How to revive the Irish language.

oldmangrub

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

English is not a language associated with the 'other' community. English encompasses much much more then that. You could argue though, and I would definitely agree, that the actions of some unionists has diminished the view of the ulster scots dialect/language among the irish speaking community.

Edit: On second thought I'm going to put dialect first. That **** isn't a proper language.

So does Irish. I think the view of the language of any members of the 'other' community who associate it with the IRA is very narrow. Understandably so. Communities are polarised in the North so anything seen remotely "British" or "Irish" can become a target. Nationalists are as guilty of it as Unionists are. It's a shame but I don't see it changing anytime soon. Tugging that rope only adds to the problem and I think Cú was spot on in saying that it is these associations in peoples' own heads (I don't know if it's really in yours) that is tragic and regrettable.

I don't agree that the actions of unionists has diminished the view of Ulster Scots among the Irish speaking community at all. Unionists who speak Scots have never seemed the extremist types to me anyway, though I'm not up to date on NI debates so that may have changed of late. Even if the UVF and UDA took up Scots en-masse it wouldn't impact on my view of the language or the rest of its speakers. It's a language and language can't really be militarised when most of its speakers are not in any army. It would be pretty unfortunate for anyone to feel this reflected badly on the language or other speakers of the language.

There's a big connection between the Irish speaking community and the Gaeidhlig speaking. I think An Comhdháil oversees cultural exchanges between them. In many universities Scottish is part of the Modern Irish degree syllabus. Also in Commerce and Irish, students can opt to do one year in a Scots Gaelic-speaking area. Culturally I might have more in common with a Scottish-speaking unionist than a nationalist; the "political" view of identity that you bemoan yourself seems too narrow to me too.

And Scottish is a language of itself. It's not a dialect of Irish, it just shares a root. {EDIT: Ulster Scots is a dialect; apologies I didn't pick up on the "Ulster" part; Are you talking about "Ulster Scots" as in the Scottish language as spoken in Ulster, or the "Ulster Scots" as in the English spoken by Ulster Scots in Ulster...? (That's a mouthful) I presumed you were talking about the former}

poeticseraphim

An Coilean wrote: »

Interesting that the 'other' community has not damaged the reputation of English amongst Irish speakers, perhaps some members of the 'other' community are a little but touchy?

Are we the other community then? So you don't think we are the same community?

Well thats fine.

Just as an aside.....Look people who speak Irish have many different political views some are right wing...and some are left wing...i have even met Gaeilgoirs who disagree with the level of public funding. The debate is separate from the language itself.

At the momment it needs to take on a more self assertive private sector role ....at least for the next budget or two. I do think another European Language should be taught from primary level. We desparately need to work on that.

These points are not an attack on the people or language itself.

By the way saying they are all in the RA is slightly daft....you may as well say we are all in the RA for being Irish....


My main gripe with gaelgoirs is that i percieve either rightly or wrongly that their concern for society stops at the langauge issue. You don't hear them crying for funding for social justice elsewhere (except for SF....who we have a right to connect to the RA ...but i don't connect them to the rest of the gaelgoir movement in that way)

You see, I actually see us as ONE community having to balance funds for more basic needs right now. It is no good speaking Irish being on the dole and having it cut whilst we look after your rights as an Irish speaker.

The truth is most Gaelscoilaíocht speakers are not native speakers and most i have met admit they speak it aswell as someone from France with really good English they have learnt accents. And not all schools teach totally throught Irish. If they were all as confortable in the language as is portrayed we would be experiencing a lot more poetry and literature and a whole movemnet by now. And that WOULD help the language. But it is not there in quantities that represent reported numbers of Irish speakers.

To the Irish speaking community i say keep speaking it by all means...but the country is broke so have a heart. Coming accross as mercenary and cynical shows a lack of empathy with those of us who i thought were your fellow citizens.

The state has given a lot to the Gaeltacht and Irish speakers over the years...in the States there is not a chance you would be given this level of funding in return for what we get back and i think you know that.

Even the EU has questioned the level of funding for paperwork for people who can speak English..and if they can't speak it well surely that points to a huge problem with this issue then. I mean if Gaeilgoirs can't speak English well enough to operate through society and read documents etc...we have a real problem because THAT PERSON IS COMPLETELY UNEMPLOYABLE IN THIS COUNTRY.

All that has ever justified the funding for paperwork in Irish is that some people may not have good enough English. Well i submit to you if that is the case and we have people who do not have that level of English in this country then they are unemployable and we have spent money effectively putting people on the dole.

On the othetr hand if as i suspect people can speak English perfectly then we have no justification for it.

I support the Irish langauge..to a point....that does not make me hate people who speak it...i don't ...nor does it make me hate the language..i don't..i admire and respect them ..i wish though if they do see themselves as a separate community that they would give the same back

But learning a lanaguage needs a lot of financial and personnal investment ....

There are too many people who exploit the 'Irish industry' people who use it for reasons nothing to do with the langauge. That needs at least to be cut out.


The 'Joke' Gaeltachts were no one speaks it....

I would even support the following strategy....two choices....primary school all through Irish with some English...or all through English with no compulsary Irish and a strong emphasis on a second eurpean language from age four and the same in secondary school...and thats it....two choices...parents or kids choose...people should make up there freaking minds all ready.....and thats the level of funding you get....forget the rest.

Brendan97

let the language die out peacefully and with its dignity intact

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Brendan97 wrote: »

let the language die out peacefully and with its dignity intact

Circular thread begins a new circle...

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain

Brendan97 wrote: »

let the language die out peacefully and with its dignity intact

You can start by getting rid of that horrible Gaelic name, Breandán! I think Bret would suit your better.

EclipsiumRasa

Could we not just completely scrap the Irish language and start from scratch?

• No irregular verbs, or weird exceptions.
• All words spelled in a way that consistently resembles how its pronounced
• 107 words for bad weather. Lets face it, its needed.
• An absolutely ton of words for insults that need several sentences of explanation when translated into English. The best insults in any language ever.
• Base all pronunciations entirely on how seductive it sounds when trying to chat up foreigners while on holiday.

"Why should I learn this stupid language?"
"Because it will turn you into a femme fatale/weaponised Casanova, even if you're only talking about foxes, the jumper you're wearing, or your desire for cake."
"Where can I learn this language!?! :pac:"

We're only abandoning Péig, TG4, and some finer nuances of Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh's GAA commentary really, right?

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain

EclipsiumRasa wrote: »

Could we not just completely scrap the Irish language and start from scratch?

• No irregular verbs, or weird exceptions.
• All words spelled in a way that consistently resembles how its pronounced
• 107 words for bad weather. Lets face it, its needed.
• An absolutely ton of words for insults that need several sentences of explanation when translated into English. The best insults in any language ever.
• Base all pronunciations entirely on how seductive it sounds when trying to chat up foreigners while on holiday.

"Why should I learn this stupid language?"
"Because it will turn you into a femme fatale/weaponised Casanova, even if you're only talking about foxes, the jumper you're wearing, or your desire for cake."
"Where can I learn this language!?! :pac:"

We're only abandoning Péig, TG4, and some finer nuances of Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh's GAA commentary really, right?

You do realise that there are only eleven irregular verbs in Irish? English has about 300!

And Irish is already phonetical.. in Irish. What your suggesting is to use an English system of spelling. Why on earth would you do that? If anything, English needs complete spelling reform.

tough, enough, hough, cough, trough, bough, plough, though, dough

The Radiator

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain wrote: »

You do realise that there are only eleven irregular verbs in Irish? English has about 300!

And Irish is already phonetical.. in Irish. What your suggesting is to use an English system of spelling. Why on earth would you do that? If anything, English needs complete spelling reform.

tough, enough, hough, cough, trough, bough, plough, though, dough

You're username is ridiculous. Boards really needs to introduce a proper character limit on usernames.

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain

The Radiator wrote: »

You're username is ridiculous. Boards really needs to introduce a proper character limit on usernames.

At least I use my real name and not a domestic appliance.

Iwasfrozen

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain wrote: »

You do realise that there are only eleven irregular verbs in Irish? English has about 300!

And Irish is already phonetical.. in Irish. What your suggesting is to use an English system of spelling. Why on earth would you do that? If anything, English needs complete spelling reform.

tough, enough, hough, cough, trough, bough, plough, though, dough

I thought the answer would have been obvious. We don't have the power to change the english language...

EclipsiumRasa

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain wrote: »

You do realise that there are only eleven irregular verbs in Irish? English has about 300!

• Abair/Dean/Feic/Faigh/Teigh/Bi
• Beirt/Clois/Ith/Tabhair/Tar

Yes. I know em, even if I could never get the blasted fádas in the right places.

I say 0 is better, and I bet anyone who has either taught a second/foreign language or has tried to learn them will appreciate not having all list of inconsistencies and exceptions when they could be spending the same time dealing with everything else.

And drop the comparison with English. Everyone seems to love English since its the worlds' business language.

English doesn't even have a proper future tense, it uses intentional modality instead (compare I will go (present tense with will stuck in) with Rachaidh mé, a recognisible single word for future tense used in no other situations). Its a plain bad comparison with Irish.

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain wrote: »

And Irish is already phonetical.. in Irish.

No. I'm suggesting the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (Not to be confused with NATO's A=Alpha C=Charlie etc phonetic alphabet) for all writing.

• So if anyone already knows it, they'll immediately know how to pronounce it.
• And anyone who learns this gets a huge help learning any other language.

If you know this, it makes *every* other language a bit easier to learn, so I say we standardise it as writting it.

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain wrote: »

What your suggesting is to use an English system of spelling. Why on earth would you do that? If anything, English needs complete spelling reform.

tough, enough, hough, cough, trough, bough, plough, though, dough

As I've just now explained, I'm not suggesting the use of the English system of spelling.

Also, I agree with English being an unintuitive set of rules for anyone to learn as a second language. Even your mistaken use of your for you're is as much the language's fault as your fault, since its such an unintuitive mess. ( Couldn't resist )

Those poor TEFL/TESOL learners. Getting an F on a test and explaining it to their parents because the bollocks doesn't make any sense to them is not funny.

I say the Irish language is whatever the Irish people decide to make it into, and we could do a much better job than whats begrudgingly accepted as the norm.

EclipsiumRasa

The Radiator wrote: »

You're username is ridiculous. Boards really needs to introduce a proper character limit on usernames.

Your username is ridiculous; radiator heaters work though the convection of energy, not the radiation of energy.

Why I bet you're not even a real household appliance! :pac:

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

We don't have the power to change the english language...

Of course we do! We are not legally required to use British English, are we? We could easily reform Hiberno-English and make it the only official version of English in this country. Oz, NZ, America and Canada have their own version, why not us!

The practicality of it, on the other hand..

Iwasfrozen

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain wrote: »

Of course we do! We are not legally required to use British English, are we? We could easily reform Hiberno-English and make it the only official version of English in this country. Oz, NZ, America and Canada have their own version, why not us!

The practicality of it, on the other hand..

haha, we could replace 'th' with 'd'. "Don't you be going cutten dat tree ova dar."

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain

EclipsiumRasa wrote: »

I say the Irish language is whatever the Irish people decide to make it into, and we could do a much better job than whats begrudgingly accepted as the norm.

I would be in favour of some spelling reform, but I think we should at least wait for the Gaeltachtaí to die out before butchering enhancing the language to suit English speakers.

What do you make of the Welsh system?

kowloon

EclipsiumRasa wrote: »

Your username is ridiculous; radiator heaters work though the convection of energy, not the radiation of energy.

[Off Topic]In fairness, they radiate heat too.[/Off Topic]

EclipsiumRasa

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain wrote: »

I would be in favour of some spelling reform, but I think we should at least wait for the Gaeltachtaí to die out before butchering enhancing the language to suit English speakers.

What do you make of the Welsh system?

I'm unfamiliar with how exactly the Welch assert their language and cultural identity or how its especially unique. Anywhere I should look?

Actually I'm not all that familiar about the pros and cons of na Gaeltachtaí either. On the one hand they seem like an asset to any kid wanting better points in the CAO, but on the other hand their existence could be seen through resources at funding something with a low level of risk to make the situation less bad when the same resources could be funding something much riskier and more controversial that would be outright world class.

Guess I shouldn't be surprised which got picked, not many risktakers get voted in in this country...

opti0nal

EclipsiumRasa wrote: »

I say the Irish language is whatever the Irish people decide to make it into.

...And the Irish people have made English the everyday language of Ireland.

EclipsiumRasa

opti0nal wrote: »

...And the Irish people have made English the everyday language of Ireland.

That was yesterday, and I suppose evidently today (if you're reading my post and I'm reading yours! :rolleyes: )

However, doesn't mean things have to be this way tomorrow, next year, or ten years time right? People can choose to start ambitious projects and make their own future.

Iwasfrozen

EclipsiumRasa wrote: »

That was yesterday, and I suppose evidently today (if you're reading my post and I'm reading yours! :rolleyes: )

However, doesn't mean things have to be this way tomorrow, next year, or ten years time right? People can choose to start ambitious projects and make their own future.

Can but don't. Any campaign to revive the language is doomed to failure because the people simply don't want to learn it. Just look at bernard dunne's brod club for an example of an ambitious project to revive irish that failed miserably. If that isn't the irish people voting with their feet i don't know what is.

EclipsiumRasa

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Can but don't. Any campaign to revive the language is doomed to failure because the people simply don't want to learn it. Just look at bernard dunne's brod club for an example of an ambitious project to revive irish that failed miserably. If that isn't the irish people voting with their feet i don't know what is.

Never heard of that really.

And I'm not really talking about reviving the language so much as scraping it and starting afresh.

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain

EclipsiumRasa wrote: »

I'm unfamiliar with how exactly the Welch assert their language and cultural identity or how its especially unique. Anywhere I should look?

Actually I'm not all that familiar about the pros and cons of na Gaeltachtaí either. On the one hand they seem like an asset to any kid wanting better points in the CAO, but on the other hand their existence could be seen through resources at funding something with a low level of risk to make the situation less bad when the same resources could be funding something much riskier and more controversial that would be outright world class.

Guess I shouldn't be surprised which got picked, not many risktakers get voted in in this country...

Actually, I was referring to the Welsh orthography. Certainly not as convoluted as Irish, but still jarring!

Of course the the Gaeltachtaí are an asset. Once the native speakers die out, so does the richness and complexity of the language.

But, so be it. It will still be spoken as a second language by an increasing minority.

Look at the Gaelscoil figures rising each year. Clearly the demand is high as many parents and pupils are turned away each year. Funding for Irish would be better spent opening new Gaelscoils to meet this demand.

Obviously the Irish curriculum isn't producing Irish speakers, but the Gaelscoils certainly are. Perhaps that's something we as a country should be seriously looking at.

dubhthach

Hiberno-English is basically dead man walking as it is, most of the distinctiveness is gradually been chipped away. Thence the rise of "Supraregional Irish English", of course it's no wonder. For years Irish people were basically told they had bad english it's no wonder Dublin use to have among highest number of elocution schools per capita anywhere in the english speaking world.

Of course result of most of the distinctiveness was due to language shift form Irish. It's interesting that people talk about "Gaelscoil Irish" and how it some even mention creole/patois. Well that's exactly the position that Hiberno-English had in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was a patois of English heavily influenced syntactically and grammatically by the Irish language. The stage accents developed in the 19th century very much reflect this. A fact that many Irish people don't really wish to acknowledge and thence the paranoia over how Irish accents are portrayed abroad in tv/film.

As for Irish orthography there's little I would change perhaps removing word internal/ending th's replacing them with h's. After all the "th" phoneme disappeared in the Irish language sometime in the 13th century. It's basically a fossil left over since them.

Example:
Flaith -> Flah
Bláth -> Bláh
Ath -> Ah

etc.

This is of course part of traditional reason that Irish people have problems with "th" as the sound which was present in Old and Middle Irish was lost by the medieval period.

opti0nal

EclipsiumRasa wrote: »

People can choose to start ambitious projects and make their own future.

OK as long as they use their own money and children.

EclipsiumRasa

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain wrote: »

Actually, I was referring to the Welsh orthography. Certainly not as convoluted as Irish, but still jarring!

Ah. Gotcha. I once visited Llandudno, it made me a bit more sympathetic to tourists trying to pronounce Dún Laoighaire.

Of course the the Gaeltachtaí are an asset. Once the native speakers die out, so does the richness and complexity of the language.

But, so be it. It will still be spoken as a second language by an increasing minority.

Wait, do you mean the number will go up or down, or the numbers as a percentage of the total population will go up or down (THIS BLASTED LANGUAGE AAAAAAAAAAAAARG- ahem)

Look at the Gaelscoil figures rising each year. Clearly the demand is high as many parents and pupils are turned away each year. Funding for Irish would be better spent opening new Gaelscoils to meet this demand.

Obviously the Irish curriculum isn't producing Irish speakers, but the Gaelscoils certainly are. Perhaps that's something we as a country should be seriously looking at.

True, but those numbers are open to a bit of interpretation. "How good the Irish is there" isn't the single question parents ask when trying to find where to send their kids for schooling. Plus I do worry that it could just be a fashionable trend in parenting ("all the other mummies and daddies are doing it, so should I" is a horrible notion but all too human).

I'm not a parent. I've never really given that much thought to how highly I'd value Irish if I had kids.

EclipsiumRasa

opti0nal wrote: »

OK as long as they use their own money and children.

What, no investors in new ideas?

Care to explain how you think Ireland's going to get out of this economic six foot hole?

As for kids, never experiment with kids. Just look how that worked out for MJ :pac:

Seanchai

LordSutch wrote: »

Good point that, now that I think about it..

Ha, as if you never thought of that anti-Irish sentiment. This feigned "that's a good point" surprise from you every time somebody says something anti-Irish here is comical.

opti0nal

EclipsiumRasa wrote: »

What, no investors in new ideas?
Care to explain how you think Ireland's going to get out of this economic six foot hole?

If knew that, I'd riding in my own private Airbus by now.....but I suspect we won't pay off our debts by changing our common language.

EclipsiumRasa wrote: »

As for kids, never experiment with kids.

We've been doing that since 1922.

Iwasfrozen

Seanchai wrote: »

Ha, as if you never thought of that anti-Irish sentiment. This feigned "that's a good point" surprise from you every time somebody says something anti-Irish here is comical.

I don't believe I ever said any thing anti irish...

Toirdhealbhach Tadhg O Caoindealbhain

Jaysus, why do you people bother with this troll? A quick Google reveals his anti-Irish sentiment going back years

The first result is this post from last June.

Iwasfrozen wrote:

There is no reason to learn irish over another language other then silly nationalistic notions, there is no other explaination for it. If you like languages there are many many more useful languages for you to learn. I can see no reason, other then nationalism, for why someone would want to learn irish. There are no practical benifites to that language over other ones.

Honestly, a chairde, move on. You're flogging a dead horse talking to this fella