The Irish language is failing.

whisky_galore

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Irish is like a lot of other stuff isn't it, a great idea as long as somebody else is doing the spadework.

A majority of Irish people have a positive attitude to the language, in that they think it's 'nice' and it would be an awful shame if it was allowed to decline. At the same time they couldn't be ars*d learning it properly or speaking it.

That is the conundrum.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Irish is like a lot of other stuff isn't it, a great idea as long as somebody else is doing the spadework.

whisky_galore wrote: »

A majority of Irish people have a positive attitude to the language, in that they think it's 'nice' and it would be an awful shame if it was allowed to decline. At the same time they couldn't be ars*d learning it properly or speaking it.

That is the conundrum.

Always amazes me how any people want compulsory Irish for kids, but are not willing to do an evening course in it themselves...

my teapot is orange

There will come a point where we have to abandon it imo. Irish schools currently perform well internationally, but as the world gets more and more competitive, with education systems in developing countries and developed countries getting better and better, there will be a time when if we want our kids to be as skilled as any others for the global workforce, we can't make them waste an hour a day on something irrelevant.

kowloon

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

Always amazes me how any people want compulsory Irish for kids, but are not willing to do an evening course in it themselves...

The 'I suffered it as a kid so everyone else should too!' crowd?

inocybe

Dan_Solo wrote: »

No. Just no.
Are you denying that at the time of leaving school nearly everybody has a least a basic level of Irish? And then roughly 0% of them use it.
Why is that?

I don't see how your reply was relevant to mine, but anyhoo... I can only respond why I don't use Irish
1. I passed the leaving cert but actually can't speak a sentence.
but more importantly
2. Because it was compulsary and was crammed down my throat, I hate it. I spent most of secondary school vowing that once I was out I would never ever have anything to do with it.

mickydoomsux

I don't use it because it is utterly redundant, obsolete and completely useless in modern Irish life.

Speak/teach it at home if you want but remove it from schools, official documents, road signs etc. because it is a waste of time and money to appease a vocal minority who will never be happy because their dream of a population fluent in Irish will never happen because it is a dead language that normal people don't care about in the slightest.

Dan_Solo

inocybe wrote: »

I don't see how your reply was relevant to mine, but anyhoo... I can only respond why I don't use Irish
1. I passed the leaving cert but actually can't speak a sentence.
but more importantly
2. Because it was compulsary and was crammed down my throat, I hate it. I spent most of secondary school vowing that once I was out I would never ever have anything to do with it.

1. You could when you finished your LC. Everybody could. The fact you can't speak it now is because you have no need to so you've forgotten every single word.
2. This isn't a reason to not speak Irish TBH. You can't blame the language itself for it being compulsory. It being useless is a good reason not to learn or speak it however.

whisky_galore

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

Always amazes me how any people want compulsory Irish for kids, but are not willing to do an evening course in it themselves...

Yes. "Someone should do something" comes to mind.

josephryan1989

mickydoomsux wrote: »

I don't use it because it is utterly redundant, obsolete and completely useless in modern Irish life.

Speak/teach it at home if you want but remove it from schools, official documents, road signs etc. because it is a waste of time and money to appease a vocal minority who will never be happy because their dream of a population fluent in Irish will never happen because it is a dead language that normal people don't care about in the slightest.

When the Shinners get into government they will make you care or else.

mickydoomsux

josephryan1989 wrote: »

When the Shinners get into government they will make you care or else.

Even the English on road signs will be in Irish then.

josephryan1989

mickydoomsux wrote: »

Even the English on road signs will be in Irish then.

Kids will have to learn Bobby Sands poetry as gaeilge.

inocybe

Dan_Solo wrote: »

1. You could when you finished your LC. Everybody could. The fact you can't speak it now is because you have no need to so you've forgotten every single word.
2. This isn't a reason to not speak Irish TBH. You can't blame the language itself for it being compulsory. It being useless is a good reason not to learn or speak it however.

Haha you're completely wrong.
1.When I did my LC I could not string together a spoken sentence, you can't tell me it isn't true - I was there 😄
2. You can't speak for me, you may find it illogical, but it's an emotional response and it is THE reason I won't even hear the language. I don't care about the usefulness or not.

FunLover18

whisky_galore wrote:

A majority of Irish people have a positive attitude to the language, in that they think it's 'nice' and it would be an awful shame if it was allowed to decline. At the same time they couldn't be ars*d learning it properly or speaking it.

Having a positive attitude is not the same as wanting to learn and speak the language. I have a positive attitude towards Irish in that I don't hate it, I appreciate it's a part of our culture and have no problem with other people CHOOSING to learn and speak which optional Irish would allow them to do but I have no desire to do so myself.

Dughorm

FunLover18 wrote: »

Having a positive attitude is not the same as wanting to learn and speak the language. I have a positive attitude towards Irish in that I don't hate it, I appreciate it's a part of our culture and have no problem with other people CHOOSING to learn and speak which optional Irish would allow them to do but I have no desire to do so myself.

Have you a positive attitude towards Shakespeare or Calculus? Would you prefer that schools provide people a choice to learn it?

Dughorm

inocybe wrote: »

Haha you're completely wrong.
1.When I did my LC I could not string together a spoken sentence, you can't tell me it isn't true - I was there 😄
2. You can't speak for me, you may find it illogical, but it's an emotional response and it is THE reason I won't even hear the language. I don't care about the usefulness or not.

Based on this year's leaving cert results it looks like Irish could be a lot of people's best subject - practically no one is failing higher level. If it were made optional many people may lose out on easy points by not choosing it...

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Dughorm wrote: »

Have you a positive attitude towards Shakespeare or Calculus? Would you prefer that schools provide people a choice to learn it?

Shakespeaere, yes, but I don't think that means EVERYONE should have to learn it.

RandomName2

Un Croissant wrote: »

A hand of friendship was extended to the Irish language. To help in survive and grow, but Eoghan slaps it away.

"I don't need your money or your pity"
"Usually when people say that they give the money back"
"I do what now?"
"Yoink!"

https://www.facebook.com/SimpsonsQuotesThatNobodyGetsAnymore

DyldeBrill

Dan_Solo wrote: »

But that's still a so what?
The problem isn't the way it's taught. Plenty of people come out of the Irish education system with a decent standard of Irish.
They just don't want to ever use it again. And why would they when they have another language that works 100% of the time, to a higher level and with almost all foreigners?

I see plenty of people using it after finishing secondary school. So don't know about that. Although there isn't a huge market, the work is certainly there. Why wouldn't they speak both? Whats wrong with wanting to speak it. If they enjoy conversing through Irish then that's their choice but you can't make an outrageous statement like you have saying that they will never want to speak the language again.

Dan_Solo wrote: »

I hate to break this to you but that's exactly how Gaelscoils work and nobody from those schools wants to speak Irish when they grow up. Why would they? English is more widely understood and to a more advanced level by pretty much 100% of the population of Ireland, not to mention Irish has 0% utility with foreigners, unlike English.
Why would even fluent Irish speakers want to speak Irish after school? Are you assuming they hate their more useful English for some reason?

I'm not sure if you were in a Gaelscoil or not but I certainly didn't get that impression in the Gaelscoil I was in. Of course there are people that won't but the majority of the people I finished school with still speak and use the language. Of course its important to learn other languages, but the way you're going about your whole argument is completely wrong in my eyes. I found that learning irish at a young age made it easier for me topick up other languages such as French and German in school.

mickydoomsux

DyldeBrill wrote: »

... the Gaelscoil I was in......

Your opinion on the matter becomes completely irrelevant at this point.

"I think the thing i was force-fed by my superiors at a crucial stage of my mental development is great, regardless of it being completely useless on a practical level to literally everyone else."

You are thinking in the exact same way as someone raised in a cult.

Ave Sodalis

mickydoomsux wrote: »

Your opinion on the matter becomes completely irrelevant at this point.

"I think the thing i was force-fed by my superiors at a crucial stage of my mental development is great, regardless of it being completely useless on a practical level to literally everyone else."

You are thinking in the exact same way as someone raised in a cult.

You could say that about any other topic. I've never used History and yet was forced to learn about it. It's been even less practical on a daily basis than learning Irish.

Dan_Solo

DyldeBrill wrote: »

I see plenty of people using it after finishing secondary school.

Well I see precisely nobody under 50 using Irish in Galway City.

DyldeBrill wrote: »

I found that learning irish at a young age made it easier for me topick up other languages such as French and German in school.

Oh this one again. I reckon your French and German would have been even better if you'd done extra French and German classes instead of Irish ones.

DyldeBrill

mickydoomsux wrote: »

Your opinion on the matter becomes completely irrelevant at this point.

"I think the thing i was force-fed by my superiors at a crucial stage of my mental development is great, regardless of it being completely useless on a practical level to literally everyone else."

You are thinking in the exact same way as someone raised in a cult.

So me sharing my experience is completely invalid? Get over yourself. Of course there are useless Gaelscoils out there where Irish isn't even implemented but to disregard my comment in that manner is simply ridiculous. I'm giving my opinion, from my experience. You obviously have your opinion and that's perfectly fine, I'm not asking you to like the language I was simply answering a point in which I saw was inaccurate.

Your comment is nothing but ignorant. Tell me how is I'm thinking of someone that's in a cult....? For simply sharing an opinion? pfft...

mickydoomsux

sup_dude wrote: »

You could say that about any other topic. I've never used History and yet was forced to learn about it. It's been even less practical on a daily basis than learning Irish.

They teach a bunch of useless stuff in schools because the ones getting paid to teach the useless stuff are the ones setting the curriculum.

Look at how ****ing useless people coming out of secondary school are at life to see how good the entire system is. It all needs a huge boot up the hole.

mickydoomsux

DyldeBrill wrote: »

So me sharing my experience is completely invalid? Get over yourself. Of course there are useless Gaelscoils out there where Irish isn't even implemented but to disregard my comment in that manner is simply ridiculous. I'm giving my opinion, from my experience. You obviously have your opinion and that's perfectly fine, I'm not asking you to like the language I was simply answering a point in which I saw was inaccurate.

Your comment is nothing but ignorant. Tell me how is I'm thinking of someone that's in a cult....? For simply sharing an opinion? pfft...

You went to a school that insisted in teaching everything through the medium of an irrelevant dead language and you are supporting this decision.

DyldeBrill

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Well I see precisely nobody under 50 using Irish in Galway City.Oh this one again. I reckon your French and German would have been even better if you'd done extra French and German classes instead of Irish ones.

In Galway City I've seen it spoken a lot. The only problem is is that its set exclusively for people who speak Irish. It should be an open invitation to all and not so closed off so I accept that you haven't heard it as much. I lived in Galway for 4 years and heard it hear and there...I guess I heard it more so than when I was living in Dublin. I lived in Connemara so I guess it was widely spoken there,

As for your second point again I agree...I'm simply saying that the fact that I had Irish at a young age enabled me to learn other languages just as easy. I could have learned Chinese or whatever language at a young age and it still would have benefited me going on to learn others. But why would it have been even better if I had done extra of these? If I had done that from the start I wouldn't have known Irish and yet I still went on to learn French and German. Its a personal preference of course and one I'm happy with.

Dan_Solo

sup_dude wrote: »

You could say that about any other topic. I've never used History and yet was forced to learn about it. It's been even less practical on a daily basis than learning Irish.

How could it be less practical than some that has, yes, zero practical value? And the Board of Education forced you to do History up to LC level? Are you sure about that?

DyldeBrill

mickydoomsux wrote: »

You went to a school that insisted in teaching everything through the medium of an irrelevant dead language and you are supporting this decision.

Calm down there with your narrow minded approach there dude. What makes it irrelevant? Fair enough, I can clearly see you dislike the language and that's your choice to do so....Graaaand! But the way you've constructed your point is so ridiculous I really don't know how to answer it...but that must be because I went to an Irish school so that's on me for not understanding.

Ave Sodalis

Dan_Solo wrote: »

How could it be less practical than some that has, yes, zero practical value? And the Board of Education forced you to do History up to LC level? Are you sure about that?

Only because you believe it has zero practical value. Are you sure I said to LC Level?

Dan_Solo

DyldeBrill wrote: »

As for your second point again I agree...I'm simply saying that the fact that I had Irish at a young age enabled me to learn other languages just as easy. I could have learned Chinese or whatever language at a young age and it still would have benefited me going on to learn others. But why would it have been even better if I had done extra of these? If I had done that from the start I wouldn't have known Irish and yet I still went on to learn French and German. Its a personal preference of course and one I'm happy with.

Why would your French be better if you did two hours of French instead of and hour of French and an hour of Irish? Is that a real question?

Dan_Solo

sup_dude wrote: »

Only because you believe it has zero practical value. Are you sure I said to LC Level?

I know it has zero practical value as there are fully zero instances that aren't artificially manufactured by the state when aptitude in Irish is of any benefit.
So your position is that knowing how to speak Irish is more important and practical than knowing anything about Ireland... where everybody speaks English anyway?