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The Status Of Irish.
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You think someone who studied Irish in third level will be as desirable to as many employers as those who studied Maths and its related subjects? Even in the private sector?
Well thats actually an interesting question, There are quite a lot of job oppertunities available to people with a Qualification in Irish.
Are there as many oppertunities available as there are to someone with a Third level maths Qulalification? I doubt it, Though Maths can be a very specialised feild so Someone with a Qualification in a particular area wont be eliagable for all Maths related oppertunities,
I would contend that someone with a Qualification in Irish is more likely to find Employment than someone with maths as the Irish sector is growing and there is (Almost)no competition for jobs from people from other countires.0 -
Oasis_Dublin wrote: »I have no use for Shakespeare or trigonometry in my daily life. Take away the compulsion FOR ALL THREE or forget about it.
I think that is a far point. Our education system is a mess and isn't fit for purpose. There was a time when one was deemed educated if they could read, write and do long division but now you need at least a degree, and that is quickly becoming a masters, to be classed as 'educated'. We have this backward idea that people that struggle with maths in the leaving cert have the potential to turn into Einstein once they reach Uni so lets force them to take honours- well they won't! We would be far better off if the top 20% were encouraged to take even a more advanced Maths curriculum and the rest to have the basics rethought to them- just the things that people need for everyday life.
Just on my experience with Irish. I learnt nothing in secondary, barring how to pass the ordinary exam. By the end of it most of what I had learnt in primary was gone- verbs/tense etc. The only reason I passed as all I needed to do was find a key word in the question(didn't matter if I knew what it meant) and just find that word in the passage and write out that line. The reason I was so bad was because we had a class of 25 and a teacher than couldn't control the 5-6 that REALLY didn't want to be there so nothing got taught. Only 1 out of the 25 did honours and that was because he attended a irish school at primary. I remember him telling me that his Irish was far better at the start of first year than at the end of 6th year!
We also had this teacher for another subject and magically all of us did honours for the junior, even the guys that ended up doing fountain Irish. My point is that forcing Irish upon us helped NOBODY and in-fact did a lot of harm to the students that excelled.0 -
Just on my experience with Irish. I learnt nothing in secondary, barring how to pass the ordinary exam. By the end of it most of what I had learnt in primary was gone- verbs/tense etc. The only reason I passed as all I needed to do was find a key word in the question(didn't matter if I knew what it meant) and just find that word in the passage and write out that line. The reason I was so bad was because we had a class of 25 and a teacher than couldn't control the 5-6 that REALLY didn't want to be there so nothing got taught. Only 1 out of the 25 did honours and that was because he attended a irish school at primary. I remember him telling me that his Irish was far better at the start of first year than at the end of 6th year!
We also had this teacher for another subject and magically all of us did honours for the junior, even the guys that ended up doing fountain Irish. My point is that forcing Irish upon us helped NOBODY and in-fact did a lot of harm to the students that excelled.
Thats a false conclusion, the problem in your story is clearly a bad teacher and a poor curriculum.
The curriculum is structured in such a way that understanding is not need, rote learning and matching a word in the question to a word in the passage is enough to get by, This is a problem with the Curriculum not Compulsion.
Your teacher was not very good, Unable to control the class and establish a positive learning environment leading to too much time being given to dealing with disruptive students and not enough being given to teaching. This is a problem with Poor Teaching, not compulsion. The biggest factor that affects learning is the teachers relationship with the student(I am training to be a teacher myself)
That your friend who came from a Gaelscoil actually lost Irish clearly shows the flaws of the curriculum(no time given to spoken Irish) Compulsion wouldent be an issue as he was fluent starting off. Again Curriculum, not compulsion is the root cause of the problem.
If these same problems(Bad teacher and poor curriculum) were present in an optional subject you would see the same poor results.
I have several books on teaching, they go into teaching practices and the factors that affect student learning in detail. At no point in any of them is students being compelled to learn given as a factor that negativly impacts their learning.
Several people here have claimed that compulsion is a negative factor in Learning, but the simple fact of the matter is that these claims are based on Nothing, The claims are based on their dislike for Irish(or in the case of one or two, compulsion in general), not evidence, there is no evidence to back up these assertions.0 -
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Smaller pool of applicants, Less competition, growing sector, You figure it out.Some actual linguistic history might come in useful here.
English replaced Irish as the dominant spoken language of Ireland between 1750 and 1800. A 1799 study by Dr. Whitley Stokes estimated that out of a total population of 5.4 million, 800,000 spoke Irish only, 1.6 million were bilingual, and the remaining 3 million spoke only English. The Education Commission in 1835 estimated the number of people who spoke only Irish at 500,000, with a further 1 million bilingual speakers, out of a population of 8 million. Other studies confirm similar findings.
By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the use of Irish in Ulster had become confined to Donegal, north Antrim, central Tyrone, and southern Monaghan. The language had fallen into almost complete disuse in Leinster, the country's most populous province.
The 1851 census—which was the first to inquire about language use—enumerated around 320,000 monolingual Irish speakers, and a further 1.2 million bilingual speakers, out of a population of 6.5 million. Just 23.3 percent of the population claimed the ability to speak Irish, and those speakers were heavily concentrated in Munster and Connaught. By the mid–nineteenth century, just 2.4 percent of the population of Leinster could speak Irish.
In other words, the language didn't lose its foothold in the country because of the Famine—it had become a minority language long before the Famine. As for the alleged impact of the national schools, it's worth noting that by 1841, ten years after they were introduced, national schools still had only 100,000 full-time pupils, out of a population of over 8 million. Quite simply, only a tiny minority of Irish children went to national school at all—so it's something of a myth that they had the language beaten out of them there in the 1830s. Compulsory primary education was not introduced into Ireland until 1876, by which time English had been the dominant language of the country for a century.
I have seen this argument before and I have seen it ripped to shreds before too, The study's you claim all agree with one another actually vary widely, And were in reality nothing more than gesstimations at best.
Think about it, do you think its credible that the population rose from 5.4 million to 8 million in the space of 35 years?
The earliest reliable record is the 1851 census, after the famine. Any attempt to claim that what went before is in any way reliable is simply a falsehood on your part. I believe that the last time this was trotted out it was shown quite convincingly that there were plenty of studies from before the famine that showed Irish as the dominant language, However The surveys into language use before the famine were far from accurate and they did not all agree with each other as you claim, to make the claim that English overtook Irish based on the guesswork that were those surveys is quite disingenuous.
I could go on, but if the standard of your 'Actual Linguistic History' is anything to go by I doubt there is much point.0 -
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Indeed I do acknowledge the 1851 census. It is the first credible attempt to determine the use of the language.
The Famine affected Irish speaking communities disproportionately to English speaking communities, Death is a great inhibitor of the spoken word. The percentage of Irish speakers was higher Directly prior to the famine.
It is also widely accepted that peoples ability to speak Irish was under reported. Irish was the language of the poor and backward, There were no state services provided in it, no education provided through it, it was strongly associated with poverty and shame. People actively hid their ability to speak Irish. Many of your so called monolingual English speakers were Bi-lingual but did not want to admit they had Irish in the Census.
Both these factors narrow the gap considerably, While English may well have been in the majority in the decade before the famine, It was only by a narrow margin and certainly not 'long before the famine'.
But I think the interesting part or your argument is just how badly your figures add up.
First you say the 1851 census was on a population of 6.5 million, then provide figures that that add up to 5.5 million(maybe 1 million don't speak either Irish or English?)
Then, and this is the good one, You expect us to believe that no Irish speakers died in the famine.
1835 Irish only + Bilingual = 1.5 million.
1851 Irish only + Bilingual = 1.52 million.
In the same period apparently 2.5 million monolingual English speakers died/emigrated.
Strange how that dosent tally with reality?0 -
deise go deo wrote: »Smaller pool of applicants, Less competition, growing sector, You figure it out.
How is Irish a growing sector? given the governments lack of money I don't think there will be any jobs for Irish speakers bar a few teaching and translating jobs.What good is an Irish graduate to a private sector company, how would they create wealth through the medium of Irish?
If there are more maths graduates then Irish isn't that a good indication of it's poor prospects economically in that if people saw great high paid jobs there would be greater demand to do it.0 -
How is Irish a growing sector? given the governments lack of money I don't think there will be any jobs for Irish speakers bar a few teaching and translating jobs.What good is an Irish graduate to a private sector company, how would they create wealth through the medium of Irish?
Have a look at the Official languages act and the 20 year plan for the language.
The last decade has seen more and more private companies providing services through Irish. Google, Facebook and Samsung to name but a few.
Irish is a popular(if not widely spoken language), all surveys conducted show widespread support for the language and as such it makes sense for large private companies to be seen to be positive towards the language too.If there are more maths graduates then Irish isn't that a good indication of it's poor prospects economically in that if people saw great high paid jobs there would be greater demand to do it.
No, as i said, Irish is a growing Language, Irish medium education is only a small sector in the overall education System, however it is also the fastest growing sector. It went from just a few hundred students in the 70's to 40'000 in 09/10. And demand for places is still well ahead of supply.
With the Official languages act and the 20 year plan, there are new jobs requiring Irish that dident even exist 10 years ago.0 -
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gimme5minutes wrote: »Ill tell you what, I am really sick to my ****ing teeth with the Irish language these days. I never it liked it, starting from back when it was forced on me in school, but I really detest it these days because of the all the BS initiatives associated with it .... all EU documents having to be translated to Irish (who ****in reads these anyway), forcibly changing the names of towns against their will (such as Dingle), requiring it as entry to basically ALL college courses in this country, and Im sick of the gaelgoirs constantly trying to force it on the rest of the country who are more than happy to speak English and who love speaking English as it has given us massive connectivity with the outside world. At this stage I am so sick of Irish being promoted (read: forced on an unwilling population) that I no longer even give a crap about its cultural value, I would be more than happy if it died off and it never had to bother us again.
To anyway gaelgoirs reading: You are as bad as the Catholics were centuries ago, going around trying to convert everyone to your ways...so please just piss off with your language and leave the good people of this country alone in peace and stop costing us billions on a language that is not dead only by virtue of the fact that the government have had the life support plugged in for the last 50 years.
Ditto. I would rather the money spent on forcing my children to learn a defunct language to creating jobs so they will not have to emigrate. Isn't it lucky they can speak English so when I visit them further a field I will be able to communicate effectively where ever they settle.0 -
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the problem with any census is that the question is asked,do you speak irish, a lot of people would say yes,even though they could not hold a conversation in it[like ireland today] i can speak a very [velly] little japanese and spanish ,but i cannot say i can speak those languages,as i say the older censuses are far from accurate0
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You agree that Irish speaking areas were hit hardest? Good.Considering the various studies conducted during the period, Glanville Price writes in Languages in Britain and Ireland (Blackwell, 2000): "The figures [for the number of Irish speakers] lie between 19 and 33 per cent of the population of the country and demonstrate that by the first quarter of the nineteenth century Irish had become a minority language in a bilingual state with a majority of English-speakers and that the majority of Irish-speakers had become bilingual."
The figures may well lie between 19 and 33% but as we shall see the figures and reality are two different things.Even if, for sake of argument, you take Price's high-end estimate of 33 percent, that still meant that two-thirds of the Irish population could speak only English in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, i.e., the years 1800-25. That was before the introduction of national primary schooling and the Famine, the two factors that nationalists most commonly blame for the language shift.
Given the consensus among historians of the Irish language as to when the language shift happened, it's just obtusely ideological to insist that English was the dominant language "only by a narrow margin" in the decade before the Famine. That timeline better fits the nationalist victimization narrative—under which the Irish language declined because the English "beat it out of us" through compulsory schooling, or because Irish speakers starved or emigrated in the Famine years—but it is based on distorting the data and the historical facts to fit a political agenda.
The famine and Primary Schooling were not what caused the language shift, they just sped it up, The language shift had begun earlier than this and was a direact result of British policy. The British government decided to get rid of the Irish language and throughout Irelands history carried out a series of activities that were meant to directly or indirectly chip away at Ireland's independence.
Interesting that you should say this:Clearly, it must be an imperialist plot against the Irish language.
As there was indeed an imperialist plot against the Irish language,
As early as 1366 it became English policy to get rid of Irish,(Statutes of Kilkenny) they were quite candid in their aims and the reasons for them, As long as Ireland kept her native language then Ireland and England would be divided.
A long series of events took place that damaged and undermined the Irish language, Far from being the cause of the language shift, the Famine and primary schools were just the nail in the coffin, the last step in a long process.
Actions such as the destruction of the Irish ruling class leading to the flight of the earls. The Elite in Ireland were English speakers then, this lead to the loss of the Status of the File and the destruction of the bardic standard of Irish.
Cromwell and the plantations further undermined the language, with the killing of nearly half of the population(Mostly Irish speaking)
600,000 from a population of 1.4 million.
From then on, English was the language of power, Irish was not used in the Courts, in trade, in parliament(despite being the language of the majority) etc and declined slowly until the famine hit.I've never claimed that these figures represent absolute precision—they have to be taken as the work of early Victorian statisticians who were doing their best with the available methodology—but they are all suggestive of a broad general trend, which is the one that Price outlines above.
Absolute precision:D? They fail to show any change even though there was a massive famine that hit Irish speaking areas hardest. How bad can they be? They are simply not credible.
If the figures you provided are to be believed then the Irish speaking population after the famine was exactly the same as it was before the famine.(or grew by 200,000:D) No Irish speakers died in the famine based on the figures you provided. We know this isent true, You have accepted as much yourself. So why do you bury your head in the sand and continue to defend the figures you gave when they so clearly lack any basis in reality.0 -
Ditto. I would rather the money spent on forcing my children to learn a defunct language to creating jobs so they will not have to emigrate. Isn't it lucky they can speak English so when I visit them further a field I will be able to communicate effectively where ever they settle.
What 'defunct' language? Irish is a living minority language that is growing.0 -
the problem with any census is that the question is asked,do you speak irish, a lot of people would say yes,even though they could not hold a conversation in it[like ireland today] i can speak a very [velly] little japanese and spanish ,but i cannot say i can speak those languages,as i say the older censuses are far from accurate
Older censuses were not accurate, but the problem then was under reporting rather than over reporting, People were ashamed of Irish in 1851, It was the language of poverty. The true figure for Irish speakers was higher than 1.5 million, which rubbishes the figures from before the famine even more.0 -
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Sorry, the EU has already had a look at them, prime examples of promoting a minority language, which is an aim of the EU.;)Do you have figures for how many people Google, Facebook and Samsung employ to provide their Irish-language services? Samsung manufactures an Irish-language mobile phone—but translating a phone's menus into Irish is about half an hour's worth of work for one person.
I don't, but services are available from all three companies, they are only a few examples of course.The idea that we can rejuvenate our economy by providing ourselves with services in Irish (a "popular" but "not widely spoken" language) is just as silly as proposing that we can all get rich by selling houses to each other.
Strawman argument.:rolleyes: I never claimed that we can 'rejuvenate our economy by providing ourselves with services in Irish'In other words, more parasitical jobs created by the state, not private-sector jobs that actually generate wealth.
Well you obviously don't care about the language rights of minority's, fortunately our state and the EU dose.0 -
deise go deo wrote: »What 'defunct' language? Irish is a living minority language that is growing.
What is your definition of growing? By your own admission only around 4% of the population are using Irish in any meaningful way in their day to day lives? Is that a higher number than used it 25 years or 50 years ago? If not then it is hardly growing is it?
Why should the majority of the population be excluded from hearing what their so-called political leaders have to say in a debate to pander to an minority language that has no real relevance to their everyday lives?
What is transpiring today is a form of cultural fascism where scarce resources are disproportionately wasted on an all but dead language and our students valuable learning window is taken up by a subject that is of very little use to them in the real world.
Again I would much prefer if languages like German and French were taught from primary school ages and growth languages like Chinese, Polish, Korean and Russian were taught in second level with Irish becoming a optional subject as it should be. If a political party committed to a future change in our educational system like that then I would be very interested in what they had to say.0 -
What is your definition of growing? By your own admission only around 4% of the population are using Irish in any meaningful way in their day to day lives? Is that a higher number than used it 25 years or 50 years ago? If not then it is hardly growing is it?
I dont know if there is more now than 50 years ago, but I would say there is more than now than 15 years ago. The growth of Gaelscoil education has been very rapid over the past 30 years and demand is still well ahead of supply. The Gaelthachts are more or less stable now too.
The opportunities to use Irish are constantly growing and improving and Irish is in a good position in terms of who it is popular with. The two groups most in favor of it, are the Young(And this is vital to language promotion) and the better off in society. This popularity is most evident in University's around the country(where the two groups meet), Most University's have an Irish Language Society and in the last ten years or so, they have tended to expand dramatically. The Cumann Gaelach in UCD has 2000 members.
Personally I am often quite suprised at just how positive the University population in general is to the language, I can count on one hand the amount of occasions I have come across someone who dident like the language.Why should the majority of the population be excluded from hearing what their so-called political leaders to pander to an minority language that has no real relevance to their everyday lives?
They shouldent, that is why a translation should be provided.What is transpiring today is a form of cultural fascism where scarce resources are disproportionately wasted on an all but dead language and our students valuable learning window is taken up by a subject that is of very little use to them in the real world.
Rubbish, if you have to use hyperbole in your argument like comparing the promotion of a Minority language to fascism then your argument isent very good.
Think about it this way, 4% speak Irish, But the vast majority support Irish and its promotion(there are several surveys that show this.) Now what % of the budget is spent on Irish or Irish related things? I think you will find the % spent on the language is lower than the % of speakers of the language. Hardly disproportionatly in favor of the language now is it?Again I would much prefer if languages like German and French were taught from primary school ages and growth languages like Chinese, Polish, Korean and Russian were taught in second level with Irish becoming a optional subject as it should be. If a political party committed to a future change in our educational system like that then I would be very interested in what they had to say.
FG are proposing making Irish an optional subject for the LC.
I dont have any problem with other languages being taught as well as Irish in primary school. I think we should adopt a 'Mother tongue + 2' approach to language education as proposed by the EU.0 -
What is transpiring today is a form of cultural fascism where scarce resources are disproportionately wasted on an all but dead language and our students valuable learning window is taken up by a subject that is of very little use to them in the real world.
Shakespeare, poetry (English), Ancient Greece, the Reformation (History), Glacier landforms (Geography), RE, PE etc. are hardly relevant to the real world as well are they? If education was purely about "real world skills" then we need to completely scrap the education system.
Personally I think our entire education system does need to be scrapped as it's completely centered around learning by rote and the "Points race". Students don't leave school with education instead they leave with a cert that shows they were able to learn off enough to get x amount of points in a "test" environment.0 -
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Shakespeare, poetry (English),
English is totally relevant as it is one of the major languages of the world and is probably the main business language used around the globe so it is very relevant.
It is also the main business and day to day language of this state.Ancient Greece, the Reformation (History)
Again history is very relevant because it is a study one could say of the mistakes that man kind has made in the past., Glacier landforms (Geography)
Glacier landforms again given the global warming situation is very relevant?, RE, PE etc.
RE is religious education and again is relevant depending on peoples beliefs but when I went to school (2nd level) it was an optional subject.
PE? Really students physical well being is not relevant? It is more relevant today than it ever has been given the playstation generation that is now our youth!are hardly relevant to the real world as well are they? If education was purely about "real world skills" then we need to completely scrap the education system.
The problem here that all those subjects that you list bar English are optional for the leaving cert but Irish is not. If those subjects are not relevant to students they have the option to drop them. With Irish they do not have this choice. People then wonder why there is such hostility towards the language when they get older. It is obvious, if you shove something down someones throat they then to be unsympathetic to it.
I also note you picked very specific sub-categories of those subjects and not the main subjects themselves.Personally I think our entire education system does need to be scrapped as it's completely centered around learning by rote and the "Points race". Students don't leave school with education instead they leave with a cert that shows they were able to learn off enough to get x amount of points in a "test" environment.
I never said Irish should be scrapped but it should be optional. Let those who want to study it continue to do so and let those who feel that their time would be better spent study another subject.
Unfortunately we do live in a competitive world and the points system does come into play here. Why should those who have an aptitude for Irish be allowed to have an advantage when applying for all university courses over those who don't especially when the majority of courses have no connection to the Irish language at all?0 -
English is totally relevant as it is one of the major languages of the world and is probably the main business language used around the globe so it is very relevant.
It is also the main business and day to day language of this state.
Again history is very relevant because it is a study one could say of the mistakes that man kind has made in the past.
Glacier landforms again given the global warming situation is very relevant?
RE is religious education and again is relevant depending on peoples beliefs but when I went to school (2nd level) it was an optional subject.
PE? Really students physical well being is not relevant? It is more relevant today than it ever has been given the playstation generation that is now our youth!
The problem here that all those subjects that you list bar English are optional for the leaving cert but Irish is not. If those subjects are not relevant to students they have the option to drop them. With Irish they do not have this choice. People then wonder why there is such hostility towards the language when they get older. It is obvious, if you shove something down someones throat they then to be unsympathetic to it.
I also note you picked very specific sub-categories of those subjects and not the main subjects themselves.
I never said Irish should be scrapped but it should be optional. Let those who want to study it continue to do so and let those who feel that their time would be better spent study another subject.
Unfortunately we do live in a competitive world and the points system does come into play here. Why should those who have an aptitude for Irish be allowed to have an advantage when applying for all university courses over those who don't especially when the majority of courses have no connection to the Irish language at all?
Gandalf did I ever say English should be optional or that Irish should be compulsory? No I didn't. I don't believe in any subject compulsion. My point is our current education system is a flawed one. Instead of focussing on literacy in English (we have well documented issues with this) we do Poetry and Shakespeare. Shakespeare (or Patrick Kavanaughs poems) is about as relevant to using English as a Business language as been force fed Peig.
Likewise myself been forced to do Pass French so I could go to University had no relevance to my degree (IT).
If universities are going to set some subjects as been compulsory at least make them relevant for the particular degree and not as a blanket matriculation subject for the entire university
Eg. Medicine:Biology, Chemistry, Physics and 2 other optional subjects,
IT: Maths, Physics and 3 other optional subjects
General Science degree: Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and an optional subject
etc.
We have a one-size fits all education system. It doesn't matter if your a genius with your hands at woodwork you "fail school" (as in fail the leaving) if you don't get a pass in English or Maths etc.
As for cherrypicking aspects of subjects, I've nothing against those subjects (heck I got an A2 in history) I'm just pointing out that using "it's not relevant in the real world/jobs market" is a very slippery slope for deciding what should actually be taught in school. Surely we should be giving our students a "well rounded education" encouraging our students to be able to think for themselves and process the "raw data" that life throws at them an be able to form an opinion from this?
Instead we get them to learn off by heart a set curriculum and bunch of past papers and regurgitate it in an Exam hall. We aren't producing well rounded individuals instead just another flock of sheep.
As for the "Party leaders having debate in Irish", I've no preference personally, if they actually want to (it was suggested by a party leader) then surely they should have a choice. I haven't seen Irish speakers demanding a debate in Irish if anything I've just seen "anti-irish language" posters stating that such a debate is un-democratic. Surely democracy is about allowing choice. Anyways if such a debate happened I don't see why the transmission can't be "time-shifted" by 5 minutes and translation subtitles incorporated. Heck you probably wouldn't even need 5mins.0 -
Sorry dubhthach I misunderstood what you were saying (too much blood in my coffee stream at the time obviously!).
I agree with nearly everything you say (I still disagree with the last paragraph!).0 -
Sorry dubhthach I misunderstood what you were saying (too much blood in my coffee stream at the time obviously!).
I agree with nearly everything you say (I still disagree with the last paragraph!).
Well that's your Democratic right to
if we all agreed on everything the world would be a much greyer place 0 -
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The work of historians cannot change the fact that the source materials they study are not credible.
As for the rest of your rant, Please try to stay on topic.:rolleyes:Really? Let's look at your earlier statements:
Just a few pages back, you were insisting that Irish was "destroyed intentionally as a community language" by the primary schools and the Famine. Now, faced with historical research showing that by 1825, two decades before the Famine, at least two out of three Irish people (if not four out of five) spoke only English, you have to admit that you are wrong—but this only spawns multiple more allegations against the English.
What are you talking about, Please stop trying to misrepresent my arguments. The Policy for getting rid of Irish started in 1366, The English then carried out several actions over the following years that contributed to a language shift.
-Destroying the Irish speaking ruling Class,
-Putting an end to the Bardic standard of the Language through destroying the status of the file in Irish society.
-Wiping out nearly half of the population and displacing the native population to agriculturally poor areas.
-Not providing any state services through the Irish language despite the existence of a large section of the population that were monolingual irish speakers.
By the time of the famine, these had all contributed to a language shift.
English overtook Irish as the primary language sometime before the famine.
-Irish was then destroyed as a community language by the famine and primary schools in most of the country.
The famine hit Irish speaking areas Hardest, and left a deep scare on those communities for a long time to come,
-The emerging middle class had Irish systematically beaten out of them brutally leaving Irish as the language of the poor.And yet Irish remained the dominant language of the country for at least 400 years after that date. Why?
Because language shift takes a long time, That is understood by anyone with an interest in language promotion.Ironically, the relaxation of the Penal Laws during the eighteenth century, which allowed the Irish to move into middle-cass occupations, led to a voluntary language shift. People adopted English, the language of business, trade, and the professions, for reasons of economic self-improvement; even Daniel O'Connell encouraged people to speak English instead of Irish, knowing that doing so would open up better futures for them and their children.
Voluntary? When no choice was given? Irish was beaten out of children in schools and the British state ensured there were no opportunities for self betterment through Irish, Hardly a natural or voluntary situation.
Why is it that there was a situation wherein there was no future for those people in the Irish language? Such a thing did not happen elsewhere, Other countries did not loose their own languages, they developed them and are still speaking them today. The answer is obvious, The British state intentionally undermined and suppressed the Irish language, They ensured that there was no future for those people through their native language by refusing to provide services or education for them through their own language.For the record, Irish people in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did not imbue the Irish language with the misty-eyed romanticism typical of later nationalists. That aura around the Irish language was created late in the nineteenth century by figures such as Douglas Hyde.
The Irish language was viewed as the language of poverty, the language of the peasant. (but then again the British state had driven the Irish leaders from Ireland many years before) The language of hunger.I've answered your question above. That the figures lack absolute precision does not mean that they "lack any basis in reality," as evidenced by the fact that professional historians of the Irish language take them very seriously.
1.5 million Irish speakers Before the Famine
1.52 million Irish speakers after the Famine(and it is widely accepted that the figure in the 1851 census is under reported due to shame attached to the language)
Explain how, While there was a famine that killed/forced out 2.5 million people,
the population of Irish speakers not only was completely unaffected, but actually grew slightly? Just explain it.
We know that the Irish speaking population in reality, far from being unaffected by the famine was actually the hardest hit, so the only logical conclusion is that the Irish speaking population immediately prior to the famine must have been far greater than the 1.5 million you claim.
Otherwise we have a paradox of the Irish speaking community being the hardest hit(which you have already admitted was the case) yet not suffering any decline in population at all.
To defend these figures, that simply can not be based on reality, by saying they may 'lack absolute precision' is just plain ridiculous.
I am inclined to call Poe's Law....Quibble all you wish—but nationalists today are left in the position of insisting, stubbornly and without any evidence, that a voluntary language shift could not have happened; the English must have beaten and starved the language out of the Irish. For ideological reasons, they can't entertain any other explanation.
The factors in the languages decline I have mentioned are a matter of historical record.
The English had it as a clear aim to undermine the Irish language and to replace it with English. And they had good reason to do so, their standpoint makes perfect sense.
The language declined and the British state was there to insure it did every step of the way.
Voluntary language shift did not happen, nor has it happened anywhere on the scale Language shift occurred here.0 -
deise go deo wrote: »Irish was beaten out of children in schools and the British state ensured there were no opportunities for self betterment through Irish, Hardly a natural or voluntary situation.
Well I am old enough to remember Irish being beaten into children at school, (I witnessed it first hand) and I have to say that it is exactly for this reason that so many people in this country over a certain age hate Irish, (many younger people dislike Irish because of compulsion & the curriculum), but I am somewhat sceptical to hear from you deise go deo, that Irish was beaten out of children 'By the British' whatever that means? British teachers just beating Irish children for speaking Irish???
Please clarify.0 -
I have to say this thread as descended into extreme sterotypes on both ends of the argument. Then again I don't think there can ever be a civil debate about the status of Irish as the two Polar opposites rage at each other while everyone else who is in the wide spectrum that is the middle stays away as a result.0
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You think someone who studied Irish in third level will be as desirable to as many employers as those who studied Maths and its related subjects? Even in the private sector?
I said certain jobs. If I want to teach Irish in secondary school, LC Maths is of little use to me.
Third level is a different ball game. Someone who studies maths at third level is hardly going to be looking for a long term career working as a teller in a bank.0 -
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