Why does Ireland speak English?

There was the famine which killed off 1000s of people if you wanted to go to America or work for a British company you needed to speak English there was no practical reason to speak Irish I think a similar thing happened to Jews in America most Jews spoke English rather than Yiddish once young people start to speak English it's hard to revive the old language English is the language of business .

I suspect there was probably also a Gaeilgeoir lobby that stood to lose if Irish was revived successfully, yet was very influential in Irish language policy.

I think the way it's taught has a bit more to do with it. I live in Germany and work for a german company where everyone speaks fluent english.

The problem with ireland is that despite learning it from approx 4-18 years old, 9 months a year, for an hour a day, we leave school barely being able to speak it. I left school speaking better French than Irish. Because in French class i was taught how to talk. How to ask for a drink, how to ask directions etc. There was no conversational Irish taught when I was in school.

So it doesn't matter if it's useless or not, the fact is that we'll never have the option to find out if it could have been used.

The way it's "taught" is the problem. Imagine someone spending 13 years of their life at something and being crap at it. Imagine people not only refusing to criticise the system but actually defending it as if criticising it is somehow offensive and you get a sense of why the Irish language lobby have been allowed to get away with so much. We spend years and God knows how much money on this misery. It's not wildly different from the Americans and their guns in some ways.

I was in France last year. I went to the Chateau d'If and I almost conducted an entire conversation with the lad selling me my ticket in my decent French. Sadly, he decided to tell me about some Scottish tourists and I'd forgotten what the French for tourists was.

Any time I criticised compulsory Irish when I was living in Ireland, people would act as if I'd thrown vitriol in their faces. Had we a functioning education system or even any interest in accountability, we'd be churning out generations of artisits who could use the language to create. Instead, we get surprised when the closest we come is a few lads from another country rapping about drugs. It's pathetic.

My point was that even if we spoke Irish, we'd still have nearly perfect English. And we'd be no worse off.

I'm not sure about the learning French/German instead of Irish. I will agree, that learning German would have helped me when I moved here :D.

I think we should learn them as well as Irish. But I do have one important caveat. It's only if we can learn Irish. There's been nearly a century of mandatory Irish and the numbers are incredibly low. It seems that we're incapable of creating a syllabus and teaching kids how to actually use it.

And if we can't teach kids how to speak it, then there's no point in teaching it at all. That time would be better spent on just about anything else.

I think one of the problems is that many language enthusiasts are a bit anti-English. Irish is a very different language to English, vso sentences structure etc.

It probably would have helped a lot of people
to understand it if it was taught more in English. Take time to explain how the structure and grammar is different etc., maybe make it more of a culture class where you throw in some mythology, heritage etc., and as students get older throw in some basic linguistics to keep it inside.

Latvian is useless pretty much anywhere outside of Latvia. Or Polish beyond Poland, likewise Italian, Greek, etc etc or pretty much every mainstream European language outside of its homeland bar English, Spanish and Portuguese and some French.

And there's a reason why all of those countries teach their populations to learn to speak English. It is a universal language. It is, literally, the language of business no matter where you are in the world. I work with many countries around the globe and they all conduct their business in English.

Also, you're ignoring a huge issue. Those countries original languages weren't bred out of them. Ours was, and to the point where it became a dead language. Honestly, I thank christ that we do actually have English as our first language and that we have learned to adopt it in the manner that we have. It has helped us no end.

Whether we like it or not, or whether it pains us to admit it, Ireland is the country it is today precisely because English is our first language.

Finally, I'll say this to everyone on this thread. Do you want to learn Irish? Because there is NOTHING stopping you from doing so right now, except yourself.

I'm not so sure that we are. I came out of secondary school with pretty reasonable French and I only did it for Junior Cert. When the politics are removed and the syllabus is fit for purpose, good things can be done.

Poland has a booming economy. The days of Poles emigrating to be waiters and cleaners are long gone.

I've a Lithuanian colleague who speaks English, Lithuanian, Russian, German and Arabic. She may not be typical but they teach children foreign languages for a reason.

Dutch kids begin learning English at 10 years old and most will be highly proficient if not fluent.

We've had a century to recover the language. We chose venality instead and this is the result.

A better question is why people know more German/French/Spainish as second languages when they only learn it in secondary school than Irish that they learn from primary school?

Most people that I know, that learned it fluently either learned it from family or went to the Gealtacht for a summer holiday (had money). It’s a pretty grim indicator of the curriculum.

There are 3 Gaelscoileanna near me 1 locally and 2 in the next town so someone must be interested in speaking it.

I'm not so sure that we are. I came out of secondary school with pretty reasonable French and I only did it for Junior Cert.

That's you.

As a nation, we're generally not good at mastering foreign languages.

Europeans, on the other hand can master English very well. That's because they can immerse themselves in it readily. English is so common a tongue that they could actually spend their whole day speaking it if they wish.

Bilingualism in this country, however, is exceedingly rare.

I did French at school too, but these days I could barely manage a sentence. Thing is I really didn't like the language at all. I rather have been taught German, which I seem to have a better understanding of. Probably because English is Germanic. Beside the gender constructs, it's an easier language to pick up.

I still couldn't hold a proper conversation in it with anyone though.

Is Norway a basket? Is Denmark a basket case? Is Finland a basket case? Is Czech a basket case?

Utter nonsense.