Question for you and Irish culture

Slutmonkey57b · 20-07-2006 10:46AM

Hmm.. why doesn't Irish culture have more of an influence?

To me, the primary reason why Irish culture fell off in the mid-20th century is that it was always part of a hypocritical backwards cultural fascism centred around obedience to the three ultimate deities of the Catholic Church, bloodthirsty republicanism, and bogmunching GAA games. Anybody with any sense has been trying to extricate the notion of "Irishness" away from these repulsive institutions for years, and as a result the traditional Irish culture has become more isolated.

The Irish language hasn't died off, it died off and was falsely resurrected, then post independance was forced down our throats in school to no good purpose. Personally, I make a point of never speaking or listening to someone speak Irish, purely because I object so strongly to the way 16 years of my school life were wasted teaching it to me. We could have learned two continental languages in that time, but no, the fascists decided you're not Irish unless you're speaking the language...

FillSpectre · 20-07-2006 11:57AM

Very simple. Human nature means the young embrace change but as they get older they go to more traditional views and actions. AS Ireland has a predominately young population it appears we have changed culturally. As the generation ages the culture will return somew what but it will be altered.

Blaming the influence of the British is a little pointless, what we have is Irish culture and all the influences you can't say it is not Irish celtic as it is what it is. The Celts were not a very defined group to start with and cultures with massive differences were all called Celts. Rural Ireland is still not particularly celtic due to the famine and traditional trades disappearing then and further with the introduction of cheap imports.

vred · 20-07-2006 12:17PM

I'm half breton, half irish but live in brittany and I come quite often to Ireland. I feel a bit the same as Jorge. In the east and in dublin you do see quite a bit of gaeilge probably 'cause of the government I suppose but oderwise you really have to be looking for it. All my cousins (living here) don't like trad music at all and I heared the same from other people, I do because my parents were quite involved when there was the music's "revival" and passed it on to me.
Brittany is quite different, the language is in a bad state (because of the french government and a generation that stoped talking it to the children) but things are starting to get better in the opinion that people have of the language, the music is really doing good. On the oder hand people that don't feel french but breton are a minority, maybe 10%, most people feel breton and french. People are not aware at all of brittany's history, it's not mentioned in school, so you end up studying france with maps where brittany is not on it for some periods and you're not told anything about it.
So it's a bit the opposite to ireland (not for the language). The east part of brittany is more influenced by france and it's there that people are more "patriotic" so that's a bit like in ireland.

Wibbs · 20-07-2006 12:30PM

Beruthiel wrote:

You're not wrong there, I come from a very large family, nearly every last one of us has brown eyes and black hair.

That's far more likely to be because of the ancestral roots of the Irish/picts, especially in the west which had far less colonisation than the east. The Spanish link is way way before the armada. The armada influence on the local genes would have been very slight. As I said in my first post genetically it seems we are most related to the population in northern Spain, not the celts of central europe. So it looks like we may have not gotten here by the obvious(and previously thought) route through central Europe - Britain - Ireland, but instead came by the seaward route. Basically we came as Spics, who turned into Micks due to the cold.:D

blorg · 20-07-2006 12:31PM

With regard to language I would think it's mainly two things: (1) English has been spoken for long enough that Irish died out, (actually comparitively recently, but it only takes a few generations) and (2) Irish is a different language group to English and thus relatively difficult to learn. It's also seen as somewhat impractical by many - hence difficult to revive.

I would have thought that it's pretty much the same in Spain; Catalan is spoken extremely widely in Catalunya (Romance language, not too dissimilar from Castillian, easy to learn) but I never got the impression that Basque was terribly widely spoken in the Basque Country (beyond "Agur!" and then continuing in Castillian.) In fact I thought it very like the position of Irish here; on the signs, etc. but not really widely spoken. Of course Basque is a completely different language with no commonality with Castillian, even more so than Irish/English, and would be substantially more difficult to learn for a Castillian speaker compared to Catalan.

Kernel · 20-07-2006 04:54PM

DaveMcG wrote:

Funny you should mention that! I was walking my dog earlier and passed by the football pitch near me, and there were no less than 30 Spanish students kickin a ball around, and playing frisbee and stuff!

If you're a Spanish student, Tallaght's the place to be!

They weren't Spanish, they were Romanians.

On topic, I think one of the saddest things about the decline in Irish culture is the slow death of our traditional music. You don't get many young people wanting to learn traditional instruments or form traditional bands anymore. Instead kids want to form rock bands and sing like Americans. Shame.

Would be nice to hear a few more new trad bands coming out with new trad stuff, as I think music has a big effect on culture, and a more unique form of music should be cherished.

Rollo Tamasi · 20-07-2006 10:00PM

Mr.Nice Guy wrote:

Yeah we all remember the countless people from the Gaelic League executed for speaking the language.

the gaelic league didn't specifically speak irish, they promoted gaelic culture. Irish was illeagal prior to 1922.

Slutmonkey57b · 21-07-2006 12:36AM

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

the gaelic league didn't specifically speak irish, they promoted gaelic culture. Irish was illeagal prior to 1922.

Bull****.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language#Irish_Language_Movement

Irish was never illegal, and people were never shot for speaking it. It was illegal to teach Irish in the newly-created national schools in the 19th century, because the british government was funding the free education of the nation (another "what have the romans ever done for us" moment people like to forget), and funnily enough they probably thought:
a) Teaching a dying language was a waste of time (sounds familiar today)
b) Teaching British subjects (like it or not we were at the time) skills that would be useful to them growing up (like the English language that was already the most widespread in the world) in a british society was a good idea.

InFront · 21-07-2006 01:17AM

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Bull****.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language#Irish_Language_Movement

Irish was never illegal, and people were never shot for speaking it. It was illegal to teach Irish in the newly-created national schools in the 19th century, because the british government was funding the free education of the nation (another "what have the romans ever done for us" moment people like to forget), and funnily enough they probably thought:
a) Teaching a dying language was a waste of time (sounds familiar today)
b) Teaching British subjects (like it or not we were at the time) skills that would be useful to them growing up (like the English language that was already the most widespread in the world) in a british society was a good idea.

Why did they make the teaching of irish illegal anyways? i mean what was their motive? I know that in India, and the as yet uncreated Pakistan, Bangladesh, teaching of the regional languages was maintained and the languages all survived the British presence. Why not here? Maybe because it is a smaller country?

Slutmonkey57b · 21-07-2006 01:33AM

Ehhh... Didn't I already cover the potential motives in the last post? I think I did. Here's another:
Expanding the influence of British culture into Ireland was a good way of offsetting the power of the Catholic church and the likelihood of Ireland being used as a staging post for the invasion of Britain by either Spain or France would hopefully diminish.
The British had less direct control over the empire further abroad, where it was more necessary to use the partnership of the locals to administrate the empire.

InFront · 21-07-2006 01:52AM

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Ehhh... Didn't I already cover the potential motives in the last post? I think I did.

i dont think that explains it convincingly though, ie why they didnt try more actively to permeate their language into southern asia. they had the same political motives there as in ireland. and in ireland they depended very heavily on locals in partnership. I think some of this has to be put down to Irish people themselves trying to further their economic and social progress. This is how 'Indian English' has come about - not British pressure but from with the India, Pakistan etc, people trying to make themselves more employable/ socially advanced. I think that even if the British had not tried to exterminate Irish here, it would probably have been inevitable.

Slutmonkey57b · 21-07-2006 02:08AM

The British Empire was simply too large for them to do that. They had nowhere near enough troops to control the subcontinent or asia, the area and population simply dwarfed the resources that the british had available to them. In contrast, Ireland was their much smaller and closer neighbour - they had the same advantage in population, troop levels etc over us that the Catholic world held over them.

InFront · 21-07-2006 02:13AM

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

The British Empire was simply too large for them to do that. They had nowhere near enough troops to control the subcontinent or asia, the area and population simply dwarfed the resources that the british had available to them. In contrast, Ireland was their much smaller and closer neighbour - they had the same advantage in population, troop levels etc over us that the Catholic world held over them.

But how does the English language oppose Catholic religion, and I remember my old religion teacher telling us that the first Christian bible in Irish was in fact published by Queen Elizabeth I. Apologies if that is not correct, she was a looper.

Wibbs · 21-07-2006 11:03AM

InFront wrote:

i dont think that explains it convincingly though, ie why they didnt try more actively to permeate their language into southern asia. they had the same political motives there as in ireland. and in ireland they depended very heavily on locals in partnership. I think some of this has to be put down to Irish people themselves trying to further their economic and social progress. This is how 'Indian English' has come about - not British pressure but from with the India, Pakistan etc, people trying to make themselves more employable/ socially advanced. I think that even if the British had not tried to exterminate Irish here, it would probably have been inevitable.

Very good point and I would suspect on the money especially in the "pale" areas.

But how does the English language oppose Catholic religion, and I remember my old religion teacher telling us that the first Christian bible in Irish was in fact published by Queen Elizabeth I. Apologies if that is not correct, she was a looper.

The problem that the catholic church would have had with the translation of the bible into the vernacular is a big one. It was against their principle of keeping it in latin, therefore reducing the difficult questions from the general population(very few of which could read latin) over doctrinal inconsistancies.

As Slutmonkey57b pointed out Irish was not outlawed, nor were people shot for speaking it. That's just the usual revisionist republican bull. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language#Irish_Language_Movement

Intersting bit in his link "Queen Elizabeth I encouraged the use of Irish even in the Pale with a view to promoting the reformed religon. She is reported to have expressed a desire to understand Irish and a primer was prepared on her behalf by Sir Christopher Nugent, ninth baron of Delvin. The first book in Irish was printed in 1564 in Edinburgh a translation of John Knox's 'Liturgy' by John Carswell, Bishop of the Hebridies."

byrnep · 21-07-2006 11:08AM

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

brave dubs like Michael Collins and De Valera yeah?
The British would execute those speaking Irish. QUOTE]

Don't exagerate, persecute maybe, execute, hardly.

ScottishDanny · 21-07-2006 11:27AM

I've seen two references to Picts here - the Picts were indigenous to Scotland and were absorbed by the Scota tribe who came over from Ireland.

If the Irish language was not banned it was certainly repressed as it was banned from the classroom and anyone speaking Irish in school was punished for it.

Here are some of the Penal Laws
Exclusion of Catholics from public office (since 1607), Presbyterians were also barred from public office from 1707.
Ban on intermarriage with Protestants
Presbyterian marriages were not legally recognised by the state
Catholics barred from holding firearms or serving in the armed forces (rescinded by Militia Act of 1793)
Exclusion from membership in either the Parliament of Ireland or the Parliament of Great Britain from 1652, rescinded 1688, reinstated 1691;
Disenfranchising Act 1728, exclusion from voting;
Exclusion from legal professions;
Education Act 1695 - ban on foreign education;
In families, property rights could be gained by conversion to the Church of Ireland;
Popery Act- Catholic inheritances forced to be equally subdivided between all an owner's sons
Ban on converting from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism
Ban on Catholics buying their own land
Ban on custody of orphans being granted to Catholics
Ban on Catholics inheriting Protestant land
Prohibition on Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5 (in order to keep horses suitable for military activity out of the majority's hands)
Roman Catholic lay priests were tolerated under Registration Act 1704, but seminary priests and Bishops were not.
When allowed, Catholic churches only allowed be built from wood, not stone.

Similar Laws were introduced to Scotland which banned Wearing tartan, The Clan system, speaking Gaelic in school. The reason was the same as why Franco banned the Basque language - to erode national identity in favour of an imperial one.

Ironically I reckon Irish language is an unpopular subject for kids at school because of the way it is taught. My Dad hated Irish lessons at school but came back to it as an adult and enjoyed it.

Slutmonkey57b · 21-07-2006 12:02PM

All of these laws were brought in more as a reaction to the Civil War in England than the need to keep the locals down. And all the laws you've just cited have nothing to do with the Irish language, they are all to do with restricting the influence of Catholics within the British state (given the history of the Civil War and the religious wars of the time this is hardly suprising).

ScottishDanny · 21-07-2006 12:33PM

If you are prohibited from speaking your native language or learning your native history etc in school isn't that a means to erode national identity?

New_Departure06 · 21-07-2006 02:03PM

Jorge this should help. Explains our history in Spanish. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_de_Irlanda

Question for you and Irish culture

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