Inability to learn our native language

justshane

Hi everyone so I recently traveled to Singapore. For anyone that's been they will know they're 3 races that make up the majority of Singaporeans. Chinese, Malays, and Indians. English is everyone's first language in Singapore but each race also learn there native language in the school system and everyone I encountered can speak both fluently.

My question is what are we doing so wrong in Ireland? How come the overwhelming majority of us can't hold a basic conversation in Irish? We spend the guts of 14 years learning it. My intial thoughts are it is just the method and process of the teaching but that's founded on nothing!

Curious on people's thoughts.

jamesbere

Oh look another Irish language thread. How long before it descends into chaos

justshane

Sorry? Chaos? It's only a question if you have no opinion don't bother posting.

jamesbere

justshane wrote: »

Sorry? Chaos? It's only a question if you have no opinion don't bother posting.

You will find that this is quite a divisive issue on here (from what i've seen when this type of thread pops up) posters have very strong opinions for and against the learning of the Irish language hence why I used the term chaos.

My opinion is that it's a slowing dying language. As much as I respect anyone who speaks the language, I feel it's not that practical nowadays to learn it as majority of our communication is done through speaking English.

the_syco

The Irish language was wiped out by the english with the workhouses, immigration, etc. A few people brought it back, but conversation is only taught at honours level. For foundation and pass level, you're taught how to read stories, read poems, and answer questions on said stories and poems so that you can answer the questions in your JC and LC.

Thus, only a few can speak it in conversation, and even then most people forget it after their LC. TBH, how it's taught needs to be rethought, as the bastardized version children are currently been taught is forgotten.

Your Face

It's a beautiful expressive language but it's taught like it's our de facto first language.

Del2005

the_syco wrote: »

The Irish language was wiped out by the english with the workhouses, immigration, etc. A few people brought it back, but conversation is only taught at honours level. For foundation and pass level, you're taught how to read stories, read poems, and answer questions on said stories and poems so that you can answer the questions in your JC and LC.

Thus, only a few can speak it in conversation, and even then most people forget it after their LC. TBH, how it's taught needs to be rethought, as the bastardized version children are currently been taught is forgotten.

The English might have tried to wipe it out but our education system killed it. How they have "thought" Irish since the foundation of the State has led to a nation that can't speak its own language after 12 years of school. Whereas in nearly every other country the children are talking multiple languages, which usually aren't native.

pickarooney

Del2005 wrote: »

The English might have tried to wipe it out but our education system killed it. How they have "thought" Irish since the foundation of the State has led to a nation that can't speak its own language after 12 years of school. Whereas in nearly every other country the children are talking multiple languages, which usually aren't native.

Why "thought" ? The poster used the right word in each case.

uck51js9zml2yt

Here in India , people speak 3 languages. Their local one, Hindi and English.
A lot of the issue is the education system.

freshpopcorn

People are very relaxed about it when they are learning it at school. If you need it for college or to get high points you put in a bit of effort but apart from that people don't. After this tough there's no reason to us it unless it's part of your career.
In my experiences with people who speak various languages there's generally a point to them speaking them and it's mainly for work. If it didn't benefit their career they wouldn't bother and their parents wouldn't push it at school.

the_syco

Del2005 wrote: »

The English might have tried to wipe it out but our education system killed it. How they have "thought" Irish since the foundation of the State has led to a nation that can't speak its own language after 12 years of school. Whereas in nearly every other country the children are talking multiple languages, which usually aren't native.

English, motherfcuker, do you speak it? I said "how it's taught needs to be rethought". In other words, how it's taught now is not working, so they should go back to the drawing board.

gramar

Here we go
Here we go
Here we go

Here we go
Here we go
Here we goooooo-oh

Here we go
Here we go
Here we go-oh

Here we go-oh
Here we gooooo

Again.

Wanderer78

Took almost 30 years of studying within our educational system to be eventually diagnosed with dyslexia, maybe that's an issue for others?

Roger Hassenforder

the_syco wrote: »

English, motherfcuker, do you speak it? I said "how it's taught needs to be rethought". In other words, how it's taught now is not working, so they should go back to the drawing board.

Well this escalated quickly!

LordSutch

justshane wrote: »

Inability to learn our native language.

But is it "our" native language?

I doubt it was never the native language of my family on either side, this, even though we've been living on this island for hundreds of years....

nice_guy80

Irish the way it was first printed was completely unlike the spoken language
it quickly became a very academic language
instead of taking the model for teaching of language from the ordinary dialects, the teaching of irish came from the academic

its not actually that hard to learn

Ave Sodalis

I really do believe it's the way it's taught. If it was left up to me to change it (but it won't be so no worries there), I'd have conversation and spoken Irish prioritised in primary schools, with basic writing and reading in the last maybe 3 years. The Junior Cert cycle would then focus more on writing and reading. I'd make it optional for Leaving Cert but assign extra points to it, similar to maths. I'd keep poems and dreary literature out of it, keeping it relevant with very little comprehension other than a few basic questions.

I don't really think being "forced" to learn it is the issue, but that idea is very much ingrained into people that it becomes the issue for them, hence the optional LC. The way it's taught is awful though. I didn't learn that Irish has masculine and feminine words similar to French until a few weeks before my Leaving Cert. The subject also focuses on too much too soon. Leaving Cert Honours requires similar comprehension skills to English (or did anyway, unsure how they changed it a few years ago).

Basically, I would have the subject taught similar to how we learn English, only extended as we aren't exposed to it as much as English outside the classroom. By Junior Cert, kids should be able to speak with fluency, and have a decent standard of reading and writing that would get them by. By Leaving Cert, they should be able to speak, read and write with fluency.

I'd love to fluent in Irish. It's always been my intention to go and learn it properly.

spurious

Offer all the naysayers 10 euro per word of Irish they know and see what they actually know.

Wibbs

the_syco wrote: »

The Irish language was wiped out by the english with the workhouses, immigration, etc.

Yes and no. It had started to die off before the 19th century and for the usual reasons language use contracts. They become less and less useful. Languages spread on the back of utility. This can be trade, religion, education, culture. Look at Scotland. Pictish died out and was replaced with the Irish language on the back of Irish religious missionaries who offered religion, education and through that more trade. Same happened here. We naturally point to the cultural pressures and our post colonial accepted history reinforces this, but it's far more complex than that. Even a figure like Daniel O'Connell acknowledged it. Though a speaker of Irish himself he encouraged people to learn English for good practical reasons.

What's interesting about Irish and the Irish people is that we didn't become bilingual as other colonised cultures have. Even when there was less colonial cultural pressure EG in the Irish diaspora across the globe, we very rapidly dropped the language. In the US there are more Dutch Americans - a tiny percentage of the American population - that speak Dutch than there are Irish Americans - one of the largest percentages - that speak Irish. Plus when we became independent and the language was promoted we again dropped it en masse. There was a higher percentage of Irish speakers in 1917 than there is in 2017. This happened in the Irish civil service when the daily requirement for the language was dropped, within weeks the language was dropped in daily use. And these were people who could already speak it.

Shenshen

I don't know how it's being taught as I'm not from Ireland.
But my observation would be that as long as nobody WANTS to speak it, it will keep dying. And if people wanted to speak it, there's nothing stopping them.

So the real question is actually why people have no interest in speaking the language among themselves, with friends and family. If you want Irish to become a living language again, that's where you need to start your efforts. Not in school.

And I feel that a language that is not being spoken by the vast, vast majority of a given population can hardly be said to be their native language.

ouxbbkqtswdfaw

I think it is nearly impossible to learn Irish. I think it's due to the fact that we are English speaking. There is some kind of incompatibility between the two languages.

Wibbs

sk3prnfg6ywoqc wrote: »

I think it is nearly impossible to learn Irish. I think it's due to the fact that we are English speaking. There is some kind of incompatibility between the two languages.

Hardly. Basque is entirely unrelated to the rest of the indoEuropean languages and people seem to have no difficulty speaking both it and Spanish or French. Basque is a good example of a language that was heavily oppressed for a long time and the day that oppression stopped it started to come back. Because the people wanted to actually speak it, rather than pay it the cultural window dressing lip service of the majority of Irish people, who clearly don't.

cnocbui

justshane wrote: »

Hi everyone so I recently traveled to Singapore. For anyone that's been they will know they're 3 races that make up the majority of Singaporeans. Chinese, Malays, and Indians. English is everyone's first language in Singapore but each race also learn there native language in the school system and everyone I encountered can speak both fluently.

My question is what are we doing so wrong in Ireland? How come the overwhelming majority of us can't hold a basic conversation in Irish? We spend the guts of 14 years learning it. My intial thoughts are it is just the method and process of the teaching but that's founded on nothing!

Curious on people's thoughts.

It's dead, get over it.

That said, my children have pointed out to me that they could perhaps start by teaching Irish grammar, not just vocabulary.

My children would describe having to learn Irish as 10 years of waterboarding. They hate/d and loath it and the large chunk of their lives utterly wasted being force-fed it.

Trying to keep this unwanted and dead language alive is like one of those scenes from a hospital ER where the patient has suffered a cardiac arrest, where someone grabs some some paddles, rubs some gel on them, shouts 'CLEAR' and then proceeds to force hundreds of volts through the patient's chest, causing the dead body to convulse, only to hear beeeeeeeeeeee and then futilely does it all again, and again.

Ave Sodalis

Shenshen wrote:

So the real question is actually why people have no interest in speaking the language among themselves, with friends and family. If you want Irish to become a living language again, that's where you need to start your efforts. Not in school.

That would be because nobody can speak it. You get to Leaving Cert and the vast majority just know enough to squeeze through the exams. There's no point in encouraging it between friends and family if they can't speak it. There's no love for the language. Not many really want to speak it and from what I've seen, schools and the way it's taught have been the biggest contributor to that problem, and so it should be schools where it's fixed or you'd just be swimming against the tide.

I would say that it needs to be more relevant and important in society. If possible, there should be areas where not having Irish would be a disadvantage. How to achieve that without promoting more hatred? I don't know.

Sue Pa Key Pa

The amount of time allocated to Irish in schools is disgraceful in return for the level of interest and eventual competence obtained. Current and future generations will travel around Europe and beyond in the same way my generation considered getting a bus. Let's equip them with an additional European language they can use to compete on an even basis with their counterparts from other countries.

razorblunt

It's the way it's taught. I went to a Gaelscoil and they were excellent at getting us to appreciate the nuances of the language so even the lads that struggled with it as a language were able to work their way through novels and poems and so on.

My main issue is that it's taught like English when it should be taught like a "foreign" language, let there be some additional course for novels and poems and the like that's optional perhaps? Right now its like having kids read French and German novels whilst they're struggling to grasp conversational level aspects of the language.

LordSutch

Quite obviously English is our native language, or should I say 'Hiberno' English, that's English with an Irish twist ... out own Irish dialect of spoken English.

Irish/Gaelic is from the past, just like Shakespearian English or Latin. I do think Irish should be kept alive as a 'niche language', but not for the masses.

osarusan

Beyond primary level in particular, it's poorly taught, as it attempts to replicate the English syllabus and students are doing poetry and other literature that is simply way too difficult for them. In recent years, it has become a lot more communicative, especially at primary level.

But mainly, it has very very little presence or usefulness and consequently very little value in the world inhabited by schoolchildren. This is often reinforced by parents who have very little Irish themselves, and don't place any value on it either.

As long as that remains the case, acquisition and fluency rates will always be low.

Samaris

If anything, I don't think the problem is that it's taught too much like English/a first language, but more that it's taught like a dead language. The stories and poems we tended to learn in school (from my own experience) were old themselves, which while grand with legends, (often sad, but also had fighting, betting, drinking and cattle rustling in), but the long texts? Peig? An Triail? Were they going out of their way to make us hate them?

There is little emphasis that this is a living language that could still develop (that we need to keep Irishing English words and/or just carting in the English word wholesale is awkward - although native speakers out here in the west will quite happily throw in English words all over the place - "Ca bhfuil an manual as an washingmachine" being my personal favourite (I'm probably wrong on the "as", but it's the manual and the washingmachine that was important ). We really shouldn't encourage the few actual words we have for modern technology for makey-up ones - gluaisteán and carr being a primary example.

Mind you, we are at a disadvantage in our native language compared to other people with theirs. We often don't speak it at home, which many people who speak English and a native or local language do. Irish is the first "other" language most of us are exposed to, which leaves us at the same disadvantage as English people have when it comes to other tongues. We start learning a second language too late to absorb it naturally.

That and it really does seem like the teaching and the frustration with having to swallow and regurgitate chunks of text - phonetically half the time - has instilled a deep hatred of Irish and all its works in many people of all ages.

whisky_galore

There's a significant mass of the population of the opinion that it should remain compulsory in schools...but I'll bet their schooldays are well over.

They're full of well-meaning 'ah shur it's lovely to hear it, and I'd love to learn it but *insert excuse here*'
It's all good provided 'someone else' does the learning and of course the govt should 'do something'.

At least I'm honest about having little interest either learning or speaking it. It is f- all use to me in daily life.

Hooks Golf Handicap

13 years I spent in school learning Irish & I can't help my 10 year old son with his 4th Class Homework.
My wife is worse than me & we're both educated professionals.

Somewhere along the way we must discard the microchip of interest.
Perhaps our own parents never pushed it, perhaps we overheard someone saying it's useless.
It's not that we couldn't learn it, it's that we chose to focus on other subjects.
I remember dropping down to pass in 5th year & having a huge row with the honours teacher.

super_furry

Schools should be teaching kids how to speak it, not boring them to death with essays and poetry and grammar.

The whole way it's thought is wrong. I can't speak more than a couple of basic words but could still recite that awful A Mhairin de Barra poem from start to finish, despite not having a notion what it means.

FizzleSticks

This post has been deleted.

super_furry

FizzleSticks wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Good point actually. I had a couple of really good teachers in school – Geography and English – that really helped to get students interested and invested in the subject but any Irish teacher seemed like they were either disinterest or lost their passion a long time ago.

Billy86

sugarman wrote: »

It's bet into us to memorize pages upon pages, of year upon year of utter scutter stories, poems and other ****e rather than actually learn any of the language itself.

I think the most useful part of it came during the leaving cert when you'd to do the oral exam.. but by then it 14 years too late!

This is pretty much it, I didn't even do it for the LC but regret that choice a little now. The 1950s style which it is taught in and all the badly dated texts etc really is brutal and sucks any joy or interest out of what otherwise could be an interesting subject. I have a few friends who are fluent and others who can at least half hold a conversation, but none of them had much interest at all for it in school either (even if they were semi-fluent in it at the time).

miece16

i've done 2 lessons of spanish at 2 hours each, so 4 hours of spanish lessons.

I can string a sentence together in spanish easier than irish

tara73

I think this subject is a mixture of different factors.
as a non irish, I tried to learn irish in different evening courses. so not in school, starting as an adult being really motivated.

for me, the main obstacle were the teachers. in all courses really weird guys who treated us like children (I havn't even been treated like that in school). and they were also not good in teaching, you didn't had a clue about pronouncation or grammar at the end of the courses. it were just learning random words or phrases.

adding to this the language is really, really difficult in itself to learn, it's the opposite of learning english or even french is like a walk in a park in comparison to irish. which is nobodys fault, it's just a point which adds to the fact so little people speak it fluently.

but whenever I spoke with irish people about their native language ( and for me, it is the native language of the irish), and why so little people speak it and don't learn it after 13 or 14 years being taught in school, they all unisono gave as the main reason because it's being taught so badly. Literally they said: it's been beaten into us. that's so sad and this should be changed. if you motivate children the right way, having fun learning it and being eager to learn it, it would change a lot.

Irish is a really beautiful and fascinating language. It's a pity it's taught so badly and so little people have a good connection to it because of the bad memories from school time.

Samaris

The pronunciation is awkward, tara. It's funny though, from my own experience again, I can pronounce just about any Irish word you put in front of me; something about how it's meant to sound has sunk in. I just won't have the blindest notion what it means and I probably wouldn't be able to spell it.

kingchess

LordSutch wrote: »

But is it "our" native language?

I doubt it was never the native language of my family on either side, this, even though we've been living on this island for hundreds of years....

What does this sentence mean? are you saying it was at some point the native language of your family?--I am not trying to be narky just curious .

Hector Savage

Practicality is key, it's a useless language in reality.
People know this and just kills their motivation.
Reminds me of this :

https://youtu.be/4zPHAhj_Cio?t=161

Agricola

Going to sound awful clichéd, but they have to make Irish cool/interesting/contemporary.

I did French in school for the same 5 years and it never felt like the absolute chore learning Irish did.

never_mind

Ave Sodalis wrote: »

I really do believe it's the way it's taught. If it was left up to me to change it (but it won't be so no worries there), I'd have conversation and spoken Irish prioritised in primary schools, with basic writing and reading in the last maybe 3 years. The Junior Cert cycle would then focus more on writing and reading. I'd make it optional for Leaving Cert but assign extra points to it, similar to maths. I'd keep poems and dreary literature out of it, keeping it relevant with very little comprehension other than a few basic questions.

I don't really think being "forced" to learn it is the issue, but that idea is very much ingrained into people that it becomes the issue for them, hence the optional LC. The way it's taught is awful though. I didn't learn that Irish has masculine and feminine words similar to French until a few weeks before my Leaving Cert. The subject also focuses on too much too soon. Leaving Cert Honours requires similar comprehension skills to English (or did anyway, unsure how they changed it a few years ago).

Basically, I would have the subject taught similar to how we learn English, only extended as we aren't exposed to it as much as English outside the classroom. By Junior Cert, kids should be able to speak with fluency, and have a decent standard of reading and writing that would get them by. By Leaving Cert, they should be able to speak, read and write with fluency.

I'd love to fluent in Irish. It's always been my intention to go and learn it properly.

To be honest, a lot of its issue relates directly with the colleges accepted in poor standards at primary level. I blame Initial Teacher Education completely and not the curriculum or 'how it's taught'. Student teachers are given very modern tools to teach Irish but their level on entry is low and leaving it's just as bad... most primary school classrooms now just press play on their white board and hope for the best.

whisky_galore

Agricola wrote: »

Going to sound awful clichéd, but they have to make Irish cool/interesting/contemporary.

I did French in school for the same 5 years and it never felt like the absolute chore learning Irish did.

You can sex it up all you want, but if you don't use it daily or have a need to use it...well then...

ouxbbkqtswdfaw

How come honours Irish students still have to learn chunks of Irish off by heart? I've been trying to teach Irish through the spoken word. I think there is something peculiar to the English language that prevents us from becoming fluent in Irish which is not there with say, French.

Hector Bellend

The only thing we're doing wrong is keeping a dead language alive by artificial means.

super_furry

Agricola wrote: »

Going to sound awful clichéd, but they have to make Irish cool/interesting/contemporary.

I did French in school for the same 5 years and it never felt like the absolute chore learning Irish did.

Caipin droim ar ais?

Roger_007

I know a few people who use Irish as their preferred language. Most of them also seem to have detestation for all things British.
Maybe that is the problem? Irish, for many people, seems to be used as an anti-British thing rather than just a language that they want to use for its own sake.

The Backwards Man

kingchess wrote: »

What does this sentence mean? are you saying it was at some point the native language of your family?--I am not trying to be narky just curious .

He's trying to say Prods don't speak Irish or some such nonsense.

In our part of Donegal, the kids from the Protestant national schools put the rest of us to shame when it came to proficiency in Irish.

tara73

Roger_007 wrote: »

I know a few people who use Irish as their preferred language. Most of them also seem to have detestation for all things British.
Maybe that is the problem? Irish, for many people, seems to be used as an anti-British thing rather than just a language that they want to use for its own sake.

I think this is very true. It's exactly what I experienced when doing the irish courses. I was very interested in the language and in learning it, but I got told 'it's not only a language, it's much more to it'...and was expected to tune in to some nationalistic sentiment. there was a really strong nationalistic urge with the teachers and always anti british comments. I found that really demotivating, I wasn't interested in being part of some patriotic, nationalistic movement and I found it very outdated.

I lived for a long time in Ireland and in day to day contact with the irish people I was always fascinated how easy going they are with the british history and almost everybody said: that's in the past, we don't want to hold a grudge and get on with the british now. And they didn't only said that, they meant it and practised it.

But the people supporting the irish language were, as said, different. Not likeable.

Samaris

sk3prnfg6ywoqc wrote: »

How come honours Irish students still have to learn chunks of Irish off by heart? I've been trying to teach Irish through the spoken word. I think there is something peculiar to the English language that prevents us from becoming fluent in Irish which is not there with say, French.

I doubt it, tbh. Irish would be a -bit- more difficult, as much of English is based on French (particularly the vocabulary), which links in to Romance languages in general, and also based on German in structure, which links on to the other Germanic languages. So there is an issue with structure and vocab being unalike, which is more difficult to an English-speaker than, say, French, but millions of people on the planet speak a second language fluently that is completely unlike their first - English is usually the second one! Chinese and English for example, or fluent English-speakers from Asian countries in general. Various African countries where the people will speak a big regional language (i.e. Swahili), but also one or more local languages which may have a completely different structure and set of sounds.

I don't think the problem is Irish as a language - it is actually pretty logical and straight-forward (although we're not used to the grammatical structure so it's not intuitive to us as "native" English-speakers). I think the problem lies somewhere between

- starting to learn a second language too late*
- Lack of practice and opportunity to use it usefully
- Poor teaching practice in terms of how Irish is communicated - and a rather confused notion of why we're learning it anyway.
- Rebellion against hours of schooltime learning off reams of stuff by heart rather than by understanding it.

One basic thing that could modify that "learn by memorising and regurgitating" is at least providing students with the knowledge of the language to -paraphrase- it and then have them do so. Paraphrasing a story, you need to -know- the story and you can't get away with phonetic babble, which is precisely how I got away with Irish exams throughout because that is what I was shown to do.


*It's notable that we do have portions of the country that -are- Irish speaking (and can speak English as well) - I live in one! The language is alive when you know where to look for it, but I also gotta say that Irish-speaking locals tend to be very reserved about speaking Irish to outsiders. Having standard Irish is certainly enough to mark you out and quite often, you will be responded to in English. Not quite sure where that's come from, but there may be an element of the living language being disparaged and/or punished in school compared to the frozen, artificial language we actually learn. A friend of mine grew up a native speaker and commented that children going to school outside the Gaeltacht would quite often be penalised in exams for using their native, correct, Irish, because it had evolved away from the Standard (or rather, the Standard imposed did not take the language into account in how it's spoken and used by those who actually speak and use it). Locals here have commented that understanding the RTE readers was difficult before the broadcaster started introducing readers from different regions to give the news in the local dialect rather than sticking to standard.

LordSutch

kingchess wrote: »

What does this sentence mean? are you saying it was at some point the native language of your family?--I am not trying to be narky just curious .

No I'm say Irish probably wasn't (my family's) native language when they arrived here many generations/centuries ago ....