Could the Irish language be revived?

Gbear · 11-05-2018 08:23PM

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

5 or 6 useful languages (and that'd be a few very motivated people)

Here's a map of languages spoken with data taken from the eurobarometer poll:

Article here.

If the average in places like the Netherlands is 3ish, presumably there are a decent number that speak 4,5,6 and so on, and they're not necessarily "useful" in as much as that means anything.

Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian - they're scarcely much more useful than Irish themselves.

It'd be interesting to see a full breakdown - comparisons between numbers of languages that people are fully fluent in, and in the number of familiar languages.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were as many bi-lingual Irish as a proportion as there are Scandinavians who can speak 4 or 5.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

In Finland a lot of people are p!ssed off that they have to learn Swedish just because there's a small Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, they don't see a value in learning it.

Most Scandinavian languages are similar to each other, just as English, Dutch and German share quite a bit, Italian/Spanish/French, etc. but Finnish is like Irish - not related to the languages around it, and not useful at all outside of its small home country. The difference between Finnish and Irish is that Irish isn't even useful within Ireland.

Languages aren't static. If we actually made an effort we could establish it properly within Ireland within a century.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

If the "learning Irish makes it easier to learn other languages" argument had any merit, then why are we so bad at learning other languages?

Because we don't actually speak Irish. I would hazard a guess that people who go to gaelscoils are on average better speakers. As far as I know they generally outperform english speaking schools, but I don't know if there's any causal relationship there. It might just be because parents who are arsed enough to send their kids to a gaelscoil are generally more arsed parents, they're wealthier, have more stable households and so on, and so their children generally do better.

Here's a tangentially related article from the Times that sounds quite promising: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/children-in-gaelscoileanna-to-learn-foreign-languages-1.3298859

I don't know Irish well enough to comment, but supposedly it has structural similarities to French, which is why it tends to be the foreign language in gaelscoils, or so I have been told.

Whether there are more fundamental skills learned with each language that help with all language learning, or perhaps because all european languages, bar Basque and possibly Finnish, Estonian and a few others, are decended from one Indo-European language, it doesn't really matter whether languages are closely-related to one another or not.
I did find it particularly easy to learn Spanish, and my pronunciation in particular was a lot better than others in my course with similar experience because I could speak french, however, I also picked up Irish and German reasonbly well in school, but just had no interest in them, in part because they're poorly, unintuitively taught. There are broader skills that aid in all language learning that stretch beyond relatively recent groupings like Germanic or Romance languages.
Perhaps they would offer no benefit to learning East Asian languages, because they're so distinct, but half the world speak Indo-European languages.

Again, I'm not that sold on Irish itself, but I think it's the most realistic option if we want to become a truly bi-lingual nation, and if we do that, I think that will have benefits enough of its own to justify it.

Graces7 · 11-05-2018 09:50PM

A family near me ( west mayo offshore island) are fully biiingual. I was on the ferry one day when an official from an islands committee was getting info and the ferryman literally went from English to Irish and back,
Possibly they were raised speaking Irish and English is a second language.
Many of their generation will be the same in remote areas.

Hotblack Desiato · 11-05-2018 11:21PM

Gbear wrote: »

If the average in places like the Netherlands is 3ish, presumably there are a decent number that speak 4,5,6 and so on, and they're not necessarily "useful" in as much as that means anything.

By useful I mean a language you have a chance to use in 'real life' preferably with native speakers and ideally incuding ones which don't speak your native language.

E.g. let's say you live in the Netherlands, you will learn Dutch obviously, English in school (and the Dutch get British TV on cable) so the standard of English is usually good. But within a couple of hours drive you have Germany, Denmark, Wallonia (French-speaking Belgium), France. So if you learn any of these languages and you have an interest you can easily take day trips there and improve your proficiency with native speakers.

With Irish, not only are the areas where it's the native language of day-to-day life now vanishingly small (and some would say that in truth they're now practically non-existent), all of the Irish speakers are also native English speakers. So due to fear of not being understood or embarrassment or whatever there is an incentive for both the Irish-native speaker and the English-native speaker to just switch to English.

Or, put it another way - a language is only really useful to know when you want to talk to someone with whom you don't have any other language in common. With Irish this falls at the first hurdle because for a long time there have been no Irish speakers who do not speak English. In other words it's redundant as a means of communication, as is say Latin. That doesn't mean that nobody should study Latin for its own sake if they want to.

Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian - they're scarcely much more useful than Irish themselves.

Not outside their own borders, but they are the languages of daily life in their own countries, Irish is not and for most people hasn't been for about 200 years now.

I don't know Irish well enough to comment, but supposedly it has structural similarities to French

Having studied French to honours LC I'd be struggling to think of any.

which is why it tends to be the foreign language in gaelscoils, or so I have been told.

French is the most commonly taught foreign language in schools in general here, and this perpetuates the situation where more people will study French at third level because they already have LC French, which increases the pool of potential French school teachers, which cements the place of French as the most commonly taught foreign language.

Again, I'm not that sold on Irish itself, but I think it's the most realistic option if we want to become a truly bi-lingual nation, and if we do that, I think that will have benefits enough of its own to justify it.

It's very difficult for English-speaking countries to do this, mainly because there is a large incentive for speakers of other languages to learn English but much less of an incentive for an English speaker to learn another language.

Canada is offically bilingual and everyone in English-speaking regions is obliged to learn French at school. It would be interesting to know how the average English speaker's enthusiam for French and level of proficiency compares with Irish here.

prinzeugen · 11-05-2018 11:49PM

I think Irish will go the same way as Klingon and Cornish. People will only learn and use it as a hobby.

On the flip side, you have the Scottish Nationalists spending huge amounts of public money to make every sign/police car/government document bilingual when absolutely nobody (except William Wallace wanabe hipster nutjobs) uses Scots Gaelic.

Hotblack Desiato · 14-05-2018 12:00PM

Like Welsh nationalists, like SF up north, and like Irish nationalists did before independence, they are using a language as a political weapon not promoting a language for its own sake.

It has been said that the worst thing that happened to the Irish language in the 20th century was independence!

topper75 · 14-05-2018 12:55PM

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Like Welsh nationalists, like SF up north, and like Irish nationalists did before independence, they are using a language as a political weapon not promoting a language for its own sake.

It has been said that the worst thing that happened to the Irish language in the 20th century was independence!

Interesting viewpoint. I can see where you are coming from. The Free State damned Irish to some extent by using it for official names: Táiniste, Dáil, Seanad, Taoiseach, party titles etc. as you might with dead languages like Latin. This approach limited the extent to which Irish could be ever revived as a working 'kitchen' language in Irish homes like Hebrew was in Israel, and instead unintentionally gave it a different role as heritage piece or object of officialdom, taken down from the dresser on occasions to impress visitors or convey authority.

I'd be much happier with 'Prime Minister' and 'parliament' whilst we were speaking English, if Irish was let truly breathe on its own.

Permabear · 14-05-2018 02:07PM

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topper75 · 14-05-2018 02:22PM

Permabear wrote: »

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Thanks - a superb example of what I was trying to address.

Speak to me earnestly in English or Irish - I love and understand both!

But please don't engage in tokenism. It aims to be helpful, but ultimately undermines.

wakka12 · 14-05-2018 03:50PM

I really doubt a large number in the countries you mentioned speak 4 or 5 or 6 though. Id say nearly all of them just know english out of necessity along with their native , and then a bit of a third. If ireland was native irish speaking we would learn english out of necessity and another foreign language at a conversation level and we'd probably have similar number of about 2.6-2.8 too then

I would say its an average of 2.7/2.8 due to the vast vast majority speaking english and native well alongside some french or german or spanish rather than a lot speaking 4 or 5 languages and lots only knowing their native language making an average in between

5+ languages would be extremely difficult to learn and is not necessary or even nearly worth the effort

feargale · 14-05-2018 11:01PM

topper75 wrote: »

Interesting viewpoint. I can see where you are coming from. The Free State damned Irish to some extent by using it for official names: Táiniste, Dáil, Seanad, Taoiseach, party titles etc. as you might with dead languages like Latin. This approach limited the extent to which Irish could be ever revived as a working 'kitchen' language in Irish homes like Hebrew was in Israel, and instead unintentionally gave it a different role as heritage piece or object of officialdom, taken down from the dresser on occasions to impress visitors or convey authority.

I'd be much happier with 'Prime Minister' and 'parliament' whilst we were speaking English, if Irish was let truly breathe on its own.

How right you are. I once listened to John A. Murphy talk about the fictions surrounding Irish e.g. GAA match programmes with most of the front cover in Irish while just about everything else inside is in English. If the GAA were serious about Irish the programme would be totally bilingual or alternatively the programme would be available to patrons in either language. In Belgium everything official is either totally in French, totally in Dutch or totally in both, none of your government letter commencing "a chara" while the rest is in English. The GAA is not alone in this attempt to delude us.
Yes, lets have 'Prime minister'/'Príomh Aire,' 'Parliament'/'Dáil.' and 'Senate/Seanad.' Away with 'Taoiseach' and 'Tànaiste', terms that belong to the nineteen-thirties and the world of 'Führer', 'Duce' and 'Caudillo.'

topper75 · 15-05-2018 10:23AM

Damn it, this has put thoughts in my head. :-)

I'm going to be awkward from now on and refer instead to senate, prime minister, hurling ball etc. at all times.

If a person mentions 'seanad', 'Taoiseach' or 'sliotar', I'll deem the conversation to have switched to Irish ...agus déanfaidh mise mar an gcéanna.

Let's see how that goes down. :-)

If someone writes to me with an address of A Chara, ... scríobhfaidh mise chuchu go hiomláin as Gaeilge.

Probably not being awkward though really, just giving a language its due.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 15-05-2018 11:34AM

topper75 wrote: »

Damn it, this has put thoughts in my head. :-)

I'm going to be awkward from now on and refer instead to senate, prime minister, hurling ball etc. at all times.

If a person mentions 'seanad', 'Taoiseach' or 'sliotar', I'll deem the conversation to have switched to Irish ...agus déanfaidh mise mar an gcéanna.

Let's see how that goes down. :-)

If someone writes to me with an address of A Chara, ... scríobhfaidh mise chuchu go hiomláin as Gaeilge.

Probably not being awkward though really, just giving a language its due.

Meine freund, this is ein sehr gut idea...

feargale · 15-05-2018 03:19PM

topper75 wrote: »

Damn it, this has put thoughts in my head. :-)

If someone writes to me with an address of A Chara, ... scríobhfaidh mise chuchu go hiomláin as Gaeilge.

No. I have a better idea. Write back to them "Dear Sirs", gach rud eile as Gaeilge until you come to the end, then "Yours Faithfully."

astrofool · 16-05-2018 12:00PM

wakka12 wrote: »

I really doubt a large number in the countries you mentioned speak 4 or 5 or 6 though. Id say nearly all of them just know english out of necessity along with their native , and then a bit of a third. If ireland was native irish speaking we would learn english out of necessity and another foreign language at a conversation level and we'd probably have similar number of about 2.6-2.8 too then

I would say its an average of 2.7/2.8 due to the vast vast majority speaking english and native well alongside some french or german or spanish rather than a lot speaking 4 or 5 languages and lots only knowing their native language making an average in between

5+ languages would be extremely difficult to learn and is not necessary or even nearly worth the effort

Some people love languages, and like learning as many as they can, and don't understand why people don't learn more languages as they love it so much. A language is also only useful if someone else learns it, so they are driven to get more people to learn it to justify the time they spend on it (a lot of Irish speakers come across like this, as if everyone has to suffer hours of learning to justify their sunken time into it). Other hobbies often don't require that level of pushiness, if I like Maths, it's useful in of itself, same if I do carpentry, I don't need someone else to learn it for what I make to be useful (also one or two people can provide all the input required, a language needs lots of people to speak it to be worthwhile).

Shurimgreat · 16-05-2018 12:20PM

Or course it could be revived.

Wales is a model of how a language has made a huge comeback. Hungary I think the same.

The key is a mixture of education from a young age and immersion. What kids learn from the age 0-5 in terms of language is critical. That will always be their "first" language. After that its a case of forcing them to learn a "foreign" language.

whisky_galore · 16-05-2018 12:38PM

Shurimgreat wrote: »

Or course it could be revived.

Wales is a model of how a language has made a huge comeback. Hungary I think the same.

The key is a mixture of education from a young age and immersion. What kids learn from the age 0-5 in terms of language is critical. That will always be their "first" language. After that its a case of forcing them to learn a "foreign" language.

It's back to that old tried and failed 'let the kids do the work' as the bulk of the adult population aren't interested.

Permabear · 16-05-2018 12:53PM

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Sponge25 · 16-05-2018 01:05PM

As a first language no. Actually most of of us are Germanic and not Celtic with the exception of Connaught.

Roger_007 · 16-05-2018 01:27PM

The majority of Irish people do not really want to revive the Irish language as the primary spoken language. If they did, it would have happened many years ago. We like to blame the education system for the failure to revive the language, but the plain truth is that the vast majority make no effort.
Just like with any problem in this country we like to blame someone else or something else for our failures when the failure lies with each and every one of us.
So, the reality is that Irish will not be revived as our primary language because we simply can't be bothered.

Hotblack Desiato · 16-05-2018 03:04PM

Shurimgreat wrote: »

The key is a mixture of education from a young age and immersion. What kids learn from the age 0-5 in terms of language is critical. That will always be their "first" language.

Which means English as the language of the home will always be their first language, unless you are advocating some sort of gulag for the under fives?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 16-05-2018 03:05PM

Shurimgreat wrote: »

Or course it could be revived.

Wales is a model of how a language has made a huge comeback. Hungary I think the same.

The key is a mixture of education from a young age and immersion. What kids learn from the age 0-5 in terms of language is critical. That will always be their "first" language. After that its a case of forcing them to learn a "foreign" language.

What if the parents of said kids don't want this?

Also, where in the hell are you going to immerse every 0-5 year old in Irish?

VinLieger · 16-05-2018 03:16PM

Shurimgreat wrote: »

Or course it could be revived.

Wales is a model of how a language has made a huge comeback. Hungary I think the same.

The key is a mixture of education from a young age and immersion. What kids learn from the age 0-5 in terms of language is critical. That will always be their "first" language. After that its a case of forcing them to learn a "foreign" language.

We invited people from wales who were involved with their program to advise us on what to do...... they were sent packing because the core advice was remove it as being mandatory in schools and stop teaching by rote

Permabear · 16-05-2018 03:30PM

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Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 16-05-2018 03:30PM

VinLieger wrote: »

We invited people from wales who were involved with their program to advise us on what to do...... they were sent packing because the core advice was remove it as being mandatory in schools and stop teaching by rote

If that's true, then it kind of proves the point that those responsible for promoting and teaching the Irish are the biggest threats to any revival hopes imaginable.

VinLieger · 16-05-2018 03:40PM

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

If that's true, then it kind of proves the point that those responsible for promoting and teaching the Irish are the biggest threats to any revival hopes imaginable.

I heard it on a radio program a few years back, I couldnt tell you any specifics about who or when but i remember that it was indeed like you say that those responsible for teaching and promoting it were shown up to be the biggest blockers.

They have this real ingrained fear of removing it as a mandatory subject which i think many would agree is one of the big issues, as people arent taught a love for the language they are simply forced into it which is absolutely the wrong way to go with children.

Ipso · 16-05-2018 05:10PM

Sponge25 wrote: »

As a first language no. Actually most of of us are Germanic and not Celtic with the exception of Connaught.

Have you a pamphlet I can subscribe to?

topper75 · 16-05-2018 05:27PM

Permabear wrote: »

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You get this reference a lot as a kick against the validity of Irish today. Daily speakers is a bit of a warped measure though when you consider that the vast majority of Irish haven't got a single word of Polish nor will they ever. However, the vast majority of people know at least a few words of Irish. No immigrant tongue will outstrip Irish in this respect.

Permabear wrote: »

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This fear equates learning Irish with forgetting English.

whisky_galore · 16-05-2018 08:10PM

topper75 wrote: »

. However, the vast majority of people know at least a few words of Irish. No immigrant tongue will outstrip Irish in this respect.

Knowing a smattering of random words without being able to string a sentence together does not a living language make. Pretty feeble result for almost a century of resources poured into the failed bilingual experiment.

Brings to mind that Carlberg ad from a few years back.

Shurimgreat · 16-05-2018 10:17PM

I think some people are confusing the question of "should the irish language be revived" (a separate topic and discussed ad nauseum) with "how could the language be revived?".

As I said it could be revived with enough effort and will. However there doesn't appear to be that will.

Unfortunately most Irish people don't or can't identify with the Irish language. Its almost foreign to them.

Aside from Irish, our educational system when it comes to most languages is pretty abysmal. We learn just enough to get us through the Leaving Cert and its quickly forgotten.

Shurimgreat · 16-05-2018 10:20PM

whisky_galore wrote: »

Knowing a smattering of random words without being able to string a sentence together does not a living language make. Pretty feeble result for almost a century of resources poured into the failed bilingual experiment.

Brings to mind that Carlberg ad from a few years back.

When it comes to something like Irish its either all or nothing ie total immersion, subjects taught through Irish and so on. But there isn't a critical mass of Irish speakers to make this feasible.

I think in time our educational system will have to drop Irish as a mandatory subject. If some don't want to learn it, fair enough. But those who do should be given all the resources needed including significant time spent in the Gaeltacht. I'd advocate the same for those learning German, French etc.

A couple hours a week in the classroom will never compare with immersion in the language for a significant amount of time.

Could the Irish language be revived?

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