Irish Language, important or not.

aoife willis

Hey guys,

I'm teaching a lunch time Irish Class and was thinking of having a discussion with the students (5th/6th year) about their views on the Irish language.
As someone who completed all of their education up until 3rd level through the medium of Irish feel I could be biased in my views and don't fully understand peoples difficulty to learn the language and to see the point of it.

I was wondering if you could share your thoughts and opinions regarding the Irish Language and it's importance/unimportance.

aoife willis

A chara,

Táim á munadh club Gaeilge uair amháin sa seachtaine agus bhí mé ag smaoineamh maidir le comhrá a spreagadh maidir le smaointí na daltaí maidir leis an teanga.
Mar dhuine a dhearna a hoideachais hoideachas go léir trí mheán na Gaeilge, is dóigh go bhfuil mé claontacht ar son an Ghaeilge.
Ní dóigh liom go dtuigim na deachrachtaí a bhaineann le foghlaimaíocht na teanga a bhíonn ag daoine agus tábhacht an teanga a thuigint.

Bhí mé á lorg bhur smaointí maidir leis an teanga agus an tábhacht a bhaineann nó nach baineann leí.

pog it

Hi Aoife,

The language isn't difficult to learn, it's just that everyone is right when they say that it isn't taught properly. It's not taught properly at primary school level as most primary school teachers would struggle to put together coherent sentences in Irish by themselves without the use of a textbook, and that has a huge knock on effect to students confidence when they then go into secondary school and feel they know nothing and of course they blame themselves and don't necessarily realise that the damage was done when they were 4 or 5 years of age.

My father told me that the standard of Irish he had leaving national school was better than most people's Irish leaving secondary school now.

In my opinion a good starting point with the 5th and 6th years would be to ask them how they view their national school education in Irish and what they feel they got out of 8 years of Irish learning there. It might put it into perspective for them!

Anyway the great news to deliver to them is that Irish is easy to learn. Just learn masculine and feminine nouns, get a grip on verbs, do lots of reading and that's it.

That's just one suggestion. Obviously there are loads.

Moonbeam

I found irish easy to learn in my summers in irish college,we had to speak it and there was no pressure to learn why,in school all the pressure was on learning stuff off by heart and the science behind it.
My little one is in naíonáin shóisearacha after 2 years in Naíonra and I reckon she has a better grasp of the language then most secondary school kids as she has learned it the same way that we all learned english and is not caught up with learning verbs off my heart or memorising stuff out of context.

TacAide

pog it wrote: »

Hi Aoife,

The language isn't difficult to learn, it's just that everyone is right when they say that it isn't taught properly. It's not taught properly at primary school level as most primary school teachers would struggle to put together coherent sentences in Irish by themselves without the use of a textbook, and that has a huge knock on effect to students confidence when they then go into secondary school and feel they know nothing and of course they blame themselves and don't necessarily realise that the damage was done when they were 4 or 5 years of age.

My father told me that the standard of Irish he had leaving national school was better than most people's Irish leaving secondary school now.

In my opinion a good starting point with the 5th and 6th years would be to ask them how they view their national school education in Irish and what they feel they got out of 8 years of Irish learning there. It might put it into perspective for them!

Anyway the great news to deliver to them is that Irish is easy to learn. Just learn masculine and feminine nouns, get a grip on verbs, do lots of reading and that's it.

That's just one suggestion. Obviously there are loads.

Couldn't agree more, after primary school and secondary school, the vast majority of people in Ireland should be fluent if not very close to it. When I was in secondary school, all my homework was sheets upon sheets of Irish to learn off by heart, often not even understanding what I was learning.

My girlfriend's mother was raised through the medium of Irish and has by far the best grasp of the language than anyone I know. She would always praise the Irish and would always try and promote its importance. Would love to have the level of Irish she has.

I personally think the Irish language in as necessary to Ireland as the air we breath, our language is an expression of out culture, promotes the Ireland in all its beautiful forms, our history and of who we are. But I'm afraid that the some people in this country would happily see the death of our beautiful language. I fear the day Irish is made optional, it may be the death nail of Irish in this country.

Days 298

As someone whos had these talks with one of my Irish teachers the general consensus will be it should be optional. Some people over estimate Irishs contribution and necessity to the country so others in response will automatically be completely on the other side.

Bias is rampant. Some think all Irish people should be able to speak it and some think no one should. Most of my classmates would just have liked to see it as optional back then, very few had an opinion on how important it is because most bar one didnt use language outside the class, and that lads Summer job relied it. So most opinions will be on current personal experience and not on a national scale or viewpoint.

If you take a strict tone with the class none will be honest. Many dont care and will go to sleep but if you let them off the ones who dont and contribute could be worth listening to and an interesting conversation could ensue.

uch

pog, I'd agree with your post in general, but disagree with the opening statement, I only learned Gaeilge as an Dyslexic adult and found it extremely challenging, I was exempt all through school and It took me the best part of 7 years to get to a reasonable level, my spelling is still terrible, but thats par-for-the-course with dyslexia. My saving grace was a 7 year old daughter who never judged and was always happy to correct me without making a big deal out of it, she's 16 now and a beautiful speaker, I'm still doing me best, but there's hope for everyone.

pog it wrote: »

Hi Aoife,

The language isn't difficult to learn, it's just that everyone is right when they say that it isn't taught properly. It's not taught properly at primary school level as most primary school teachers would struggle to put together coherent sentences in Irish by themselves without the use of a textbook, and that has a huge knock on effect to students confidence when they then go into secondary school and feel they know nothing and of course they blame themselves and don't necessarily realise that the damage was done when they were 4 or 5 years of age.

My father told me that the standard of Irish he had leaving national school was better than most people's Irish leaving secondary school now.

In my opinion a good starting point with the 5th and 6th years would be to ask them how they view their national school education in Irish and what they feel they got out of 8 years of Irish learning there. It might put it into perspective for them!

Anyway the great news to deliver to them is that Irish is easy to learn. Just learn masculine and feminine nouns, get a grip on verbs, do lots of reading and that's it.

That's just one suggestion. Obviously there are loads.

GaelMise

aoife willis wrote: »

Hey guys,

I'm teaching a lunch time Irish Class and was thinking of having a discussion with the students (5th/6th year) about their views on the Irish language.
As someone who completed all of their education up until 3rd level through the medium of Irish feel I could be biased in my views and don't fully understand peoples difficulty to learn the language and to see the point of it.

I was wondering if you could share your thoughts and opinions regarding the Irish Language and it's importance/unimportance.

I would suggest that as someone who had their education through Irish, and who now has fluent Irish, the system worked quite well for you.
It should be noted however that for many students and many schools the system is not working for them at all and they are getting very little from the current system. In this kind of situation, it is natural to feel fed up and frustrated.

The difference between Irish the school subject, and Irish the language outside of schools should be noted.
One is of course very valuable and important, the other however has some serious questions to answer, and if it is important, it may well be important for all the wrong reasons.

GaelMise

TacAide wrote: »

Couldn't agree more, after primary school and secondary school, the vast majority of people in Ireland should be fluent if not very close to it.

This is not true, the contact time with Irish, the actual number of hours spent learning it (the numer of years these hours are spread over is irrelevant) is simply no where near enough to even get close to fluency, its barely enough to get a low to moderate level conversational ability, and thats if the poetry/literature stuff was left out.

The worst thing you can do is have an unreasonable expectation that can never be realised, it sets the system up to fail from the start.

The truth is that the children are learning as much Irish as you could reasonably expect them to given the amount of time they spend learning the subject and the priorities in the existing curriculam.
Those priorities could be changed, emphasising spoken Irish over literature for example, and a better ability of spoken Irish could be achieved (at the cost of an even lower level of literacy in Irish than is currently achieved) but the time given to the subject in schools only allows so much to be achieved, and the best teacher, and the best teaching methods won't change that.

We need to recognise that short of immersion second language education like a Gaelscoil, it is simply not possible to teach someone a language in school if their only contact with that language is in school.

pog it

GaelMise wrote: »

T

The truth is that the children are learning as much Irish as you could reasonably expect them to given the amount of time they spend learning the subject and the priorities in the existing curriculam.
Those priorities could be changed, emphasising spoken Irish over literature for example, and a better ability of spoken Irish could be achieved (at the cost of an even lower level of literacy in Irish than is currently achieved) but the time given to the subject in schools only allows so much to be achieved, and the best teacher, and the best teaching methods won't change that.

The truth is subjective and it would seem nobody else here so far would agree with you.

It's a damn shame that I don't have a report to blast you with wherein for example unannounced independent inspections of primary school teachers have been carried out and their grasp of the language and method of translation tested and proven to be inadequate.

It's pathetic the level they are going into schools with. They do about 3 weeks in the Gaeltacht for their teacher training and some Irish homework after that and then they are free to go as far as the Irish part of the learning goes.

I've been through the system myself.

GaelMise

pog it wrote: »

The truth is subjective and it would seem nobody else here so far would agree with you.

It's a damn shame that I don't have a report to blast you with wherein for example unannounced independent inspections of primary school teachers have been carried out and their grasp of the language and method of translation tested and proven to be inadequate.

It's pathetic the level they are going into schools with. They do about 3 weeks in the Gaeltacht for their teacher training and some Irish homework after that and then they are free to go as far as the Irish part of the learning goes.

I've been through the system myself.

You are quite right, 'truth' is quite subjective, but my truth is based on the evidence I have seen haveing spent quite a good while looking into the area over the past year or so.

I accept that the teachers in many cases have a less than exemplary grasp of the language themselves, but there is actually good evidence that the subject knowledge of the teacher actually has only quite a limited impact on how well the class is likely to do.

pog it

GaelMise wrote: »

I accept that the teachers in many cases have a less than exemplary grasp of the language themselves, but there is actually good evidence that the subject knowledge of the teacher actually has only quite a limited impact on how well the class is likely to do.

...On 'how well the class is likely to do'?

As it is, we don't have any matriculation exam for pupils in 6th class so how was this evidence gathered?

If you are talking about how well a class gets on later in 2nd level, 3rd level, etc. they will achieve that as a result of secondary school and third level or further education, when there is a combination of good teaching, self learning, etc.

Doesn't change the fact that when they leave 6th class, they have been grossly let down by teachers at primary level and they could have had a proper headstart in the language.

GaelMise

pog it wrote: »

...On 'how well the class is likely to do'?

As it is, we don't have any matriculation exam for pupils in 6th class so how was this evidence gathered?

If you are talking about how well a class gets on later in 2nd level, 3rd level, etc. they will achieve that as a result of secondary school and third level or further education, when there is a combination of good teaching, self learning, etc.

Doesn't change the fact that when they leave 6th class, they have been grossly let down by teachers at primary level and they could have had a proper headstart in the language.

I'm not talking specifically about learning Irish in the Irish education system, the statement is based on research on education in general which suggests that the teachers subject knowledge has only a limited impact on how well the class is likely to do.

Now, you could say the Irish education system is different, or that learning Irish is different, but if you do, I would hope you include a bit about why this is the case.

In this specific Irish case, my opinion is that the evidence that shows in general that the subject knowledge of the teacher(or lack there of) only has a limited impact on the class, holds true for teachers in primary schools. Given this, even though I would agree that the standard of Irish amongst primary school teachers is not what it should be, this fact alone does not necessarily mean that pupils are being let down, or that they are learning less than they could reasonably be expected to.

There are other factors involved, but basicly it boils down to the fact that a native Irish speaker does not necessarily make a good Irish teacher just because their own Irish is at a native speaker level.
Whereas someone with only limited Irish themselves may still be a very good teacher because they happen to use methods that work, and as a result may well end up achieving a better result than someone whos subject knowledge is much better than their own but is ineffectual at imparting that knowledge to others and helping them to learn themselves.

pog it

GaelMise wrote: »

I'm not talking specifically about learning Irish in the Irish education system, the statement is based on research on education in general which suggests that the teachers subject knowledge has only a limited impact on how well the class is likely to do.

Now, you could say the Irish education system is different, or that learning Irish is different, but if you do, I would hope you include a bit about why this is the case.

In this specific Irish case, my opinion is that the evidence that shows in general that the subject knowledge of the teacher(or lack there of) only has a limited impact on the class, holds true for teachers in primary schools. Given this, even though I would agree that the standard of Irish amongst primary school teachers is not what it should be, this fact alone does not necessarily mean that pupils are being let down, or that they are learning less than they could reasonably be expected to.

There are other factors involved, but basicly it boils down to the fact that a native Irish speaker does not necessarily make a good Irish teacher just because their own Irish is at a native speaker level.
Whereas someone with only limited Irish themselves may still be a very good teacher because they happen to use methods that work, and as a result may well end up achieving a better result than someone whos subject knowledge is much better than their own but is ineffectual at imparting that knowledge to others and helping them to learn themselves.

Obviously a good teacher with a more limited knowledge of Irish than a diabolical teacher with native speaker level Irish is better than the latter but that's quite an extreme example to give to support your claims that what knowledge a teacher has of a subject is irrelevant!

The point is that primary school teachers who don't have much of a grasp of the language themselves can't begin to possibly pass on any proper standard to their pupils.

I have no idea what 'evidence' you have to prove otherwise but I wouldn't hold my breath there anyway from what you have said already.

There are no matriculation exams at the end of primary school here in any case. You can't say how 'well' a class does without them.

TacAide

GaelMise wrote: »

This is not true, the contact time with Irish, the actual number of hours spent learning it (the numer of years these hours are spread over is irrelevant) is simply no where near enough to even get close to fluency, its barely enough to get a low to moderate level conversational ability, and thats if the poetry/literature stuff was left out.

The worst thing you can do is have an unreasonable expectation that can never be realised, it sets the system up to fail from the start.

The truth is that the children are learning as much Irish as you could reasonably expect them to given the amount of time they spend learning the subject and the priorities in the existing curriculam.
Those priorities could be changed, emphasising spoken Irish over literature for example, and a better ability of spoken Irish could be achieved (at the cost of an even lower level of literacy in Irish than is currently achieved) but the time given to the subject in schools only allows so much to be achieved, and the best teacher, and the best teaching methods won't change that.

We need to recognise that short of immersion second language education like a Gaelscoil, it is simply not possible to teach someone a language in school if their only contact with that language is in school.

I understand what you are saying, but really when a person goes all through primary from the age of 4/5 and through secondary school, reading, writing and speaking Irish, all those years should give a student a very good grasp of Irish, maybe I was over ambitious with my previous post, but at the same time if someone was exposed to a language for that long, people should have a good standard of Irish.

GaelMise

TacAide wrote: »

I understand what you are saying, but really when a person goes all through primary from the age of 4/5 and through secondary school, reading, writing and speaking Irish, all those years should give a student a very good grasp of Irish, maybe I was over ambitious with my previous post, but at the same time if someone was exposed to a language for that long, people should have a good standard of Irish.

Why? I'm not trying to be awkward, but where is the evidence that the amount of time spent learning Irish in the Irish education system should be producing a better result than it is?

In my opinion it would be quite surprising if it did. The amount of time spent actually learning Irish, and the curriculum that is taught taken together should to my mind be producing just about what it is producing. If you were to look objectivly at the system we have, the ammount of time actually spent learning Irish and the curriculum I expect you would conclude that what you should be getting out of it is students with a reasonable volcabury, basic grasp of grammer, just about able to make out a simple piece of text and able to use basic words and phrases, but below a level of being able to hold a conversation comfortably. Ie essentially what we are getting.

The system may not be producing what we would like it to produce, but I think it is producing what we should reasonably expect it to produce.

TacAide

GaelMise wrote: »

Why? I'm not trying to be awkward, but where is the evidence that the amount of time spent learning Irish in the Irish education system should be producing a better result than it is?

In my opinion it would be quite surprising if it did. The amount of time spent actually learning Irish, and the curriculum that is taught taken together should to my mind be producing just about what it is producing. If you were to look objectivly at the system we have, the ammount of time actually spent learning Irish and the curriculum I expect you would conclude that what you should be getting out of it is students with a reasonable volcabury, basic grasp of grammer, just about able to make out a simple piece of text and able to use basic words and phrases, but below a level of being able to hold a conversation comfortably. Ie essentially what we are getting.

The system may not be producing what we would like it to produce, but I think it is producing what we should reasonably expect it to produce.

Well simply put, school work conducted during classes and homework help the student increase their knowledge base of Irish, much like any subject.

GaelMise

TacAide wrote: »

Well simply put, school work conducted during classes and homework help the student increase their knowledge base of Irish, much like any subject.

Absoutly, and for the average child that goes through the education system their knowledge increases from a starting point of nothing, in most cases, to what we are getting today, ie a reasonable volcabury, basic grasp of grammer, just about able to make out a simple piece of text and able to use basic words and phrases, but below a level of being able to hold a conversation comfortably.

The question is why should we expect that the schoolwork conducted during classes and homework that is being done in our existing system, should increase their knowledge of Irish beyond what it is managing to do currently?

Personally, I don't see much reason to expect that the existing system should give a better result than it consistantly has given over the past ten years.
Of course we would all like it to give a better result, but as Austin Powers once said 'I'd like a gold plated toilet, but its just not on the cards, is it?' There are changes that could be made to it that could lead to it give a somewhat better result than we are getting, but the constraints of time and resources available would prevent a high level of fluency being achieved in any system even vageuly similer to the existing one.
Thats not to say that it cant be done, Gaelscoileanna prove that it can be done quite successfully every year, I'm just saying it can't be done in anything similer to the system in our existing English medium schools.

Tryng to revive the Irish language through the education system alone has been a failure from the start, and we can be reasonably sure that its not going to start working all of a sudden after 80 years. If we want to take Irish seriously, we are goingt to have to stop expecting the impossible to happen and look at other ways to develop the language outside of the education system. The education system has an important role to play, but it cannot to much more than it is currently doing on its own.

aoife willis

Having read over all these posts I think the prevailing theme is the inability to successfully teach the Irish Language, particularly in English speaking schools. I am wondering however is it in fact the Irish persons psyche, the constant reiteration Irish is hard, Irish has no place in the world, which is more damaging to the teaching/learning and the overall success of the language.

There were claims that there is not enough time given to the subject to realistically expect students to be fluent by the time they leave school. This is a point I totally disagree with, due to the simple fact that I am currently sitting across from a fourth year girl on work experience who has fluent Irish. She never went to an Irish school, she is the only speaker in her family so it's not like she had an more education in the language than the school system provided.

How does Irish fair in comparison to the foreign languages taught in schools? I imagine there are many people taking French, Spanish etc. to leaving cert level with the same if not a slightly better grasp on the conversational aspect of the language in comparison to Irish, with on average 2 classes a week less.

Is it our view of and the image of the Irish language which hinders are learning or the teaching of the language?
Almost every Irish person you come across would say they wish they could speak Irish or gave it more attention in school. There are plenty of resources out there to learn it. So why don't we use them?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

GaelMise wrote: »

This is not true, the contact time with Irish, the actual number of hours spent learning it (the numer of years these hours are spread over is irrelevant) is simply no where near enough to even get close to fluency, its barely enough to get a low to moderate level conversational ability, and thats if the poetry/literature stuff was left out.

The worst thing you can do is have an unreasonable expectation that can never be realised, it sets the system up to fail from the start.

The truth is that the children are learning as much Irish as you could reasonably expect them to given the amount of time they spend learning the subject and the priorities in the existing curriculam.
Those priorities could be changed, emphasising spoken Irish over literature for example, and a better ability of spoken Irish could be achieved (at the cost of an even lower level of literacy in Irish than is currently achieved) but the time given to the subject in schools only allows so much to be achieved, and the best teacher, and the best teaching methods won't change that.

We need to recognise that short of immersion second language education like a Gaelscoil, it is simply not possible to teach someone a language in school if their only contact with that language is in school.

It's not the hours inside the classroom, it's the hours outside the classroom.

I've said it numerous times in other threads: most stdents will see Irish as a school subject and not as lanaguage. And it is a very diffifult thing to learn as a school subject.

Also, ANY langauge is going to be hard to learn when you don't have a chance to practice it. The majority of people who are fluent or newrly fluent in Irish, I'd argue got some exposure to it outside the classroom.

aoife willis wrote: »

Having read over all these posts I think the prevailing theme is the inability to successfully teach the Irish Language, particularly in English speaking schools. I am wondering however is it in fact the Irish persons psyche, the constant reiteration Irish is hard, Irish has no place in the world, which is more damaging to the teaching/learning and the overall success of the language.

There were claims that there is not enough time given to the subject to realistically expect students to be fluent by the time they leave school. This is a point I totally disagree with, due to the simple fact that I am currently sitting across from a fourth year girl on work experience who has fluent Irish. She never went to an Irish school, she is the only speaker in her family so it's not like she had an more education in the language than the school system provided.

How does Irish fair in comparison to the foreign languages taught in schools? I imagine there are many people taking French, Spanish etc. to leaving cert level with the same if not a slightly better grasp on the conversational aspect of the language in comparison to Irish, with on average 2 classes a week less.

Is it our view of and the image of the Irish language which hinders are learning or the teaching of the language?
Almost every Irish person you come across would say they wish they could speak Irish or gave it more attention in school. There are plenty of resources out there to learn it. So why don't we use them?

Your first question should be this: "Why are you here?"

For some, language, for some people is little more than a tool for communication and in that respect, Irish is useless other than to get points in the leaving. If that's why they're there, they lanaguage is not going to be a part of their lives for much longer.

For others, though, it's an essential medium of self expression and they'll take any chance to learn or speak it - and here is where it's importance lies. And this is, of course, why you want them to be there.

I'd also ask them this:
Is culture and identity something you are born into or something you are relate to?
Then follow up with:
Why does the Irish langauge play/not play an important part of who you are?

GaelMise

aoife willis wrote: »

Having read over all these posts I think the prevailing theme is the inability to successfully teach the Irish Language, particularly in English speaking schools. I am wondering however is it in fact the Irish persons psyche, the constant reiteration Irish is hard, Irish has no place in the world, which is more damaging to the teaching/learning and the overall success of the language.

There were claims that there is not enough time given to the subject to realistically expect students to be fluent by the time they leave school. This is a point I totally disagree with, due to the simple fact that I am currently sitting across from a fourth year girl on work experience who has fluent Irish. She never went to an Irish school, she is the only speaker in her family so it's not like she had an more education in the language than the school system provided.

How does Irish fair in comparison to the foreign languages taught in schools? I imagine there are many people taking French, Spanish etc. to leaving cert level with the same if not a slightly better grasp on the conversational aspect of the language in comparison to Irish, with on average 2 classes a week less.

Is it our view of and the image of the Irish language which hinders are learning or the teaching of the language?
Almost every Irish person you come across would say they wish they could speak Irish or gave it more attention in school. There are plenty of resources out there to learn it. So why don't we use them?

Well, you are bringing up quite a few different topics for discussion there.
With relation to the importance of attiudes to the language, yes this is important, and if a child is constantly told that learning Irish is difficult and pointless, it is likely to become a self fulfilling prophesy.

However, when it comes to people wo say they would love to have Irish, yet never seem to do anything about it, this generally relates back to the status of the language.

Languages can be ranked in status in any given society, in a largely monolingual society like ours, its obvious which language is on top.

However if you take a multilingual society like Switzerland, then it becomes more complex.
German, being the most widely spoken language in Switzerland has the highest status over all, but this does not necessarily mean that it has the highest status in all parts of Switzerland.
In the French speaking areas, French has the highest status, but because German is still a high status language, in French speaking areas, you will find that German is quite common as a second language.

Language status is important because it plays a large part in determining who learns what language.
The speakers of lower status languages invariably tend to learn High status languages, but the speakers of High status languages only rarely learn lower status languages.

In our own case, because English is arguably the highest status language in the world, you will only rarely find English speakers learning a second language, and when they do, it is almost exclusevly another Hich status language like French/German/Spanish.

Comming back to the relation between Irish and English here, English obviously has a much higher status than Irish in Ireland.
What you would expect to find then, and what you do find in practice is that Irish speakers would have a high tendancy to learn English and achieve fluency, whereas English speakers would be much less inclined to learn Irish and achieve fluency.

We often hear English speakers who say that they would love to learn Irish, but in reality, people do not tend to learn a language simply for a love of that language. A small number of people might, but large numbers of people do not tend to. What motivates large numbers of people to learn a language are practical concerns, concerns that go into the status of a language.
Can I gain employment from knowing that language? Will it open up oppertunities for me? Is knowing that language essential and well regarded in society?
For an Irish speaker learning English, the answer to these questions is absoutly yes. For an English speaker learning Irish, it is much less clear, and as such motivation is much lower.

Learning a language is a difficult, time consuming and often expencive thing to try to do, motivation is a major part of doing it successfully. If all you have is 'i'd like to know it' rather than 'I need to know it' or 'knowing it will benefit me for x, y, and z reasons' then motivation is not likely to last.


As for the student of yours that has fluent Irish, ask them are they interested in the language outside of school. I would not be surprised if they have spent quite a bit of time studying/using the language outside of classtime and homework.
Ity be the case that this particular student has some unusual ability to learn languages and did indeed become fluent through the average amount of contact time that most students get from classtime and homework, though I would find that a little hard to believe.

The fact remains however, that 99.9% of students do not achieve fluency in Irish from the average amount of time spent learning Irish in ordinary English medium schools.
Are we going to look on this and conclude that for some unknown reason, tens of thousands of students are all underperforming, consistantly every year? Or would it make more sense to conclude that overall, the system is producing what it is able to produce, ie students that have quite a lot of Irish when you look at it, but still not a comfortabl conversational ability in the language.

Given the system we have, that students do not develop a conversational ability in the language is hardily surprising, I know from my own experiance in school that conversation was never something that was developed.
Not once in 14 years did I have an actual conversation in Irish, I practiced words and phrases, and learned off how to have one particular conversation for my oral, but that is a far cry from actually developing a conversational ability, and no wonder then when it comes to it that people are not comfortable haveing a conversation in Irish.

GaelMise

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

It's not the hours inside the classroom, it's the hours outside the classroom.

Absoutly, but the hours outside the classroom, beyond homework, generally tends to be few if any.

Thats the point have been trying to make, we have people who seem to think that the education system, ie the hours in the classroom, should be producing fluent Irish speakers, and when this does not happen, question, whats wrong with the education system, why is it not producing fluent Irish speakers, and what can be done to fix it.

My point is that the education system, ie the hours in the classroom is not where the problem is. We need to get over the notion that the hours in the classroom can produce fluent Irish speakers and stop trying to achieve the unachievable there, and look instead to an area that has been left by the wayside as a result of this focus on the education system, ie use of the language outside the classroom.

The education system could be improved, but that still wont produce fluent Irish speakers, if you want people to be fluent Irish speakers you need to look at ways of creating oppertunities to use the language outside the classroom.

Also, ANY langauge is going to be hard to learn when you don't have a chance to practice it. The majority of people who are fluent or newrly fluent in Irish, I'd argue got some exposure to it outside the classroom.

Absoutly.

deirdremf

When people consider their poor outcome in Irish, they often forget that lots of people get poor outcomes in many subjects at school.

How many people end their schooldays proficient in maths? What does that even mean?

Well, to give that a context, how many people leave school as mathematicians? Virtually no-one - an A on the higher level in maths in the leaving cert does not make you a mathematician. It qualifies you to become one, if you continue studying the subject at third level, and then at graduate level. When you have a PhD, you can call yourself a mathematician. And this is the same for almost all other subjects you do at school - Irish schools do not produce geographers, historians or scientists either, and they produce very very few people fluent in French, German, Spanish or whatever.

The two exceptions here are English and Irish. Because almost everyone in our country speaks English as a first or good second language, with very few exceptions we come out of school proficient in English.
Regarding Irish, most people from the real Gaeltacht end their school days proficient in Irish, as do most people who get their secondary education in Irish in other parts of the country, a lot of those who receive their primary but not their secondary education through Irish, and a significant number of those who receive their entire education through English.

Considered in this way, IMO the results we get in Irish - while a lot less than optimal - are far better than we usually give ourselves credit for.

pog it

d

GaelMise wrote: »

The fact remains however, that 99.9% of students do not achieve fluency in Irish from the average amount of time spent learning Irish in ordinary English medium schools.
Are we going to look on this and conclude that for some unknown reason, tens of thousands of students are all underperforming, consistantly every year? Or would it make more sense to conclude that overall, the system is producing what it is able to produce, ie students that have quite a lot of Irish when you look at it, but still not a comfortabl conversational ability in the language.

Given the system we have, that students do not develop a conversational ability in the language is hardily surprising, I know from my own experiance in school that conversation was never something that was developed.
Not once in 14 years did I have an actual conversation in Irish, I practiced words and phrases, and learned off how to have one particular conversation for my oral, but that is a far cry from actually developing a conversational ability, and no wonder then when it comes to it that people are not comfortable haveing a conversation in Irish.

If your arguments were true, then you'd have to be able to explain how pupils leaving national school in the 60s had a higher standard in Irish than do students on leaving secondary school today.

You might argue that more time was spent in the classroom on Irish in the 60s, but even allowing for that, it can't account for such a major gap in standards.

(We have to assume average teaching skills apply across the board, and that then, just like now, there were always the outliers- the really good and the really bad. So arguing that it's down to teaching skills doesn't cut i. Nor does saying that it is unreasonable to expect better).

Now, if we were to have an independent study done across the country to test national school teachers standard in Irish, we'd then have our answer.

deirdremf

pog it wrote: »

If your arguments were true, then you'd have to be able to explain how pupils leaving national school in the 60s had a higher standard in Irish than do students on leaving secondary school today.

You might argue that more time was spent in the classroom on Irish in the 60s, but even allowing for that, it can't account for such a major gap in standards.

First of all, the primary curriculum was much narrower in the 60s.
In second place, something like half of the teachers were from the Gaeltacht, and they had the ability to speak it correctly and being trained teachers, were able to teach it.
Also the stick was used liberally, particularly in boys' schools (and not just for Irish).
And there was the carrot of a job in the civil service if you did well enough!
That said, the thing is, lots of other kids didn't leave primary school in the 60s with a good level of Irish - particularly if they weren't destined for the middle class.

Now, if we were to have an independent study done across the country to test national school teachers standard in Irish, we'd then have our answer.

I'd love to see Ruairi Quinn's face if you made that suggestion to him! Apparently he thinks a C on the higher level is evidence of competence in Irish!

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

deirdremf wrote: »

I'd love to see Ruairi Quinn's face if you made that suggestion to him! Apparently he thinks a C on the higher level is evidence of competence in Irish!

In fiarness, it probably is (to communicate with it, if not to teach) - but it's getting away from the initial question: is it important to students or not?

pog it

deirdremf wrote: »

First of all, the primary curriculum was much narrower in the 60s.
In second place, something like half of the teachers were from the Gaeltacht, and they had the ability to speak it correctly and being trained teachers, were able to teach it.
Also the stick was used liberally, particularly in boys' schools (and not just for Irish).
And there was the carrot of a job in the civil service if you did well enough!
That said, the thing is, lots of other kids didn't leave primary school in the 60s with a good level of Irish - particularly if they weren't destined for the middle class.
I'd love to see Ruairi Quinn's face if you made that suggestion to him! Apparently he thinks a C on the higher level is evidence of competence in Irish!

In terms of the curriculum, I acknowledged in my post that more time was spent on Irish back then.
But saying the curriculum was more narrow is not really true. As far as I know pupils were also taught Latin, at least in terms of prayers, and on top of that they learned history, maths, english reading, geography, etc.

Plenty of teachers were not from the Gaeltacht. My own father's wasn't.

The main point is, that if pupils had the ability, they were able to leave national school with a really high standard in Irish.

Those now who have that ability are not leaving with that same standard.

That is shocking.

National school teachers are therefore no longer respected in the same way they used to be. Even though their Irish levels are not getting the attention they should be, it's widely acknowledged that teachers these days are taking it easy in the main. We're getting every twit who wants a safe and relatively cushy life.

And this is highly relevant as to how students perceive the language..

GaelMise

pog it wrote: »

If your arguments were true, then you'd have to be able to explain how pupils leaving national school in the 60s had a higher standard in Irish than do students on leaving secondary school today.

Well first we would need to know just how big the gap in the average amount of Irish learnt between then and now is.

You might argue that more time was spent in the classroom on Irish in the 60s, but even allowing for that, it can't account for such a major gap in standards.

I am unaware of anything beyond anacdotal evdence for the gap in standards. If you have some research on this, would you mind sharing it? Assuming there is a significant gap, it is quite likely that there are many factors, perhaps it could be shown that one of them is a significant problem, though it is possible that none of them on their own can be said to be the main problem.

We have to assume average teaching skills apply across the board, and that then, just like now, there were always the outliers- the really good and the really bad. So arguing that it's down to teaching skills doesn't cut i. Nor does saying that it is unreasonable to expect better.

Well we can't actually, how something is taught has a major impact on learning ourcomes. There is no such thing as a natural teacher. Teaching is something that can be done well or badly depending on the strategies adopted.

Now, if we were to have an independent study done across the country to test national school teachers standard in Irish, we'd then have our answer.

No, we would not, even if every teacher was fully fluent, it does not mean that they would be any good at teaching the language. Don't get me wrong it does have an impact, but it is far from being the only relevant factor.

dubhthach

Regarding number of hours and the resultant lack of fluency, the Canadians did a study regarding language learning with regards to French, published back in 1981.

Swain, M. (1981). Linguistic expectations: Core, extended and immersion
programmes. Canadian Modern Language Review, 37, 486-497

They reckoned that 1,200 hours of language contact would give a "Basic" understanding of a language (French in this case). Your average Irish student gets about 1,388 hours language "contact" over the course of Primary/Secondary education.

See the following doctoral paper from RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN in the Netherlands:

Retention and Attrition of Irish as a Second Language
A longitudinal study of general and communicative
proficiency in Irish among second level school leavers
and the influence of instructional background,
language use and attitude/motivation variables

http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/arts/2003/l.murtagh/thesis.pdf

Some language policies have specified expected levels of competence in terms of
number of instructional hours. For example, in 1977, the Ontario Ministry of
Education in Canada set down three basic levels of competence which may be
achieved from second language programmes (Swain, 1981: 490). The ‘basic’ level of
competence is considered to be achievable in 1,200 hours, a ‘middle’ level in 2,100
hours and a ‘top’ level in 5,000 hours. A ‘basic’ level indicates that a learner has
acquired “a fundamental knowledge of the language, the ability to participate in simple
conversations, the ability to read simple texts and the ability to resume the study of
French in later life”. A learner who has reached the ‘middle’ level should be able “to
read newspapers and books of personal interest with help from a dictionary, to
understand radio and television, to participate adequately in conversation and to
function reasonably well in a French-speaking community after a few months’
residence”. The ‘top’ level, should enable the learner to “continue his or her education
using French as the language of instruction at the college or university level, to accept
employment using French as the working language, and to participate easily in
conversation”.

In the early eighties, Harris (1984) estimated “the total number of hours exposure to
Irish during the primary-school years” to be roughly about 1,728. This was based on a
weekly average of approximately 5.4 hours per school week. The recommended
minimum number of hours for Irish in the new primary school Irish curriculum
(Department of Education and Science, 1999b: 17) is considerably lower (3.5 hours
per week) than this average. Summing across the whole eight years of primary school,
this more recent estimate amounts to 936 hours. A similar calculation for post-primary
schools, based on figures supplied by the Department of Education and Science
(2002), indicates that the total time spent learning Irish at secondary is almost half of
that at primary. This is estimated on the basis of an average of three hours Irish per
week (x 66 weeks) at the two years of senior level and two hours and forty minutes a
week (x 99 weeks) at junior level (3 years), giving a total average of 452 hours.
Combining the estimates for primary and secondary school gives an average of 1,388
hours. If time on Irish during the one year optional transition year cycle is included
the total may be somewhat higher but is, at best, unlikely to be more than 1,450 hours,
still well below that estimated by Harris (1984) for primary school alone. These
comparisons suggest that there has been a significant decline in the time spent learning
Irish since the 1980’s.

If one were to describe the majority of current Leaving Certificate graduates of Irish
in terms of the three levels of proficiency defined above for French learners in Ontario,
they would, given the number of hours currently spent learning Irish, be functioning at
a ‘basic’ level of proficiency. It will be recalled, however, that the Leaving Certificate
Higher Level course in Irish expects that students would, on completion of that course,
be able to function competently through the medium of Irish in general social
interaction.
Finally, it is interesting to compare the number of Irish contact hours in the
‘ordinary’ school system with the corresponding amount in the ‘all-Irish’ or immersion
school system. The ‘all-Irish’ estimate was calculated on the basis of the length of the
school day (minus time on English instruction) over the eight year primary cycle and
the five year secondary cycle. The final estimate for ‘full’ immersion (from primary
through secondary) students who have completed the Leaving Certificate programme
is approximately 10,700 hours, a figure which is almost eight times that for ‘ordinary’
school students who are taught the language as a subject only. These immersion
school leavers would under the proficiency definitions presented earlier be considered
more than capable of functioning at the ‘top’ level of proficiency. That is to say, if
they so wished, they should be able to partake in all conversations in Irish, proceed to
third level Irish-medium education, or take up employment where Irish is the working
language.

GaelMise

dubhthach wrote: »

Regarding number of hours and the resultant lack of fluency, the Canadians did a study regarding language learning with regards to French, published back in 1981.

Swain, M. (1981). Linguistic expectations: Core, extended and immersion
programmes. Canadian Modern Language Review, 37, 486-497

They reckoned that 1,200 hours of language contact would give a "Basic" understanding of a language (French in this case). Your average Irish student gets about 1,388 hours language "contact" over the course of Primary/Secondary education.

See the following doctoral paper from RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN in the Netherlands:

Retention and Attrition of Irish as a Second Language
A longitudinal study of general and communicative
proficiency in Irish among second level school leavers
and the influence of instructional background,
language use and attitude/motivation variables

http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/arts/2003/l.murtagh/thesis.pdf

Thank you. I think it is fair to suggest that the decline in standards of Irish achieved, and the decline in the amount of time spent on Irish in schools over the same period are linked.

I accept that the standard of Irish amongst teachers may also have declined during this period too, but personally I think this is a less significant factor.

The question is, if we want to improve the standards of Irish achieved, how do we go about it?

There are several options, focusing on the standard of Irish among teachers is one of them, but I think it is not the most significant factor, and focusing on it too much is going to give limited results at best.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

GaelMise wrote: »

Thank you. I think it is fair to suggest that the decline in standards of Irish achieved, and the decline in the amount of time spent on Irish in schools over the same period are linked.

I accept that the standard of Irish amongst teachers may also have declined during this period too, but personally I think this is a less significant factor.

The question is, if we want to improve the standards of Irish achieved, how do we go about it?

There are several options, focusing on the standard of Irish among teachers is one of them, but I think it is not the most significant factor, and focusing on it too much is going to give limited results at best.

But you're still focusing in on it as a school subject: I trade you 15 minutes of conversation with an Irish-speaking friend or family member for every hour spent in a classroom and we'll see which produces the more efficient (and more enthusiastic) Irish speaker.

lollsangel

Growing up to me irish couldnt die a fast enough death. I hated going to the classes etc, bcis it was too hard, tere was no point and frankly boring!

we moved to dingle almost 4 years ago, and moved back west of dingle. Here practically everyone speaks irish as a first language, so I started to learn it as a language as my neighbour used to say to me speak it as you think it, and the grammer will follow. My 5 year old twins will answer you faster in irish than they will in englush.

if I could change one thing it would be to take the focus from verbs and grammer that is taught in non gael scoile schools, and have it taught as a language same as we all learned to speak english.

GaelMise

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

But you're still focusing in on it as a school subject: I trade you 15 minutes of conversation with an Irish-speaking friend or family member for every hour spent in a classroom and we'll see which produces the more efficient (and more enthusiastic) Irish speaker.

The school subject is important, and we have several option of how we proceed with it, what reforms we implement and what aims we have for it.

The extracurricular use of Irish is of paramount importance, and encouraging this inside and outside of schools is an important aspect of any reform in my opinion.

My point is that there is no single simple solution to the problem, and focusing on the subject itself, and the standards of Irish amongst teachers in particular as tends to happen, will only limit the improvements that could be made.

Thoie

I'd break the discussion into a few parts.

Is the language important as a language?
I'd say no. Discuss what makes a language "important" - is it number of speakers? Number of people from other countries who speak it? Primacy of the language within a given group?

Is the language important culturally?
I'd say yes. From a cultural perspective, language can shape how people think/interact. For example, in some of the Asian languages, where the verbs come at the end, you kind of have to listen to the full sentence before you know how it's going to turn out. With English, and the verbs coming at the start, it's easier to second guess what the speaker is about to say.
Then you have the cultural history part - are there things people can express in Irish that they can't express in another language? Look at some examples - does an English version of Trasna na dTonnta (or something else they're familiar with) convey the same feelings? Why/why not?

The influence of the language
How do we speak today in English that is shaped by Irish? (I'm after coming home, Don't be leaving the door open, etc) Does that lead to a feeling of cultural inclusivity amongst Hiberno-English speakers? Is that a good thing/bad thing?

How the language is taught
It's been a long time since I was in school, so things may have changed, but my experience of learning Irish in school was that the curriculum was quite like English - you learned poems/stories off by heart, analysed them, and from this rote learning you were magically supposed to absorb the language. French and Spanish were taught as a foreign language - the aim was to make sure you could communicate with other people.

The problem with teaching Irish like English, was that with English there was an assumption you could already speak the language. Your vocabulary increased as you aged just through common usage. If you came across a word you didn't know, it was explained to you in English. What's a sparrow? It's the little fat brown bird about this size that you see in the garden. Cad é an gealbhan? It's the little fat brown bird....

While English/Irish dictionaries were useful if you were at home where no-one could explain it to you, teachers were also inclined to tell you the word in English, so you were back to memorising a translation, rather than expanding your communication skills.

I find it very telling that with 13 years of Irish, 5 years of French and 2 years of Spanish, I can read a newspaper/magazine in French or Spanish (or get the gist of an article at least), but I can't do the same with Irish.

Using Aoife's earlier response as an example, what I gather she's saying is:

I'm somethinging an Irish club once a week and I was ... morning...morning with the language.
Because people did ....
..... people learning the language were ... and ... understanding the language
I was ... this morning the language.

It's embarrassing, but all I can gather is that she runs/attends? a weekly Irish club, and has some thoughts about people learning and understanding the language.

Paz-CCFC

Thoie wrote: »

How the language is taught
It's been a long time since I was in school, so things may have changed, but my experience of learning Irish in school was that the curriculum was quite like English - you learned poems/stories off by heart, analysed them, and from this rote learning you were magically supposed to absorb the language. French and Spanish were taught as a foreign language - the aim was to make sure you could communicate with other people.

The problem with teaching Irish like English, was that with English there was an assumption you could already speak the language. Your vocabulary increased as you aged just through common usage. If you came across a word you didn't know, it was explained to you in English. What's a sparrow? It's the little fat brown bird about this size that you see in the garden. Cad é an gealbhan? It's the little fat brown bird....

While English/Irish dictionaries were useful if you were at home where no-one could explain it to you, teachers were also inclined to tell you the word in English, so you were back to memorising a translation, rather than expanding your communication skills.

I find it very telling that with 13 years of Irish, 5 years of French and 2 years of Spanish, I can read a newspaper/magazine in French or Spanish (or get the gist of an article at least), but I can't do the same with Irish.

Would I be correct in saying that you were more interested in French and Spanish and you involved yourself more with the languages? I studied French for 9 years and got a B2 honours in the Leaving - I tried speaking to a girl from France the other day, and I struggled to string a sentence together. After 9 years of Irish, I was more than fluent. That's because I chose not to immerse myself in French as I was in Irish. I think that what you're taught in school is merely a steeping stone - it's up to the person to build on that.

What we've said also brings up another point - learning languages is "in years". Most people who have just completed the Leaving Cert haven't done 13/14 years of Irish - they began learning Irish 13/14 years ago. If you only do Irish in the classroom, and not at weekends, during the summer, Christmas etc., then you can't say that you've been doing it for 13/14 years. Those who don't go to a gaelscoil and don't engage in the language outside of school hours will have a contact time of about 1,400 hours. Based on a 16 hour waking day, that equates to about two months. Two months spread over 14 years is about 1% of that time - in my opinion, that's a miniscule amount of contact time. Is two months enough time to become fluent in a language?

Using Aoife's earlier response as an example, what I gather she's saying is:

I'm somethinging an Irish club once a week and I was ... morning...morning with the language.
Because people did ....
..... people learning the language were ... and ... understanding the language
I was ... this morning the language.

It's embarrassing,

It's not embarrassing. It should never be embarrassing to make a mistake whilst learning a language. This is a reason that puts off English speakers, I think. In classes for various languages, I've found that people are very quiet and meek, for fear of being wrong. If you're too afraid to make a mistake, you'll never learn. If everyone were shy like this as a baby, they'd never have any language!

but all I can gather is that she runs/attends? a weekly Irish club, and has some thoughts about people learning and understanding the language.

To be fair, you understood a fair bit of what Aoife wrote.

Thoie

Paz-CCFC wrote: »

Would I be correct in saying that you were more interested in French and Spanish and you involved yourself more with the languages? I studied French for 9 years and got a B2 honours in the Leaving - I tried speaking to a girl from France the other day, and I struggled to string a sentence together. After 9 years of Irish, I was more than fluent. That's because I chose not to immerse myself in French as I was in Irish. I think that what you're taught in school is merely a steeping stone - it's up to the person to build on that.

I honestly don't think so - I badgered my parents into letting me go to the Gaeltacht, but never took part in a French exchange. In my school, French and Irish were taught in two completely different ways. Irish was rote learning of poems and essays and regurgitation, French was conversational. We learned grammar in both, but never had any conversation in Irish. It's a long time ago now, so I may be mistaken, but I don't think I ever had a "chat" in Irish in school until the day of my oral.

To this day I can still natter away in French on the rare occasion I run into French people.

Paz-CCFC wrote: »

What we've said also brings up another point - learning languages is "in years". Most people who have just completed the Leaving Cert haven't done 13/14 years of Irish - they began learning Irish 13/14 years ago. If you only do Irish in the classroom, and not at weekends, during the summer, Christmas etc., then you can't say that you've been doing it for 13/14 years. Those who don't go to a gaelscoil and don't engage in the language outside of school hours will have a contact time of about 1,400 hours. Based on a 16 hour waking day, that equates to about two months. Two months spread over 14 years is about 1% of that time - in my opinion, that's a miniscule amount of contact time. Is two months enough time to become fluent in a language?

For me the years are a comparative thing. If my 13 years of Irish distils into 2 months, then my 5 years of French condenses to about 3 weeks. Yet I have enough French still to easily read an Agatha Christie book, and I can't get a decent sense of what's being said in the Irish articles in the Irish Times.

Picking the first one at random: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/treibh/r%C3%B3n%C3%A1n-%C3%B3-domhnaill-le-bheith-ina-choimisin%C3%A9ir-nua-teanga-1.1687611

I gather that O'Donnell has been named commissioner of other languages (mostly because Choimisinéir sounds liked commissioner). He's worked for TG4 since 1998 and possibly presented The Week In Politics. Irene is taking over from him. Dinny, the something of Gaeltacht is happy about the appointment. I recognise a quote "ar buille" solely from An Poc Ar Buille (but

Paz-CCFC wrote: »

It's not embarrassing. It should never be embarrassing to make a mistake whilst learning a language. This is a reason that puts off English speakers, I think. In classes for various languages, I've found that people are very quiet and meek, for fear of being wrong. If you're too afraid to make a mistake, you'll never learn. If everyone were shy like this as a baby, they'd never have any language!

I'm not embarrassed to make mistakes (as any French person I've spoken to will tell you ). I'm embarrassed that after 13 years (or 2 months) of learning Irish that I can't just sit down and read a newspaper article, let alone a book.

Paz-CCFC wrote: »

To be fair, you understood a fair bit of what Aoife wrote.

Woohoo! The problem is, while I got the overall gist of what she was talking about, I don't know what her thoughts were (only that she has an opinion). It's a bit like seeing that something is important to you, but I've no idea whether I agree or disagree with you, or whether agreement is expected - maybe I should laugh? Or cry? I don't know!

dubhthach

Thoie wrote: »

I gather that O'Donnell has been named commissioner of other languages (mostly because Choimisinéir sounds liked commissioner).

I don't know why you are Anglicising his surname, that's as rude as someone Gaelicising your surname without your consent.

As an aside I love the word "buile" (buille as used in article is different word, similiar meaning -- think you've spotted an editorial mistake) particularly when you consider it's meaning in context of Old Irish literature.

In Old Irish it's written as "Baile" and in sense of "frenzy" has meaning of vision quest/trance and two great examples of literature been:

Baile In Scáil ("The Phantom's Ecstatic Vision")
Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig (The "ecstatic vision" of Conn of Hundred Battles)

eDIL (electronic Dictionary of Irish Language -- covering old/middle period of language) has following for it:

2 baile
Forms: buile; boile; bhuile;
Meaning: vision; frenzy, madness (originally arising out of super- natural revelations):; subject or inspiration of poets:;

Paz-CCFC

Thoie wrote: »

I honestly don't think so - I badgered my parents into letting me go to the Gaeltacht, but never took part in a French exchange. In my school, French and Irish were taught in two completely different ways. Irish was rote learning of poems and essays and regurgitation, French was conversational. We learned grammar in both, but never had any conversation in Irish. It's a long time ago now, so I may be mistaken, but I don't think I ever had a "chat" in Irish in school until the day of my oral.

Wouldn't you have learnt Irish in the manner as French for your 8 years in primary school?

Didn't your Irish teacher ever make small talk as Gaeilge?

To this day I can still natter away in French on the rare occasion I run into French people.

I think that people generally underestimate their level of Irish more than other languages, particularly spoken. I'd say if you were put in a position where you'd have to speak Irish, then you'd be able to manage it. It wouldn't be perfect, it might be rusty due to disuse alright, but it's always there, especially for someone who went to Gaeltachtaí a bit, as you said.

For me the years are a comparative thing. If my 13 years of Irish distils into 2 months, then my 5 years of French condenses to about 3 weeks. Yet I have enough French still to easily read an Agatha Christie book, and I can't get a decent sense of what's being said in the Irish articles in the Irish Times.

Is that not simply because you read French articles/books, but don't with Irish, so you're having more continuous contact time with it? And even at that, you've done a decent job with the two bits of Irish you've read so far.

Picking the first one at random: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/treibh/r%C3%B3n%C3%A1n-%C3%B3-domhnaill-le-bheith-ina-choimisin%C3%A9ir-nua-teanga-1.1687611

I gather that O'Donnell has been named commissioner of other languages (mostly because Choimisinéir sounds liked commissioner). He's worked for TG4 since 1998 and possibly presented The Week In Politics. Irene is taking over from him. Dinny, the something of Gaeltacht is happy about the appointment. I recognise a quote "ar buille" solely from An Poc Ar Buille (but

He became the next language commissioner. "Eile" means other, alright, but "an chéad _____ eile" means "the next _____" (literally meaning "the first other ____" - I didn't realise this until just now. Thank you, Thoie!). Yeah, he presented it, alright. Irene is his wife. Dinny is the state minister for the Gaeltacht.

Re commissioner/coimisinéir, plenty of these kind of things exist in languages. It's usually indicative of them coming from the same root (in this case, the Latin "commissionem", meaning "delegation of business"). Plenty exist between French and English - beef/beouf, poulty/poulet, partisan, even English (Anglais). These exist between Irish and other languages, too. A speaker of French/Italian/Spanish would see some similarities between the days of the week. Eg, Luan - lundi/lunedì/lunes, Máirt - Mardi/Martedì/Martes etc.

That's a great way that you learned "ar buile". It's a very effective method of learning a language (or anything else terminology-heavy) to link it back with things you already know. I don't speak German, but I know the word for table (tische) because it sounds like tissue. It shows how effective it is, by the fact that it twigged with you straight away.

I'm not embarrassed to make mistakes (as any French person I've spoken to will tell you ). I'm embarrassed that after 13 years (or 2 months) of learning Irish that I can't just sit down and read a newspaper article, let alone a book.

Give another few articles a lash, you're doing pretty well so far.

Woohoo! The problem is, while I got the overall gist of what she was talking about, I don't know what her thoughts were (only that she has an opinion). It's a bit like seeing that something is important to you, but I've no idea whether I agree or disagree with you, or whether agreement is expected - maybe I should laugh? Or cry? I don't know!

Aoife didn't really give any thoughts, apart from saying she was a bit biased in favour of Irish and didn't really understand how it was overly difficult to learn. She was mostly asking for other people's opinions.


Keep the faith, Thoie - you're better than you think you are!

Thoie

dubhthach wrote: »

I don't know why you are Anglicising his surname, that's as rude as someone Gaelicising your surname without your consent

No harm intended - was translating as I went along. I work in a business where people's names (including my own) are translated all the time and I don't even notice it at this stage. I wouldn't even blink if someone referred to me by the Irish version of my name or surname.

dubhthach

Thoie wrote: »

No harm intended - was translating as I went along. I work in a business where people's names (including my own) are translated all the time and I don't even notice it at this stage. I wouldn't even blink if someone referred to me by the Irish version of my name or surname.

In jest surely if you were to translate it then it would have been:
"Grandson of "World-Ruler" and not O'Donnell though

Domhnall (Dónal reformed spelling) -> Dumnovalos (Proto-Celtic)

*dumno- (proto-Celtic) = World
*val (proto-Celtic) = rule

As for the Poc (thence Puck Fair in Kerry), no doubt he was in middle of a religious enlightenment when the protagonist of the song/poem stumbled into his field. Perhaps brought on by eating some "mushrooms" so it's no wonder he was "ar buile".

In case of the two "poems" you could summarise them as saying basically Conn dropped some acid and had a "trip" where he ended up meeting the God Lugh and prophesying the names of future kings of his line. The "Baile Chuinn" probably dates to period 700-720AD.

Thoie

dubhthach wrote: »

In jest surely if you were to translate it then it would have been:
"Grandson of "World-Ruler" and not O'Donnell though

Ah c'mere, I'm still trying to figure out how to tell my fuinneog from my doras!
:P

dubhthach

Thoie wrote: »

Ah c'mere, I'm still trying to figure out how to tell my fuinneog from my doras!
:P

Doesn't help that fuinneog is borrowing from Old-Norse vindauga

vindr (“wind”) +‎ auga (“eye”)

This of course is same origin of word Window which is borrowing in english from Old-Norse as well.

Simple rule in Irish, loan words starting with v/w -> f

so Latin: vīnum -> O.Irish: Fín -> Modern Irish: Fíon
(wine)

This reflects an older shift in Goidelic languages where v/w sound shifted to a f sound. That's why Fear (man - Fer in Old Irish) is cognate with latin Vir (as in virile) and English Wer (as in Werewolf).

pog it

dubhthach wrote: »

Regarding number of hours and the resultant lack of fluency, the Canadians did a study regarding language learning with regards to French, published back in 1981.

Swain, M. (1981). Linguistic expectations: Core, extended and immersion
programmes. Canadian Modern Language Review, 37, 486-497

They reckoned that 1,200 hours of language contact would give a "Basic" understanding of a language (French in this case). Your average Irish student gets about 1,388 hours language "contact" over the course of Primary/Secondary education.

See the following doctoral paper from RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN in the Netherlands:

Retention and Attrition of Irish as a Second Language
A longitudinal study of general and communicative
proficiency in Irish among second level school leavers
and the influence of instructional background,
language use and attitude/motivation variables

http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/arts/2003/l.murtagh/thesis.pdf

I don't see any mention here of time spent on homework or even any allowance for outside exposure to Irish such as on TG4, etc.

I don't have access to the Harris 1984 paper but nothing you have quoted seems to specifically mention how much time has been factored in for homework which would account for lots of extra hours of exposure.

bennyineire

Here's an idea, instead of having an Irish class in school tell the students (particularly secondary school) that they can chat amongst themselves about anything they like during the allocated class time but under the proviso that it has to be in Irish. The teacher would walk around the class in a mentor role.
Let the students use Google translate through a phone or a tablet to help them and then check with the teacher that the grammar is right. If you could get a fluent speaker to help out the teacher (maybe a University Student who would get extra credits) that would be great too.
I think in this environment nearly everyone who goes to School would have at least conversationally Irish.
Now tell me please surly this is the way to keep our language alive.
BTW this comes from a 36 y/o who has a Master Degree in Computer Science but has less Irish than his 8 y/o son

Insect Overlord

bennyineire wrote: »

Let the students use Google translate through a phone or a tablet to help them and then check with the teacher that the grammar is right.

Replace Google Translate with some decent dictionaries (Focal.ie, PotaFocal.com, Breis.Foclóir.ie) and you could be onto a great idea there.

bennyineire

An File wrote: »

Replace Google Translate with some decent dictionaries (Focal.ie, PotaFocal.com, Breis.Foclóir.ie) and you could be onto a great idea there.

I just put in "What time is it" in focal.ie and I got "
Níor aimsíodh téarma ar bith · No terms found" but yeah I get your point, but Google translate will spit out something that makes some kind of sense and Google translate is a handy app that is on practically every teenagers phone, also that is where the teacher/mentor comes into to place to make sure grammar etc. is right

feargale

@dubhthach: Just wondering what your sources are for Irish etymology. I'm particularly interested in that, but the only printed work appears to be MacBain ( Scots Gaelic. ) I believe the RIA have an amount of material, but nothing in print. I heard some years ago that they were working on bringing something out, but I guess alot of us will be in the great language laboratory in the sky when it happens.

pog it

feargale wrote: »

@dubhthach: Just wondering what your sources are for Irish etymology. I'm particularly interested in that, but the only printed work appears to be MacBain ( Scots Gaelic. ) I believe the RIA have an amount of material, but nothing in print. I heard some years ago that they were working on bringing something out, but I guess alot of us will be in the great language laboratory in the sky when it happens.

The RIA has the eDIL online dictionary and the book version.

dubhthach

pog it wrote: »

I don't see any mention here of time spent on homework or even any allowance for outside exposure to Irish such as on TG4, etc.

I don't have access to the Harris 1984 paper but nothing you have quoted seems to specifically mention how much time has been factored in for homework which would account for lots of extra hours of exposure.

The point of quote is about language exposure within education system, specifically in a classroom setting. TG4 is great for providing passive exposure. As an irregular speaker (I classified myself as: "Less often - outside education system" in the census) I use it all the time -- along with twitter and RnaG. If anything I think RnaG is a resource that should be used alot more in education system, particularly for exposure to various canúintí.

dubhthach

feargale wrote: »

@dubhthach: Just wondering what your sources are for Irish etymology. I'm particularly interested in that, but the only printed work appears to be MacBain ( Scots Gaelic. ) I believe the RIA have an amount of material, but nothing in print. I heard some years ago that they were working on bringing something out, but I guess alot of us will be in the great language laboratory in the sky when it happens.

eDIL is available online see:
http://edil.qub.ac.uk/dictionary/search.php

Was updated in late 2013.

Wiktionary can also be used to certain extent however it's fairly basic regarding coverage, can be useful for finding Proto-Indo-European root and cognates.

A copy of Dineen is also hosted out of UL, useful for (a) finding new words (b) pre-caighdeán oifigiúil (can be useful for comparing with Gaidhlig)

pog it

dubhthach wrote: »

The point of quote is about language exposure within education system, specifically in a classroom setting. TG4 is great for providing passive exposure. As an irregular speaker (I classified myself as: "Less often - outside education system" in the census) I use it all the time -- along with twitter and RnaG. If anything I think RnaG is a resource that should be used alot more in education system, particularly for exposure to various canúintí.

Re TG4, I only mentioned it as an aside really to show how presenting the total hours spent teaching the language is not giving a true reflection of the actual total exposure children/young people have to the language by the time they are leaving secondary school.

You need honesty when you are arguing this and homework is a gigantic contributor to what a person learns and you can't just leave it out in the same breath as talking about total hours spent teaching.

So when you factor in time spent on homework and other things like Irish language tv, etc. the expectations of what level of Irish you should have leaving school are completely different than if you just go by Harris 1984 or similar research on just total teaching hours.

Take this study:

http://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Inspection-Reports-Publications/Evaluation-Reports-Guidelines/insp_Irish_in_the_Primary_School_08_pdf.pdf

During the evaluation the inspectors noted the oral language ability of the teachers. They found that 3% of the teachers had a poor level of spoken Irish, 20% had only a fair ability to speak Irish, 55% had a satisfactory standard and 22% had a high standard of Irish. These figures reflect the indings of Harris et al. (2006, p.128), based on a national survey, in which 25% of teachers in ordinary primary schools described themselves as poor speakers of the second language.

However, inspectors considered that almost half of the teachers observed in this evaluation had difficulties with their proficiency in the Irish language or with their ability to teach Irish.

From:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/education-how-did-we-get-the-teaching-of-irish-so-wrong-1.1667065?page=1