When did the Irish stop speaking Irish?

Dots1982

I'm guessing it was sometime in the 19th century. Anyone know?

BoJack Horseman

There was no line in the sand.... It was gradual decline.

Orangebrigade

1821.

The Backwards Man

They haven't

Harry Palmr

When it became profitable.

El Weirdo

3.15 pm

ancapailldorcha

I've read that it was on the decline before the English invasion. It was being supplanted by English which was associated with progress and modernisation at the time.

Dots1982

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

There was no line in the sand.... It was gradual decline.

Ok when did the majority stop speaking Irish?

Charles Babbage

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I've read that it was on the decline before the English invasion. It was being supplanted by English which was associated with progress and modernisation at the time.

So the decline in Irish started before the 12th century? Perhaps you should read different books.

mad muffin

'Twas the year of our lord 1662

whatismyname

Orangebrigade wrote: »

1821.

Nah, I think it was 1842.

The Raptor

It was when Peig came along.

TallGlass

My question is. How come the majority of Irish people cannot grasp a second language. I would love to speak Irish, German or French but I just can't do it. Is it because its just too easy most of the time other people speak English. I don't know but would love to speak another.

darkpagandeath

Would Irish not be a modern term anyway....

Ruu

Níl a fhios agam.

aaronjumper

Ruu wrote: »

Níl a fhios agam.

My Irish teacher always regretted teaching me this phrase.

The Raptor

Ruu wrote: »

Níl a fhios agam.

Je ne sais pas.

I had more French than Irish.

DopeTech

July 19th

granturismo

As soon as the leaving cert was over.

cornholiooo

Would 1% of the Irish population be fluent irish speakers???

bilbot79

TallGlass wrote: »

My question is. How come the majority of Irish people cannot grasp a second language. I would love to speak Irish, German or French but I just can't do it. Is it because its just too easy most of the time other people speak English. I don't know but would love to speak another.

It takes a lot of effort when you don't live in the other country.

Mantis Toboggan

TallGlass wrote: »

My question is. How come the majority of Irish people cannot grasp a second language. I would love to speak Irish, German or French but I just can't do it. Is it because its just too easy most of the time other people speak English. I don't know but would love to speak another.

No English speaking country is good at learning other languages mainly because everything is in English and there's no need to learn!

catbear

Post famine English was favoured over Irish in peoples homes. It was seen as a way to the world which had opened massively through globalized trade.

It must be stressed though that English wasn't learned but adapted through Irish, hence Hiberno-English.

The Raptor

bilbot79 wrote: »

It takes a lot of effort when you don't live in the other country.

What if you live in the country the language is spoken? In our case, Ireland.

They don't do anything for promoting speaking Irish except seachtain na gaeilge. Just a week of Irish speaking. It should be made fun to speak it every day.

Caoimhgh1n

What does this have to do with After Hours?

c_man

The Raptor wrote: »

They don't do anything for promoting speaking Irish except seachtain na gaeilge. Just a week of Irish speaking.

Well it's usually two weeks in fairness. I know, I know...

MRnotlob606

nuair a chonaic mé do mháthair

The Raptor

c_man wrote: »

Well it's usually two weeks in fairness. I know, I know...

Thanks for correcting me. But two weeks in the year isn't much, in Ireland. It should be every day of the year.

You don't go to France to find that they speak French for two weeks in March.

riffmongous

Tyson Fury wrote: »

No English speaking country is good at learning other languages mainly because everything is in English and there's no need to learn!

Yep everything, there is no culture beyond the anglosphere.. such a sad thing to believe

masti123

Actually, in the 2011 census, 1.77 million people declared they could speak Irish.

Caoimhgh1n

masti123 wrote: »

Actually, in the 2011 census, 1.77 million people declared they could speak Irish.

This is why you can never trust a census.

LeinsterDub

masti123 wrote: »

Actually, in the 2011 census, 1.77 million people declared they could speak Irish.

Census doesn't clarity proficiency. The more interesting statistic would be how many people filled out the census as Gaeilge

masti123

Dots1982 wrote: »

I'm guessing it was sometime in the 19th century. Anyone know?

We never did. The overall amount of speakers in Ireland is continuing to go up due in part to the Gaelscoil movement.

The Irish Free State dumped the language revival on the Dept. of Education with the disastrous results we see today. Instead, they should have put a plan in place to make all public schools Gaelscoils by 1950.

Gaelscoileanna Teo and most other Irish language organisations are due to the enthusiasm and grassroots efforts by the Irish people, not the government. TnaG, now TG4, started out as a pirate station and only received public funding after protest.

The future of the language truly relies on the people, but there are some critical changes the government needs to make, in particular the Dept. of Education:

• Completely overhaul the Irish curriculum based on recommendations by the Irish language organisations
• Focus on orla/aural and have Irish Literature as a higher level option
• Teach at least one subject through Irish (Stair, Tíreolaíocht, P.E., etc)
• Better training, immersion and support for Irish teachers
• Boost funding for new Gaelscoileanna to alleviate the huge waiting lists

It's never too late to make Ireland a bilingual country. The demand is there.

Earthhorse

TallGlass wrote: »

My question is. How come the majority of Irish people cannot grasp a second language. I would love to speak Irish, German or French but I just can't do it. Is it because its just too easy most of the time other people speak English. I don't know but would love to speak another.

It's because they're taught really badly. Sure, there are other factors; like having English means there's less need and being on an island leaves us less exposure to foreign languages but the one thing we can control is how it's taught and we have it totally arseways.

You really need to learn to speak a language first but their is too much of a focus on writing and reading early on in our curricula. I did five years of French in school but my Spanish is better after 12 weeks of listening to Michel Thomas on top of a night class. We also start a little late, except with Irish. It's generally believed that children absorb new language better than adults but we don't start on foreign languages till secondary school.

MRnotlob606 wrote: »

nuair a chonaic mé do mháthair

Love that sitcom!

murphyebass

When it became completely irrelevant and worthless.

So a looooooong time ago thankfully.

darkpagandeath

The Raptor wrote: »

What if you live in the country the language is spoken? In our case, Ireland.

They don't do anything for promoting speaking Irish except seachtain na gaeilge. Just a week of Irish speaking. It should be made fun to speak it every day.

Why would you learn a language with zero benefit. Those 50k people you can communicate with better be extremely interesting. And in before Language is culture … It's not.

Eugene Norman

The real answer is that parts of Ireland – the cities and Norman towns have been speaking Engiish for centuries, even if the hinterland was Irish speaking. It was also not common in the east coast post the 17th C. However most people were Irish speaking. Post the famine the peasantry lost interest in the language, and encouraged their children to speak English. The Gaelic revival in the late 19th C was urban based, and largely middle class.

custard gannet

masti123 wrote: »

Actually, in the 2011 census, 1.77 million people declared they could speak Irish.

The vast majority of that number is likely from people putting their children down as daily speakers. Which they technically sort of are, except they will forget he stumbling amount they posses within a year of leaving school. I even know primary school etchers who would admit they wouldn't be capable of holding an adult level conversation in it.

biko

Yesterday

masti123

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Why would you learn a language with zero benefit. Those 50k people you can communicate with better be extremely interesting. And in before Language is culture … It's not.

You need to realise that not all things we do are important because they're 'beneficial': all cultural activities basically: music, literature, sport, etc. I myself have sunk countless hours into practicing the piano and doing various sports I have no talent whatsoever for, which, objectively, was for "zero benefit".

Sure, it pays for some. Actors, artists, athletes, they make a living from it (or more). But that's not really why they do it in the first place. Nor does it explain why the rest of us bother with it. I'd say the closest you can come to economically justifying all that time and money spent on teaching kids how to hit a ball with a stick or to use hair from a horse's tail to make strings on a wooden frame vibrate in aurally pleasing ways, is that it keeps us sane enough to properly function as a workforce.

But that's not why we play hurling or the violin, is it. The real reason is that we find it personally meaningful in some kind of way.

The question why we force Irish down everyone's throat for 12 years to no apparent effect is still a good question. I'd say we're just doing it wrong. In Luxembourg 90% of children come from school fluent in Luxembourgish AND German AND French AND English.
Luxembourgish, the national language, is about as 'beneficial' as Irish, and yet it shouldn't surprise anyone that they're very attached to it. I think the real mystery is why Irish people hate Irish so much.

The_Valeyard

Cromwell probably didnt help things. Or the famine.

Paz-CCFC

LeinsterDub wrote: »

Census doesn't clarity proficiency. The more interesting statistic would be how many people filled out the census as Gaeilge

It does for Irish. It's split up into various categories - daily, weekly, less often, never, not stated. And then daily only within the education system and also daily within and outside the education. It's about 100,000 that speak it daily and another half a million that speak it daily only within the education system.

custard gannet wrote: »

The vast majority of that number is likely from people putting their children down as daily speakers. Which they technically sort of are, except they will forget he stumbling amount they posses within a year of leaving school. I even know primary school etchers who would admit they wouldn't be capable of holding an adult level conversation in it.

That actually accounts for less than a third. As well as the 100,000 that speak it outside of the education system, another 100,000 speak it weekly, which suggests they'd be fairly proficient at the language. The biggest group of the 1.77M speakers - 600,000 -speak it "less often". Which could be anything from a conversation once every other week, every month, year etc. 400,000 claim to have it but never speak it. Figures from here, page 6

The 100,000 daily speakers are a good starting point for calculating fluent Irish speakers. But some of the half a million that only speak it within the education system will still be quite fluent, so who knows how many more that that could be? Also, I think a lot of the irregular speakers are better at Irish than they give themselves credit for. I find that with people in general, regardless of what second/third etc. language they're learning. I always get foreign English speakers who have, what to me is a very high level, apologising for making a few mistakes, not realising that they're very able to communicate clearly that they want to say. A lot of people get shy and don't speak as much as they could for fear of making a mistake.

An Ciarraioch

Midway through the 19th century in terms of being a majority language - mixture of the Famine, emigration and the new National Schools, but self-driven, rather than being forced to abandon the language by the English.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Invited, what we thought was a friendly neighbour, over for tea and a chat, went downhill from there

dd972

TallGlass wrote: »

My question is. How come the majority of Irish people cannot grasp a second language. I would love to speak Irish, German or French but I just can't do it. Is it because its just too easy most of the time other people speak English. I don't know but would love to speak another.

It's not as hard as you think, Belgians and Swiss people have the advantage of being in a multilingual state with constant exposure to the assorted media, signage etc, English as a lingua franca doesn't help anglophones either, but in short you just need to stick at it and it'll come.

MadsL

murphyebass wrote: »

When it became completely irrelevant and worthless.

So a looooooong time ago thankfully.

Just one example.

Since Irish is an office EU language, and two EU languages are required for positions in EU administration it is far from useless.

darkpagandeath

MadsL wrote: »

Just one example.

Since Irish is an office EU language, and two EU languages are required for positions in EU administration it is far from useless.

It's a ridiculous waste of money and I have no idea what the EU was thinking Recognising a language that is not used primarily by Ireland's own population. Gives rise to stupid thinks like a Romanian man getting off penalty points due to not being offered the information In Irish.

BoatMad

No need to learn another language , other then English, Esperanto has arrived , it's just called English

The whole world is teaching it's kids to learn English. Tech is virtually dominated by English
In another 100 years it will be the dominant language

It's also has the beauty of being one of the easiest languages to learn and is highly tolerant of spoken grammatical errors.

The problem is resolving itself

FURET

I'm from south Tipp and my fifth great grandfather (1725-1792) - who was a tenant farmer - had an anglicized name (minus the "O", which his grandson had reinstated by 1850). I've seen headstones from the late 1600s with anglicized Catholic Irish names as well.

The townland names and the names that are mentioned in the 1641 Depositions for my area in south Tipp are all anglicized as well and have not changed between then and now.

BoatMad

darkpagandeath wrote: »

It's a ridiculous waste of money and I have no idea what the EU was thinking Recognising a language that is not used primarily by Ireland's own population. Gives rise to stupid thinks like a Romanian man getting off penalty points due to not being offered the information In Irish.

It was a EU power play, nothing to do with Irish per se

Paramite Pie

The Raptor wrote: »

Je ne sais pas.

I had more French than Irish.

That's due to the Intermediate Plateau Effect or whatever it's called. It's the point at which most language learners bottom out and fail to progress in their skills (ESL teachers may be familiar with this), usually due to rote learning & not enough time being spent reinforcing the language. You learned French in a comparatively short space of time compared to Irish.

I used to speak French far more confidently than Irish but since leaving school almost 10years ago -- I've forgotten more French than Irish. (despite using it in France and Belgium on multiple trips!) I always had a larger Irish vocabulary but couldn't actually speak it. Weird.

TallGlass wrote: »

My question is. How come the majority of Irish people cannot grasp a second language. I would love to speak Irish, German or French but I just can't do it. Is it because its just too easy most of the time other people speak English. I don't know but would love to speak another.

In my primary school, Irish was taught in the morning and never brought up again until someone needed to pee. Perhaps Irish lessons should be spread throughout the day (maybe even reinforcing other lessons in maths or geography) and students should not be berated or shamed for not knowing the teanga.