Do you Speak Irish?

bodhrandude

My first time on the Arran Islands I went into the American Bar where I said to the bar man Na hogany scogany (which I just made up in my head then), to which the bar man said What? I realised then that my attempt to sound Irish failed so I just asked for a pint of Guinness.

Insect Overlord

Well, that's just... special.

dlofnep

Wibbs wrote: »

TBH if the OP was (pretty much exclusively) starting recurring threads on the subject of how great Israel is, he'd likely be thought a Mossad shill, though not a culturally exclusive one to be fair.

I'd say say - I know the OP on a personal level, and he isn't the type to sit on the sidelines. He works hard to promote the Irish language in a very inclusive manner. He has helped me out here in Waterford on a number of times, even when he didn't have to. He's a very sound chap who just so happens to be passionate about Irish.

I'm also very passionate about the language, but I try to stay out of these topics because there's no pleasing everyone.

JessePinkman

Try and use as much as possible and more importantly try and use simple phrases that most people understand so they can reply

opti0nal

I never speak Irish. I wish Irish enthusiasts would stop annoying the majority population with their preposterous 'official language' laws.

Is it true that an English-speaker who drives in English-speaking parts of the country can fail NCT if they don't have the name of the county of registration in Irish on their car registration plate?

How can this be justified? Surely a person should be allowed to choose the language used on their car registration plate?

dlofnep

opti0nal wrote: »

I never speak Irish. I wish Irish enthusiasts would stop annoying the majority population with their preposterous 'official language' laws.

Those Irish language laws protect the rights of Irish language speakers. I highly doubt the 'majority of the population' are annoyed with them. There is nothing preposterous about protecting one's rights to operate in their language.

opti0nal wrote: »

Is it true that an English-speaker who drives in English-speaking parts of the country can fail NCT if they don't have the name of the county of registration in Irish on their car registration plate?

You made the claim - why don't you tell us?

NegativeCreep

I know way more French than I do Irish. Theres more point in knowing French anyway. French is a lovely language. Irish sounds offensive to my ears

Ficheall

dlofnep wrote: »

You made the claim - why don't you tell us?

He's right.

• The registration number consisting of numbers and letters must be in black on a white reflective background
• The name of the county of registration must be in Irish, (examples are Baile Átha Cliath, Corcaigh, etc.)
• The flag of the EU and the letters "IRL" must be placed on the left-hand side of the plate, the flag comprising 12 gold stars in a circle, the letters in white beneath it, all on a blue reflective background. No other numbers, letters, marks, etc., should appear on your registration plate.

The entire thing is a little ridiculous. Let's focus on the Irish language aspect of it though, just to prove a point.

Insect Overlord

NegativeCreep wrote: »

I know way more French than I do Irish. Theres more point in knowing French anyway. French is a lovely language. Irish sounds offensive to my ears

You're doing it wrong. Try listening to Gleanntain Ghlas Ghaoth Dobhair, Buachaill Ón Eirne or Coinnleach Glas An Fhomhair.

NegativeCreep

Insect Overlord wrote: »

You're doing it wrong. Try listening to Gleanntain Ghlas Ghaoth Dobhair, Buachaill Ón Eirne or Coinnleach Glas An Fhomhair.

Are they songs? I'm not really a fan of Irish songs. That Sean nós (sp?) singing gets on my nerves!

Smidge

Loved Irish throughout school.
Went to the Gaeltacht every year in secondary and enjoyed every minute of it.
Have sadly lost the majority of what I had learned over the years due to having nobody to speak it with

Sterling Archer

I don't speak Irish, didn't learn it in school due to cracking my skull.. I'm trying to learn common phrases to use every day, even something simple like "whats to story?" if doesn't help that there is very little in the way of easy access spoken translations, especially apps.

Wacker The Attacker

JessePinkman wrote: »

Try and use as much as possible and more importantly try and use simple phrases that most people understand so they can reply

Did you ever use irish while cooking crystal meth for Gus Fring?

poeticseraphim

There is no one to use it with. And nobody i socialize with uses it.

It is not used in many cultural persuits or hobbies. And outside of classes nobody in Dublin speaks it. And nobody would be able to speak it well.

I suspect the fact that there is virtually nobody to speak it with, is the main reason it never worked as a state scheme.

It is really a tool to convince the population at the time that no matter what it went throough republicanism was justified. Just incase they got any ideas of trying to indentify themselves as people.

It is quite strange that they enforced it. And did not recognize in the constitution that English is our mother tongue for most of us. They should have given it equal status.

It was to erase the past 800 yrs i suppose or put a certain slant on it.

If you think about it , it is like the nationalism classes that one might have in Russia or the pledge of allegiance in America. It serves the same purpose. State control. The teaching of it in schools has virtually nothing to do with the people who simply happen to grow up speaking it.

I don't know why they need 'protecting' though. That never made sense to me. English is the majority language that should be recognised i feel. And Irish speakers should be accomodated if there is a genuine need. And they should be of course allowed to speak it. But English should be the official language. It just seems silly and strange and state driven in order to protect the idea of 'state nationhood'.

It does sound harsh to me , I think it is funny how the Irish accent when speaking English is so soft. I think i must sound weird to native speakers when i say Irish words. It even sounds harsh to Germans apparrantly. I think iit sounds nice to slavic ears though. It depends on your native tongue how it sounds to you really.

poeticseraphim

Insect Overlord wrote: »

You're doing it wrong. Try listening to Gleanntain Ghlas Ghaoth Dobhair, Buachaill Ón Eirne or Coinnleach Glas An Fhomhair.

Erm no.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh4eW3aPnL4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20akrOZr3mo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-IdyWs3axc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi0M7PLJZKw

I respect your right to your language:o

It sounds incredibly harsh to this south Dubliner.:o

I also find it almost impossible to pronounce it properly.

It is easier for non Anglophones to learn and they like the sound of it, for instance German or slavic speakers seem to like it.

There are lots of other langauges that just sound harsh to me too. It is not an Irish thing...

We need a sexy native language....and a sexier native culture..and sexier native people...

Ireland needs to bring sexy back.

purplepanda

Don't have any relatives that can speak it, apart from a cousin who has lived in Dingle Gaeltacht for 25 years & she still can't speak a word at all even though her husband & kids are fluent

Given that my Grandad was born less than 5 miles from where the Normans first landed in Ireland, it's doubtful if anyone of my ancestors has spoken it during the last few hundred years . No census entries for Irish speakers either.

The Scots lowlanders don't feel compeled to learn Scots Gaelic (or be forced to learn it at school) to feel Scottish, so I really don't see why some expect parts of Ireland to be different?

English has been spoken for 800 years plus in Ireland. And probably been the majority language for the last 2-300 years.

It should be encoraged in regions where it has a recent history just as Scots Gaelic is.

Kids in South Wexford should be taught Yola before Gaelic IMO!

kowloon

We could make our native language Spanish. Might cost us in the long run though, what with all the Spanish students. How about Italian?

purplepanda wrote: »

The Scots lowlanders don't feel compeled to learn Scots Gaelic (or be forced to learn it at school) to feel Scottish, so I really don't see why some expect parts of Ireland to be different?

They do have the tartan biscuit tin though. A culture with a rich and vibrant heritage.

poeticseraphim

kowloon wrote: »

We could make our native language Spanish. Might cost us in the long run though, what with all the Spanish students. How about Italian?

I like your thinking.



Mandarin could be useful.

opti0nal

dlofnep wrote: »

There is nothing preposterous about protecting one's rights to operate in their language.

Except that Irish is the first language of just a handful of the population. Most of those who assert this 'right to speak Irish', are in fact, native English-speakers. They suffer no material loss when confronted with street signage in English or when dealing with an English-speaking public servant.

I own my car, I paid for it. I speak only English. I live in an English-speaking part of the country. I paid for the registration plate.

Why should I be forced by these 'Irish-speakers' to display the county on it in Irish?

Why should I be fined or my car seized if I change my registration plate to show the county of registration in English?

gobnaitolunacy

Only find it useful conversing with other Irish abroad when you don't want others to know what you're on about.

Ta mo thoin cosuil leis an brat Seapanach. - The food did not agree with me.

who the fug

Nope , don't find much call for reciting the lords prayer in Irish, and I no longer have to ask permission to go to the toilet.

Any words I do use, are words that would have been in everyday use growing up to describe something.

Seeing as the mother taught me the Mass in Irish , being able to ask permission to go the toilet after 12 years is a pretty poor return.

Ficheall

I wonder whom the people who think the language sounds harsh are listening to.
Would they be native speakers, for example, or people who recall a few phrases from secondary school?
Most Irish (nationality) students can make French sound incredibly harsh, which is no mean feat. The concept of intonation and accents doesn't really seem to feature in teaching.

Bigfellalixnaw

I have been teaching myself Irish (Munster Irish to be exact) since I left secondary school. Unfortunately I don't have much of a chance to speak it after all my trouble, as there is no population of Irish speakers nearby to converse with.

gbee

I hate it, I turn off Irish programmes and blame it for some of the illiteracy in our schooling system.

Also, as 13 years was mentioned, it also throws up a very poor education system if adult foreign students can come to language schools for a summer and get fluency certs in less than three months.

Precious flower

As I've said many times before on threads similar to this I would love to be fluent in Irish. I think though secondary school creates a hatred of Irish, it certainly did for me. Always learning the grammar frustrated me, I could go on all day about how wrong they're teaching it. If everyone here can see that why can't they? My father is from Connemara so I've always been very passionately for the language and detest it when people are negative when speaking about it 'It's dead etc'. If we had that attitude towards everything we'd have no heritage.

I won't deny though that although I preach I don't make enough effort to try and learn the language. I turn on TG4 occasionally but I've no excuse for not making a bigger effort. It's such a beautiful language. When we go up to Connemara and I hear it spoken naturally it makes me more firm in my belief that it can't die out. For people who think it's a waste of a language or ugly head to Connemara and you'll think differently.

BrianG23

I'm a practical guy. I respect people who want to learn out of...Artistic value? Pride? Well, I'm not like that, I don't find Value in it. Language is a form Communication for me, I don't hold any value in it other than that.

Herb Powell

opti0nal wrote: »

Except that Irish is the first language of just a handful of the population. Most of those who assert this 'right to speak Irish', are in fact, native English-speakers. They suffer no material loss when confronted with street signage in English or when dealing with an English-speaking public servant.

I own my car, I paid for it. I speak only English. I live in an English-speaking part of the country. I paid for the registration plate.

Why should I be forced by these 'Irish-speakers' to display the county on it in Irish?

Why should I be fined or my car seized if I change my registration plate to show the county of registration in English?

Because you live in Ireland.

gbee wrote: »

I hate it, I turn off Irish programmes and blame it for some of the illiteracy in our schooling system.

WTF???

Wibbs

purplepanda wrote: »

English has been spoken for 800 years plus in Ireland. And probably been the majority language for the last 2-300 years.

Hardly 800 years. Small pockets of old English maybe, but Norse French far more likely. There were few enough English people here 800 years ago. Hell the Normans in England spoke more French than English. It took three centuries of Norman rule before one of their kings was a fluent English speaker. Richard the Lionheart that oh so "English" king, had barely a word of it(and avoided living in England as much as he could).

The English language wouldn't have come over in any real numbers until the plantations. Certainly not in the rural areas. Even then Irish was spoken in the cities and by many of the old "Norman" families. Something seems to have happened it in the 18th century. At the start of same it would have been the majority language by a goodly margin, by the end of that century it had shrunk. By the time the famine came about it was already well in decline.

What I find interesting about the language is how quickly it died off in the diaspora that fled Ireland for the new world. In America it died off within a generation and those arriving in New York would have been mostly from Irish speaking areas. Italians tended to keep the language. Jews kept a lot of their language roots too and incorporated it into American English. Quite a number of words ended up in common use even beyond their respective communities. My first thought was because they were going to an English speaking culture and because theywere coming from one the second language Irish got dropped. That doesn't explain why they also dropped it in south American countries who weren't English speaking. Hell in Argentina where there is a large population of Irish ancestry they speak Spanish, yet there is a much smaller population of Welsh ancestry and many speak Welsh.

Welsh and Irish are interesting to compare. It could well be argued that the Welsh by dint of geography have been under more English rule and cultural pressure, yet more Welsh people retained the language and it didn't take as much to revive the language to where it is today. The same explanations could be leveled at Welsh's decline as are leveled at Irish and it's decline, but it declined and continued to decline far faster here. It seems there was more of a collective reason/feeling within us to drop the language in Ireland.

poeticseraphim wrote: »

Mandarin could be useful.

*head explodes*:mad::D

Ficheall wrote: »

I wonder whom the people who think the language sounds harsh are listening to.
Would they be native speakers, for example, or people who recall a few phrases from secondary school?
Most Irish (nationality) students can make French sound incredibly harsh, which is no mean feat. The concept of intonation and accents doesn't really seem to feature in teaching.

Yea, I'd personally find Donegal Irish and Blasket Islander Irish to be much easier on the ear. Some of the TG4 accents seem odd to me. There seems to be a new one on TG4 too. An Irish "D4" exaggerated type one. How they pronounce the word for "four", "ceathair" an example. I always heard it as "Cah-hir", listen to old folks in the Wesht and Donegal and it's "Cah-hir". On TG4 I've started to hear "Cah hiritttt". It's drawn out and more exaggerated. Not the only word, but the most obvious(and common). Maybe it's actually a natural accent I never heard as a kid on the telly/radio? Answers on a postcard please...

Wibbs

Herb Powell wrote: »

Because you live in Ireland.

To be fair HB, that's a bit of a circular argument. It is because it is. Doesn't really explain the cultural disconnect of the majority, nor the insistence on retaining the cultural totem of Irish in such things, more often than not among those who can't speak more than a cupla focal themselves. "Yes it's a part of our CULTURE!!! We MUST retain it!!!". Can you speak it? "eh *looks at feet*.... no." It's a very schizo cultural subject for us. We don't have it about Gaelic games, or Irish music. We play/listen/watch both in large numbers, no lip service required. However ask us beyond lip service to actually speak Irish and we're met with a resounding silence or at best far off whispers. It's all a bit odd.

The Cool

Very occasionally, just to say "F you" to my friends who think I can't because I'm a prod.