Could the Irish language be revived?

JohnKyle39

The Welsh language was going extinct and they were able to revive it and now there are parts of wales that only speak welsh and the numbers
of Welsh speakers is growing. They are trying to hit 1 million speakers by 2050.

Could the Irish language be revived and have larger Irish only speaking areas?

Wanderer78

JohnKyle39 wrote:

Could the Irish language be revived and have larger Irish speaking areas?

Of course it could be but not the way it's currently being rammed into our heads

SusieBlue

The way its being taught is the problem.
If it was learned organically, through speaking, as it is in Gaelscoils, there wouldn't be half the problems there are today. Instead we force uninterested kids heads into books, studying verbs and language rules that they neither understand nor care about.
The way Gaelscoils teach the language is so much more natural.

JupiterKid

With great effort and some fresh thinking, it could reverse its seemingly terminal decline. But the Gaeltacht is almost all but gone now. There are maps showing its extent in the 1950s and today and the shrinkige is alarming. Ill see if I can dig them out and post them up.

The Gaelscoils might be a help in this regard. But it is patently clear the way Irish has been taught in nearly all other schools the past 90 odd years has been an utter and abject failure. Irish should definitely be made optional at Leaving cert level. I myself left school with French as one of my better subjects and Irish as my worst. If current trends continue, outside of a tiny community the Irish language will effectively be gone by 2050.

The general trend globally is for major languages such as English - currently the lingua Franca of global finance and commerce - to grow and spread and for minor, regional ones to go extinct. Irish is no exception to this. It will be an uphill battle but with the way things are going, the prognosis is bleak.

irishguitarlad

I think when they teach it in secondary schools the grammar rules should be taught in English to differentiate in your head because that way it takes less effort to memorize and internalize. I do this sometimes with Spanish and it works great. English grammar should also be taught in secondary schools more as when you know the mechanics of your own language, it makes it easier to learn another.

PlaneSpeeking

I was never taught it in school (lived in UK) but my old auntie from West Cork used to teach me swear words when I visited on holiday.

By the time I was 17 I had such a filthy vocabulary, I wish I'd have kept learning.

SEPT 23 1989

Quickest way to revive it is to ban it

pickarooney

A lot bigger languages than Irish are likely to die out at the current rate.
If the will to retain it doesn't surpass the practicality of not speaking it, there's no hope for it, and that will has to extend beyond "I'd like to be able to speak it but won't make a really concerted effort"

whisky_galore

We can revive the Irish language revival thread....

Are Am Eye

Welsh should be the ISO, langua franca for the world. With all other
languages outlawed.

What's the point in having more than one language in the world?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Before you ask the question of whether or not it can be revived:

1 - do we want it revived?
2 - who's going to be doing all the work of learning it?

topper75

I don't think Welsh was ever going extinct though was it?

They didn't revive it off a low base AFAIK.

Welsh is in good shape because it is spoken by prods. Prods love their bible, see, and must be literate to read it. Also prods don't muck about with Latin. Their bible must be in their vernacular, Welsh. Hence a thriving Welsh literature in Cymru.

The Gaels of Erin, being priest-lead Catholics, weren't as big into the whole reading and writing thing. So no meaningful corpus published in recent centuries. Because no commercial market for it. So a pushover when challenged by a foreign tongue of commerce, English. It got walloped.

Nach gcuirfeadh sé sin brón ort?

Solomon Pleasant

I followed the bog standard route of starting to learn irish at 5 and finishing at 17 - My standard of Irish was poor even though I completed the honours paper in the Leaving Cert.

In stark contrast, I’m fluent in German and currently study in Germany, entirely through German.

I regularly speak with people from all over Europe and the world and I always feel a little bit jealous that they can speak their own language among themselves and I have no notion what they’re saying, meanwhile myself and other irish students can only communicate through English. The vast majority of foreign students have a very high level of English - proof that bi-lingualism is very doable.

It won’t be revived as people aren’t motivated enough to learn the language and the system isn’t in place to cater for a revival.

storker

JohnKyle39 wrote: »

Could the Irish language be revived

Yes, by banning the speaking of it, which would be followed by a huge increase in usage in a short time.

facehugger99

Of course it could but it would cost even more money than the stupid amounts we're spending on it now and involve completely over-hauling the way it's being taught.

But what would be the point anyway?

It's highly likely in a few generations it'll be gone for good - can't happen soon enough as far as I'm concerned. Completely ridiculous to have persisted with this sham for so long.

JupiterKid

The Gaeltacht in 1926, circa 1960 and 2007. See a noticeable trend?

1926



1956



2007

TomSweeney

It doesn't help either that the fascists in the Gaelteacht send kids home that speak english, what kind of nonsense is that ?

Solomon Pleasant

facehugger99 wrote: »

Of course it could but it would cost even more money than the stupid amounts we're spending on it now and involve completely over-hauling the way it's being taught.

But what would be the point anyway?

It's highly likely in a few generations it'll be gone for good - can't happen soon enough as far as I'm concerned. Completely ridiculous to have persisted with this sham for so long.

I really hate the attitude of “the language is a joke, worthless and a piece of ****e” which is so prevalent in Ireland.

I’m not very patriotic or even nationalist in my views but it shows ignorance and poor awareness of what languages are, and their importance.

Amirani

I don't think the teaching is the problem as many people claim. Fundamentally the problem is that learning it offers almost zero discernible benefit to anyone learning it, so there's no incentive to work hard to become fluent in it. I can read/speak it passably, having done Higher Level all through school and in the Leaving Cert, but it's completely irrelevant in my day-to-day existence.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Immersion is the only way to become fluent in a language.

I never took to it in the classroom but when I'd spend 3 weeks at the Gaeltacht in the summer I'd come home with a decent command of it.

Then I'd go back to school in Sept and regress again.

clio_16v

Conversational Irish should be taught from the start. Rules / tenses after. I love Irish and had an ok standard when I did my leaving but its all but gone now. I don't think it's irrelevant or a waste of time. It's not going to help you work or study abroad or anything like that. I think it's about identity and culture. We should be proud to be Irish and celebrate it through the cupla focal we might have

TallGlass

It so sad really, a fully functional language there we should all use. Myself included, I can blame everyone and anything, but I see no use, if I said a few words to someone in a shop, I would be looked at with three heads.

Yet in work, there are Indian guys who speak a mix of English/Indian in the same sentence to each other.

I wonder sometimes to myself, is my brain so occupied with English and learning dialects, from here there and everywhere that it's nearly the same as learning another language.

But I know deep down, it's not it's just an excuse, the reason Irish fails, is because, verbally it's isn't used at all. We can learn, this tense, spelling what ever, but if we don't speak it, then it's going no where.

Any chance of revival has to be based on bi lingual, with the majority of word English to Irish.

Trying to learn it is a nightmare to be perfectly honest. And at the same time, it shouldn't be a nightmare at all. On paper I think French is easiest to learn but Irish is more related to English.

My conclusion is it needs more speaking, focus on the other particulars later.

I don't remember learning English, that's a starting point. It was spoken, when I was 3/4 I started to learn the rules.

Zirconia

"Could the Irish language be revived? "
I sincerely hope not - I won't be speaking it anyway, I can't stand it!

dude_abided

Nope the English have taken over. :pac:

Ursus Horribilis

No, that horse has long since bolted. Life is just so much easier when English is your first language. It's why Irish people stopped speaking the language in the first place.

yesto24

The main reason (only reason) Welsh is spoken is because they have nothing else to identify themselves.
They are not an independent country, they are tge subject of many jokes, their flag in not part of the UK flag.
Sporting success is long gone or never existed.
What have they got?
Well we have our language. That's all they got.
Compare this to Ireland.
We have our independence, we have our own flag.
We have no need to show our individuality by speaking a different language, despite what some Irish language fanatics may think.

whisky_galore

People simply aren't interested....and you can't force them to use it with education, encouragement, bullying or any amount of funding. People will go out of their way to spend their hard earned cash to be able to play sports, dance or learn music but very few will bother do that with Irish.

Ursus Horribilis

It's mostly used these days as a social status thing anyway, isn't it? Sending young Jack and Chloe to the gaelscoil rather than having to mix with the riff raff in the local school.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

ted1

TomSweeney wrote: »

It doesn't help either that the fascists in the Gaelteacht send kids home that speak english, what kind of nonsense is that ?

There's different levels I Gaelteachts some are strict some aren't.

If a kid is sent home its own to the
Parents sending them to the wrong one and not looking into it

ted1

Ursus Horribilis wrote: »

It's mostly used these days as a social status thing anyway, isn't it? Sending young Jack and Chloe to the gaelscoil rather than having to mix with the riff raff in the local school.

I hear that a!it and it's utter rubbish.
I sent my kids to one because the Gael colaiste it feeds into always ranks in the top 5 school for results and it's free, there's a scarcity of good free secondary schools between the N11 and the sea