The creeping prominence of the Irish language

Do you still need to study Shakespeare to matriculate to Computer Science?

Why are you against Irish being equally prominent to English on a sign?

Should the native Irish speaker have to squint to see what's on it in your opinion?

So, progress then :)

But again, it's not really a rights issue.

Teaching Irish in schools won't and hasn't stopped its decline. Its probably slowed the decline.

It certainly slowed its decline in the Gaeltacht, and even reversed the decline in a few small areas. However, the pressures (not just social pressures) didn't disappear with independence.

Outside of the Gaeltacht however, teaching Irish in our schools has certainly reversed the decline, and there are now Irish speakers in every parish in the State if not in the whole country. It is certainly true that many of them do not speak Irish on a daily basis, but this does not change the fact that they are Irish speakers.

The Gaelscoil movement produces several thousand new speakers each year, so I think we can call it a success, while the various Irish-language media give people who do not have a network in their locality a way of participating in the Irish-language community when they wish.

West Britain is a term invented by the English who ruled Ireland in the 19th century, and has ever since been applied to their cultural heirs, some of them actual descendants. The same type of person in Scotland called the country they lived in North Britain.

Don't blame us if some of us use your own term to refer to you.

Oh, we certainly have the right to engage with the State through Irish.

The State and its various branches however ignore us, and reply in a different language - which means that in fact our right doesn't in reality exist because there is no mechanism to ensure that the response will be available in Irish with no ifs, buts or at some later dates.

I gave up making complaints to the Coimisinéir Teanga because he does not have the power to enforce compliance - or because in certain cases where he has the power he just gave up because he couldn't be bothered. He stated this (not so graphically) in one of his reports.

When you say, "there is no mechanism to ensure that the response will be available in Irish with no ifs, buts or at some later dates", can you elaborate on this?

Is it a case of services not provided or complaints not being followed up? Or not being able to conduct dealings at hospitals, police stations (non emergencies), post offices, etc., with clerks/officers in Irish?

Are you looking for the ability to deal with the State in the language of your choice, or any State employee?

Excellent post. Gaelscoil taught Irish seems to evaporate after all the final exams are done.

"People in Ireland blame the education system for their lack of Irish because its an answer that offends the least amount of people."

This is so true.

Is there any other country in the world where their citizens think so little of their first language.

But many people do think a lot of the Irish language. They just don't/can't speak it though to the chargrin of anti-crowd.

People who can speak Irish in my experience are open and tolerant because they are all dual language speakers already. They have had to learn a second language be it Irish or English and know that learning languages isn't easy. They understand that everyone has their own level, that's why even the cúpla focal are welcome. It's solidarity, it's community.

The census figures, any report that actually looks at the number of active Irish speakers, the decline of Gaeltachts, the complaints from Irish language speakers about the challenges faced when trying to access services through Irish. If the Irish education system on its own was good a producing active Irish language speakers we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Using this link there were about 73k active daily Irish speakers in 2016. That's a rough estimate even if it's off by a factor of 2 or 3 it won't change my point

Gaelscoils and more broadly the education system from my point of view do produce students who are capable of conversing in Ireland. In 2021 about 61k odd did the leaving cert. 24,725 did honours Irish. About 29% got a H2 and above. So that's 7,145 students(see the state examinations statistics page and the excel file you can download. I am being conservative when I assume that everyone who gets that is capable of at least talking in Irish when leaving school particularly with the increased weighting of the oral. 10 years of that gives you about 70,000 people speaking Irish. In 2016 there were only roughly that many people speaking Irish full stop daily. The number of daily Irish language speakers is not consistent with the number of people you would expect given the leaving cert results from the last 10 years never mind 50 years. Again if everyone who is capable of speaking Irish to some degree spoke Irish we would be having this discussion in Irish. The fact boards an Irish based forum mandates English outside specialist language forums tell you a lot.

The biggest challenge for the Irish language is that you can have the best language teaching going but it won't make much difference. The minute students leave the classroom they are bombarded by wealth of English language media and other societal pressures that render the teaching in schools largely futile. I'm not blaming the Irish language, speakers, teachers etc. But the language is competing with a language that has over a billion speakers between native and non native speakers. That provides a wealth of information and utility in the language that only a small handful of languages can come anywhere close to matching. Look at Wikipedia and the number of articles in English versus any other language.

Any plan to promote Irish has to factor in the challenge it is up against. Pretending Irish is the native language of Ireland and all Irish people have some magical ability and or desire to actually speak the language on a regular basis is actively damaging and killing the language. That attitude is one of the reasons the language has declined because the actual speakers of Irish are not supported.

The problem with this idea is that you continue to ignore the pressures to speak pretty much any language but Irish in Ireland. Its ideas like this that are killing the Irish language. Had the state a hundred years ago reconciled itself to reality that Ireland was fundamentally an English speaking country and focused on supporting Gaeltachts the language would be in better shape.