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Anyone in Ireland that can speak Irish only?

stevek93

This is common in other countries that don’t speak English as a primary language obviously but do we have the same here? One who can’t speak English but who can speak Irish or one who can speak Irish better than English?

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punisher5112

Places such as Connemara would be a good place to check....

legrand

stevek93 wrote: »

This is common in other countries that don’t speak English as a primary language obviously but do we have the same here? One who can’t speak English but who can speak Irish or one who can speak Irish better than English?

Níl

happyoutscan

Used deliver to Rosmuc Connemara in the 90s, Id say there may have been a few then. Those have probably passed on by now.

kennypowers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%A1n_%C3%93_hEinir%C3%AD#:~:text=Se%C3%A1n%20%C3%93%20hEinir%C3%AD%20(Se%C3%A1n%20%C3%93,last%20known%20monolingual%20Irish%20speaker.

RandomViewer

Tory island

L1011

RandomViewer wrote: »

Tory island

None there.

There are plenty of areas where there are native Irish speakers still obviously; and some of the older people with non-fluent English.

I met an early 20s native Welsh speaker with non-fluent English when in Caernarfon a year or so ago; don't think there's any native Irish speakers of that age without fluent English.

Eggs For Dinner

legrand wrote: »

Níl

What's Nil's surname?

RandomViewer

Eggs For Dinner wrote: »

What's Nil's surname?

Nil Fhios Agam

riclad

99 per cent of people here speak english fluently,
apart from tg4 all tv and radio is in english .
IF you wanted to have your child learn only irish you,d have to be like those cults in the usa,where children do not go to school and are educated at home.
Why would you do that to a child.
I presume some children in the gaeltacht grow up speaking irish and english.
In practice irish people speak english in everday life, everyone can speak it, some people are fluent in irish .
try going one day speaking only irish outside the gaeltacht, you,d have a hard time doing business .
in my experience once people leave school they can only understand a few words of irish and a basic few phrases.
i,m excluding people from the gaeltacht area .

RandomViewer

riclad wrote: »

99 per cent of people here speak english fluently,
apart from tg4 all tv and radio is in english .
IF you wanted to have your child learn only irish you,d have to be like those cults in the usa,where children do not go to school and are educated at home.
Why would you do that to a child.
I presume some children in the gaeltacht grow up speaking irish and english.

Some speak Irish ,English and Polish fluently, shows how poor or teaching methods are

friendlyfun

Honestly doubt there would be any monolingual Irish speakers left. I believe the last one died in 1998( Seán Ó hEinirí ) and there is an interview with him. I think if there were some left we would know about it as it would certainly be the subject of many studies, documentaries, books etc as was the life of Seán Ó hEinirí.

Miri5

I was born and bred in the Connemara Gaeltacht. I know loads of children who have Irish as their first language and learn English when they start playschool/ primary. Nothing wrong with that, and most definitely nothing like an American cult. They are bilingual and often as not find other languages easier to pick up.

up for anything

RandomViewer wrote: »

Nil Fhios Agam

I laughed.

Upforthematch

Miri5 wrote: »

I was born and bred in the Connemara Gaeltacht. I know loads of children who have Irish as their first language and learn English when they start playschool/ primary. Nothing wrong with that, and most definitely nothing like an American cult. They are bilingual and often as not find other languages easier to pick up.

So there are plenty of 3 year olds then who speak irish only

legrand

riclad wrote: »

99 per cent of people here speak english fluently,
apart from tg4 all tv and radio is in english .
IF you wanted to have your child learn only irish you,d have to be like those cults in the usa,where children do not go to school and are educated at home.
Why would you do that to a child.
I presume some children in the gaeltacht grow up speaking irish and english.
In practice irish people speak english in everday life, everyone can speak it, some people are fluent in irish .
try going one day speaking only irish outside the gaeltacht, you,d have a hard time doing business .
in my experience once people leave school they can only understand a few words of irish and a basic few phrases.
i,m excluding people from the gaeltacht area .

Pretty sure OP was not looking for a lecture on the merits or otherwise of speaking Irish!

Conall Cernach

A man I know from Connemara went to England in the 60s with a neighbour who could not speak any English then. I'd say there are no adult native Irish speakers who cannot speak English nowadays.

JohnnyFlash

I'm from the Connemara Gaeltacht, and would have grown up knowing monolingual Irish speakers. They had started to die off by the early 90's. My own father was able to speak English, but simply chose not to do so. He didn't say much in Irish either to be honest, being a famously taciturn man.

One of the best things about speaking Irish with fellow native speakers is being able to relax, have the banter, and converse in my native tongue without having the conversation dominated by the topic of the language itself, or how this beautiful language gets mixed up with the awful type of small-minded nationalism you tend to find with the Neo Gaeilgeoir types. Think beard, glasses, leather patches on their corduroy jacket, corduroy pants; no sense of humour, a fetish for Pearse, and the personality of a fúcking rock.

I do like the pop-up Gaeltacht events, but they were always in danger of being overran by the zealots mentioned above who wanted to dish out a dose of boring nationalism using their UCD/Stillorgan Dual Carriageway Irish. Those lads would bore the tits off you. Flann O'Brien was a great man for making fun of their sort.

What's also annoying is having to explain the "usefulness" of Irish to naive, narrow-minded, monolingual bootlickers. You don't find me asking them banal questions about how useful their love of Japanese cartoons and computer games is.

I do miss the idea and the reality of Irish monolingualism. More for what it stood for, rather that what it meant to me as a young man.

AdrianBalboa

Issues I have with Irish is its use of religious terminology in their greetings, and the genderized surnames.

My children go to a Gaelscoil and I told them to use “hello” instead of Dia Dhuit and to use whichever version of their surname they are more comfortable with instead of following the outdated Ó/Ní format for boys and girls respectively.

I also told them to just ignore whatever their teacher says about the “rules” and pronunciation and all that rubbish and just talk to each other. They’re never going to learn how to speak if they’re learning grammar!

AdrianBalboa

“Ní” means “no” which stigmatises girls.

Upforthematch

AdrianBalboa wrote: »

“Ní” means “no” which stigmatises girls.

Huh?

That's a new one anyway.

As if a word can't have two (or in the case of ní, three) totally separate meanings without someone feeling stigmatised :rolleyes:

Sgt Hartman

You would find quite a few people living in Dublin's North Inner City flats that are barely literate in English. Some of the accents there are so bad that you'd think that they were speaking a pidgin dialect of English.

AdrianBalboa

Upforthematch wrote: »

Huh?

That's a new one anyway.

As if a word can't have two (or in the case of ní, three) totally separate meanings without someone feeling stigmatised :rolleyes:

It’s very simple. “Ní maith” means “don’t like.”

Ó Mannion - “From Mannion”

Ní Mannion - “Not (really) Mannion”

The official story is that “Ní” is just the female version in this case but I find it difficult to believe they simply took a negative word to use it as a positive prefix, referring to women, without thinking about it.

Upforthematch

AdrianBalboa wrote: »

It’s very simple. “Ní maith” means “don’t like.”

Ó Mannion - “From Mannion”

Ní Mannion - “Not (really) Mannion”

The official story is that “Ní” is just the female version in this case but I find it difficult to believe they simply took a negative word to use it as a positive prefix, referring to women, without thinking about it.

Ní comes from iníon (daughter of) - I really hope you're just spoofing and not believing what you have just written.

The third meaning for ní is wash (from verb nigh) - are you going to link this to girls being unclean now or some other seafóid?

Edit: Of course I forgot the fourth meaning ní means 'thing' as well - girls are only objects as well perhaps?

TenLeftFingers

I can't remember which social media platform I was told this on but the same subject came up since it's claimed that the last monolingual Irish speaker passed away some years ago. Anyway, a few were claimed to know of such people in their area.

chosen1

AdrianBalboa wrote: »

Issues I have with Irish is its use of religious terminology in their greetings, and the genderized surnames.

My children go to a Gaelscoil and I told them to use “hello” instead of Dia Dhuit and to use whichever version of their surname they are more comfortable with instead of following the outdated Ó/Ní format for boys and girls respectively.

I also told them to just ignore whatever their teacher says about the “rules” and pronunciation and all that rubbish and just talk to each other. They’re never going to learn how to speak if they’re learning grammar!

Hope you are equally as opposed to using "goodbye" as a farewell statement since it's a contraction of "God be with you". Words and phrases all have roots. Some maybe outdated but every speaker gets on with it. I'm sure they're are other examples from other languages also and no one gets uppity about it.

Don't ever go to Iceland either and ask their surname. You would get very offended.

KevRossi

The last monoglot Irish speaker in Co. Dublin was recorded in the 1831 census in Glenasmole (past Bohernabreena). Her family descendants still live there.

WAW

AdrianBalboa wrote: »

It’s very simple. “Ní maith” means “don’t like.”

Ó Mannion - “From Mannion”

Ní Mannion - “Not (really) Mannion”

The official story is that “Ní” is just the female version in this case but I find it difficult to believe they simply took a negative word to use it as a positive prefix, referring to women, without thinking about it.

Are you for real? Ní comes from iníon. Loads of languages use male and female signifiers. It's very common.
As for the greetings. Surely the intent is the main thing. The intention of wishing a person well.
If you're looking to excise any traces of deities and gender from the language, you'll have a pretty limited vocabulary or cultural understanding and poorer for it IMO.

Penfailed

AdrianBalboa wrote: »

My children go to a Gaelscoil and I told them to use “hello” instead of Dia Dhuit

So you're taking God out of the Irish version but using the Devil's English version. HELL-Oh.

Oranage2

I worked for a company and there had to so many Irish speakers, a guy from the gaeltacht said he didn't learn English till he was like 10

Tokyo

Fadó fadó, I worked tarring the roads on the Aran Islands when I was a teenager (mid 90's), and a few of the local council labourers there could speak Irish, but not a lick of English. It surprised me too because up until then, any Irish speaker I'd met could also speak English. Chatting to them about it while we were working, they told me they never had the need to learn - older generation (possibly early 60's at the time), furthest they'd go would be to the local pub and back home, never really had any need to go to the mainland. Good chance what is left of that generation has died out now though.