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Office of An Coimisinéir Teanga to be Closed.

1235

Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 94 ✭✭cytex


    You mean like, Irish speaking doctors and surgeons in A&E?

    yep where there is a demand for the service.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Registered Users Posts: 94 ✭✭cytex


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    First off please show respect to my culture. This post is full of narrow minded bigotory and a perfect example of why we need this office. And read my other post with the other guy who was speaking this kind of bile . No im not more irish than you i am more Gaelic


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,027 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    cytex wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    That's fine, it's a free country, however don't get upset if you're not understood by the majority of your fellow countrymen.
    I can speak to europe as gaeilge why not my own goverment.
    How can you "speak to Europe"? Unless you're talking about a tiny amount of civil servants in an office in Brussels, you're not going to get very far as Gaeilge. As Permabear linked to, you'll not get very far in this country doing so outside of a very narrow subset of the population. If you could we wouldn't be having this debate in the first place.
    Civil rights is one thing you should not put a price tag on .
    You have the right to speak an language you care to. How are your civil rights being affected? Sounds like more Gaelgoiri hyperbole as per usual.
    Well of course you dont think it is important as it is not your language, culture or identity.
    Oh hang on.. Well there is talk of a two tier EU financially, so maybe a two tier Ireland based on such nebulous and oft artificial constructs.
    cytex wrote: »
    yep where there is a demand for the service.
    Supply will follow demand. As it is the demand is tiny, or artificial.
    narrow minded bigotory
    The bigot card. Oft followed or implied by the "west brit" card.
    First off please show respect to my culture
    Undercurrent: Not yours.
    No im not more irish than you i am more Gaelic
    And what does that mean? Seems quite loaded to me.
    Permabear wrote:
    You are clinging on to a language and an "identity" that the Irish themselves relinquished centuries ago. By the time of the 1851 census, just 2.4 percent of the population of Leinster said that they spoke Irish. Were the people of mid-nineteenth-century Leinster not really Irish? Was the population of the Aran Islands more Irish because they spoke the "correct" language?
    This pretty much.

    If this office(and legislation etc) is required to the degree claimed, almost by definition the language is in trouble as a countrywide language and it's status as important to the majority. Irish is important as a minority language, it will survive, maybe even grow and those that find it important will continue to use it, but the days and massive waste of public time and money over this cultural vanity object are or should be well passed by now. We've had nearly a century of the same thinking and less people speak it today than did a century ago. Why? Mostly because people weren't that bothered. Sure they may have said and continue to say it's important, but the majority couldn't express that importance as Gaelige. If nothing else a fresh eye on the problem is required not the same old same old waste of breath, time, energy and finance of the past

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 94 ✭✭cytex


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    I am not acussing any body of being a bigot or a west bit i was mearly pointing out the bigotory in your last post of calling it a useless language etc now that i have 2 mods personally attacking me tho i will not continue this conversation before you decide to ban me for no reason.

    Thanks


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Registered Users Posts: 505 ✭✭✭alejandro1977


    sure didn't Gay Mitchel want to join the common wealth

    I'd never heard that - I do know that Eamon O Cuiv wanted to join the Commonwealth however. In fairness apeing his grandfather is about all he can offer (De Valera also wanted Ireland to join the Commonwealth)


  • Registered Users Posts: 94 ✭✭cytex


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    No the language is not carried on as a national vanity project . It is carried on as peoples first language. In the gaeltachts and outside the gaeltacht in places like derry belfast dublin cork donegal etc.
    Re your one percent there are 6% gaelscoils in the republic.
    1/2 a million people on the last censous said that they use Gaeilge everyday I belive this figure is a lot more accurate than the ones that said they "have Gaeilge" which in my opinion is correctly disputed as a incorrect figure. Please show where your getting 1% from as this is basically just insulting .
    Gaeilge is a living language look back in my posts for links to benifits of billingualism.
    native gaeilge speakers have their own festivals traditions etc that have been passed down look back in the thread for a link to one such of these.

    So you are really uninformed or you are attacking the language and those that speak it for no reason . And to be honest your comments are extremelly offensive . If you wish to criticize my stance then do so on actual facts and not on the rubbish your spouting.

    If you dont want the language that is your right and i will equally fight for that right but there is many in this state that do and to be honest most of gaeilge speakers dont really care if the majority speak it or not and most dont want it forced on people with no interest. as much as they dont want english forced on them. which you seem to be advocating.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 94 ✭✭cytex


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    so by them figures 18% can speak irish . (although some not do it less than weekly) a far cry than 1% .

    My appoligies on including the education system i misread it and agree compulsion in either langauge is wrong.

    the goverment spend more on stationary than promotion of the langauge this year including grants etc for the gaeltachts links in previous post on this thread . But not including tg4 which (as far as i know) doesnt get money directly from the tv license) but through services from rte. to an ammount of 38 mill.

    Im sorry but as i have already said this is about civil rights for gaeilge speakers it might not be important to you but it is for a lot of people and these peoples rights are just as valuable as your rights and should be protected.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,027 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    cytex wrote: »
    No the language is not carried on as a national vanity project
    It kinda is at this stage. An expensive and embarrassing failure of one at that. Let's imagine - and it is in the realms of imagination - that your figure of half a million people speaking it is correct. That would still mean four million Irish people don't. Four million. This after a century of pushing the cause of the language. Making it compulsory in schools so pretty much the majority of the four million would have been schooled in it. Making it compulsory for some careers(even more careers in the past). At one point it was compulsory for dealings within the civil service, yet when that was dropped as a daily requirement the language stopped being used. Huge amounts of time and effort and money was thrown at "our" language, yet here we are. Even at the pie in the sky Gaeligoiri figures this has been a failure. What does all this tell you?
    It is carried on as peoples first language.
    In very very small numbers of people. Even a cursory glance at the TG4 schedules would show quite a number of interviews with "fluent" Irish speakers bringing in English words to make up a conversation. I'm not talking about loan words either, which all languages have. I'm talking about everyday words that would have perfectly fine Irish equivalents. The level of fluency isn't there for many.

    Please show where your getting 1% from as this is basically just insulting .
    How is it insulting? The stats are there and require no emotive responses.
    Gaeilge is a living language look back in my posts for links to benifits of billingualism.
    Who said it wasn't a living language. I certainly didn't. I'm debating the figures. I'm also debating this; if it is such a living language among half a million people every day, how come it needs so much life support? Being bilingual is an advantage of course on a couple of levels, but it's more of a practical advantage if the languages are more universal and used by more people. Now before someone pipes up with the "oh well the Swedes have english and swedish and Swedish is only spoken i Sweden" style argument. Yea groovy, but at least all Swedish people speak Swedish. They could spend their entire loves not speaking anything else. This is not the case in this country. Not by a long shot. Well if it was the Gaelgoiri wouldn't be crowing on about even more concessions.
    And to be honest your comments are extremelly offensive .
    Just because one has a hobby horse or passion and someone else doesn't, this does not mean they're being offensive. Most often it means one is looking for offence.
    If you wish to criticize my stance then do so on actual facts and not on the rubbish your spouting.
    He did.
    If you dont want the language that is your right and i will equally fight for that right but there is many in this state that do and to be honest most of gaeilge speakers dont really care if the majority speak it or not and most dont want it forced on people with no interest. as much as they dont want english forced on them. which you seem to be advocating.
    Well lets get rid of compulsory Irish in schools. Some Gealgoirs are actually OK with this, but some start foaming at the mouth at the suggestion. OK let's look at this forced stuff. Look at Spain. Four official languages IIRC. Look at Basque. The oldest language in Europe. It makes all the others including Irish look as recent as txt speak. It's also in a far healthier state than Irish and this is after centuries of official oppression for the language. Up to 1975 indeed. That should make some ask questions about the state of Irish.

    Anyway, in the Basque country you will see signs in Basque and Spanish and that's cool. However even the most twirly eyed loony ETA supporter would not expect to see the same bilingual signs in Madrid or Seville. Yet there are Basque speakers who live in both those cities and meet up, have their cultural nights etc. I'm sure they could complain they're being "forced" in some way. They could but I really doubt they would*. I really doubt they would crow on about human rights. Yet similar is being "forced" on non Irish speaking areas of this country. The parts were the other four million of us live. Even at those massaged figures. When you look at the actual figures? It's even dafter.





    *knowing a few and having posed this question they agreed.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,801 ✭✭✭PRAF


    The country is in receivership, there's no money in the kitty, we have to borrow billions just to keep things going. If we are going to trim anything, this seems like a good place to do it.

    I'm all for promoting the Irish language. It would be great if we could all speak it fluently. However, the reality IMO is that people like Hector and Micheal O'Muircheartaigh do more for the Irish language than the Official Languages Act could ever do.

    We should be encouraging a love of the language and promoting what its real use should be (using it to slag off foreigners in our native tongue:D)

    Employing someone to monitor compliance by public bodies with the provisions of the Official Languages Act is a waste of time and resouces. Only Irish language extremists could ever find a use for reading some boring govt report in Irish.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,027 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    cytex wrote: »
    the goverment spend more on stationary than promotion of the langauge this year
    That sounds like it carries the smell of something one would step in if one was to follow a male member of the cattle species around a field. How do they define "promotion" for a start? No one can seriously be suggesting that the government bill for stationary is more than the overall bill for the Gaeltachts support, never mind the cost of Irish in the educational system. How much do the various translations cost? The cost of printing such translations bilingually?
    PRAF wrote:
    Irish language extremists could ever find a use for reading some boring govt report in Irish.
    To be fair P, as Gaelige nó as Bearla I think we can all agree the content is usually written in High Bulshítese.:D

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 10,012 ✭✭✭✭thebman


    cytex wrote: »
    Again we should not be forced to speak english . I can speak to europe as gaeilge why not my own goverment. I never said to not put a spending limit on it I said that not everything is about money. Civil rights is one thing you should not put a price tag on . Well of course you dont think it is important as it is not your language, culture or identity. Can you show me a link to the savings that you are getting from the closure of this office as this article (it is slighlity biased ) says that bord snip reckons that there is going to be none. And i cant find a less biased article
    http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1117/breaking40.html

    Less biased because it suits your biased agenda I guess.

    It isn't a civil rights issue, it is a desire of a small number of people who want the state to spend millions of other peoples money fulfilling their desires. In fact not even that, they want the state to further borrow in our and future generations name for something that apparently a thriving language that doesn't require this expenditure but does for some reason.


  • Registered Users Posts: 280 ✭✭texidub


    cytex wrote: »
    What Gaeilge brings:

    Billingualism
    http://www.buzzle.com/articles/benefits-of-being-bilingual.html

    http://www.derryjournal.com/news/local/gaelscoil_pupils_performing_better_in_english_and_maths_1_2137485

    The Gaelic culture
    http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/1105/1224307103256.html

    It brings a sense of belonging and community with other speakers even if it is the first time you met . It is a identity and a culture and it makes me smile being able to communicate in my language.

    fair enough. Here's my take on that:

    Any language would make me bilingual.

    Any language would open me up to a community.

    Nothing unique about Irish there. What I really want to find out is what particular --uniquely Gaelic-- linguistic functionality would learinng Gaelic bring. I mean stuff that is unique to irish that cannot be translated into English --some grammatical construct with descriptive potentiality etc...

    I'm looking for something like:

    Only in Gaelic can you....

    Only Gaelic enables you to...

    All that aside, here's the rest of my take:

    1. Life is short. I want to communicate with new people. I want to experience new ideas.

    2. I can already communicate with my fellow Irish men and women.

    3. I already have sense of belonging to Irish people.

    Therefore, learning Irish brings me no gain.

    Can you see what I am getting at?


  • Registered Users Posts: 280 ✭✭texidub


    On the surface, Unionists and Gaelic lobbyists seem to make for strange bedfellows (yes I know many unionists learn Gaelic). But both approach mainstream Irish society from a position of some resistance and seeking advantageous change. And both shout about civil rights in support of their cause.

    Weird, huh?

    I just can't shake the sense that there is a lot of resentment and anti-Irishness in both communities, however counter-intuitive that may seem.


  • Site Banned Posts: 4,066 ✭✭✭Silvio.Dante


    This is one Quango that won't be missed. Bloody Irish language fanatics make some of my working colleagues life hell...


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,005 ✭✭✭Enkidu


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Anyway, in the Basque country you will see signs in Basque and Spanish and that's cool. However even the most twirly eyed loony ETA supporter would not expect to see the same bilingual signs in Madrid or Seville. Yet there are Basque speakers who live in both those cities and meet up, have their cultural nights etc. I'm sure they could complain they're being "forced" in some way. They could but I really doubt they would*. I really doubt they would crow on about human rights.

    *knowing a few and having posed this question they agreed.
    Any Catalonians or Basque I've spoken to find our approach ridiculous. Instead of people just learning the language if they want to, we put effort into ensuring another generation of young people must learn it. In Catalonia and the Basque country people just learned it, raised their kids with it and that was it. Although Catalonia is starting to go down a similar route as us in some ways.

    There are places where there are genuine human rights issues with the oppression of local languages (France for example is atrocious with Breton), however Ireland certainly isn't one of them. Again it comes from people's bizarre approach of pushing for official recognition beyond what minority languages usually get and what is reasonable for them to get, instead of just learning it in their own time.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,027 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Plus it's clear their approach works and ours hasn't. New thinking required I'd say.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,677 ✭✭✭deise go deo


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    That is not true, and you know it's not true, I would have expected more of a moderator


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,359 ✭✭✭cyclopath2001


    That is not true, and you know it's not true, I would have expected more of a moderator
    What's not true? That French people generally don't speak Irish? Or that learning French or German would be of more benefit to an English speaking Irish person, than learning Irish?

    What's all this got to do with saving money by just using our most popular national language?


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,020 ✭✭✭BlaasForRafa


    That is not true, and you know it's not true, I would have expected more of a moderator

    Quite right, iirc its less than 1%


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 42,347 Mod ✭✭✭✭Lord TSC


    That is not true, and you know it's not true, I would have expected more of a moderator

    Desie, counter it with figures then! Not a refutation of our figures or with simple guess work and generalisation. We've provided figures and backed up our reasoning of them. You've failed to do so. Provide us with some stone cold figures or you hold no credibility in claiming ours make little sense.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,077 ✭✭✭Rebelheart


    DanDan6592 wrote: »
    How does this prove that he or FG are against Irish culture?

    Ridiculous post.

    In fairness, Fine Gael's Brian Hayes in his role as minister in charge of the OPW, also wants to put up statutes to heroes of the British Empire in the Phoenix Park, Dublin - as unbelievable as that sounds to most Irish people in 2011. This is the same Brian Hayes, protégé of John Bruton, who has gone on several rants against the Irish language and Irish culturally generally throughout the years.

    Whatever Fine Gael is, it really isn't pro Irish culture. It's disingenuous to contend otherwise. Pro Anglo-Irish culture, sure. Going on campaigns for years against nationalists (most infamously John Hume) in the North, sure. Advocating that British military personnel who fought against Irish freedom fighters be honoured by Irish people, sure. It's all for that sort of "Irishness". Irish-Ireland is a bit too much of an underdog for the backward closed-minded party which fought against democracy in Spain, for Franco, fascism and the Roman church, and which produced anti-semites like Oliver J. Flanagan and neo-fascists like Patrick Cooney and Patrick Donegan.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,077 ✭✭✭Rebelheart


    thebman wrote: »
    Less biased because it suits your biased agenda

    This is one of the constant features of the fanatics who are anti-Irish language: only their opponents have an "agenda". :rolleyes:


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,077 ✭✭✭Rebelheart


    cytex wrote: »
    First off please show respect to my culture. This post is full of narrow minded bigotory and a perfect example of why we need this office.

    Well said. That particular poster has gone on several rants in this forum about how Irish culture generally is "backward" and basically that the British "civilised" the Irish. Such is the sort of baggage and benighted thinking behind at least one of the anti-Irish fanatics here.


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  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,077 ✭✭✭Rebelheart


    rodento wrote: »

    The majority of the Irish version of these reports and documents were not bought by members of the public.


    Says it all really:rolleyes:

    Yes, and I can just see the demand for all those fascinatingly interesting English language reports making the Government Publications Office super rich. Tell me, when was the last time that a state-funded report in the English language made it into the Top 10 selling publications?

    And how much does all that nonsense in English which nobody/hardly anybody reads cost taxpayers?


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