Irish language revival

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Reati wrote: »

This myth has been covered and debunked at length.

Well, as long as the system isn't at least sending out large numbers of speakers on a regular basis, there will be some truth to the idea, even if the specifics are debateable.

cj maxx

Reati wrote: »

This myth has been covered and debunked at length.

Really?? Personally speaking it would make a difference to me.

Greyfox

Reati wrote: »

This myth has been covered and debunked at length.

And yet most Irish people agree that it was badly taught in most Irish schools.

Reati

Greyfox wrote: »

And yet most Irish people agree that it was badly taught in most Irish schools.

Erm just because a set of people anecdotally believe something doesn't make it true or fact

James Brown

Reati wrote: »

Erm just because a set of people anecdotally believe something doesn't make it true or fact

I can only speak for my year, not just my class, my year. None of us could speak Irish upon leaving several years of study. We could parrot phrases and child level speak.
IMO, teaching words by rote made a poorly thought times tables of the language. That's just me now.
In fact I know only two people who could manage a very basic conversation in Irish, (who didn't attend an Irish speaking school).

Sardonicat

Matt Barrett wrote: »

Reati wrote: »

Erm just because a set of people anecdotally believe something doesn't make it true or fact

I can only speak for my year, not just my class, my year. None of us could speak Irish upon leaving several years of study.
IMO, teaching words by rote made a poorly thought times tables of the language. That's just me now.

And me! Got a higher grade in Irish than French but left school with basic conversational French and no ability at all to converse in Irish. Memorising realms of prepared answers and stock phrases in Irish to prep for an exam was not the same as learning to speak a language. Having said that, it was a very long time ago. Someone a bit closer to LC might be able to shed some light on how it's taught these days.

Upforthematch

Matt Barrett wrote: »

I can only speak for my year, not just my class, my year. None of us could speak Irish upon leaving several years of study. We could parrot phrases and child level speak.
IMO, teaching words by rote made a poorly thought times tables of the language. That's just me now.
In fact I know only two people who could manage a very basic conversation in Irish, (who didn't attend an Irish speaking school).

Did your teachers speak much irish in the classroom out of interest?

PeadarCo

Reati wrote:

Erm just because a set of people anecdotally believe something doesn't make it true or fact

But what difference would teaching the subject better do? It's a handy excuse for most people. The reason most people don't speak the language is because there's no need. Why speak a language that maybe has 100k regular speakers instead of the global language of business, entertainment and science. Especially when English is the primary language of the country. One of the reasons for the large multinational presence here is the English language.

It is amazing Irish is still alive as a living language.

LegallyAbroad

janfebmar wrote: »

Kids should not be forced to learn dead old languages which nobody speaks in real life (only a few posts a month are in Irish on boards.ie for example).

That's because boards.ie has a certain demographic (right-wing middle aged men, mostly), is not a community, and is a medium of the early 2000s.

Twitter, for example, has a very active twitter community because it allows Irish speakers from across Gaeltachtaí and outside of them socialise naturally. Who the hell is going to spend their time speaking to anonymous usernames.

Upforthematch

PeadarCo wrote: »

It is amazing Irish is still alive as a living language.

Good point! is it because there is a natural love of the language out there after all?

LegallyAbroad

Greyfox wrote: »

And yet most Irish people agree that it was badly taught in most Irish schools.

The vast majority of Irish people are monoglots. They're crap at all languages. Irish, French, German...you name it. They bang on about Irish so much because the fact that they can't speak Irish makes them feel bad (even if they don't admit it) whereas there's no implicit expectation that they be able to speak foreign language.

ILoveYourVibes

How do you say O Captain my Captain in Irish???

ILoveYourVibes

Reati wrote: »

Erm just because a set of people anecdotally believe something doesn't make it true or fact

Oh really ..

How do you say Oh Captain my Captain in Irish?

LegallyAbroad

Upforthematch wrote: »

Good point! is it because there is a natural love of the language out there after all?

A mixture of love of the language and the fact that it is still a community language for tens of thousands of people. It's what they've always spoken.

Irish will live out every person currently alive agus is rud fíor dóchasach é sin a thugann ardú misnigh domsa:D

Jellybaby1

Franz Von Peppercorn II wrote: »

To be fair that’s probably nonsense. People really do speak Welsh in Wales, people just say they do here. That said it shows there’s a desire to learn the language rather than ban it.

This ^ reminds me of something I experienced years ago. I had a temp job just handing out forms to people. One guy asked for a form in Irish and I promptly handed him a form in Irish. Then he asked me to give him a form in English. I said 'sorry, I thought you asked for one in Irish'. He said 'I did but I need the English one so I can fill in the Irish one'. Just an example of what 'I speak Irish' can really mean.

ILoveYourVibes

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

That's abusive. Teenage students are not there to be used as tools to further someone else's agenda.

The language needs them like a mother needs her children.

Mahony0509

Little late to the thread but the single reason for Irish not being popular is the education system. The way it's taught is awful. Poor leaving cert students will have to sit their Irish paper next week and write about some unknown poetry and ridiculous literature. Sad state of affairs when more LC students can speak French/German/Spanish fluently compared to Irish.

Fourier

BarryD2 wrote: »

WRT latter I've wondered if a modern Irish speaker met a native speaker from say the 18th century, would they be able to converse at all meaningfully? Even now, there are differences in vocabulary between Ulster, Connacht and Munster Irish and then there's the official version. The whole area is full of contradictions but I suppose such is life.

It's not that difficult to read somebody from the 18th century. The Irish is very similar to the Irish from the 1940s. You're talking about three major areas of differences that you'd grasp in a few minutes if you're already properly fluent.

Stop moaning ffs

To throw a spanner out there if we’re all in our 30s or 40s or above we grew up with a deeply ingrained insecurity about our country and everything in it.
We don’t have even a smidge of pride or patriotism on the deluded admittedly levels the Americans or English do.
We still have an often quite ugly attitude to our own people and different regions and as evidenced here in this thread a deep resjtement to our own language and culture.
Little wonder the language is stifled ignored and railed against bitterly both here and in the everyday.

LegallyAbroad

Mahony0509 wrote: »

Little late to the thread but the single reason for Irish not being popular is the education system. The way it's taught is awful. Poor leaving cert students will have to sit their Irish paper next week and write about some unknown poetry and ridiculous literature. Sad state of affairs when more LC students can speak French/German/Spanish fluently compared to Irish.

They really don't, though.

The number of fluent Irish speakers within a given cohort by age 18 is in the thousands.

The number of actually fluent French/German/Spanish speakers is negligible (i.e. at C1 or C2 CEFR level).

The standard for a H1 in Irish against French/German/Spanish speakers is not comparable.

You already know this, how many actually fluent French/German/Spanish speakers of Irish nationality do you know?

Whereas if you were down in Gallaras this weekend you'd have met thousands of young Irish speakers from every corner of the country.

Mahony0509

LegallyAbroad wrote: »

They really don't, though.

The amount of fluent Irish speakers within a given cohort by age 18 is in the thousands.

The amount of actually fluent French/German/Spanish speakers is negligible.

The standard for a H1 in Irish against French/German/Spanish speakers is not comparable.

You already know this, how many actually fluent French/German/Spanish speakers of Irish nationality do you know?

Whereas if you were down in Gallaras this weekend you'd have met thousands of young Irish speakers from every corner of the country.

In my local secondary school, near Cork City, they're expecting (in a class of ~40) up to 10 H1s in French, versus maybe 2 if they're lucky in Irish. I know from speaking to teachers that that trend is similar in surrounding areas. Schooling is teaching kids to hate Irish, and they would much rather learn another language.

Wibbs

Reati wrote: »

Erm just because a set of people anecdotally believe something doesn't make it true or fact

The majority of kids go through school learning Irish as a compulsory subject and yet the majority of Irish adults can't speak it. Anecdote or no, it's clearly been a failure as far as revitalising the language goes. There were more native speakers of Irish when the Brits left than there are today, even after a century of promotion and education and legislation. Look at the civil service example. When the requirement to speak and use it as a daily language was removed the staff went over to English almost overnight. And these were folks who could already speak it.

So whats the reason? Badly taught? The majority don't see any use for it beyond a cultural artefact, even cultural window dressing? Other? In less time Welsh grew, Basque grew, Catalan grew, Hebrew came from nothing, never mind all the languages of the post Soviet era nations. It's a long list and there were many positive and negative pressures that differed from the Irish language experience but the results kinda speak for themselves. It seems the majority of Irish people actually don't see any concrete positive for it, not beyond lip service anyway and this has been reflected in the Irish diaspora too.

Now the minority will continue to speak it and that's a good thing and I suspect the inexorable decline of the last century has been halted and it's now stabilised at a more permanent level and again that's a good thing, but growth to the point where it's a much larger minority who will fluently speak it on a daily basis is at the moment a pipe dream.

LegallyAbroad wrote:

That's because boards.ie has a certain demographic (right-wing middle aged men, mostly

A demographic more given to nationalism and a demographic one might expect to be more in favour of a return to Irish? Never mind a demographic that tend to like to impose stuff on younger people. Why are the Left wing more likely to be Gaelgoiri?

ILoveYourVibes

Jellybaby1 wrote: »

This ^ reminds me of something I experienced years ago. I had a temp job just handing out forms to people. One guy asked for a form in Irish and I promptly handed him a form in Irish. Then he asked me to give him a form in English. I said 'sorry, I thought you asked for one in Irish'. He said 'I did but I need the English one so I can fill in the Irish one'. Just an example of what 'I speak Irish' can really mean.

I haven't a word of Irish. I just sometimes use it in art. Particularly when i am pissed off.

I think though its useful to look at things from new angles. I find this debate goes around and around.

Its often two different types of people with zero tolerance for even the moderates of the other view let alone the extremes. For example the whole Lá Dearg thing. I know its the north but it illustrates something.

When you are exposed to an extreme against you it changes how you act. Not just in reaction to the extreme but as a whole.

The whole Suil Eile thing made me think of it. What do extreme unionists see Irish as? Do they have good reason? And what reaction do their attitudes get?

What does it feel like to be in a language minority? What reactions do they get. And most importantly HOW DOES THAT FEEL?

Stop moaning ffs

Is anyone doubting Irish is taught badly? And is in need of serious reinvigorating?

Wibbs

Mahony0509 wrote: »

Schooling is teaching kids to hate Irish, and they would much rather learn another language.

TBH I would agree that there is too much attention and blame laid at the foot of teaching the subject. If it were just that alone, I don't think we would have seen the steep decline in the language over the last hundred years. IMO it's far more pragmatic and to do with the perceived usefulness of the language beyond one's schooling and exams to pass. Learning French or Spanish opens up a huge chunk of the world to someone, learning Irish does not as unless an Irish speaker is 101 they speak English with equal facility. Again it is a perception, most French and Spanish students won't use it much if at all in adulthood unless they move to places where it's the local language, but they can go through an entire life in Ireland without ever having to speak Irish either.

Stop moaning ffs

Made that point earlier.
It has few practical applications compared to any other language.

Maybe change that and introduce ways where it can be used and useful.

*what they might be apart from a Garda being unable to arrest you if he can’t address you in reply in Irish I don’t know. Is that still a thing?

Fourier

Wibbs wrote: »

Now the minority will continue to speak it and that's a good thing and I suspect the inexorable decline of the last century has been halted and it's now stabilised at a more permanent level and again that's a good thing, but growth to the point where it's a much larger minority who will fluently speak it on a daily basis is at the moment a pipe dream.

I think this is actually borne out in studies. It declined to a certain number of speakers until about the 80s but has held there since. I too would consider it unlikely to rise as I believe it would have over the 2000s and 2010s when negative feeling toward it was lower than before, yet it still held at roughly that level.

Reati

Mahony0509 wrote: »

Sad state of affairs when more LC students can speak French/German/Spanish fluently compared to Irish.

Proof please? This anecdotal arguement continues to get pushed in this thread yet no one has given a shred of evidence.

I've shown how these languages underperform in exams compared to Irish yet (I'm told that doesn't actually matter because standardized exams results don't count as proof of accomplishment when learning of languages even those there is an entire evaluation framework based on this concept) somehow the French and German students we churn out are much better but can't get thier heads around the exams. Let's be honest, we churn out students with the same or lesser ability on average at Irish, French or German.

It's highly unlikely we're putting out more fluent speakers of any langauge than the other given they are all taught in the same format. You do not become fluent in 3.5hrs a week. Anyone claiming otherwise is either a Savant in languages or a English speaking monglot talking out their ass. Re-read that setence 3.5times!

As for the "shur mickey down the road leant more French in the leaving than Irish" evidence. Course he did. It's absolutely not the old I can speak French or Spanish (just like the 1.7million who claim they can speak Irish. Another dubious figure) yet when push comes to shove, they actually can't do more than say hello and order a beer.

Sardonicat

I can order a beer in French. I can't in Irish.

Reati

Mahony0509 wrote: »

In my local secondary school, near Cork City, they're expecting (in a class of ~40) up to 10 H1s in French, versus maybe 2 if they're lucky in Irish. I know from speaking to teachers that that trend is similar in surrounding areas. Schooling is teaching kids to hate Irish, and they would much rather learn another language.

I call BS. I will gladly FOI request for the results of that school and post here come August. PM the name.