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We must rid ourselves of our ludicrous language laws

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    #242
    gananam
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 71 ✭✭gananam


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Irish is 'perfectly useless' is it? Is that why both Google and Facebook have provided their sites in Irish? You can add in several other multinationals to that list too, Twitter, Firefox and Microsoft also provide Irish versions of their products. Translation into Irish for private companies is putting a friend of mine through college. So much for unemployable.


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    #243
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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    #244
    Carlos Orange
    Registered Users Posts: 2,499 ✭✭✭Carlos Orange


    gananam wrote: »
    Irish is 'perfectly useless' is it? Is that why both Google and Facebook have provided their sites in Irish? You can add in several other multinationals to that list too, Twitter, Firefox and Microsoft also provide Irish versions of their products. Translation into Irish for private companies is putting a friend of mine through college. So much for unemployable.

    Right up there with upside down English and speaking like a pirate.


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    #245
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 34,494 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    gananam wrote: »
    Irish is 'perfectly useless' is it? Is that why both Google and Facebook have provided their sites in Irish? You can add in several other multinationals to that list too, Twitter, Firefox and Microsoft also provide Irish versions of their products. Translation into Irish for private companies is putting a friend of mine through college. So much for unemployable.


    I'd love to see what the hit ratios are on those sites, Irish v English

    Same with the annoying language choice button you have to press on BoI ATMs.

    Commercially, doing this is a complete waste of time and money, but maybe there's a grant in it.

    But finally in your post above we get to the nub of the issue, the whole thing is about keeping people in make-work translation jobs, same as the EU official language malarkey. It's frankly embarrassing that this country can make not only or own taxpayers, but those of other countries, waste money in this way.

    Fingal County Council are certainly not competent to be making decisions about the most important piece of infrastructure on the island. They need to stick to badly designed cycle lanes and deciding on whether Mrs Murphy can have her kitchen extension.



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    #246
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 34,494 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    gananam wrote: »
    for the benefits of learning a language, Irish is as good a language as any

    It really, really, really, isn't.

    It's probably the worst choice we could make.

    Fingal County Council are certainly not competent to be making decisions about the most important piece of infrastructure on the island. They need to stick to badly designed cycle lanes and deciding on whether Mrs Murphy can have her kitchen extension.



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    #247
    PopePalpatine
    Registered Users Posts: 11,883 ✭✭✭✭PopePalpatine


    I'd say in Facebook's case, there's probably a hefty tax write-off in providing services in Irish. :pac:


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    #248
    Grudaire
    Registered Users Posts: 3,620 ✭✭✭Grudaire


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    I'd love to see what the hit ratios are on those sites, Irish v English

    Like many of the most useful things available through Irish Facebook has been translated by a volunteer community of Irish Speakers. Other translations that have occurred include Firefox, Linux, Wikipedia, LibreOffice etc etc
    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    Same with the annoying language choice button you have to press on BoI ATMs.

    I can assure you that it is not as annoying as being compulsed to use English to do daily tasks! :pac:

    As an aside I think that could be coded as a one-off choice, rather than needing to be picked every-time.


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    #249
    Shep_Dog
    Closed Accounts Posts: 499 ✭✭Shep_Dog


    Grudaire wrote: »
    Like many of the most useful things available through Irish Facebook has been translated by a volunteer community of Irish Speakers. Other translations that have occurred include Firefox, Linux, Wikipedia, LibreOffice etc etc
    That's an evasive answer. The question was about takeup and hit-rates on Irish-language material.
    Grudaire wrote: »
    LI can assure you that it is not as annoying as being compulsed to use English to do daily tasks! :pac:
    Why should it be annoying to talk to people in their native language?
    Grudaire wrote: »
    As an aside I think that could be coded as a one-off choice, rather than needing to be picked every-time.
    It's good that you agree to the concept of supporting language choice for English speakers.


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    #250
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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    #251
    The Corinthian
    Closed Accounts Posts: 19,777 ✭✭✭✭The Corinthian


    Grudaire wrote: »
    Like many of the most useful things available through Irish Facebook has been translated by a volunteer community of Irish Speakers. Other translations that have occurred include Firefox, Linux, Wikipedia, LibreOffice etc etc
    Heh, on Wikipedia there are 36,090 articles on the Irish edition. Meanwhile, there are more articles in regional dialects such as Piedmontese (63,852), Breton (55,564) and Occitan (88,625).

    Even more amusingly, there are significantly more articles published in Latin (122,436) - a dead language - or even Esperanto (220,149) - an invented one. Yes, a made up language has greater uptake than Irish.

    Of course, this may be due to a lack of Irish speakers willing to translate or author articles without government funding, but it ultimately adds up to what appears to be the lowest ranked national language in terms of articles on Wikipedia as a whole, for any developed nation. At least with some, they have the excuse of not having much Internet access - Ireland does not.

    So I wouldn't draw too too much attention to the language online, as it compares rather embarrassingly when compared with other languages from developed World.


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    #252
    zeffabelli
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,516 ✭✭✭zeffabelli


    1. The argument learning Irish helps learn other languages.

    a. One has to actually learn the language ... This is not happening. Not learning Irish is not going to help people learn French or German.

    b. Irish has to actually be taught. Sending home random vocabulary words no one can actually pronounce or recognise aurally is not teaching a language. It's just rote learning time wasting. Research has already established rote learning is not education.

    b. Makes far more sense to learn one of those other languages first as the stepping stone/bridge.

    2. The argument for learning a dead language.

    a. Latin would make far more sense as it gives us access to the history/culture/and mindset of Europe as well as honing of rhetoric in our own language. Latin is dead only like a dead star is.... The light keeps shining.

    3. The argument connecting education with employability.

    a. Schools are still modelled on the late 19th century industrial model with Victorian ideas about the work place. As a general rule schools are about 60 years behind what employers want and need.

    Irish is a severely tenacious hangover from an Irish Victorian model of education and identity formation. It's time to move on folks.


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    #253
    Carlos Orange
    Registered Users Posts: 2,499 ✭✭✭Carlos Orange


    zeffabelli wrote: »
    1. The argument learning Irish helps learn other languages.

    a. One has to actually learn the language ... This is not happening. Not learning Irish is not going to help people learn French or German.

    Arguably years of not learning Irish sets the stage for doing poorly with other more useful languages.


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    #254
    StudentDad
    Registered Users Posts: 1,493 ✭✭✭StudentDad


    My experience of Irish in school was awful. National school and secondary. It was taught so badly I actually came to hate the language. It had no relevance to me in day to day life. Fast forward a good few years, my wife is fluent in Irish, no thanks to the schools she attended. It irritates her no end to see signage around the place that are supposedly in Irish but are drafted by people who don't seem to know the language!

    The way I see it the language needs to be made relevant to day to day life. Otherwise what's the point? Coercing people to work in a language that has little meaning in day to day life is pointless and frankly irritating.

    SD


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    #255
    zeffabelli
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,516 ✭✭✭zeffabelli


    psinno wrote: »
    Arguably years of not learning Irish sets the stage for doing poorly with other more useful languages.

    Absolutely. It's actively destructive through the attrition of self esteem and negative feedback loops.


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    #256
    zeffabelli
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,516 ✭✭✭zeffabelli


    StudentDad wrote: »
    My experience of Irish in school was awful. National school and secondary. It was taught so badly I actually came to hate the language. It had no relevance to me in day to day life. Fast forward a good few years, my wife is fluent in Irish, no thanks to the schools she attended. It irritates her no end to see signage around the place that are supposedly in Irish but are drafted by people who don't seem to know the language!

    The way I see it the language needs to be made relevant to day to day life. Otherwise what's the point? Coercing people to work in a language that has little meaning in day to day life is pointless and frankly irritating.

    SD

    That's exactly it. The whole point if language is meaning and if it had no meaning... It's no longer a language.

    In this framework one could actually argue that Irish is not a language but something else... Since it does not generate or provide meaning...

    It's part of a mindset that refuses to give up on the hope of a better past.


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    #257
    StudentDad
    Registered Users Posts: 1,493 ✭✭✭StudentDad


    zeffabelli wrote: »
    That's exactly it. The whole point if language is meaning and if it had no meaning... It's no longer a language.

    In this framework one could actually argue that Irish is not a language but something else... Since it does not generate or provide meaning...

    This makes me think of an experiment I read about. Sorry can't provide a link. Where a father tried teaching his very young child Klingon. It worked well for a while until the child realised that Klingon wasn't exactly useful and the child lost all interest in it. If I go into town and everyone there is speaking French, I'll learn French. It has a direct relevance to my life, Irish doesn't. Would it be nice to be able to speak Irish? Sure. I could say the same about any language though. As it stands though, apart from idealistic notions about nationality, learning Irish to a workable level does not appear to merit the effort.

    SD


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    #258
    zeffabelli
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,516 ✭✭✭zeffabelli


    StudentDad wrote: »
    This makes me think of an experiment I read about. Sorry can't provide a link. Where a father tried teaching his very young child Klingon. It worked well for a while until the child realised that Klingon wasn't exactly useful and the child lost all interest in it. If I go into town and everyone there is speaking French, I'll learn French. It has a direct relevance to my life, Irish doesn't. Would it be nice to be able to speak Irish? Sure. I could say the same about any language though. As it stands though, apart from idealistic notions about nationality, learning Irish to a workable level does not appear to merit the effort.

    SD

    There's no motivation. I picked French because of ballet and cosmetics, wine and perfume, basically.

    The language is acquired via access to other interests.

    I love food I'll learn Italian. I want to trade with China I'll learn mandarin.


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    #259
    gananam
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 71 ✭✭gananam


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Having to move the goalposts a long way now I see, I thought your position was that Irish is 'perfectly useless' to multinationals like Google and Facebook? Just admit that you are wrong, both Facebook and Google provide their services in Irish, for Google it goes well beyond just their search engine. And as I mentioned, its not just Google and Facebook, others like Twitter, Microsoft and Samsung also provide Irish on their products.

    Hard to argue that Irish is 'perfectly useless' to these companies when they are in fact using it on their products, don't you agree.

    Plenty of private business include Irish as part of their products, the idea that Irish is useless is, plainly, a nonsense. Perhaps you should remove the ideological blinkers that blind you to this.

    The translation industry is obviously supported by the legislative requirements being debated in this thread. If the state weren't compelling county councils to translate their development reports into Irish, for example, there would be much less translation work for people like your friend.

    Actually the translation work my friend does is for private companies, there is no legislative requirement on the likes of Google to provide things like Gmail in Irish or for Microsoft to provide Windows and other products in Irish.

    As for the report you mentions, I'm sure the English version was a best seller, I'm sure the sales of that version easily paid back the cost of producing it (I'm being sarcastic by the way). Since when have public reports been provided on a commercial basis?




    To address the wider topic, I've seen critics of the Irish language refer to it as a 'mom and apple pie' issue. They are of course correct, state support for Irish has wide support and is not a controversial or divisive issue. Only a small minority have a problem with it and thats why its not going anywhere, no matter how many threads that handful of vocal critics start on Boards.


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    #260
    PopePalpatine
    Registered Users Posts: 11,883 ✭✭✭✭PopePalpatine


    Do you have any polls for support of compulsory Irish? All I'm seeing from a quick Google search is an incredibly biased poll from an Irish language advocacy group.


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    #261
    gananam
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 71 ✭✭gananam


    PopePalpatine wrote: »
    Do you have any polls for support of compulsory Irish? All I'm seeing from a quick Google search is an incredibly biased poll from an Irish language advocacy group.

    Who carried out that poll? Was it the group themselves or did they get a reputable polling agency to do it on their behalf? If it was the latter, are you suggesting that the company involved compromised themselves by altering the result?


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    #262
    zeffabelli
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,516 ✭✭✭zeffabelli


    gananam wrote: »
    Who carried out that poll? Was it the group themselves or did they get a reputable polling agency to do it on their behalf? If it was the latter, are you suggesting that the company involved compromised themselves by altering the result?

    You have not provided one viable defence for the amount of money, time, stress and investment for Irish.

    You come up with Twitter and Facebook and guess what, they are American... You rely on the US an anglophone country in your defence????? It's honestly sad so so so pitiable.

    Here's the facts. The Irish cartel invest their identity in this language and they narcissistically expect everyone else to also... In a true facist spirit of trying to rewrite the desires and identities of others.

    No one gives a ****. Wake up. But they are resentful if money that could go into healthcare, time that could go into math or science, going on a pipe dream of political nostalgia for an Ireland that will never ever exist.

    You are European now. Catch up!


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    #263
    PopePalpatine
    Registered Users Posts: 11,883 ✭✭✭✭PopePalpatine


    gananam wrote: »
    Who carried out that poll? Was it the group themselves or did they get a reputable polling agency to do it on their behalf? If it was the latter, are you suggesting that the company involved compromised themselves by altering the result?

    It was the group themselves, IIRC.


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    #264
    gananam
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 71 ✭✭gananam


    zeffabelli wrote: »
    No one gives a ****. Wake up. But they are resentful if money that could go into healthcare, time that could go into math or science, going on a pipe dream of political nostalgia for an Ireland that will never ever exist.

    You are European now. Catch up!

    Yes, I am European, and happy that both of my languages are in use at the heart of Europe.

    As for the ráiméis above, if you are correct and most people support the removal of Irish, then what exactly is stopping them? You do realise that Irish speakers are only a small minority of the population right? We can't outvote the English speaking majority in this country.

    The reality is, as I said, that the Irish language does in fact enjoy wide support across the population. State support for Irish is not a controversial issue. There are a handful of critics like yourself who resent the Irish language and state support for it, but that feeling is not shared by any significant amount of people here. If it was there might be some kind of political opposition to the Irish language, as it stands, there is none. Politicians are not fools when it comes to assessing the mood of the people, if there is a bandwagon to jump on, jump they will. Find me the politician who has jumped on the anti Irish bandwagon. There aren't any because they are shrewd enough to realise that such a move would get them nowhere.


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    #265
    gananam
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 71 ✭✭gananam


    PopePalpatine wrote: »
    It was the group themselves, IIRC.

    Well in that case its not worth the paper its written on, even if they were not trying to make up a result that suited them, they wouldn't have the necessary experience to do a poll correctly to remove sample bias and other inaccuracies.


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    #266
    Carlos Orange
    Registered Users Posts: 2,499 ✭✭✭Carlos Orange


    gananam wrote: »
    Politicians are not fools when it comes to assessing the mood of the people, if there is a bandwagon to jump on, jump they will.

    People are often fairly silent on hidden costs. If you asked them directly should a county council spend €30,000 translating a report that no one is even bothered to read in Irish or spend that money on something else I'm pretty sure the answers would lean strongly in one direction. Minority agendas with hidden costs , whether it is the Irish language or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank would be more opposed if the costs were a single line item instead of hidden away.


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    #267
    PopePalpatine
    Registered Users Posts: 11,883 ✭✭✭✭PopePalpatine


    Opposition to compulsory Irish in schools != opposition to the Irish language's existence. Would you class the support for optional Irish as "political opposition to the Irish language"? The Socialist Party and SWP/AAA/PBP oppose compulsory Irish (it's probably their sanest policy, along with their policy on the nonsensical balkanisation of schools along the "patronage" system) and Fine Gael opposed it until the Gaeliban threw their toys out of the pram.


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    #268
    gananam
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 71 ✭✭gananam


    PopePalpatine wrote: »
    Opposition to compulsory Irish in schools != opposition to the Irish language's existence. Would you class the support for optional Irish as "political opposition to the Irish language"? The Socialist Party and SWP/AAA/PBP oppose compulsory Irish (it's probably their sanest policy, along with their policy on the nonsensical balkanisation of schools along the "patronage" system) and Fine Gael opposed it until the Gaeliban threw their toys out of the pram.

    Of course favoring optional Irish does not mean opposition to the language itself necessarily. My comment were in relation to the topic of the thread itself, ie: removing state support and the language rights of Irish speakers. No matter how you spin it, supporting that does equal opposition to the language itself. But as I've said previously, only an insignificant minority do actually support that, so there's not much to be concerned about there.


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    #269
    gananam
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 71 ✭✭gananam


    PopePalpatine wrote: »
    It was the group themselves, IIRC.

    By the way, I did a quick search myself, Tuairisc.ie, the Irish language news website, commissioned a poll on that question a while back. The poll was carried out by Millward Brown. Result was 55% in favor of compulsory Irish, 34% against (11% no opinion)


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    #270
    keane2097
    Registered Users Posts: 17,770 ✭✭✭✭keane2097


    gananam wrote: »
    Having to move the goalposts a long way now I see, I thought your position was that Irish is 'perfectly useless' to multinationals like Google and Facebook? Just admit that you are wrong, both Facebook and Google provide their services in Irish, for Google it goes well beyond just their search engine. And as I mentioned, its not just Google and Facebook, others like Twitter, Microsoft and Samsung also provide Irish on their products.

    Are you genuinely offering this as an argument?

    Google also offer their products in 'Pirate'.


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    #271
    gananam
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 71 ✭✭gananam


    keane2097 wrote: »
    Are you genuinely offering this as an argument?

    Google also offer their products in 'Pirate'.

    So what? The argument was that Irish is 'perfectly useless' to multinationals like Google. I was merely disproving that point, its irrelevant what other languages Google offers its products in.


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