Why do you hate Irish?

It has to be the way it's taught. You learn it every day for 8 years in primary and still can't have a simple conversation or understand any Nuacht on tv. It cant be the kids' fault.

It is state propaganda forced upon people. You should not have to learn Irish if you don't want to. Not everyone is Gaelic in thinking and thinks the Irish language is what defines them. You would be better learning Chinese and investing money into languages which are relevant in the world.

What good is Irish going to do in the 21st century? Keep it as a hobby but it should not be state funded.

If so many people are coming out of school after spending the majority of their childhood and teenage years learning it, and not being able to speak much more than a few simple words and phrases, surely something is fundamental wrong with the way it's been taught?

I don't hate it. I don't love it either, I can just use it fairly well.

In my experience, most people hate it for three main reasons:

1. It often wasn't taught well at all (e.g. no speaking practice, consolidation, grammar explanation, leading to frustration. It's not a particularly difficult language to learn, but you still need a pretty competent teacher.

2. Most of us are monolingual and lacked the benefit of exposure to and us of another language from an early age in learning a language. This was compounded by being taught Irish by teachers who were basically monolingual English speakers. Even the ones who were fluent in Irish would probabky have grown up with it as a mother tongue, and therefore didn't have the insight into learning a language in a school setting which is crucial to any language teacher. It's telling that none of the non-Irish born people I know who've learnt it had any issues with it, as they'd already learned English and other languages properly.

3. It was cool to say you didn't like it when you were a teenager, and some people maintain this mindset into adulthood.Though I believe its unpopularity was strongly linked to points 1 and 2, with people getting frustrated with their lack of progress and saying "Stupid language anyway, I'd want to learn it if they didn't try to cram it down my throat!" Understandably, of course.

So I really don't buy it when someone says it was forced down their throat in primary school. Do they also hate English, Nature Studies, Religion (well...), Geography, History etc which we also had no choice about learning in primary school?

For the record, my ideas on language learning come from being an experienced English-language teacher who has also learned some French and Italian. I think Irish should be compulsory in Primary School as it's crucial for children to learn a second language for their general cognitive development and later language acquisition. I think Irish is the best option as there are the most opportunities for encountering and using the language outside the classroom (number of Irish speakers in the country, signs, TG4, RnaG) which is essential for learning a language.
I then believe it should be optional at Second level.

I'd be amazed if there were many 12-year olds sitting in a classroom during an Irish lesson thinking "I wish I were learning something more practical that will benefit me in my adult life."

That argument's always seemed to me to be retrospectively applied.