What if Ireland did speak Irish..

popinfresh

With all this talk of "why don't we speak Irish", I thought it'd be interesting to see your views on what it would be like if the British hadn't imposed english on our ancestors. What would the world be like?

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i hate you guys......

SantaHoe

I guess we can only imagine...

I'd say we'd have English as a second language anyway.
I don't think we'd have spread to as many parts of the world as we have if we couldn't speak English.
They probably wouldn't have St.Patricks day in the USA.
If it wasn't for the English-speaking Irish sowing roots in America, I don't think we'd have half the tourism we have now.
But on the flip-side, maybe we'd have more visitors if we all spoke ás Gaeilge?

I'm glad my English isn't as bad as my Irish is now, if it was - I'd probably never leave the country.
Fluency in English opens a lot of doors to working abroad.

chernobyl

we would be even more isolated that we are already, Americans would have an even worse stereotype for us (who cares), and would would not be as rich a country as we are now.
but how can what i just said be right, because we will never know.

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Ashley Lyn

Ashley Lyn Cafagna

popinfresh

Well personally I think it would have had an affect on the emegation numbers, therefore countrys like Australia and America would be different aswell. And the population of Ireland would be around 20 million, at least...

Doctúir

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by popinfresh:
Well personally I think it would have had an affect on the emegation numbers, therefore countrys like Australia and America would be different aswell. And the population of Ireland would be around 20 million, at least...</font>

You appear to be labouring under the misconception that past generations of emigrants were all English speakers. In fact, rates of emigration were higher amongst Irish speakers because they generally came from poorer regions of the country. Many of them may have been bilingual, but their proficiency in English would have been poor, given the lack of any formal education.

Quote:
"Moreover the greater part of Famine emigrants came from regions where the majority spoke the Irish language. Even where it was spoken in the minority, it was a strong minority. According to S. H. Cousens’s estimates, 90% of people in Galway, 54% of people in Sligo and 76% of people in Cork were Irish-speakers. They amounted to about a quarter of Famine emigrants, that is to say half a million emigrants were Irish-speakers. In the late 1840s some port officials reported the occasional inability of entire emigrants’ ships to speak English. Therefore it is fair to say that the mid-nineteenth century exodus had a strong Gaelic character."

See http://www.uhb.fr/Langues/Cei/lpret1.htm
and references therein.

[This message has been edited by Doctúir (edited 20-08-2001).]

Fand

We're positing an Ireland that never spoke English here, are we?

There are several possible scenarios:

1) Irish people, like the Dutch, an even smaller country with a bigger population than ours, or Denmark, with its comparable population and size, might be proudly speaking its own language but also confident in several other languages.

2) Irish people might have returned to speaking our own language, but also use English for business, as is done in many other countries.

Oh, and so on. Plenty of possible ways it could be - but I'll leave the stage now to the self-hating Seóníní who want to be little Brits.

SantaHoe

Blah, can't be ar$ed getting into into this again.

[This message has been edited by Dead{o}Santa (edited 25-08-2001).]

chernobyl

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by popinfresh:
With all this talk of "why don't we speak Irish", I thought it'd be interesting to see your views on what it would be like if the British hadn't imposed english on our ancestors. What would the world be like?

</font>

Look @ the Aran Islands..thats what you would have.

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Ashley Lyn

Ashley Lyn Cafagna

Volvagia

If we didn't speak english as our first language then the country would not be as wealthy as it is now. A large factour in choosing a place for a factory is the langusge the majority or the country speaks if its english then its easier for the large american companys!

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The Millenium Bug, You mean Han Solo's ship is coming here in the year 2000?

Fand

Dunno 'bout that, Vol - the Dutch seem to do OK; they speak Dutch, but also fluent English, German, French, Spanish, Italian...

We're not stupider than the Dutch, so why can't we speak Irish, and speak fluent English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan.... for business?

Volvagia

I suppose your right Fand i never thought about that!

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The Millenium Bug, You mean Han Solo's ship is coming here in the year 2000?

Manach

I suppose it would depend from when people started speaking Irish.
From the 18th Century onward, Irish would be associated with a defeated peasantry. But prior to Cromwell, there still was a unique Gaelic culture/civilisation associated with the language. If our Irish speaking was based on this period, the present day society would certainly be different than what we have today.

Volvagia

Wow now that i didn't know!

Jcastle

We would not be as fluent as the Dutch and Danes. Those countries have close geographical links and economic links with a much larger neighbour. They are also more advanced industrial and trading countries. Plus being contigous to your foreign speaking neighbour lends itself to language influence.
If Ireland spoke Irish I would imagine the East coast would have some level of proficiency in English while the midlands and west would not. Therefore economic disparities would be much greater than today leading to a wealthier part on the Eastern seaboard and much of the rest of the country being poorer.

The country as a whole would be much poorer.

Aard

Almost a 10yo thread! But interesting argument nonetheless.

Enkidu

Ten years old, but why not?:)

Most answers to this question basically involve imagining the modern world, except with Ireland being one big Gaeltacht that is completely isolated from the outside world for some reason.

A slightly more realistic answer would mean the Gaelic order didn't collapse and that the old lords and the Bards remained in power. We already have interesting records from that time of the resentment the average Irish person carried toward the Bards and the upper classes, so who knows what kind of conflicts would have arisen there as we moved toward a democracy. I think it realistic that the Bardic standard would have remained in place without a spelling or grammar reform, meaning we would learn written Irish in school, which would be quite seperate from what we spoke.

deise go deo

Interesting thread, if a little old.

I don't get the asumption that without the English Language we would have to be poor, there are plenty of well off countries in Europe who dont have English as their first Language. In fact almost all well off European Countries don't have English as their first or even second language in Places.
Look at Switzerland, they have 4 languages, all of them not English, and they are getting on just fine.

Not to mention that in the spirit of proper historical fantacy, If Ireland did not become English speaking then it stands to reason that England would not have become the great power it did (as its unlikely that an England that became a great power would have left Ireland alone due to Irelands strategic importance for them), meaning English would not be as important as it is.



Another related but slightly different question would be, What would Ireland be like if it became Irish speaking over the next 50 years or so?

An Bradán Feasa

All we need now is a DeLorean with a flux capacitor so we can put right what once went wrong...


I'm aware I'm mixing two mithoi.