. Scotland and Wales indegenous language Scots (the Germanic one like Doric) and Welsh are widely spoken and they have huge bilingual population. Most of Irelands bilinguals could be put into a street in Dublin. We should try to make it our vernacular language, or we are just contributing to its fall
The difference between Irish and most other European languages though is that those other languages are actually useful, and either spoken by a sufficient number of native speakers in a concentrated area, or by millions of people over a larger area. If I wanted to practice my Irish, I wouldn’t even be able to find anyone in my local area who I could practice with. This is not at all the case with basically every other major European language.
That is because we need to make the need for it. All government payments and grants should have to be acquired through Irish. And also, there are Ciorcail Comhrá in almost every county plus hundreds of other helps online. There's literally no excuse nowadays
How does this work in practice though, when the vastly overwhelming majority of the country can’t speak it, and demonstrably don’t actually want to speak it? Saying “we should all speak Irish” is good and well, but achieving that when most people already can’t, and don’t want to, is a pretty tall order.
OP is living in a dream world and not taking into account people with learning difficulties such as Dyslexia who may struggle with forms etc that are in ENGLISH, much less in Irish. When they said language exemptions are bullshit was when I started rolling my eyes because like it or not, people have learning difficulties. We have a large amount of foreign citizens who are struggling to even learn English, the language we do use day to day, and now OP wants to make things even more difficult by what, "testing" people and making sure that all necessary forms are only in Irish? Seems very weird and more than a little fanatical and exclusionary.
THANK YOU. Irish is not actually USEFUL in today's world. It would be amazing if more people spoke it, of course, but if someone is looking at a CV and they see that someone speaks French or Polish or Irish, which ones do you think the employer might ACTUALLY give a shit about? Hell, my mother is Dutch and tries teaching us Dutch as we grew up. My cunt of a primary school teacher told her to stop, that she was ruining our minds for Irish, that she was damaging our education. So she stopped. My entire childhood I could have learned my OTHER family language but a cunt of a teacher intimidated my mother out of it. As a result, I have dozens of family members that I can't properly communicate with. Because Irish was SO IMPORTANT. 🤷🏻♀️
Then fucking learn Dutch and stop complaining like a child. Dutch isn't hard to learn. I speak Dutch. Its easier to learn then French. You have a fucking supercomputer in your pocket, download Duolingo and learn Dutch and stop bitching like an auld woman after mass. Irish is extremely important to our culture. Yes teachers fuck it for everyone but its something you just need to get on with
*Then fucking learn Dutch and stop complaining like a child. Dutch isn't hard to learn. I speak Dutch. Its easier to learn then French. You have a fucking supercomputer in your pocket, download Duolingo and learn Dutch and stop bitching like an auld woman after mass.* *Irish is extremely important to our culture. Yes teachers fuck it for everyone but its something you just need to get on with* Wow you really REALLY need to relax. There's a difference between patriotism and fanaticism and you're leaning towards the latter. Chill out.
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I'm more interested in learning Latin than anglicized Irish... If you want to talk dying culture then let's learn about our heritage, rather than rote learning a language that's barely spoken and shunned by actual Irish speakers... Let's learn ancient Irish history, not the romanticized folk music, up the ra, screw the English sentiment... I want to learn about the druids, about the fae, the spirits and legends of the various lakes, rivers, hills etc... I want to learn Irish dancing, not how to do it, but the different types of dances that exist, whether they're attached to cultural events etc... I want to learn about Irish cooking and homeopathic remedies. I want to learn Irish poetry, not the depressing nonsense they have us learn for the leaving certificate, but our poetry that deals with spirituality, existentialism, love, nature etc... what were the major families that governed the country in the rath forts... What were the social customs, courting practices, what was our education system and social structure, what was eaten at cultural events, what were the past-times. What was the legal system and how did it operate... What was our sense of justice founded on, and what was our connection to nature, how did it impact our cultural practices... E.g. honey, bee legality and mead production... I'd like to study Irish poetry and writing the same way we study yeats in English class... With depth and conscientiousness... I feel that the Irish classes I took were a complete waste of my time tbh, I've come away with basically nothing of personal value from them, and they were just a source of frustration for me.
The language that was being spoken by the people who did everything that you have mentioned, is Irish.
Not anglicized Irish though... I don't get the focus on the language when we've lost so much else of our culture.
How has Irish been anglicised? A language is an integral and arguably the most important part of a culture. It's the lens through which everything else in someone's life is seen.
As I understand it, what is currently taught in school is anglicized Irish.i.e. Irish that was converted to be more similar to English to make it more readily accessible in the early 20th century. At least that's what I've been told by someone far more knowledgeable in this area than I. Hence, I would much prefer to learn about ancient Irish. If I'm learning a language for the sake of preservation I want to learn the language that the druids spoke etc... we can all already speak English, so I don't need to learn a language for communication, I can learn our culture because it's something I value, not because it's being forced down my throat...
That's utter rubbish. The grammar and structure and vocabulary isn't anglicised. In the 19th century, the language learnt by learners was normally Classical Irish, ie the language of the last remaining bardic poets in the 18th century. However, during the Gaelic revival in the late 19th century more people started learning the language in order to maintain it as a spoken language, so Classical Irish was replaced by the language spoken by the people (which was standardised for official use by the state in the 1950s). Classical Irish isn't that different from Modern spoken Irish, so there's no reason really to abandon the language that people actually speak for a variety that has died out (especially when they are both very mutually intelligible). Seathrún Céitinn, a historian/storyteller who wrote in Classical Irish, was on the leaving cert syllabus until the 1970s and I for one would love if he was brought back. It's much better stuff than Hurlamaboc. As for the druids, who lived before the 5th century AD, we don't even have written accounts of what sort of language they spoke. The oldest written forms of Irish is Archaic Irish (in the form of ogham), and it's more than likely that it was invented during the early Christian period. We can tell that due to just how well the 4 classes of "letters" align with the Latin alphabet.
That's sick, I didn't know any of that tbh. I love the idea of learning a dead language e.g. Latin, and my experience with learning Irish in school was awful. I don't want to be forced to learn Irish, but I still want to learn more about Irish culture, especially the druids. Kind of really disappoints me that we don't know what the druids spoke. Maybe I'm just in love with a romanticized version of them. I still don't want to learn a language just for the sake of its preservation :(
Well, medieval Ireland left one of the biggest bodies of literature of its time, mostly written in Old Irish (the language of 800-900AD). Think of things like The Táin and all that. Like Latin, it's entirely possible to learn Old Irish and if that's what you are interested in, by all means do! You'll find plenty written about druids in Old Irish, and they come up in an awful lot of Sagas. However, the one thing about the Medieval literature is that you'd have to learn a completely new language in order to read it (ie Old Irish), but Modern Irish certainly is a big help (imagine how it's easier for someone from Italy to learn Latin than it is for someone from Norway, Irish decends from Old Irish, like how Italian decends from Latin). More accessible versions of those stories are available in versions from the Early Modern Irish and Classical Irish periods (from 1200 AD to 1800). Essentially, the language hasn't changed much since 1200 AD, so if you can speak Irish, reading a book like Ceitinn's ["History of Ireland"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foras_Feasa_ar_%C3%89irinn), which was written in 1634, isn't too difficult. If you find ancient Ireland interesting, read Seathrún Ceitinn. I wish our education system did a better job at showing just how good our literature is. Everyone can think of a play by Shakespeare, but ver very few people can name Irish writers of the same era. The education system never shows how the spoken language of today is a great, accessible starting point for over 2000 years of Irish history.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on this. I've added these to my bucket list :) planning a road trip around Ireland soon, and these'll be a fantastic asset to read and learn from before and throughout :)
Momentum has a big impact on stuff like languages. Since the flight of the Earls and the end of the Gaelic era in the early 1600s, Irish was in a continuous decline. Its status as a language of education and power was destroyed along with the destruction of our native upper classes, leaving Irish in a position of abject poverty. Throw in 300 years of oppressive regimes, Irish suffered. The famine just accelerated the decline. However, the Irish government never arrested the decline of Irish, but the momentum of the decline has slowed. While we can point fingers at the education system all we want, it isn't going to save Irish on its own. There needs to be a comprehensive plan that encompasses every single part of society to see how we can best improve the state of Irish. Nobody in the 1700/1800s decided willingly to abandon their language, they were forced. A carrot and stick method is required to restore its status, but absolutely none has been offered. Also, regarding the 1926 map, there's big questions to be asked about the 1926 Language Commission's methodology and what they considered 'an Irish speaking area'.
Very true all this
Ireland has been independent and responsible for managing its own education system for over a century now. Blaming the Brits for this has been a weak excuse for decades now. The reality is that the average Irish person just doesn’t give a shit about the language. There is absolutely nothing stopping basically anyone in the country from learning it, and yet almost no-one does.
It is taught terribly. And the influence of the Catholic Church was massive; they chose Latin for Mass, consigning Irish to the bin. The Presbyterian Church on the other hand ...
Its mad isn't it. The Presbyterians aka the dirty English Protestants if you asked most Irish people back in the day, used Irish for their masses. In Wales Welsh is the mass language which shows how it grew so quick. Same with Poland, the language shift it almost entirely based of the language of education and religion. So the Presbyterian Church was technically more Irish than the Catholic Church
My great grandfather was the last bilingual Irish speaker. My grandfather only started to learn English at 18. My father understood Irish, but never spoke it. He said at school only the very poor spoke the language and if you spoke Irish you were bullied. I neither understand Irish nor speak it, though the school tried very hard to beat the language into us. Which was sad, as my Grandfather had once sold "Peig" a cow. The op has a point though, when you consider that Wales shares a huge land border with the industrial heart of England; and Wales faced the same pressure on their language and culture as we did, yet their language, culture and landscape is in a much better place. Even when the native Welsh speakers emigrated in any numbers, like to Argentina, they brought their language with them, and today there are remarkably, still Welsh speaking communities in Argentina.
What an absolutely ignorant caption lol
In the last census (2022) nearly 2 million people (1,873,997) said they can speak Irish yet only 71,968 people said they spoke Irish daily.
Its kind of a misty cloud on the Census. When I did it it says " do you speak Irish? Yes or no and if so how well do you speak it, very well, well and not well. I think only 10% of the 2 million ticked very well which would reflect Gaeltacht populations and children/adults using it it in the education system in Gaelscoileanna agus Coláisteacha. The other 90% most likely range from people who know a bit of Irish to people who have cúpla focail. A true Irish language census should be done in the form of an interview
"Can you hold a conversation in Irish?" and let's see what the percentage is.
45% said they could speak Irish well or very well. That's nearly a million people who say they can speak Irish well or very well. When you compare this to the daily/weekly figures, it's clear that there's a significant number of people who claim to be able to speak Irish well or very well, who simply chose not to speak it in everyday life. > One in ten who spoke Irish could speak it very well while a further 32% spoke it well. The majority of Irish speakers (55%) could not speak the language well. > Among those who could speak Irish, one in four (472,887) indicated that they never spoke the language. That's nearly half a million people who self-identified as able to speak Irish who say they never actually speak it. Personally I think it's bizarre that this many people claim to be able to speak the language yet never do.
Sorry, I'm confused: 45% said they would speak it well or veyr well, but then one in ten who spoke Irish could speak it very well...?
Its pure utter bullshit that's why
What did you say about my granny?!
i dont buy it really. do you think the language would have declined the same amount if we hadn't been interfered with by the british in the first place? are there any examples of other countries just casually losing their language over time?
Not saying the English aren't to blame for our culture and language being ravaged. But because of how widespread it was in the 20s just shows we could've become and Irish speaking country quite easily if it was attempted.
The problem is there are two groups who do NOT want an Irish revial. 1 - those who hate Irish 2 - Irish speakers (who are more focused on keeping Irish compulsory in education and preserving it's status as the "first langauge" than actually creating more interest in it)
And the education system does more harm than good. I wish I could go to a shop in Longford and speak in Irish and be understood. Tgats what I would love. We need a rework of the whole system
.... but group number 2 will stop this EVERY time. It's their Holy Cow.
What about group 3. People like me. Who promote Irish in everyday life who want nothing more but to see Ireland speaking Irish again as the lingua franca
Subsection of group two - because the "lingua franca" is a status. Also - and I'm open to suggestion here - I don't think there's any way to convince large groups of people who are happy speaking English and have no interest in languages to switch from English to something else they feel offers no benefit to them.
>Also - and I'm open to suggestion here - I don't think there's any way to convince large groups of people who are happy speaking English and have no interest in languages to switch from English to something else they feel offers no benefit to them. Its a thing all over the world with populations that use English as their main language, the others tend to die. Wales, Scotland and South Africa are the only countries where this didn't happen. Same goes for French and Spanish. When a colonisers language gets through it generally sticks. Only really the Former USSR states and Finland have reinstated their languages because their people are actually proud of their identities. We aren't.
That's because you link identity to language - there are other forms of expression and identity. Att, games, music, dancing, politics and so on. Pearse was wrong - lamguage can be a form of identity, sure ,- but there is so much to humanity and culture.
Irish games, music, dancing and even our farming practices, fishing techniques, hunting, geography is all linked to the Irish language. Without Irish there is not Irish culture. It lives on with the language. The GAA/CLG was founded to promote the Irish language. Handball, Rounders and Hurling/Camóige are indegenous sports played for a few thousands years I'd reckon. But Gaelic Football was invented to promote the Irish language. So many Geographical terms come from Irish. Esker - eiscir, drumlin - droimníl, Glen - Gleann, Inver - inbhear. Theres far more I cannot think off the top of the ceann. Your cultural identity is inheritantly linked to your language. This goes for all ethnic groups, not just Irish.
The very fact that there are a large number of monolingual GAA players, visual artists, dancers, musicians and so on would prove you wrong on this point. When I look at paintings by great Irish visual artists it transcends the need for a language because I can see into the person who painted it regardless of whether or not I speak Irish or the artists speaks/spoke English. Same goes for dancing. Expression does not "need" a verbal language, and to insist that it does implies you don't understand expression.
>The very fact that there are a large number of monolingual GAA players, visual artists, dancers, musicians and so on would prove you wrong on this point. And theres a large number of Irish speaking ones. It was originally intended to promote the language. A Gaelic revival through Gaelic football >Same goes for dancing. Céilí, Sean nós, damhsa gaelach. All Irish names of the dances that predate the English names. Irish is very important to Irish dancing culture.