Mind your Language.

An Coilean

http://www.sabotagetimes.com/life/mind-your-language/

A good, if pessesimistic artical on the state of the Welsh language.

Little more than the name of the language needs to be changed for the artical to apply to Irish. Except of course, our position is much worse.

It’s hard to give a toss about language when you’re an English speaker. Because losing your language is not something you’ll ever have to worry about; English is a dominant language – the third most common in the world. It’s a source of national pride – a gift to the planet. It helped to civilise the fuzzy wuzzies and spread culture and joy throughout distant lands.

So when you hear people bleat on about their language disappearing – it doesn’t really register. There are more important things to worry about in life than some bloke in Connemara demanding a bi-lingual sign on his local Post Office.

But what if things were different – if the cultural boot was on the other foot? If the English language found itself under attack. That Germany owns Ireland now has been said sarcastically often enough, but let’s say in 20 years’ time Germany emerged as the dominant player in Europe and German became the common language. It started being used in the legal, government and business worlds, so more people began to learn German as a way to improve their job prospects.

German corporations controlled the media and began to bludgeon the public with anti-English messages. The English language was causing many of the country’s problems – it was dusty, messy and outdated. It helped to explain why English speakers were such a backwards, thick and bigoted people. The language was holding the nation back – blocking its progress.

Middle-class parents wanted the best for their children, and that meant giving them the gift of German. RTÉ began to broadcast more of its output in German. And society started to split and divide along language lines.

Your prospects in life became determined by the language you spoke. German became something for the educated and the powerful. English for the manual classes and the poor – for the people who clean your office toilets and within a couple of generations, it was all over for English. It’s now a cultural curiosity – spoken only by weirdos at diddely ey festivals in Leitrim.

As a German speaker you’re sick of hearing these people drone on about their language. You’re sick of them chuntering on about Dickens and Joyce and Fair City and U2 and all the rest of the cultural twaddle that you don’t understand. You don’t care about some bloke in Tipperary moaning about the German signs on his local fish and chip shop.

Now, this all sounds absolutely nuts; like the deranged ramblings of some purple nosed Daily Mail columnist. But this is what has happened to the Irish language over the past 200 years. It was done by England and we continued it, it tore the country apart and is still effecting every aspect of Irish life.

Because back in the 1810s, around 60 percent of people living in Ireland were Irish speakers, many of them spoke no English at all. Fast forward to the recent 2011 census and that number has dropped to below 2 percent.

But even this doesn’t show the true scale of the decline. Irish used to be the language of the everyday world, people would spend their entire lives never speaking English. Now, it’s rare to hear Irish being spoken on the streets, apart from in a dwindling number of communities in the west.

You probably don’t care much about this if you’re an English speaker – it doesn’t effect you. And that includes the majority of Irish people who were brought up speaking English; who have been taught at English language schools, watched English telly, listened to English music and read English books.

And I’m one of them. Language was a choice made for me by the school I went to. I was taught to read and write in English with Irish only taught as a school subject. It was treated the same as any other foreign language – like French or German. It gave you enough to ask to go to the toilet – and not much else.

So why did the Irish stop speaking their language?

The popular narrative is that it’s just a natural process – a stronger and healthier language replaces an older and weaker one. That the Irish language is dying of natural causes – like an elderly relative withering away.
It’s sad but inevitable. What can you do?

That’s the common explanation – but it’s bollocks.

The Irish language has declined so rapidly because the English placed a pillow over its face, and the Irish state left it there. It has taken around 300 years to complete, there have been occasional bouts of kicking and thrashing against, but it’s pretty much job done.

And it was only when the body was limp that some chocolate biscuits were placed on the bedside cabinet – bilingual road signs, an Irish Language TV channel. Then the lifeless patient was berated for its lack of appetite.

Government policy towards Irish is not the only reason for the decline, but it’s the main one. It’s the consequence of the state treating the Irish language in the main as a sickness which needed to be cured.

It’s the way that the British Empire used language to control their various colonies during the C19th. It was a benign method of dominating occupied nations with minimal bloodshed or confrontation – a very English form of tyranny.

Whether it was Ireland, Singapore, Nigeria or North Borneo – the method was the same. English would become the official language used for government, commerce and law. Natives chosen for positions of power would be sent off to English public schools to learn the language and the ‘British’ way of life.

It would seep down through society, exploiting people’s natural desire to better themselves, to have the best opportunities in life. In doing so, it created a vicious form of divide and rule – collaborators versus separatists, English speakers versus native speakers. It was a seed which, once planted, took on a malevolent life of its own – spreading and mutating over generations.

This is exactly what happened in Ireland. The country in the C17-19th was viewed by the English as being a dangerous and lawless land. It was a fear fuelled by the outbreaks of rebellion such as 1798, Emmets Rebellion and the Fenian ‘cowards’ that delighted the world with their daring.

These were Irish people joining together to fight against corruption, inequality and injustice. But they were portrayed in the London media as being a kind of sub-human rabble; wild and barbaric people who babbled and plotted in their primitive language. It was a view endorsed by the Government.

The state concluded early on that the main problem with Ireland was its language. And the cure was simple – the eradication of Irish from the Island. English was to be the language of Government, Law and Learning. If that required the destruction of their Irish counterparts, then so be it. When the last of the native Irish learned class went gently into the night, state funded English language schools were set-up. It’s one of these schools where I, like most Irish people, was taught.

The toxic legacy of all this was to give many Irish speakers a deep-rooted sense of inferiority and shame about their language. It was no longer something to be proud of, it was a problem that needed to be tackled. It was a sickness infecting the country, something the English had found the cure for.

The power of this feeling can be seen during the late C19th when school kids heard speaking Irish in the classroom were beaten by their teachers, this brutal treatment often carried out at the demand of their Irish speaking parents who to be fair, were only doing what they thought was best for their children.

This division of the population by language has been eating away at the country ever since. It resulted in a cultural civil war which brought out the worst aspects of both sides. Two versions of Ireland were created, two distinct cultures which view the other as a threat. What one side gains, the other side loses. What’s good for one, is bad for the other. When the Irish state was established, official Ireland sought both to wrap the green flag round it’s self through the use of the language, while also doing nothing to reverse the damage caused to the language over the previous centuries. This has sharpened the conflict, one side seeing the faltering attempts to make Ireland ‘Oirish’ as a source of embarrassment and a challenge to their narrative of Irish history, ie; that Irish died because it deserved to. At the same time, the other side sees the cynical and tokenistic use of Irish as a betrayal by the state of the language revival, one of its founding principles.

The result of all this has left non-Irish speakers with a feeling of insecurity in their own country, culturally left out in the cold and staring back in at a history and culture they can’t access. For Irish speakers, they have been battered from all sides, endlessly under attack, having to justify the use of their own language – mostly to fellow Irish people.

If the attack on the Irish language was originally intended to subdue and weaken the country, to create a servile and utterly compliant people who would become more English than the English themselves – then it can only be seen as a monumental success.

The decline of the language, the stripping away of links to our history and culture, has induced a kind of dementia. It’s a country which no longer remembers who or what it is, who can say what it means to be Irish anymore? So now Ireland simply exists and accepts the guiding hand of its neighbour.

The removal of the core of the Irish identity has created a void which is being gleefully filled by the Anglophone media’s brand of ‘’Irishness’’, that is to say Britishness – Corrie, the royal family, the footie and all that. And there seems little hope of anything changing.

There's no fight or energy left. No upsurg of anger. No dissent. No political will. No obvious solution. Just a blank stare, a rugby top and a grim Irish self-loathing; a nihilistic acceptance of fate.

What do you think? Overly downbeat or closer to the truth than many would like to admit to themselves.

im invisible

She'd go "Aon focal dar, focal two, focal eile,
And I not knowing no focal at all

Insect Overlord

im invisible wrote: »

She'd go "Aon focal dar, focal two, focal eile,
And I not knowing no focal at all

Are you ever going to post something useful on this forum?

im invisible

ah shur, like the majority of the Irish population who went through thirteen years of learning irish, my language skills wouldnt be the best, although i do try to help out when i can

Insect Overlord

im invisible wrote: »

ah shur, like the majority of the Irish population who went through thirteen years of learning irish, my language skills wouldnt be the best, although i do try to help out when i can

The OP was written entirely in English.

johnolocher

I think the article has a lot of merit, it provokes thought. But I take issue with when it is the government or the 'Brits' eradicating Welsh it is evil government & evil empire but when parents were often demanding their kids be hit for speaking welsh it is 'to be fair...'. Other than that it pretty much sums up government and conolnial attempts to instil English but *to be fair* the government & Brits probably thought they were doing what was in the countries best interests. It's a fact the British empire sought to export Britishness to every corner of the globe, they did see English as superior having overseen an astonishing period of invention & discovery in Victorian Britain, they saw an economic miracle exporting and importing all over the globe. A side affect of that is it would have created a section of people who viewed other ways as inferior or backward and this in my opinion is what led to the wrongs of empire which saw Irish almost eradicated through divide and conquer as the article explains so well. The Irish people did willfully give up Irish for English, they did see it as the language of success and that continues today, and it has to be said it is the language of success, who in their right mind in the back end of Conamara would not teach their kid English today? How could they even function in Clifden let alone the wider world? I'd hope they would speak both, as they do today in Conamara and it would be nice if Ireland as a whole would embrace Irish more & become bilingual..

The point on German is interesting, but I'd like to think the Irish as small open Island would embrace German in the same way as English if it became economically viable in Ireland and the world. The irony of that is you would have English speakers saying 'English is our native language we have been speaking it for over 1000 years we shouldn't let it die, how could we access centuries of our culture and history without it?'

And they'd have a point, but the overriding factor would be times changes languages live and die, we couldn't understand oldGaelic society let alone the norse what were here or the people before the Celts.

An Coilean

johnolocher wrote: »

I think the article has a lot of merit, it provokes thought. But I take issue with when it is the government or the 'Brits' eradicating Welsh it is evil government & evil empire but when parents were often demanding their kids be hit for speaking welsh it is 'to be fair...'. Other than that it pretty much sums up government and conolnial attempts to instil English but *to be fair* the government & Brits probably thought they were doing what was in the countries best interests.

Lets be clear on this, it was done because it was believed to be in Britains best interest. The desire to eradicate the Irish language came from a belief, based on a deep rooted racism (Which has largely disapeared in present day Britain) that the Irish language and culture were barbaric and an obstical to British power in Ireland.

The Irish people did willfully give up Irish for English, they did see it as the language of success and that continues today, and it has to be said it is the language of success, who in their right mind in the back end of Conamara would not teach their kid English today? How could they even function in Clifden let alone the wider world? I'd hope they would speak both, as they do today in Conamara and it would be nice if Ireland as a whole would embrace Irish more & become bilingual.

The point of the artical and what needs to be bourn in mind more generally is that the adoption of the English language wholesale and the abandonment of the native language has in Wales, and I would argue to an even greater extent in Ireland not brought success but has actually been a disaster for Ireland that has devided the population, damaged creativity and self confidenced, stunted socioeconomic growth and left a large part of the population feeling like outersiders in their own country cut off from their ancestral identity.

That children can't function in the language through which their Grandparents were raised in many parts of Ireland is not something to be celebrated, it is something that has and will continue to damage society for many generations.

I'd like to think the Irish as small open Island would embrace German in the same way as English if it became economically viable in Ireland ....
And they'd have a point, but the overriding factor would be times changes languages live and die, we couldn't understand oldGaelic society let alone the norse what were here or the people before the Celts.

The thing is languages don't just die, language shift is a process that is influenced by many factors. The rapid language shift experianced by Ireland was not a natural process, nor was it something that was chosen by Irish people. It was engineered and forced through and it caused considerable damage, and is still causing damage today.

Imagine if America was cut off from the culture and society of the founding fathers. If they could not understand the writings and ideas of that time and as a result they were forgotten. If instead their whole concept of themselves was in large part based on an outside, malevolent influence. Don't you think that would have had a negative impact on Americas development?
Ireland is cut off from the culture and society that was dominant on this Island at the same time as Americas founding fathers.

Iwasfrozen

An Coilean wrote: »

Imagine if America was cut off from the culture and society of the founding fathers. If they could not understand the writings and ideas of that time and as a result they were forgotten. If instead their whole concept of themselves was in large part based on an outside, malevolent influence. Don't you think that would have had a negative impact on Americas development?
Ireland is cut off from the culture and society that was dominant on this Island at the same time as Americas founding fathers.

I don't usually post in this forum since it really isn't the place for me but I feel I have to challenge you on this point. In no way is Ireland cut off from the writings and literature of our forefathers. Language is not a barrier, many people speak old Irish and these documents can be translated. In fact I'd be very surprised if Trinity or UCD don't already employ people for that job.

An Coilean

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

I don't usually post in this forum since it really isn't the place for me but I feel I have to challenge you on this point. In no way is Ireland cut off from the writings and literature of our forefathers. Language is not a barrier, many people speak old Irish and these documents can be translated. In fact I'd be very surprised if Trinity or UCD don't already employ people for that job.

The general population are cut off in large part from the culture that was dominant on this island just a few hundred years ago, it is not specifically Old Irish that is in question, Irish was still the majority language of the Island only a few hundered years ago and the language is not significantly different now, there have been changes but not to the extent that material from that time would be incomprehensibal to a modern speaker of the language. Think of material written in English a few hundered years ago, somewhat different but still understandable.

Secondaly, language is very much a barrier, while some can read Irish, and even Middle and Old Irish, the general poipulation can not, there is a substantial body of material that has never been translated. Even at that poetry, song and story can never be fully rendered in translation.

I remember hearing that on a diplomatic mission from the UK to china, the title of one of the members of the delegation, A 'Permenant Sectary' was rendered in Chinease as being an 'Eternal Typist'

It is inevitable that when dealing with more astethic forms of language such as Poetry, the tone and meaning of what is being said is lost in translation.

But it is not even material that has not been translated or what is lost when translating material. The toxic legacy of a rapid language shift such as Ireland underwent are the negative perceptions and preconceptions that have been left behind. The shame, the cultural cringe.
People are cut of from the once dominant Gaelic culture of their ancestors because in the interveening years their perception of it has been systematically destroyed.
It became the language and culture of a backward, savage, even subhuman people, it had no value, it was useless, it was of the uneducated, the poor, the starving, something that anyone in their right mind would want to put as much distance between themselves and it. Those perceptions, that cultural hangover, that mental wedge between the population and their ancestral and cultural herritage is what has cut Ireland off from its forefathers.

Iwasfrozen

An Coilean wrote: »

The general population are cut off in large part from the culture that was dominant on this island just a few hundred years ago, it is not specifically Old Irish that is in question, Irish was still the majority language of the Island only a few hundered years ago and the language is not significantly different now, there have been changes but not to the extent that material from that time would be incomprehensibal to a modern speaker of the language. Think of material written in English a few hundered years ago, somewhat different but still understandable.

Secondaly, language is very much a barrier, while some can read Irish, and even Middle and Old Irish, the general poipulation can not, there is a substantial body of material that has never been translated. Even at that poetry, song and story can never be fully rendered in translation.

I remember hearing that on a diplomatic mission from the UK to china, the title of one of the members of the delegation, A 'Permenant Sectary' was rendered in Chinease as being an 'Eternal Typist'

It is inevitable that when dealing with more astethic forms of language such as Poetry, the tone and meaning of what is being said is lost in translation.

But it is not even material that has not been translated or what is lost when translating material. The toxic legacy of a rapid language shift such as Ireland underwent are the negative perceptions and preconceptions that have been left behind. The shame, the cultural cringe.
People are cut of from the once dominant Gaelic culture of their ancestors because in the interveening years their perception of it has been systematically destroyed.
It became the language and culture of a backward, savage, even subhuman people, it had no value, it was useless, it was of the uneducated, the poor, the starving, something that anyone in their right mind would want to put as much distance between themselves and it. Those perceptions, that cultural hangover, that mental wedge between the population and their ancestral and cultural herritage is what has cut Ireland off from its forefathers.

Then I suppose it's really a matter for the people of Ireland to decide. The British empire is long dead, the school system which made English speaks ers out of our children is gone. Now in fact we have the opposite, the shoe is on the other foot, now it's Irish that is the government mandated language. Forced, often unwillingly onto children who know no better and teenagers who have no choice even though they do.

Yet still despite this state support, despite the millions that have been spent on the language and the forced education of our children in it the Irish government has failed where the British government has succeeded. Obviously I'm not going to say that one language is "better" then another in a vacuum, any such claim would be as your article says "bollocks" but certainly a language can have a level of attractiveness influenced largely by the sheer amount of cultural output it produces, it's no surprise that english the most spoken language in the world (not native speakers) is also the language of the country with by far the most cultural output. I am of course talking about America and it is my opinion (I could of course be wrong) that under this background of American hegemony a successful language revival will never take place. Even if everyone in Ireland spoke Irish as a second language they would still speak English because American hegemony has made that the normal cultural background. And short of making ourselves a pariah state there is very little we can do to limit this affect.

Having said all that, that article was very interesting and a very good read. Thanks for sharing.

An Coilean

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

And short of making ourselves a pariah state there is very little we can do to limit this affect.

In what way? By not speaking English as our primary language, like every other small nation in Europe?
Is Denmark a Pariah state?

Iwasfrozen

An Coilean wrote: »

In what way? By not speaking English as our primary language, like every other small nation in Europe?
Is Denmark a Pariah state?

No my point is that no language revival attempt will ever be successful under a background of American cultural hegemony. Even if everyone in Ireland spoke Irish they would still revert back to English as their spoken everyday language because American media and cultural output has made that the norm.

It is Irish's great misfortune that the language which superposed it happens to have been the language of the world's only super power. Under a background of such over whelming cultural might I don't believe any Irish language revival will ever achieve it's goals.

An Coilean

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

No my point is that no language revival attempt will ever be successful under a background of American cultural hegemony. Even if everyone in Ireland spoke Irish they would still revert back to English as their spoken everyday language because American media and cultural output has made that the norm.

It is Irish's great misfortune that the language which superposed it happens to have been the language of the world's only super power. Under a background of such over whelming cultural might I don't believe any Irish language revival will ever achieve it's goals.

What did you mean by 'making ourselves a Pariah state' then? What would we have to do for this to happen in this context?

Other small countries that have their own language have not become English speaking in the face of American cultural might.
Quebec is right on Americas door step yet they have managed not only to stabelise the speaking of French, but make it much more widespread than it was in the past.
Personally I don't buy the 'over whelming cultural might' of America argument.

Iwasfrozen

An Coilean wrote: »

What did you mean by 'making ourselves a Pariah state' then? What would we have to do for this to happen in this context?

Block American media.

An Coilean wrote: »

Other small countries that have their own language have not become English speaking in the face of American cultural might.
Quebec is right on Americas door step yet they have managed not only to stabelise the speaking of French, but make it much more widespread than it was in the past.
Personally I don't buy the 'over whelming cultural might' of America argument.

Other small countries are not trying to revive their native language from an English language base. Same with Quebec they started as French speaking and simply maintained that (and not hugely successful in Montreal). It would be comparable if Quebec was an English speaking province trying to revive French.

An Coilean

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Block American media.


Other small countries are not trying to revive their native language from an English language base. Same with Quebec they started as French speaking and simply maintained that (and not hugely successful in Montreal). It would be comparable if Quebec was an English speaking province trying to revive French.

French was in a bad way in Quebec 30 years ago, in many parts relegated to being a second class language, no official recognition. When they got the atonomy to do so they put measures to promote the language in place that would make Opti0nal's toes curl and they have been quite successful in maintaing and increasing the use of French.
The 'over whelming cultural might' of their nearest neighbour does'nt seem to have been too much of an obstical.

Iwasfrozen

An Coilean wrote: »

French was in a bad way in Quebec 30 years ago, in many parts relegated to being a second class language, no official recognition. When they got the atonomy to do so they put measures to promote the language in place that would make Opti0nal's toes curl and they have been quite successful in maintaing and increasing the use of French.
The 'over whelming cultural might' of their nearest neighbour does'nt seem to have been too much of an obstical.

But the percentage of French speakers in Quebec was never down any where near the levels of the Irish speakers in Ireland.

I think with French in particular you can draw a parallel with what your article was saying. As the language of a world wide empire French speakers would have had a great amount of pride in the success of their country without the cultural hangovers the Irish have.

CSS Dixieland

Gentlemen, The contributions exhibited in this thread have, insofar as they express a current reality of the Irish Language, a meritorious value. Thanks to all of the authors who have written them, for their effort and zeal in showing the situation in which the cherished Tongue and its Culture is today. Notwithstanding this fact, be it said that the beautiful Language of Old Hibernia is, most fortunately, not in as desperate a situation as might per chance be surmised by perusing the aforesaid contributions. The condition of the patient is serious, but not desperate as yet. Pray be so kind as to permit the use of some idiosyncratic linguistic forms in this text, namely, those with the authority of Classic Orthography such as "Gaedhilge". After all, the spelling reform of the 1950's or the more recent of 2011, had or have the specific aim of presenting an "easier" standard for didactic purposes, not of implying that the Old Spelling be "incorrect". Besides, those contemporary regulations have been solely enacted by the Irish Free State (Eire, Republic of Ireland), and for its own territorial jurisdiction, they are thus not binding on Goidelic (Gaelic) or Brittonic (Brythonic) language as it is spoken or written in Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwalles, Bretagne, Galicia, Asturias, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Appalachia, Chubut, or any other part of the World. Sadly, those legal dispositions are not even binding on six of the nine counties of Province Ulster. Gaedhilge has the distinct historical fortune of enjoying ONE OF THE OLDEST AND RICHEST LITERATURES OF NORTHRON EUROPE. It pays a bad service to our Noble Cause to forget that fact, or of not mentioning it whenever the chance of doing so might attract sympathies. The main phases of the Language might be summarily described as follows (even though the phases are of course overlapping and the Chronology is only an approximation, based on studies of History, Archaeology, Linguistics and Philology): -Primitive Gaelic, 300 to 550 -Old Gaelic, 550 to 950 -Middle Gaelic, 950 to 1200 -Classical Irish-Scots-Manx Gaelic, 1200 to 1750 -Contemporary Irish, Scots, Manx, 1750-presentThe Brittonic branch has a different Chronology. All this shows how much Ireland can be proud of its Treasure, its Historical Past. Although other Northron European nations certainly also have a valuable Tradition of their own, worth studying and preserving, they can hardly claim to be as Old as the Irish. That factor makes a difference. The distinguished readers of this Forum are invited to study and appreciate the following jewels, if it be possible for them to access a copy of the editions in which they were published: -Irish Grammar (1916-1955), by Osborn Bergin -Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla (Dictionary Irish and English of 1904, enlarged edition 1927), by Pádraig Ó Duinnín (known as Patrick Dinneen) In the Internet, besides other documents, there is: -Selected Old Irish Texts (originals and explained translations to English), by Professors Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel and Jonathan Slocum, at the Linguistic Research Centre, University of Texas: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/iriol-0-X.htmlPleasure reading ! Receive a Confederate Regard. Dixieland for ever ! 11th March 2013 CSS Dixieland

johnolocher

It may have one of the oldest & richest literature in Europe, but (going back to what An Coileán said) that doesn't mean anyone feels cut off from it. The vast vast majority of people are not going around feeling cut off from their part Gaelic heritage, they get on with life without a thought for it. Poetry and literature (modern novels aside) are a hobby of the few, the general public care about as much about old Irish poetry as they do about old English poetry.

I certainly agree it is very rich and is worth studying and that's why people who want to, do so. I am studying Irish as its worthwhile to my interests but the notion that we are wandering around unconnected to our past because we can't read a 17th century poem is nonsense, we are connected to the past because our ancestors passed their ideals down from generation to generation, and unfortunately for the Irish language, one of those ideals was that English was the way forward.

CSS Dixieland

Gentlemen, Pray be as forgiving as for excusing the ignorance of this Your new member and devoted admirer, but there is an important technical question that, because of its relevance to further contributions in this Distinguished Forum, ought to be formulated now without undue delay: Is it possible to break lines of text, for correctly formatting the text into paragraphs ? Not considering proper to the smooth flow of this thread to abound excessively on the subject, but earnesty desiring to enrich the knowledge of relevance to such artifices, please be kind to allow a very few further enquiries: Does the Forum accept, recognise, and properly execute Hyper Text Mark-up Language ? If that be so, is it HTML version 4.01 or another version ? If HTML be not accepted, is then acceptable to use BB Code ? In any case of the above, is there in this Forum a page or thread with information applicable to the correct solving of this problem ? Expressing beforehand the deepest recognition and gratitude to those Gentlemen who might will to take the trouble of tackling any of these doubts, receive all members and readers of the Forum a Martial Confederate Salute. Dixieland for ever ! 11th March 2013 CSS Dixieland

Insect Overlord

CSS Dixieland wrote: »

Is it possible to break lines of text, for correctly formatting the text into paragraphs ?

Use the Enter/Return key on your keyboard.

deirdremf

An Coilean wrote: »

http://www.sabotagetimes.com/life/mind-your-language/

A good, if pessesimistic artical on the state of the Welsh language.

Little more than the name of the language needs to be changed for the artical to apply to Irish. Except of course, our position is much worse.


What do you think? Overly downbeat or closer to the truth than many would like to admit to themselves.

It is a particular view, and there is much in it that rings true.

However, there is a big difference between Ireland and the other countries mentioned: colonisation.
Ireland was colonised after the Cromwellian wars, and this colony was reinforced again and again, with infusions from England and to a lesser degree Scotland, right up until independence.
This colony functioned entirely through English, although I have no doubt that some members learned Irish and some even integrated.
But the influence was pretty much one way: English took over at all the levels that mattered, and eventually, as in the article, at the other levels too.
In my opinion, this colonisation is why Ireland is almost entirely English speaking, while Wales, the Basque Country and Catalonia still have large populations speaking their native languages.

deirdremf

An Coilean wrote: »

The general population are cut off in large part from the culture that was dominant on this island just a few hundred years ago, it is not specifically Old Irish that is in question, Irish was still the majority language of the Island only a few hundered years ago and the language is not significantly different now, there have been changes but not to the extent that material from that time would be incomprehensibal to a modern speaker of the language. Think of material written in English a few hundered years ago, somewhat different but still understandable.

Secondaly, language is very much a barrier, while some can read Irish, and even Middle and Old Irish, the general poipulation can not, there is a substantial body of material that has never been translated. Even at that poetry, song and story can never be fully rendered in translation. ....

It is inevitable that when dealing with more astethic forms of language such as Poetry, the tone and meaning of what is being said is lost in translation.

But it is not even material that has not been translated or what is lost when translating material. The toxic legacy of a rapid language shift such as Ireland underwent are the negative perceptions and preconceptions that have been left behind. The shame, the cultural cringe.
People are cut of from the once dominant Gaelic culture of their ancestors because in the interveening years their perception of it has been systematically destroyed.

According to Seán de Fréine (in The Great Silence, I think), Irish was spoken by 75%-80% of the population just 200 years ago. English was very much a minority language at the time.
Irish was the language of the poetry and songs of most of the people. It was even spoken in those areas where we are told English had been spoken since the middle ages: Fingal in N. Co Dublin and Bargy and Forth in SE Co. Wexford. It was spoken in Dublin and the other cities (not so sure about Belfast, which was not yet a city), and there was not a county in Ireland where it was not dominant in at least some parts.

It became the language and culture of a backward, savage, even subhuman people, it had no value, it was useless, it was of the uneducated, the poor, the starving, something that anyone in their right mind would want to put as much distance between themselves and it. Those perceptions, that cultural hangover, that mental wedge between the population and their ancestral and cultural herritage is what has cut Ireland off from its forefathers.

It may have been portrayed as this by some, and to an extent still is - while others are telling us it is the language of an Elite.
As if it is given even minimal importance in Blackrock College and other similar schools.
It is generally despised and hated in the civil service, as we saw just this week, a member of the Guards treated a lad as a criminal for speaking Irish to him. This is the true position of the State regarding Irish, and the current government is busy cutting support to it with the excuse that times are tough.

deirdremf

CSS Dixieland wrote: »

-Selected Old Irish Texts (originals and explained translations to English), by Professors Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel and Jonathan Slocum, at the Linguistic Research Centre, University of Texas: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/iriol-0-X.htmlPleasure reading ! Receive a Confederate Regard. Dixieland for ever ! 11th March 2013 CSS Dixieland

Fascinating website you have, but the correct link appears to be :

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/iriol-0-X.html