We must rid ourselves of our ludicrous language laws

dubhthach

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

A ban bit be somewhat harsh though I'd be in favour of making the Irish language lobby fund itself as opposed to financing its strangulation of the language.

But surely we need an actual accurate figure for how much the Irish language actually costs, instead we see people flinging around Ed Walsh's figures from his 2011 article which he never backed up by the way and which only cover education system.

The unofficial policy of the state since the 1960's has been the "strangulation of the language". Even JJ Lee basically says this in his book "Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society" published 26 years ago in 1989.

After all what good is a cermonial language if there are pesky natives who won't get with program and stopped speaking it (except when it can be rolled out to open an off-license or something by a right honourable member of parliament)

ancapailldorcha

dubhthach wrote: »

But surely we need an actual accurate figure for how much the Irish language actually costs, instead we see people flinging around Ed Walsh's figures from his 2011 article which he never backed up by the way and which only cover education system.

The unofficial policy of the state since the 1960's has been the "strangulation of the language". Even JJ Lee basically says this in his book "Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society" published 26 years ago in 1989.

After all what good is a cermonial language if there are pesky natives who won't get with program and stopped speaking it (except when it can be rolled out to open an off-license or something by a right honourable member of parliament)

I'm not sure what your point is here. Regarding the cost, one must factor in the loss of skills which could otherwise be gained. I'm thinking of skills such as coding, critical thought, science, economics, prudent management of one's finances, etc...

Regarding the "pesky natives who won't get with program", what do you mean? I'd be surprised if anyone was speaking it more than English to be honest. There were around 77,000, approximately 2% of the population who self-identified as "fluent" in the 2011 census. I think that the real figure is a lot less than that.

dubhthach

Let somehow the Dutch end up learning 3+ languages in school and have no problem picking up computer programming. If anything they are our main competitors with our sole advantage been how we "subsidise" US companies with favourable tax rates (go ask EU comission about that). How is teaching of Irish somehow preventing teaching of critical thinking? Do you think if it was banned that suddenly all of those topics would suddenly improve? Sounds fantastical tbh

2% of population identified as been daily speakers outside education system. Question wasn't about fluency but about frequency, the next headline figure was 110k claimed to use language at least once a week (again outside education system). If we pour a cynical figure on these numbers and say cut them by 50% you still looking at a linguistic community of at least 100k people. Which if anything matches alot of figures coming out of research for the last 20 years or so.

Here's how those 2% of population who describe themselves as dialy speakers distribute, unsurprising the Gaeltacht stands out:



As for fluency I'd say I have a higher fluency than most people with my "Lofa Líofa" Irish, however I put myself down in census as "Less Often" which make sense as most of my use of language is either passive (eg. tv/radio) or via the internet.

But hey again why not just have a referendum, delete article 8 (which would also remove pesky issue of irish language text having precedence in law etc.) and same time ban teaching of Irish in Bearloirí schools, after all if the parents really want it they can send kids to it outside of school just like codo-Dojo or the like. (Amazingly only learning to code in University didn't have an impact on my professional career in IT, who'd have thought!)

Shep_Dog

dubhthach wrote: »

As a native Bearloirí myself I'd fully support that, but than again I don't see how my language rights as an English speaker are been trampled on.

Parents are being denied the right to choose which languages are taught to their children.

ancapailldorcha

dubhthach wrote: »

Let somehow the Dutch end up learning 3+ languages in school and have no problem picking up computer programming. If anything they are our main competitors with our sole advantage been how we "subsidise" US companies with favourable tax rates (go ask EU comission about that). How is teaching of Irish somehow preventing teaching of critical thinking? Do you think if it was banned that suddenly all of those topics would suddenly improve? Sounds fantastical tbh

It's the amount of time devoted to Irish that's the problem. The syllabus has other problems but Irish is the main one. It needs to be excised immediately or at least made optional. We've had US employers import hundreds of their own staff due to the inferiority of the Irish graduates.

dubhthach wrote: »

2% of population identified as been daily speakers outside education system. Question wasn't about fluency but about frequency, the next headline figure was 110k claimed to use language at least once a week (again outside education system). If we pour a cynical figure on these numbers and say cut them by 50% you still looking at a linguistic community of at least 100k people. Which if anything matches alot of figures coming out of research for the last 20 years or so.

Here's how those 2% of population who describe themselves as dialy speakers distribute, unsurprising the Gaeltacht stands out:

As for fluency I'd say I have a higher fluency than most people with my "Lofa Líofa" Irish, however I put myself down in census as "Less Often" which make sense as most of my use of language is either passive (eg. tv/radio) or via the internet.

But hey again why not just have a referendum, delete article 8 (which would also remove pesky issue of irish language text having precedence in law etc.) and same time ban teaching of Irish in Bearloirí schools, after all if the parents really want it they can send kids to it outside of school just like codo-Dojo or the like. (Amazingly only learning to code in University didn't have an impact on my professional career in IT, who'd have thought!)[/QUOTE]

Deleting that article would result in the Irish language lobby, teachers unions, the Church and any other parasites you'd care to mention crawl from the woodwork to protect their taxpayer subsidised gravy train. Look at what happened when Fine Gael wanted to make it an optional Leaving Cert subject a few years ago.

Incidentally, if there are so many speakers then why are there no independent media outlets catering for them?

dubhthach

Shep_Dog wrote: »

Parents are being denied the right to choose which languages are taught to their children.

Aren't they also be denied what History is thought to their children, after all what good is covering Irish history going to do them in job market?

Again simple solution: Ban Irish in english speaking schools.

ancapailldorcha

dubhthach wrote: »

Aren't they also be denied what History is thought to their children, after all what good is covering Irish history going to do them in job market?

Learning history can set a student down a road learning valuable skills. Learning Irish merely funnels them back into a broken system.

Shep_Dog

dubhthach wrote: »

Aren't they also be denied what History is thought to their children, after all what good is covering Irish history going to do them in job market?
Again simple solution: Ban Irish in english speaking schools.

Language is different and very personal, just like religion.

Banning Irish will only play into the hands of Conradh. Just make Irish an optional subject, like tennis or hurling.

dubhthach

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

It's the amount of time devoted to Irish that's the problem. The syllabus has other problems but Irish is the main one. It needs to be excised immediately or at least made optional. We've had US employers import hundreds of their own staff due to the inferiority of the Irish graduates.



Here's how those 2% of population who describe themselves as dialy speakers distribute, unsurprising the Gaeltacht stands out:

As for fluency I'd say I have a higher fluency than most people with my "Lofa Líofa" Irish, however I put myself down in census as "Less Often" which make sense as most of my use of language is either passive (eg. tv/radio) or via the internet.

But hey again why not just have a referendum, delete article 8 (which would also remove pesky issue of irish language text having precedence in law etc.) and same time ban teaching of Irish in Bearloirí schools, after all if the parents really want it they can send kids to it outside of school just like codo-Dojo or the like. (Amazingly only learning to code in University didn't have an impact on my professional career in IT, who'd have thought!)

Deleting that article would result in the Irish language lobby, teachers unions, the Church and any other parasites you'd care to mention crawl from the woodwork to protect their taxpayer subsidised gravy train. Look at what happened when Fine Gael wanted to make it an optional Leaving Cert subject a few years ago.

Incidentally, if there are so many speakers then why are there no independent media outlets catering for them?[/QUOTE]

Why would the church care about Article 8? After all the Church was one of major angliscaing forces in Ireland during the 19th century. As for Fine Gall, well just because they lacked the balls to hold referendum doesn't mean one shouldn't be held eh?

I mean isn't the whole point of a democracy that we can robust political debate about such things? If the people decide to scrap the article great, if they don't and decide to keep it well that's democracy ain't it.

You talk about a gravy train but how much money is actually spent? As I've pointed out you could ban Irish from school system and teachers would still get paid same amount. If we combine the funding of "Craggy Island" (Depart of Arts ....) that's spent on Irish language and TG4 we looking at under 100million, so what does the Gravy train come to?

As for time devoted to Irish, back in 1980's it's was about 5.5hours/week it's now at 3.5hours/week let no rejoicing from usual suspects. That adds up to about 936 hours over 8 years of primary school.

In Ontario back in late 70's the reckoned ye need about 1,200 hours of language contact to achive "basic competency" in a second language

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”.

When you factor in secondary school the figure reaches 1,388 hours, so straight in middle between "basic" and "middle" levels. Now your average Irish student gets about 452 hours of contact with a European language in secondary school (same amount of time as Irish). There's no way that Irish schools can produce fluent French speakers (for example) without increasing the time spent on French over course of education to at least 2,000 hours.

As for US companies having worked in several the main reason why they bring in workers from abroad is they want Native speakers, they don't want their customers in Munich ringing up and getting Paddy from South Dublin with his Dort inflected German mangling the language.

The Irish education system would never produce enough speakers of multiple European languages (there's at least 30-40 languages in Google dublin office for example) plus as far as they are concerned getting employee's to reloacated to Ireland from other EU states is no different from getting american employee's to reallocated from Portland to Seattle.

dubhthach

Shep_Dog wrote: »

Language is different and very personal, just like religion.

Banning Irish will only play into the hands of Conradh. Just make Irish an optional subject, like tennis or hurling.

I wasn't aware that either Hurling or Tennis were curricular subjects in Ireland, who cares what Conradh think, ye swear they were some sorta sleeping giant, they fairly tiny organisation.

The Corinthian

dubhthach wrote: »

I do, I've paid north of €120,000+ in PAYE and PRSI, let alone VAT, fuel duty, stamp duty etc since I've graduated, how much have you paid?

More than you.

Anyways didn't I state above that the 3.5 hours per week could be replaced with other subjects?

Actually, you suggested the unions would block any such cut in Irish because Irish would no long be taught. So yes, you did.

However the idea that the state could save €1 billion/year from banning teaching of Irish is a mirage, the state would still spend the same amount of money on payroll.

As Permabear has already pointed out, that money saved would naturally be spend elsewhere - on something which benefits our society far more than Irish.

Now the question is how much should the state actually spend on Irish language per year when you strip out teachers salaries?

Remove it's obligatory status and let the parents decide.

Shep_Dog wrote: »

Banning Irish will only play into the hands of Conradh. Just make Irish an optional subject, like tennis or hurling.

Who's said anything about banning Irish?

dubhthach

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Learning history can set a student down a road learning valuable skills. Learning Irish merely funnels them back into a broken system.

How so? Been bilingulal makes it considerably easier to learn a third or fourth language. For example once I realised that the vowel system was identical in Dutch as in Irish (eg. ee = é) I suddenly found it lot easier working with my dutch colleagues (not mangling their names) or when I had to work for time in the Netherlands.

Again what is economic value of Irish history? Shouldn't it just be replaced with standardised international history curriculum? Does knowing something about Plantation of Laois/Offaly make you more hireable for a US multinational looking to cheat on their corporation taxes?

But fumble in a greasy till
And add the ha’pence to the pence

ancapailldorcha

dubhthach wrote: »

Why would the church care about Article 8? After all the Church was one of major angliscaing forces in Ireland during the 19th century. As for Fine Gall, well just because they lacked the balls to hold referendum doesn't mean one shouldn't be held eh?

Once compulsory Irish is removed from the education system, religion would hopefully be next.

dubhthach wrote: »

You talk about a gravy train but how much money is actually spent? As I've pointed out you could ban Irish from school system and teachers would still get paid same amount. If we combine the funding of "Craggy Island" (Depart of Arts ....) that's spent on Irish language and TG4 we looking at under 100million, so what does the Gravy train come to?

You're only talking about time spent teaching and ignored the points about replacing it with other subjects. You've also assumed that the unions would automatically get their way.

dubhthach wrote: »

As for US companies having worked in several the main reason why they bring in workers from abroad is they want Native speakers, they don't want their customers in Munich ringing up and getting Paddy from South Dublin with his Dort inflected German mangling the language.

The Irish education system would never produce enough speakers of multiple European languages (there's at least 30-40 languages in Google dublin office for example) plus as far as they are concerned getting employee's to reloacated to Ireland from other EU states is no different from getting american employee's to reallocated from Portland to Seattle.

This is quite unconvincing. European schools enable students to be highly proficient in multiple languages. There is no reason, barring unions, the Irish lobby and others why our system can't be excellent.

Carlos Orange

dubhthach wrote: »

How so? Been bilingulal makes it considerably easier to learn a third or fourth language.

How often has learning Irish in an Irish school made someone bilingual? Someone who wasn't in an already bilingual home.

Shep_Dog

The Corinthian wrote: »

Who's said anything about banning Irish?

Dubhthach.
But, I suspect this was a trojan, straw-man argument.

Permabear

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dubhthach

The Corinthian wrote: »

More than you.

Good for you, hope the good burghers of Zurich enjoy your tax.

Actually, you suggested the unions would block any such cut in Irish because Irish would no long be taught. So yes, you did.

What I stated was:

dubhthach wrote: »

If you banned teaching of Irish in morning there would be minimum savings on this, due to the fact the the teachers Unions would go on strike if their members were to loose on the order of 800-900million+ in payroll.

The unions couldn't give a fig what their members spend 3.5 hours a week at as long as they don't loose out on 800million a year in payrole. My point quite simply is that there is minimum saving from removing Irish from curriculum when it comes to current budget of Department of Education.

Remove it's obligatory status and let the parents decide.

Who's said anything about banning Irish?

I thought it was fairly obvious that I suggested that Irish should be "banned" from core curriculum of english speaking schools. Again if Bearloirí parents want it they can have their children in extra-curricular classes or send them to Gaelscoil.

Are you against removing Irish from the core curriculum of english speaking schools? Or is your preferred option that what ever percentage of children whose parents want them to do Irish in school should have those children taken out of class and thought by equivalent of a resource teacher in parallel to the stream of kids who've opted out?

Sounds lot easier to just remove it from the standard school day and than have it as optional module during out of school hours (eg. from 2.45pm etc.)

dubhthach

Shep_Dog wrote: »

Dubhthach.
But, I suspect this was a trojan, straw-man argument.

No I actually think that Bearloirí who are so strident in moaning about "dead language" status of Irish shouldn't have it forced on them. Ergo it should be removed from curriculum in English speaking school, that's tantamount to a ban during the standard school day.

I mean it's fairly obvious that 90 years of Goverenment interference hasn't done anything for the language.

Would you prefer that it wasn't removed?

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Shep_Dog

dubhthach wrote: »

No I actually think that Bearloirí who are so strident in moaning about "dead language" status of Irish shouldn't have it forced on them. Ergo it should be removed from curriculum in English speaking school, that's tantamount to a ban during the standard school day.
I mean it's fairly obvious that 90 years of Goverenment interference hasn't done anything for the language.
Would you prefer that it wasn't removed?

I'd let the schools decide based on local demand.

dubhthach

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

How can you have functionality bilingualism with just 1,300 hours of language contact? It's impossible, of course if child goes to Gaelscoil and Gaelcholáiste they end up with 10k hours of language contact, which is more than double what is suggested for functionality bilingulaism in Ontario study. The emphasis of course is on contact (eg. they do not curricular items such as PE in Irish, ergo reinforces speaking ability), given that people keep telling us that there no Irish monglots left (there are some people in their 60's and older who have very basic english), than there's on order of probably 200,000 functionality bilingulals in Ireland today. Though I'd say that 100k of those make up main linguistic community.

Again by "banning" Irish in english speaking schools you at least remove the whole "13 years wasted etc." after all how can you complain about it if ye didn't voluntary (well or your parents volunteer) do the subject as extra-curricula course.

Wouldn't it be preferable if we just taught people French, Dutch, or German directly? In reality, only 7% of Irish ten-year-olds are learning a foreign language, versus an EU average of over 70%.

Sure all we have to do is spend the money to have a skilled enough number of teachers to teach those languages. Simple solution would be to ensure that every primary school has at least two native speaking foreign language teacher (eg. French, German etc.) whose timetabled to have a dedicated numbers of hours with each class. I mean if likes of Paypal can't find French or German (let alone Dutch) speaking workers from Ireland where do you think Department of Education is going to find them.

Shep_Dog

dubhthach wrote: »

How can you have functionality bilingualism with just 1,300 hours of language contact? It's impossible, of course if child goes to Gaelscoil and Gaelcholáiste they end up with 10k hours of language contact, which is more than double what is suggested for functionality bilingulaism in Ontario study.

They may become bilingual, but not functionally bilingual in a social sense as Irish is no longer our functional language.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

PeadarCo

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

To be honest I don't think anyone would argue against taking Irish completely off the school curriculum. From a cultural point of view it would be good to keep just not with the same level of focus. Particularly as people approach the Leaving Cert and begin to specialise subject wise.

When people take about bilingualism in European countries it should be noted many of them have no other option to learn English. For example I came across a person from Slovenia who learned English by watching films. The Slovenian language has "only" 2.5 million speakers which means alot of films aren't dubbed into the language. People end up watching English films with subtitles. The Irish Language has maybe 100k daily speakers if we're being generous so faces similar challenges just on a vastly different scale.

Most children who learn Irish in school don't have any other interaction with it outside school so there's not the same reinforcement that would come with other core subjects such as basic maths and english.

A question of Irish language speakers how do you think the Irish language should be kept alive? The only hope I see for the language is that its kept alive even just for hobbiests and hope at some point circumstances change that would help properly revive it.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

I'd rephrase the question: how do Irish speakers think the language could flourish?

zeffabelli

From an educational perspective, forcing students to learn something, without the reaching of concrete specific goals, is very bad for self esteem.

The results of spending so many years trying to learn something that produces nothing, is actively bad for you and your sense of accomplishment.

Shep_Dog

zeffabelli wrote: »

From an educational perspective, forcing students to learn something, without the reaching of concrete specific goals, is very bad for self esteem. The results of spending so many years trying to learn something that produces nothing, is actively bad for you and your sense of accomplishment.

Worse still is when children are shamed into learning Irish and told that anyone who does not speak it is not a proper Irish person. Kids are not stupid and see this for the lie that it is, but they also learn not to trust the people who've set themselves up as their cultural superiors.

It is for this reason that we have a huge number of people who claim to speak Irish (so as to appear to to be Culturally Correct), but don't.

zeffabelli

I have no Irish at all. My boy gets 9 s and 10s on his math and English Friday tests. He gets 1s and zeroes on his Irish.

What does this tell me?

It tells me I need an active strategy to antidote the attrition of his self esteem by these exams for a language which won't matter to him or me and is clearly not being taught in any productive manner.

I am foreign so I can take a distance from this, but witnessing what my boy is enduring, has caused me great sympathy for the greater population and generations of Ireland who have had their self esteem eroded by the fruitless vanity project, endorsed by a select few both ideologically and financially driven.

Grudaire

zeffabelli wrote:

From an educational perspective, forcing students to learn something, without the reaching of concrete specific goals, is very bad for self esteem.

Does this argument not apply to all subjects?

ancapailldorcha

Grudaire wrote: »

Does this argument not apply to all subjects?

No. The Irish syllabus is blatantly unfit for purpose.