Honestly how amazing is it that we have fluent English?

LordSutch

Beanntraigheach wrote: »

Was corporal punishment only used in Irish classes?

If so, I suppose the extensive use of corporal punishment (the "bata scóir" etc), mocking, and humiliation so successfully employed in the teaching of English to Irish-speaking children may have provided inspiration.

Its the one constant when you talk to people of a certain age re learning Irish in school, and what happened to you if you underperformed. Hand out and "WHACK" X twelve on the hands (or on the arse) with a cane or meter stick. You may also have got wolloped in Maths & English, but many teachers seemed to dish out a special punishment for any failings in Irish, as I can also testify to :mad:

God bless stuffy old Peig & those feckin windswept Aran islands.

BoatMad

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

English became the language of government and commerce. As the vast majority of Irish people were poor, they chose to ensure their children could speak the language of government and commerce in order that they might have a chance to make a decent life for themselves. If they had ensured that their children spoke Irish only, it would have greatly marginalised them. That would have been shameful.

It is simplistic to judge those people and their behaviour from a modern perspective.

This is in general the primary motivator , though Irish was reintroduced into the curriculum in the national primary school system in ireland , while still under British rule !!

BorneTobyWilde

Nothing fluent about it to be honest. A lot of what people speak here is far from fluent English.

Beanntraigheach

screamer wrote: »

Not at all I nearly had 10 broken fingers as a four year old child for not tidying up my counters fast enough. For which the punishment was hands flat on the desk and to belts of a meter stick across them and that was in the 80s.....
anyways corporal punishment was metered out by all sorts of old b*****d teachers for anything at all they wanted it definitely wasn't solely reserved for Irish.

I see. Well that would mean that corporal punishment use as an explanation for common animosity towards the Irish language wouldn't really stand up then.

Professor Moriarty

screamer wrote: »

Well please explain the Welsh then. Proud of their heritage and culture and proficient bi linguists. The Irish though not at all no pride in their native tongue no thought of being able to shock horror speak both languages. National pride my backside and that perhaps speaks volumes as to why the language has effectively died.

Did Ireland and Wales have the same history? Are you suggesting that Welsh people are genetically more patriotic?

BoatMad

LordSutch wrote: »

Its the one constant when you talk to people of a certain age re learning Irish in school, and what happened to you if you underperformed. Hand out and "WHACK" X twelve on the hands (or on the arse) with a cane or meter stick. You may also have got wolloped in Maths & English, but many teachers seemed to dish out a special punishment for any failings in Irish as I can also testify to :mad:

God bless stuffy old Peig & those feckin windswept Aran islands.

never got physically touched in primary or secondary Irish class ( 60s ) and my ability at irish was and remains truly appalling . I speak better French and Spanish !!. Could never understand why we stood in Irish class and no other, most of the time I was just jumping from foot to foot . We did however listen to BBC radio Schools as well ( and this was a rural primary )

retaining a language purely for some form of nebulous " cultural Identify " is very perverse in my view. Ireland could of course done what Israel did, but in its heart it knew its future was speaking English. The rest is just a form of cultural delusion , mostly promulgated by Dev.

fundamentally you cannot learn a language at school, it must be part of everyday life

screamer

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Did Ireland and Wales have the same history? Are you suggesting that Welsh people are genetically more patriotic?

The Welsh seem to be more capable linguistically than the Irish and are not ashamed or embarassed to be heard speaking their native language.......

Professor Moriarty

BoatMad wrote: »

This is in general the primary motivator , though Irish was reintroduced into the curriculum in the national primary school system in ireland , while still under British rule !!

And many of its champions were Protestants of English ancestry.

Professor Moriarty

screamer wrote: »

The Welsh seem to be more capable linguistically than the Irish and are not ashamed or embarassed to be heard speaking their native language.......

So it's genetic?

BoatMad

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

Nothing fluent about it to be honest. A lot of what people speak here is far from fluent English.

nobody speaks " fluent " english , every region has its peculiarities

BoatMad

screamer wrote: »

The Welsh seem to be more capable linguistically than the Irish and are not ashamed or embarassed to be heard speaking their native language.......

maybe in a few valleys , but travelling around , welsh is not in anyway a daily language

screamer

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

So it's genetic?

Who knows. It's great to see though I admire the Welsh and I think it truly amazing for a country to retain and use their national language and also be able to speak another fluently.
I would think that we in Ireland, although fluent English speakers are one of the most deficient countries in Europe when it comes to ability to speak other languages of any kind.

Beanntraigheach

LordSutch wrote: »

Its the one constant when you talk to people of a certain age re learning Irish in school, and what happened to you if you underperformed. Hand out and "WHACK" X twelve on the hands (or on the arse) with a cane or meter stick. You may also have got wolloped in Maths & English, but many teachers seemed to dish out a special punishment for any failings in Irish, as I can also testify to :mad:

God bless stuffy old Peig & those feckin windswept Aran islands.

Is that right. A "special" punishment, reserved solely for underperformance in Irish.
And there was "Peig" too!

Professor Moriarty

screamer wrote: »

Who knows. It's great to see though I admire the Welsh and I think it truly amazing for a country to retain and use their national language and also be able to speak another fluently.
I would think that we in Ireland, although fluent English speakers are one of the most deficient countries in Europe when it comes to ability to speak other languages of any kind.

Yes it is amazing for a country to retain its language. Tír gan teanga etc. However, and again, the reasons why one language survives and another dies are very complex. Genetics really aren't a reason.

BoatMad

I would think that we in Ireland, although fluent English speakers are one of the most deficient countries in Europe when it comes to ability to speak other languages of any kind.

we exist in the Anglo-sphere , technology has greatly increased the need for other stop learn english , rather then english speakers learn other languages. The world learns english. ( and english is an extremely simple language to speak badly , yet be understood) All Anglo-sphere countries by and large are terrible at leaning other languages , not just us, the reason is , lack of necessity.

simples

BoatMad

However, and again, the reasons why one language survives and another dies are very complex.

indeed, arguably, however , by any metric Irish is dead, but we keep it alive on a respirator primarily for rather obscure cultural reasons, rather like we also keep the book of Kells. Both are equally significant or insignificant to modern ireland as you desire, but both could disappear in the morning and life would continue here without a beat of a difference in reality.

we are not defined by our language , its merely a component in our makeup and not a major one either. Cultural identity is far far greater then merely language

Professor Moriarty

BoatMad wrote: »

indeed, arguably, however , by any metric Irish is dead, but we keep it alive on a respirator primarily for rather obscure cultural reasons, rather like we also keep the book of Kells. Both are equally significant or insignificant to modern ireland as you desire, but both could disappear in the morning and life would continue here without a beat of a difference in reality.

we are not defined by our language , its merely a component in our makeup and not a major one either. Cultural identity is far far greater then merely language

It is indeed, but a culture is much more defined when it has its own language.

Grammar, phrases and, most especially, words both filter and express a nation's or society's communication. Words matter, and the words available to a person/society define communication and consequently define how people think.

Shenshen

murpho999 wrote: »

I have found Spanish and Portuguese people to be very different, and also even sound very different as they speak different languages.

As for Austrians and Germans I would not hear the difference as I don't speak German but I would know that they are different, just like Canadians and Americans, Australians and New Zealanders and also, many Latin American nationals.

However, for some reason where I have travelled (and I have been around quite a bit) I have been told I am British by many people and it must come from being such a small country with a shared language next to a larger more dominant one. Very frustrating in my experience.

All I can say is at least people abroad know that Ireland exists... my relatives from Austria regularly have to explain to people that no, they're not from Australia, and yes, there is a country called Austria.

Irish Stones

Am I allowed to say that English is a rather easy to learn language, but that native English speakers are probably those who write it worst?
I am Italian and live in Italy. I started following Boards about 4 years ago and I read it daily, I like it!
But sometimes I see some incredible mistakes that I would never do.
It's instead of its, and viceversa.
There, their, they're.
Than vs then
Should of instead of should have
Quite and quiet
And so on...
Worse than this is that the same errors are found on newspapers too!

FTA69

Well done on your mastery of English mate but I wouldn't say by any stretch of the imagination that it's an "easy" language to learn. The spelling alone must drive anyone cracked.

Yeah, it's extremely convenient.

But I'm reading a lot of odd posts in here claiming that whatever they see posted on FB or wherever isn't fluent.. Or that because people speak their working class English instead of the highbrow stuff, they're somehow not fluent. Each of these groups would have a bit of trouble understanding each other but understand themselves absolutely fine. In fact, the lower class would have a better chance at understanding the upper class than the other way around.

I teach English as a second language and while some of my students have an incredible grasp of it and may even speak it "perfectly" in terms of its structures and whatnot, they'll never be able to understand people from all across the English-speaking world to the same level as the people who are being criticised here for using "nd" instead of "and" or "could of" instead of "could have".
They can write a better essay than I can and can have a great conversation with someone who speaks "perfect" English.. But they're still paying me to converse with them so they're used to various accents and dialects before heading off to study in Dublin or London.

Native speakers just don't use perfect English.

BoatMad

BoatMad wrote: »

nobody speaks " fluent " english , every region has its peculiarities

I don't think you understand what is meant by fluent. Definition. It most certainly isn't synonymous with Received Pronunciation or Standard English. Practically everybody in Ireland is fluent in spoken English. Far fewer are fluent in written English, as contributors to this website repeatedly make clear.

BoatMad wrote: »

by any metric Irish is dead

Similarly you don't seem to understand what constitutes a "dead language". Perhaps give us just one of those metrics. Authoritative studies only, please. Kevin Myers articles and other rants do not qualify.

You could start with the UNESCO list of Endangered Languages, which has five levels: Vulnerable; Definitely endangered; Severely endangered; Critically endangered; Extinct. Out of these Irish is classified as "Definitely Endangered" (although I read in The Economist here that "This status has since been improved to "vulnerable""), which is a long way from the wet dreams of the Irish haters.

UNESCO list of Endangered Languages

The King of Moo

The King of Moo wrote: »

Have our attention spans become so diminished that four lines counts as "a wall of text!?"

Can you break that into phrases please?

Irish Stones

FTA69 wrote: »

Well done on your mastery of English mate but I wouldn't say by any stretch of the imagination that it's an "easy" language to learn. The spelling alone must drive anyone cracked.

I'm sorry, can't understand whether you're replying to my previous post.
If this is the case, then I simply said what other posters said before me. I agree with you that the trouble with English language is the spelling. Once I read somewhere that an English speaker could not say, beforehand, how a word never heard before might be spelled unless someone else show them. It's a lifetime learning.
We Italians are luckier on this matter, a word is pronounced exactly as it written, there are rules of course, but easy to grab. We are able to write down any word that we hear, even if it's new to us, we are able to read any written word.
On the other hand we have a very complex set of conjugations, hundreds of them for every verb. In some regions of Italy people easily mix up conditional and subjunctive modes, because they're hard to understand.
Adjectives can be feminine and masculine according to the noun, and plural and singular. Adjectives can be written before or after a noun and sometimes this can change totally the sense of a sentence. Very often we omit the pronoun in a sentence, the conjugation of the verb is often enough to undesrtand who is the subject of the sentence, but we have to be careful because this omission might lead to confusion in certain cases (for example: "Sono qui" could mean "I am here" or "They are here").
So, probably English is easier than Italian for the grammar, but not for the spelling.