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Reviving the Irish language

2

Comments

  • #32
    Cork
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,924 ✭✭✭Cork


    diarmuidh wrote:
    tá mé ag éisteacht le RnaG anois thrín Idirlíon why not try it
    http://www.rte.ie/smiltest/rnag_new.smil

    Bí ag léamh na scéalta in san Irish Times freisin! agus off course bí ag féachaint ar TG4...

    leím as an mballa agus bí ag déanamh rud !!

    Splanc on Friday night on Newstalk is good.

    But if you are going to a public sector organisation - Speak Irish.

    Don't be put off by fast Irish talkers on TG4 or Rnag.


  • #33
    Peanut
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,462 ✭✭✭Peanut


    gigglingrat wrote:
    I'm a teenager, and I love the language, but unfortunatly, there's no place for me to go to speak it. It's a shame because I don't have fluent Irish, but I'd like to improve and I can't. The government should set up..."clubs" isn't the right word, but...places for people who want to learn.

    We aren't saying "Oh, we must speak Irish all the time", but "Something must be done about the poor status of Irish today.

    Sure... if it's something that appeals to people, then they will join up.
    But I wouldn't rely on the Government to try to create something appealing..


  • #34
    gigglingrat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 315 ✭✭gigglingrat


    That is true alright...


  • #35
    Be The Holy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 54 ✭✭Be The Holy


    According to this website: http://www.volkmar-weiss.de/table.html, the average Irish IQ is 93, which as a Western country is not really something to be proud of. Compared to countries such as Spain (97), Portugal (95), Italy (102), United Kingdom (100) and our oft derided stateside cousins USA (98), we as a nation are unfortunately at a natural disadvantage as it is.
    .[/QUOTE]


    The reason given for our low IQ status was that we have been exporting our brightest, youngest and best for the last 200 years or so with a thus resulting fall in our IQ levels. This should be reversed in the coming years as we obtain the resulting brain drain from eastern europe.

    As regards the language, the growth of Gaelscoileanna is to be welcomed and should be encouraged by government if they really want to develop a bilingual society as they state. People are generally well disposed towards the language but lets be honest the standard of teaching in school was brutal, so its no surprise when the tg4 dude cant find that many people able to converse. I managed to develop some proficiency in it only by four visits to the gaeltacht as a teenager, spoken conversational irish didnt seem to come into the school ciriculum and then being forced to listen to donegal irish which is pretty incomprehensible, the accent is strong enough in english never mind irish.


  • #36
    OTK
    Closed Accounts Posts: 556 ✭✭✭OTK


    Alun wrote:
    Speaking as an Englishman currently living in Ireland, but who, unlike many of my countrymen is something of a linguist and speaks 4 foreign languages, one of them fluently, I can sympathise with you. Since arriving here 5 years ago,

    I've tried on a couple of occasions to learn some Irish, but honestly, neither teacher had the remotest clue as to how to teach the language, or any foreign language for that matter. My wife also had a similar experience with a different teacher.

    They all seem to assume some kind of innate, inbuilt basic ability in the language obtained from who-knows-where, and wouldn't know a grammatical construct if it bit them in the face. One teacher I had didn't know the difference between an adjective and an adverb, for example.
    I agree. I am Irish and I have studied 6 languages including Irish and speak three with reasonable fluency. Irish was taught in a completely different way to any of the others. The teacher claimed that hard and fast rules simply did not exist for Irish grammar or spelling.

    The main problem for me was that we were being taught to speak Irish with a pronunciation completely alien to the native speakers. Non-gaeltacht teachers taught some ugly version that could never be fluent as it had not the natural cadence of a living language. It reminded me of my latin classes -a language spoken as if it were English.

    "Taw on tooktarawn egg chockt gu dee awr skull." (in a Dublin drawl)

    Now this kind of thing happens with all foreign language teaching by non-native speakers, and it's fixed by spending some time with native speakers and learning the music of the language. I can still read Irish fairly well but I learnt far less in 12 years of Irish than say in 4 years of German (with 9 months spent in Germany).

    Irish college didn't help. You need total immersion with native speakers for a month or more to adjust your ear to a foreign language, so spending two weeks with horny fourteen year old english speakers was never going to work. The few words I heard of native Irish from the bean a tí's family in the evening was something but there were eight english speaking children in the house. We outnumbered her family. Most of the day was spent with more Dublin teachers speaking Dublin 'Irish'. On the odd occasion I spoke with a native speaker I could hardly make out a word.

    Whatever you think of Manchan, he does speak beautiful Irish - the reason, I believe, being that he had a native Irish speaking relative living at home with him while he grew up.

    So I would say that you can't really learn Irish without living in a real Gaeltacht apart from non-Irish speakers, And the problem is that there isn't enough Gaeltacht to do this for every child. At least the teachers of Irish should have to do this.


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  • #37
    greenteaicedtea
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 204 ✭✭greenteaicedtea


    Irish IS a hard language to learn because it differs in big ways from English.

    (I realize you all may know this but please bear with me)

    There is no word for "yes" or "no". There is no word for "to know" or "to have", it's all workarounds like "knowledge is at me" and "on me" and stuff like that. There are no direct equivalent words to memorize, so you have to learn the whole sentence structure first, before you make any sense, and the sentence structure differs from English too, so not only are you learning new vocab, but the grammar is indivisible from the verbs. I think it'd be hard for the average teacher to teach on a good day.

    In French, there are direct equivalents of most verbs, and many tenses, but not all, it's a lot easier to learn IMO.

    It might be easier to encourage people to speak it to their children, if possible, rather than learn it in school.

    Or if there was an Irish equivalent of Sesame St.? Young children pick up complex concepts easier than when they get older.


  • #38
    Cork
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,924 ✭✭✭Cork


    There is no place to use and practice Irish.

    Down here in Cork - I go to weekly conversational Irish classes.

    But after my weekly class - I have zero opportunity to use the language.

    Not to be deterred by this - I hope to stick up Irish posters around the office next week.


  • #39
    gigglingrat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 315 ✭✭gigglingrat


    In French, there are direct equivalents of most verbs, and many tenses, but not all, it's a lot easier to learn IMO.

    Ah now, but Irish only has eleven irregular verbs! Easy peasy....


    For me in school, I notice a lot of people would consider themselves better at French than Irish, but it's only because of the discrepency between the caighdean of Irish required and that of French. I think that a middle level for Leaving Cert Irish, in between ordinary and higher, might help the language...and I do agree with what OTK said; it needs to be taught by native speakers. That would bring the language to life.


  • #40
    OTK
    Closed Accounts Posts: 556 ✭✭✭OTK


    gigglingrat wrote:
    Ah now, but Irish only has eleven irregular verbs! Easy peasy....


    For me in school, I notice a lot of people would consider themselves better at French than Irish, but it's only because of the discrepency between the caighdean of Irish required and that of French. I think that a middle level for Leaving Cert Irish, in between ordinary and higher, might help the language...and I do agree with what OTK said; it needs to be taught by native speakers. That would bring the language to life.
    By the time I left school, my caighdeán of Irish was a lot lower than for languages I had studied for a fraction of the time.

    I was always hesitant speaking as I didn't have the grammatical bedrock of knowing the genders of nouns and the inflection rules for noun cases and how to agree adjectives and so on. Of course you can avoid all this nasty grammar with enough exposure to the native language but I wasn't getting that either. In 12 years, there would have been plenty of time to learn this stuff.

    I hated 'Is fearr Gaeilge briste ná Béarla cliste'. What a philosophy! Let's all be idiots - at least we're not Brits.

    Does anyone know a good Irish grammar book?


  • #41
    gigglingrat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 315 ✭✭gigglingrat


    I think graimear an draoi is pretty good, got it for junior cert but it covered pretty much all of the bases.


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  • #42
    Peanut
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,462 ✭✭✭Peanut


    OTK wrote:
    I hated 'Is fearr Gaeilge briste ná Béarla cliste'. What a philosophy! Let's all be idiots - at least we're not Brits.
    Yeah this sort of in-your-face nationalist attitude is/was one of the most damaging obstacles for learning. Who would want to learn a language that actively promotes bigotry? If not bigotry, then at the very least it's a silly "my language is better than yours" mindset.

    It's effectively saying to the potential student, "Here, we still have this chip on our shoulder about the Brits and how they imposed English speaking on us - if you really want to learn the language, then you should have it, too."

    There's a place for national pride but not at the cost of small-mindedness. I don't want to offend Irish speakers, but if the language is to grow then it needs to get rid of the redundant attitudes like this.


  • #43
    simu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,730 ✭✭✭✭simu


    Grammar: this one's very clear imo: http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Grammar-Book-Nollaig-Congail/dp/1902420497

    You can also get it in Irish, it's called Leabhar Gramadaí Gaeilge.


  • #44
    OTK
    Closed Accounts Posts: 556 ✭✭✭OTK


    Thanks for the links to those books. When I was in school I didn't have the initiative to find a decent Irish grammar book.


  • #45
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 31,828 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    As an Englishman (Irish ancestry) I find it intriguing that the majority of people have simply lost interest in their native language.

    I recently asked a colleague about this, her response "800 years blah blah de blah". I don't know what percentage of people spoke Gaeilge (as a first/only language) in the 1920's, but I'm certain it was much higher than today.

    Perhaps you should look at Wales, the welsh language also declined but there were enough people at grass roots level interested in keeping it alive and it is now widely spoken in Northern parts of the country.

    Most people need a reason to learn a language, I have travelled the world and in many places English was widely spoken enough, but once away from the main centres, I needed to have knowledge of the language to get by.

    What reason does the average man in the street have to learn Irish!


  • #46
    dame
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,623 ✭✭✭dame


    I started a thread in the Parenting Forum on Gaelscoils. Some of you might be interested;

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055047557

    I did two three-month stints with Gael-linn when I was in primary school. The scheme was where a primary school pupil lived with a gaeltacht family and went to the local primary school for three months. I went in 5th class and again in 6th class, staying with a different family each time.

    The first time I went I had basically zero Irish (crappy Irish teaching in primary school at home) and by the end of it my ear was tuning in and I could understand pretty much everything said to me and could usually reply fairly decently. The second time I went I tuned in pretty much straight away and was fluent by the end of it, Connemara blas and everything. My Irish was absolutely fantastic after it. :D

    I then returned home and to the local primary again where I had far better Irish than the teacher and I learned pretty quickly not to correct her or try and help anyone else out! :mad: All through secondary school the Irish teaching was absolutely crap. Even with streamed honours/pass classes and all that it was still crap. People just had this mindset that Irish was hard and they didn't really need it anyway so why bother. Irish just wasn't cool. By and large the teachers were just as apathetic. There was one teacher who was a native Connemara woman and for some reason she had a pass class who really did not give a **** so she was wasted on them. She was about to retire though so maybe she was just fed up after years of it and wanted an easier syllabus to teach. There was another who was fantastic and who I had for two years but she was so enthusiastic about the Irish and very strict and there was just a bad air in the class because people resented being told to speak in Irish at all times during class. It's true what someone else said earlier - Irish people do hate to look silly or be seen to not know something! :rolleyes: Overall my own Irish deteriorated drastically during my secondary school years. I still got a fantastic result in it for my leaving but I was in no way as fluent as I once was, despite trying.

    As far as I could see nobody else in my class actually really understood what they were learning. We were given standard answers to standard poetry/literature questions and people just learned them off. They also learned off sample essays (some of which were written by the teacher and all of which had been strongly edited by the teacher) For the oral exam I'd say I was the only one not to have written out a script and rhymed it off. The amount of people who came out saying they got asked X but managed to give answer Y (which they had prepared) anyway was unreal. The amount of these people getting high B results was staggering! The standard of Irish of even "good" Irish leaving cert results is actually ridiculously low.

    There are moves to improve the teaching of Irish in schools but will they be implemented? They definitely ought to be.

    The Gael linn scheme I mentioned has been scrapped as far as I know. The interest in it dwindled over the years. It had been going for decades (my mother and her siblings had all had a stint of it). When I was there in 5th there was a Dublin child who got homesick and left after 3 weeks and in 6th class there was another Dublin kid who also left after 3 weeks. Neither of them made any real effort to speak Irish while they were there and went on about how their school at home was bigger and better and there was so much more to do in Dublin. :rolleyes: Maybe it's partly due to kids like those that it finished. A pity.

    Sorry for the long rambling post folks, hope it makes sense.


  • #47
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 31,828 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    As far as I could see nobody else in my class actually really understood what they were learning. We were given standard answers to standard poetry/literature questions and people just learned them off. They also learned off sample essays (some of which were written by the teacher and all of which had been strongly edited by the teacher) For the oral exam I'd say I was the only one not to have written out a script and rhymed it off. The amount of people who came out saying they got asked X but managed to give answer Y (which they had prepared) anyway was unreal. The amount of these people getting high B results was staggering! The standard of Irish of even "good" Irish leaving cert results is actually ridiculously low.

    I think that says it all really, people don't realy want to learn a language if all they can do with it is recite poetry, literature etc.

    Language needs to be used as a tool for communicating with others, it needs to be taught as such to be of any use to anyone.


  • #48
    luckat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,366 ✭✭✭luckat


    Speak her and she shall heal.


  • #49
    simu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,730 ✭✭✭✭simu


    dame wrote:
    As far as I could see nobody else in my class actually really understood what they were learning. We were given standard answers to standard poetry/literature questions and people just learned them off. They also learned off sample essays (some of which were written by the teacher and all of which had been strongly edited by the teacher) For the oral exam I'd say I was the only one not to have written out a script and rhymed it off. The amount of people who came out saying they got asked X but managed to give answer Y (which they had prepared) anyway was unreal. The amount of these people getting high B results was staggering! The standard of Irish of even "good" Irish leaving cert results is actually ridiculously low.

    That is scarey and disgraceful. :mad: We need some sort of Turing test fot students of Irish by the sound of it! :eek:
    There are moves to improve the teaching of Irish in schools but will they be implemented? They definitely ought to be.

    I'm not that optimistic - the general trend in education in this country is towards dumbing down and learning any language requires hard work.


  • #50
    dame
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,623 ✭✭✭dame


    simu wrote:
    the general trend in education in this country is towards dumbing down

    Sadly true.


  • #51
    dame
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,623 ✭✭✭dame


    simu wrote:
    We need some sort of Turing test fot students of Irish by the sound of it! :eek:

    What's a Turing test?


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  • #52
    simu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,730 ✭✭✭✭simu


    dame wrote:
    What's a Turing test?

    See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

    What I meant was that it scares me that people are managing to produce Irish essays in exams without having a clue what they are actually writing!


  • #53
    luckat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,366 ✭✭✭luckat


    There's a good Wiki on Irish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language too, with a quick run-down on the grammar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_syntax.

    I've known some people who were badly abused as children, and as adults they suffered grief, anger, hatred and self-contempt. They only started to heal when they found some centre in themselves - some true sense of self that was deeper than the abuse they'd suffered.

    Sometimes Irish people's self-contempt - most vividly expressed in their dualistic attitude to the Irish language - reminds me of this, and I have a suspicion that we will only be truly healthy when we speak both Irish and English happily and fluently without it being any big deal.


  • #54
    Peanut
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,462 ✭✭✭Peanut


    luckat wrote:
    ...and I have a suspicion that we will only be truly healthy when we speak both Irish and English happily and fluently without it being any big deal.

    Do you think it's possible for a majority of the people to be bilingual?

    It doesn't really seem like it's possible to have a population with equal fluency in more than one language. It seems like in most cases, there is either a dominant language (areas of Belgium?), or two languages converge into a pidgin form (Gibraltar, Jamaican creole).

    I think it is just simply too much work for most people to have proficiency in more than one language if there is no everyday-type reason for them to have it.

    If anyone knows of successful examples it would be interesting to hear them.
    I'm not sure about Wales but I would hazard a guess that English is still by far the dominant language.


  • #55
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 31,828 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Peanut wrote:
    I'm not sure about Wales but I would hazard a guess that English is still by far the dominant language.

    Yes, English is dominant in most of the country, but in the north western regions, Welsh is the dominant (and preferred) language. In these regions English is only spoken when needed! it's a common complaint among English tourists going into a north wales pub "that everyone starts speaking Welsh" without considering the fact that they were already speaking welsh before they walked in!

    There seens to be more pride in maintaining the language amongst people (& repelling the English language invasion!!), welsh is not imposed on the people as Irish is here. People speak the language because they want to, not because a government body is "encouraging" them to speak it.

    The wiki article on the Irish language is quite interesting in the fact that it eludes to parents actively discouriging their children from speaking Irish, in the 19 centery thus wiping out the language in most of the country in a couple of generations. Perhaps there is still even today, a deep seated feeling that speaking Irish will hold you back.


  • #56
    Jo King
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,139 ✭✭✭Jo King


    I checked the 1901 census. My grandfather and grandmother are recorded as children. In the case of my grandfather his parents are recorded as speaking Irish and English. All of the children are recorded as speaking English only. It seems that my Great-Grandparents made a conscious decision to switch the family over to English. Irish was discouraged in schools through the use of the neck-band. there was also a feeling that English was more useful for emigration purposes. Primaray education was introduced into Ireland even before it was in England, partly because of demand in Ireland and partly because of the resistance of industrialists in England. Compulsory primary education hastened the decline in the use of Irish.


  • #57
    UU
    Closed Accounts Posts: 879 ✭✭✭UU


    Deleted User wrote:
    Yes, English is dominant in most of the country, but in the north western regions, Welsh is the dominant (and preferred) language. In these regions English is only spoken when needed! it's a common complaint among English tourists going into a north wales pub "that everyone starts speaking Welsh" without considering the fact that they were already speaking welsh before they walked in!

    There seens to be more pride in maintaining the language amongst people (& repelling the English language invasion!!), welsh is not imposed on the people as Irish is here. People speak the language because they want to, not because a government body is "encouraging" them to speak it.

    The wiki article on the Irish language is quite interesting in the fact that it eludes to parents actively discouriging their children from speaking Irish, in the 19 centery thus wiping out the language in most of the country in a couple of generations. Perhaps there is still even today, a deep seated feeling that speaking Irish will hold you back.
    Yes. I've already posted this post on another thread but I'll post it up again.


    Be inspired by the Welsh......

    Welsh is taught properly in Wales from when childhood in schools. It is compulsory up until around 16 but by then they are practicly fleunt in 'el Cymraeg (Welsh). Welsh is also a celtic language and has been far more successful than Irish in terms of revival and keeping it living. Maybe there isn't so much negativity behind it?

    So my thoughts? Well I think our government ought to get up off their silly arses pretending everyone is brilliant at Irish based on the Leaving Cert. results and other schemes than do not work, and send a few liguistics and specialists over across the sea to Wales and see how they teach Welsh there and do the exact same thing for Irish like a mirror image. By using Welsh as a framework for keeping Irish alive!

    P.S. Did you know? Around 30% of people in Wales can speak Welsh and it is the most spoken Celtic language.

    Slán go fóil. :)
    Hwyl Fawr a icchyd da! ;)


  • #58
    luckat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,366 ✭✭✭luckat


    One of the big problems is the Irish addiction for correcting each other (which would be perceived as rudeness if you did it in English). This makes people shy about speaking Irish - you can hear it in people's voices, the tentative tone of "am I right?"

    Until people are willing to tell anyone who tries to correct them without being requested to, to **** off, no non-native-speaker is going to speak the language readily - except the people who regard it as a stiff dead thing, or a competition in who's got the best grammar.


  • #59
    randomname2005
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,098 ✭✭✭randomname2005


    This may or may not belong in this topic but I will post anyway!

    Do people think that increased use of the irish language would somehow degrade the language and maybe result in the loss of some of its identity?

    When listening to Irish on the tv/radio it seems to me that the presenters are using more english, more often. One fear I have is that Irish would lose its identity and become morphed with english.

    Also, I agree with dame regarding the rote learning for exams. It was widespread in my school (higher level) and I was given out to for trying to write an original essay when I should have learned one out of a book!!

    R


  • #60
    JaysusMacfeck
    Closed Accounts Posts: 324 ✭✭JaysusMacfeck


    Deleted User wrote:
    There seens to be more pride in maintaining the language amongst people (& repelling the English language invasion!!),

    I think you're forgetting that the Welsh didn't have laws banning the language and so it still remains alive and well. British policy in Ireland was very, very different. It's short of a miracle that there is anything left of the Irish language at all.


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  • #61
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 31,828 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    JaysusMacfeck wrote:
    I think you're forgetting that the Welsh didn't have laws banning the language and so it still remains alive and well. British policy in Ireland was very, very different. It's short of a miracle that there is anything left of the Irish language at all.

    I don't believe there were any laws actually banning the use of Irish, it's use was discouriged, as described in this article
    The Irish language has been a minority language at least since the 19th century.[9] Though its number of speakers has been in decline since the 19th century, it is an important part of Irish nationalist identity. A combination of the introduction of a primary education system (the 'National Schools'), in which Irish was prohibited until 1871 and only English taught by order of the British government, and the Great Famine (An Gorta Mór) which hit a disportionately high number of Irish language speakers (who lived in the poorer areas heavily hit by famine deaths and emigration), hastened its rapid decline. Irish political leaders, such as Daniel O'Connell (Dónall Ó Conaill), too were critical of the language, seeing it as 'backward', with English the language of the future. The National Schools run by the Roman Catholic Church discouraged its use until about 1890. This was because most economic opportunity for most Irish people arose at that time within the United States of America and the British Empire, which both used English. Contemporary reports spoke of Irish-speaking parents actively discouraging their children from speaking the language, and encouraging the use of English instead. This practice continued long after independence, as the stigma of speaking Irish remained very strong. Despite the policy of successive Irish governments to promote the language the decline in the number of native speakers (language shift) within the Gaeltacht has accelerated although the number of those elsewhere in the country able to speak it (as a second language) has increased albeit not to the extent that many hoped. Many believe today that only the element of compulsion is objectionable.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language#Stages_of_the_Irish_language

    Blaming history doesn't solve the problem! overcome the stigma speaking the language has, look to places where reviving a local language has been successful.

    randomname2005 wrote:
    When listening to Irish on the tv/radio it seems to me that the presenters are using more english, more often. One fear I have is that Irish would lose its identity and become morphed with english.

    It's probably one of the key reasons why some languages are more successful than others, because they "borrow" words from other languages.

    For example Bungalow is an indian word.
    The english language borrowed so many words from the invadors of England over the centuries and also from the colonies in 18th / 19th centuries.

    Better to have a language full of modern borrowed words than one like latin that would be almost impossible to use in IT support :D


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