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A Gaeltacht in Dublin?
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,075 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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Ditto for Roman scribes IIRC. Meh students are always moaning about something. It's their job.Ha!:D
Another funny addition is that we have records of Babylonian scribal students complaining about the fact that they were forced to learn Sumerian in school!
Ancient Hebrew is similar I gather. Ancient Egyptian isn't that far out either. I tried having a go at the latter years ago. Makes reading Peig seem like a joyful exercise.The Corinthian wrote: »Bah, the vernacular of those nasty blow-ins. I prefer Sumerian, which incidentally shares sentence word order with Irish.
I disagree, it is a native language of this country. I stress the "A". The mistake comes where some stridently claim it must still the native language of all of us. Most of us deep down know this to be bogus. Indeed all too often the most vociferous of those decrying it's rarity among us can't speak a word of it beyond an ironic version of a certain Carlsberg commercial. It can be quite odd in a is my tea spiked with mescaline way to hear many ardent supporters state things like "I hated it in school, can't speak a word of it today(beyond slan/cead mile failte), but it's OUR language FFS!".It's one thing teaching children a foreign language of their choice, such as French, and praising them for their efforts. It's another thing telling them they must learn Irish and that it's their true 'native' language.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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I'm not being charitable and I agree it's not a well-thought out idea - that's why I questioned if it could realistically be enforced. I doubt the 'architects' of this idea have worked this out either.You're being very charitable to them. It was one of the few tangible examples given by a proponent of granting 'Network Gaeltact' status to Clondalkin. A not well-thought out idea.
To begin with, children are probably not going to be learning a foreign language of their choice; they're more likely going to be learning a foreign language of their parents choice.It's one thing teaching children a foreign language of their choice, such as French, and praising them for their efforts. It's another thing telling them they must learn Irish and that it's their true 'native' language.
Secondly, being forced to learn your true 'native' language is not simply limited to Irish. The parents of immigrant children frequently force their children to do this, for example.
So I would not object to children being 'forced' to learn, per say.
What I would object to is that it is a policy that has failed; that Irish is taught, as a compulsory subject, throughout the lifespan of primary and secondary school, constantly, for around a dozen years, that passing exams in it was essential to even passing your Leaving Certificate, or getting into an NUI college, that doing your exams in Irish would even gain you bonus marks, and so on - has not created a bilingual society.
Instead, it has created a society of at best Oirish* speakers and unfairly eroded good will towards the language in many who resent how a good portion of their education was essentially squandered with little to show for it.
Worse still, this system has created a culture of graft in a small cabal, that has absolutely no interest in the language in reality.
Seḏ em ef (forgive the creative spelling), and all that jazz, yeah. Not the easiest language to get into, especially due to the phonetic 'gaps' that we have to fill in and I found Gardiner isn't that much help, beyond some very basic expressions, as it wasn't really written as a language course textbookAncient Hebrew is similar I gather. Ancient Egyptian isn't that far out either. I tried having a go at the latter years ago. Makes reading Peig seem like a joyful exercise.
Governments use policy to incentivize or decentivize social behaviour all the time. People get tax breaks when married because we promote the traditional family as the basic unit of society. Certain industries receive grants and other fiscal incentives because we want to encourage their growth. Rich people are charged higher levels of tax and poor lower levels, so as to partially redistribute wealth and decrease the gap between rich and poor.Nonetheless we do grant advantages to Gaeltacht areas in terms of public spending.
We grant advantages to Gaelscoils with bonus LC points, lower pupil/teacher ratio, and, let's face it, a less than all-inclusive enrolment, whatever the enrolment policy may say. How is that really any better, or more fair, than the situation in the US pre-Brown vs Board of Education ? It's using public moneys collected from all, but allocating them in an unequal way.
So there's nothing new or, in theory, particularly unusual by the incentives used to promote Irish.
However, when the incentives become de facto the end rather than the means is where you have a problem, because you no longer see a purpose to them meant for the common good, only the inequality they represent. In this regard, I'd agree that many of the policies that have been used to promote Irish have become ethically bankrupt; they simply have failed to make any declarable difference to the language and, as the article that kicked off this thread demonstrates, have become the end in themselves, with the language relegated to the role of an altruistic by-product at best.
So on one level I'd disagree with you; such incentives are not bad in themselves and can be very beneficial, however in the case of Irish they have essentially failed and because they now overshadow the language in terms of importance, are probably an obstacle to much-needed reform that could actually benefit the language.
I doubt very much that you, or others, would feel such resentment at such incentives and inequalities had they actually succeeded in making Ireland a bilingual society. However, I do think it perfectly natural that people do feel this way given their failure and perpetuation in the face of this failure.
* Oirish. Pseudo-Irish language; composed almost completely of English, with a few words or phrases in Irish - when actually spoken, which is practically never. Speakers in reality retain cúpla focal, which they will use occasionally in clichéd fashion (greetings, toasts, etc), but in reality cannot string together a complete sentence. Oirish speakers will self-assess themselves as having some Irish, or even be so bold as to suggest they have conversational Irish, but as they never actually use it, they never realize how little they actually have.0 -
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Actually, I suspect that more than 1.7 million people have the ability to use Irish; I use 'sláinte' all the time (perhaps too often for my own good).If he and his group seriously think "Around 1.7 million people have the ability to use Irish" then they've been smoking something stronger than tobacco.
One should read in-between the lines of such statements; 'ability to use' is a pretty broad statement and does not imply any capacity to string together more than a handful of words and phrases; it's essentially tokenism and what I would call Oirish and is indeed spoken by the majority in Ireland:
Lack of reliable data on the language I believe only benefits those interested parties who have a stake in maintaining the status quo, rather than the Irish language.0 -
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPH4Mv06Lig
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