Is Irish a Dead Language?

Enkidu

iguana wrote: »

Hiberno-English can be lyrically quite beautiful and has given rise to some stand out poetry and prose. That is a naturally evolved speech pattern which is unique to our country, varied by region and has grown from our ancestors and their lives and influences.

I forgot to mention that this is a very good point that should not be overlooked. An interesting fact is that Hiberno-English has a construction were it forms the past simple using "after". For example:
I'm after cutting the grass.

This is present in Irish as well, but it's not Celtic. So Irish probably borrowed it from the language that was present here before the arrival of Celtic culture. Making this construction very old, non-Indo-European and still in use.

Cú Giobach

Wibbs wrote: »

Agreed but the Irish spoken today is quite a bit away from that 1600 Irish and a very much away from the older very sophisticated bardic style Irish of the "land of saints and scholars". It has evolved like all languages do, but there has also been a forced evolution of it since the foundation of the state.

Yea , so??

marienbad

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Around 60,000.

Ok thanks

Cú Giobach

marienbad wrote: »

Ok thanks

That isn't quite right it's estimated at between 20,000 (to low) and 40,000 (to high). Choose your number (everyone here chooses depending on which side of the debate they are on).
I misread your post. 50,000- 60,000 are the number of people who use it as their main method of communication.

samboshy

Irish is a dying language but not dead yet. Anyone denying this is clearly deluded.

fulhamfanincork

In my opinion it is, but only because of the way that it is taught in secondary school.

Too much emphasis is put on learning off realms and realms of pages, while the actual speaking of the language is severely neglected.

I would give 50% of leaving cert marks to oral work.

deise go deo

iguana wrote: »

Used daily/first language = two totally and completely different things.

I am aware of that, hence I gave two different figures for them.

There are 50,000+ People who use Irish every day, and there are 60,000+ native speakers of Irish, most of whom but not all use it every day.

Irish is a dying language but not dead yet. Anyone denying this is clearly deluded.

I dont think so, It could be, but I think the Situation has improved over the past 15 years or so. With the growth of the gaelscoil movement and the action taken to provide services through Irish for native speakers, the factors that influence the language are improving. That is why UNESCO upgraded Irish a few years ago from Critically endangered to Vulnerable.

Dionysus

wellboy76 wrote: »

Why do I have issues?

Oh, I don't know ... perhaps referring to Irish people who speak Irish as "mucksavages"?

Just a wild guess.

wellboy76 wrote: »

I dont want to speak the language and if my children choose not to I would like them to have the choice for themselves to not learn it in school when they are old enough to make it themselves like in 1st year. I think that is being reasonable!

All of which is a markedly different sentiment to referring to people with the intelligence, education and cultural openness to speak Irish as well as English as being "mucksavages".

wellboy76 wrote: »

And for the joke that is TnaG, I wish there was a box on my TV licence form to tick so none of my money goes down that toilet.

There's that hatred once again.

wellboy76 wrote: »

It is the 21st century and I dont want something that is no benefit being rammed down my throat.

Great; you're at last putting forward something like a rational argument. However, I assume you apply this logic to everything else (including Shakespearian poetry and quadratic equations) which is of no benefit to you?

wellboy76 wrote: »

I bet you are a tweed wearing teacher!

Tweed-wearing. If you're going to condemn Irish speakers as "mucksavages" in contrast to supposedly educated English-speaking monoglots such as yourself, at least try and write English properly. Most Irish speakers whom I know are highly educated by any standard. Yes, you don't like that - we get it. Trying to demean Irish people as "mucksavages" because you don't share their appreciation for Irish is really narrow-minded, in a Spenserian way.

Dionysus

iguana wrote: »

What is now claimed to be Irish was put together by committee in the late 19th century and is only slightly more genuine than Elvish.

The lack of historical knowledge in this single sentence is astonishing.

iguana wrote: »

And lets be honest, outside of those same small, remote pockets of the country our biological ancestry is as much Norman and Scandinavian as it is Celtic (influenced), so Irish is no more our ancestral language than French or Icelandic.

Source?. "Let's be honest" indeed.

iguana wrote: »

What we should give acknowledgement and respect to is the influence the Irish language has had on our spoken English.

Had. The English spoken in Ireland today is, with some prominent exceptions such as "giving out", mostly Received Pronunciation English or even American English, sadly. Outside of "established Ireland" Hiberno-English is spoken but the sort of people who do speak it would also be the sort of people - e.g. GAA players and managers, culchies - who are derided by the same people who have issues with the Irish language. If anybody says 'do be' when speaking English, the piss is taken out of them in this country, despite 'do be' being a classic Hiberno-English construct from the (very sensible and functional) Continuous Present Tense in Irish 'bí'. In contrast, professors of Hiberno-English such as Terence Dolan in UCD are fluent in Irish and view the decline of Irish as a serious cultural loss to the Irish people. That, from the leading authority on Hiberno-English, speaks to an intellectual awareness which you're lacking in that post. Other leading intellectuals on Anglo-Irish literature, such as Declan Kiberd, would be similarly-minded in their view of the importance of Irish.

iguana wrote: »

Hiberno-English ... is what we should be proud of and feel connected to our roots through. Not some zombie language that is forced on us.

Well, if a largely dead dialect of English is the limit of your linguistic pride as an Irish (?) person, you're easily satisfied/deluded.

I get the distinct impression that many people who are so vehemently against Irish are really trying to shape Ireland and its culture and identity to match their own narrow cultural limitations. Perhaps that's a bit too truthful, though.

Dionysus

Wibbs wrote: »

Agreed but the Irish spoken today is quite a bit away from that 1600 Irish and a very much away from the older very sophisticated bardic style Irish of the "land of saints and scholars". It has evolved like all languages do, but there has also been a forced evolution of it since the foundation of the state.

This makes Irish different to English (or French or Italian...), how, precisely? Are you contending that A) the English spoken in England is the same as the English spoken there in 1600? and that the English language has not had a 'forced evolution' in Ireland over the same period?

samboshy

Dionysus wrote: »

Oh, I don't know ... perhaps referring to Irish people who speak Irish as "mucksavages"?

Just a wild guess.



All of which is a markedly different sentiment to referring to people with the intelligence, education and cultural openness to speak Irish as well as English as being "mucksavages".



There's that hatred once again.



Great; you're at last putting forward something like a rational argument. However, I assume you apply this logic to everything else (including Shakespearian poetry and quadratic equations) which is of no benefit to you?



Tweed-wearing. If you're going to condemn Irish speakers as "mucksavages" in contrast to supposedly educated English-speaking monoglots such as yourself, at least try and write English properly. Most Irish speakers whom I know are highly educated by any standard. Yes, you don't like that - we get it. Trying to demean Irish people as "mucksavages" because you don't share their appreciation for Irish is really narrow-minded, in a Spenserian way.

Are you the grammar police?:eek: Stop nit picking

Dionysus

samboshy wrote: »

Are you the grammar police?:eek: Stop nit picking

Given that certain people here are contending that speakers of Irish are "mucksavages" "backward" and all the rest it's very appropriate that their own standard of English is examined. I'm not going to allow a barely-literate zealot for the English language look down on me as a "mucksavage" for speaking Irish. If an Irish speaker gave this sort of abuse to English speakers here it wouldn't be tolerated.

iguana

Wibbs wrote: »

To be fair that's a bit of an exaggeration. Yes it was simplified, it was homogenised out of the various dialects, but I can see the reasoning TBH and it is as close to "original" say 18th century Irish as possible. Plus languages evolve anyway. If you hopped in a time machine back to Shakespeares time, chances are high you'd find it very hard to follow as pronunciations and word associations have changed. Go back as far as Chaucer and game over.

Yes languages evolve and change utterly, and English is the greatest bastard language of all, which changes fantastically and speedily since it's original inception. Several hundred years from now everyone on Earth is likely to be speaking English, but it won't be a language we would recognise easily.

But languages do this naturally and through usage. They don't fall out of use for several hundreds of years and then get picked up by a committee who take it's near corpse and attempt to force it's evolution to their modern standards and then get imposed on school children for generations and on public notices by constitutional remit. That isn't an authentic language, it is a partially constructed language with roots in a dead one.

As for the language spoken in England in the late 13th century, there was still largely a division of French for the nobles and what was basically a Germanic dialect for the ordinary citizens and peasants. By that time they were starting to be influenced by each other and the language we know as English was starting to be born. You are right in saying it would be game over for me in terms of anything beyond basic verbal communication with the English of that era. However someone who speaks French and German with a decent ear for language would fit in quite easily after a period of adjustment.

wellboy76

Dionysus wrote: »

Given that certain people here are contending that speakers of Irish are "mucksavages" "backward" and all the rest it's very appropriate that their own standard of English is examined. I'm not going to allow a barely-literate zealot for the English language look down on me as a "mucksavage" for speaking Irish. If an Irish speaker gave this sort of abuse to English speakers here it wouldn't be tolerated.

Id say you are some laugh in the mucksavage arms!!!! :D:D

Dionysus

wellboy76 wrote: »

Id say you are some laugh in the mucksavage arms!!!! :D:D

Hilarious. :rolleyes:

iguana

Cú Giobach wrote: »

In all fairness wtf is this about??

First the genetic influence of the normans and vikings was mixed into the much larger native gene pool, the normans became Irish speaking (more Irish that the Irish) and the majority of people alive here today had Irish speaking ancestors.
Until the 1600's Irish was the dominant language of the island. Irish was affected and enhanced by the Norman's and Viking's languages ie the addition of new words, not supplanted by them.

The Normans spoke French, the Vikings spoke language that has more in common with modern day Icelandic than any of the other language. We are not much more Celtic in our make up than we are Norman or Viking. So Irish is no more "our" ancestral language than either French or Icelandic. And I, along with the majority of the population, feel very limited connection to the language.

Enkidu

iguana wrote: »

Several hundred years from now everyone on Earth is likely to be speaking English

This is separate to the Irish debate, but that is just futurist fantasy. No major linguists consider this remotely likely.

Insect Overlord

Welsh, Catalan and Basque are all examples of minority languages that are undergoing (so far) successful revivals. Basque doesn't have even a fraction of the rich literary heritage that Ireland has, is completely unrelated to the Latin and Germanic languages that surround it and has still got quite a bit of support in certain parts of France and Spain.

Would any of the doubters from this forum be so vociferous if they were trying to tell those Welsh, Spanish and French nationals to give up and let go? I sincerely doubt it.

Enkidu

iguana wrote: »

We are not much more Celtic in our make up than we are Norman or Viking.

True, but that's because we are not much of any of the three. We are largely the original inhabitants of these islands, the native north Atlantic peoples.

So Irish is no more "our" ancestral language than either French or Icelandic.

Ancestral language is a vague and nebulous thing, but in any way it can be measured, this is false. The average Irish person has far more Irish speaking ancestors than Anglo-Norman (the Normans spoke a separate lingue d'oil, not French) or Old Norse speaking ancestors.

iguana

Dionysus wrote: »

This makes Irish different to English (or French or Italian...), how, precisely? Are you contending that A) the English spoken in England is the same as the English spoken there in 1600? and that the English language has not had a 'forced evolution' in Ireland over the same period?

Because it wasn't forced. It evolved as the result of vast populations speaking the language through the social and technological advances and interacting with people of other languages. As societies changed the languages did. This is not what has happened with Irish, obviously up until it went out of use this happened throughout it's history, but once any language falls out of use for a time period longer than a human lifespan, it dies. And outside of a few small pockets of population that is what happened to Irish.

I suggest anyone who isn't aware of just how false the Irish language is takes a look at it's etymology with particular regard to the late 19th century Gaelic Revival. Irish is not a truly authentic language.

deise go deo wrote:

I am aware of that, hence I gave two different figures for them.

There are 50,000+ People who use Irish every day, and there are 60,000+ native speakers of Irish, most of whom but not all use it every day.

You really do not seem to be aware of the difference at all. Neither "native speaker" nor "people who use the language daily" mean "first language." They are very different things.

Enkidu

iguana wrote: »

I suggest anyone who isn't aware of just how false the Irish language is takes a look at it's etymology with particular regard to the late 19th century Gaelic Revival. Irish is not a truly authentic language.

I have and I still have no idea what you are talking about, particularly with the Gaelic revival. If you were talking about An Caighdeán Oifigiúl from the 1950s then there might be something to it, but not the late 19th century. There were still around 700,000 Irish speakers in 1891.

iguana

Enkidu wrote: »

Ancestral language is a vague and nebulous thing, but in any way it can be measured, this is false. The average Irish person has far more Irish speaking ancestors than Anglo-Norman

In very large part due to the fact that in Ireland the Irish language evolved to incorporate elements of those languages, so our later, mixed, ancestors still spoke an Irish language.

Enkidu wrote: »

(the Normans spoke a separate lingue d'oil, not French) or Old Norse speaking ancestors.

They did but French is one of the Langues d'oil, and the Normans were subjects of the French realm. The Langues d'oc while different were, close enough to be understood by native speakers of the selection of dialects. By the time of the Norman invasion of Ireland the Norse influence on their dialect of d'oil was fading. After King John's loss of his Norman and Aquitaine territories in the very early 13th century barely 100 Norse words were absorbed into common French.

iguana

Enkidu wrote: »

I have and I still have no idea what you are talking about, particularly with the Gaelic revival. If you were talking about An Caighdeán Oifigiúl from the 1950s then there might be something to it, but not the late 19th century. There were still around 700,000 Irish speakers in 1891.

It is, or certainly was, on the honours Leaving Cert history course in the late 90s, that's where I first read about it, but it's well documented. It's a very interesting piece of history (if you are fascinated by etymology).

Cú Giobach

iguana wrote: »

The Normans spoke French, the Vikings spoke language that has more in common with modern day Icelandic than any of the other language. We are not much more Celtic in our make up than we are Norman or Viking. So Irish is no more "our" ancestral language than either French or Icelandic. And I, along with the majority of the population, feel very limited connection to the language.

It is customary to respond to the points when quoting someone instead of just repeating what you said earlier.
The Norman's were a tiny minority on the island who's language disappeared with a few traces remaining in Irish.
The Vikings language similarly disappeared again leaving a few words in Irish.
After these languages disappeared Irish remained the dominant language of the island until English began its rise.
The vast majority of people here spoke Irish from the arrival of the language with the celtic influence until after the 17th century and you say "We are not much more Celtic in our make up than we are Norman or Viking".
Linguistically Irish was unquestionably the language of the ancestors of the Irish people (with a few very small exceptions) until the rise of English, and genetically the Norman and Viking influence is minute. (Though genetics have nothing to do with language. )

Enkidu

iguana wrote: »

In very large part due to the fact that in Ireland the Irish language evolved to incorporate elements of those languages, so our later, mixed, ancestors still spoke an Irish language.

No, that's not true. The evolution from Old Irish to Modern Irish is mainly due to middle word contractions and grammar changes caused by sound alterations in Irish itself. It is true that Irish borrowed words from those languages, but Modern Irish is basically just Old Irish with grammar evolution, not really a mixed language. Also most people on the Island didn't really mix much with the Norse and Normans as can be told from genetics.

iguana

Enkidu wrote: »

This is separate to the Irish debate, but that is just futurist fantasy. No major linguists consider this remotely likely.

Yes they do. A bastard hybrid of English and various Asian languages is the most likely to be the main earth dialect in the future. The reason that English will form the base of it is because of how fluid it is and how easily and swiftly it evolves by adapting and absorbing a wide variety of elements from all other languages it encounters.

Enkidu

iguana wrote: »

It is, or certainly was, on the honours Leaving Cert history course in the late 90s, that's where I first read about it, but it's well documented. It's a very interesting piece of history (if you are fascinated by etymology).

Well I am very interested in the etymology of Irish and it's not well documented. I have NUI Maynooth's Stair na Gaeilge and this is not mentioned anywhere. I have never read of "fake" alterations to Irish in the late 1800s in any text I've read.

Dionysus

iguana wrote: »

Because it wasn't forced.

This is a truly bizarre thing to contend. It overlooks centuries of English education policy in Ireland, starting with An Act for the English Order, Habit & Language in 1537, and reaching its most vicious in the classrooms of late nineteenth-century Ireland (p.21), a policy of forced English which was detailed by the school inspector, Patrick Keenan, in the 1850s. Why you wish to deny something as easily verifiable as this is something only you can answer.

iguana wrote: »

I suggest anyone who isn't aware of just how false the Irish language is takes a look at it's etymology with particular regard to the late 19th century Gaelic Revival. Irish is not a truly authentic language.

Having studied both Early Irish and Modern Irish in uni, I can say without fear of contradiction that you are, once again, talking nonsense. And that's being polite.

But, by all means, you can begin referencing academic and linguistic works to support your rather idiosyncratic ideas about Modern Irish. Any minute now....

iguana

Dionysus wrote: »

This is a truly bizarre thing to contend. It overlooks centuries of English education policy in Ireland, starting with An Act for the English Order, Habit & Language in 1537, and reaching its most vicious in the classrooms of late nineteenth-century Ireland, a policy of forced English which was detailed by the school inspector, Patrick Keenan, in the 1850s. Why you wish to deny something as easily verifiable as this is something only you can answer.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Of course English was forced into use in this country, this tiny, tiny minority of it's users. But as a language in it's own right and in it's country of origin, it was far more organic. Although it's promotion as a tool of national unity and identity, during the latter period of what's known as the 100 years war, may have added a speed to it's growth, it is still considered to have grown authentically.

Insect Overlord

iguana wrote: »

Although it's promotion as a tool of national unity and identity, during the latter period of what's known as the 100 years war, may have added a speed to it's growth, it is still considered to have grown authentically.

What kind of growth would not have been "authentic"?