Time to dump Irish

"Understanding" and "appreciation" are rather dilettante aspects of a language though. They're simply nice-to-haves. The primary function of a language is communication and in that respect Irish falls a long way short. This is because the vast, vast, majority of people on this island (and anywhere else for that matter) cannot speak it and have no interest in speaking it. Into the bargain, the majority of those who do speak it do so terribly and at the level of a schoolchild at best. Actual fluent speakers of the language that could hold a conversation about anything above a school age level are quite few and far between.

Yes. There's a difference between something being optional and something being compulsory but with various specific exemptions. If something is genuinely optional then there's no need to apply for permission not to do it.

The maths tells me that I've to point ou tto you three time snow that I said the reason was banal and not the language. Here's the quote again, post no. 32:

Which means your stance is, "I don't care what you wrote - I'm going to go with what i think you wrote and pretend it's more accurate, even though I know it's completely false!" and this is pointless, so drop the charade.

To ensure the survival of the Irish language the government should ban it's use immediately, with stiff financial penalties for those who dare to use it. This ban should be for a period of 5 to 10 years !

Is Spain Franco banned the use of the Catalan language, the ban lasted from 1939 to 1975 After the demise of Franco Catalan was revived and made an official language of Spain. Today over 9 million speak the language on a daily basis and are very proud and protective of their language, indeed the native speakers will only speak Spanish when they really have to - they have the same disrespect for Spanish as most Irish folk have for Irish. I spent some time in Barcelona their attitude to their own Catalan language sure was an eye opener.

Good anecdote from a recent episode of the Tommy, Hector and Laurita podcast where Hector tells of helping his son with Leaving Cert Irish revision. Hector's obviously one of the more prominent Gaelgeoirs in Irish media but even he came out of the study session fairly confused, joking that he might need some grinds.

Doesn't that about sum it up?

Who's been designing the Irish curriculums over the years and how has no-one in the Board of Education figured out that the method of teaching it in primary and secondary is basically absolute gash? Everybody says and knows that it's taught wrong.... except for the people charged with laying out the curriculum, apparently. There needs to be some real investigation into what's going on, there.

I think you may be being a bit selective about increases of Welsh in Wales with your example of Cardif.

Yes, Cardif may have improved but look at the other areas where the language has survived. These were always Welsh speaking areas. The language never died out in Wales to the extent it died out in Ireland. When a language is dominant, it is self-perpetuating.

There's kind of an idea abroad that Irish as heard now is some revered cultural thing as spoken by the Gaelic clans of ancient times. Whereas I suspect that if we had native speakers from various parts of 19th century Ireland even, that they'd understand little of what they'd hear now or each other for that matter. The language declined seriously after the famine period and into the early 20th century when there was a Gaelic Revival period, the reinvention period. Then we had state interference in the form of An Caighdeán Oifigiúil - the standardising of the language. Even locally now, there's seems to be a different vocabulary in pockets. Of course you can argue that language is a living thing and changes over time, but I think in the case of Irish, a lot of the change was driven by reinvention and standardisation. That chap Manchán Magan has written a fair bit about many of the lost words and phrases. So we should be clear as to what we aim to preserve.

My point, though, was that with other parts of Wales (and considerable parts) where Welsh is actually dominant, increasing the number of Welsh speakers in Cardif is not that difficult. A lot of it could be explained by patterns of migration for example but the fact that large parts of the rest of the country is Welsh-dominant would make the language more relevant to potential learners. They know from travelling around their own country that Welsh is helpful in ordinary everyday situations in their country.

Contrast that with Dublin. Inward migration will never increase the number of primarily Irish speakers to any great extent because where are they to come from? Second, relevancy: in what situations is the language useful when traveling about the country? Again few and far between. Almost all the usefulness of the language comes from needing it to get into college or other artificially constructed advantages.

Education may still play a part but it is a smaller one that many I think imagine.

I'm not going to get into a diversion, but the link between the disappearance of indigenous languages and colonisation has been well studied.

Friel also deals with it in Translations and writings around that play. There was a conscious (by design) effort to dispossess by changing placenames and stigmatising the indigenous language.

We wern't unique in that regard.

That's very interesting about Hector. My experience of Irish in school was very negative. I found it difficult and depressing and imo the curriculum was woeful. We seemed to do about 2 hours of it a day in primary school, I just shut down on it. When i got to secondary school i still hated it and never passed a single exam in my 5 years at secondary school. By leaving cert year my Irish teacher let me do my other homework during Irish class.

Perhaps if the focus was on making the language fun it may have been more palatable. Maybe focusing more on games, discussion and conversation through Irish in the early years and then on to grammar as we got better at it.

This is what I've never understood: what, exactly, is the long term goal?

Get more people speaking Irish? Then teach people to enjoy it rather than endure it. How no one in power understands this, I will never know.

Have it as the dominant language? Never going to happen. And not because of English and its history, or crazy political policy, but because English is the language of entertainment. The dawn of the internet and American/UK movie/music culture killed that dream off.

I'd like to think your last paragraph is conspiracy, but sadly it's the only theory that actually makes any sense whatsoever.

You are probably correct in that Irish will never become the dominant language. It may not even be a desirable outcome.

Yet if there is a point to any of it, that would be the point. Anything less and there is no point, no worthwhile goal.