"I used to hate the Irish language, but now...."

Múinteoir · 05-03-2009 01:18PM #1

I'm interested in people who disliked/hated Irish when they were younger, but then grew to appreciate it as time went by. Any stories to tell?

ch81 · 05-03-2009 01:23PM

i loved irish in primary and even secondary school. iv lost it all now and im back in college as part of my course we have to do a module in irish and i hate it, i cant grasp tenses hate all those exceptions to the rules..im sitting here now trying to write an essay in irish on teaching young children and its a nightmare!!i would love to be able to speak it fluently though i think its very important we bring our kids up learning there own language.:)

ManFromAtlantis · 05-03-2009 01:27PM

same as op. hated it but in my mid life crisis have even done a course as gaeilge. its a lovely language but this was all lost on me given the way it was taught. i know theyre making improvements in that regard but really i think get the youngsters speaking it seems to be the key. i ahve learned so much with out trying just by watching tg4. sin e (damn cant get that fada)

Redbhoy · 05-03-2009 02:56PM

I was indifferent to it at primary school despite having a native speaker from the Aran islands as a muinteoir, and hated it in Secondary due to a grievance with a teacher.
I was indifferent again through college but began to develop an appreciation of it as I matured after college. A few things happened that made me want to learn it again. Seeing some african immigrant children speaking an Gaeilge in Carrickmacross was one. Another was when a few German lads started slagging a few of us in Galway for not being able to speak our own language. Luckily one of the lads could actually speak it, German and French too. So he saved at least some of our blushes.

We are taught it badly in most cases. There should be total immersion in the language at primary level. Maybe a day a week where only Irish is spoken? And interesting things taught through Irish. Music, Art, PE?
And eventually convert all primary schools to Gaelscoileanna. Companies should be encouraged to label products As Gaeilge as well as As Béarla. The more we're exposed to the language the better in my opinion.

Redbhoy · 05-03-2009 02:58PM

ManFromAtlantis wrote: »

sin e (damn cant get that fada)

Alt Gr + a = á etc etc Sin é

Alt Gr is the key beside the spacebar.

conchubhar1 · 06-03-2009 01:22PM

I wouldnt say I hated irish in school

just never gave it any time - and dont get me started on how it was thought

but now, im doing it as a joint major in my degree . . .

acontadino · 06-03-2009 06:45PM

hated the way its thought but my mum can speak it fluently despite being the daughter of sicilian migrants(immigrants at the time)

i love the way it sounds

conchubhar1 · 07-03-2009 01:09AM

me too

sounds great when spoken well - blas

shqipshume · 07-03-2009 01:12AM

All Irish school,Grand parents spoke to me all time.I love it always have.
My bf loves it and is learning bit by bit from me and he is Albanian

theirishguy · 07-03-2009 09:29AM

i never really got a chance to learn Irish because i did to much messing and stuff + i didn't really want to learn it either ..........
but now I'm 16 and i love

speaking Irish (well what little i have) but i think Irish is coming back fast

Micamaca · 08-03-2009 02:23PM

I'm a mature student going to college for first time...learning French and German. Have now become very interested in re-learning Irish. It is a lovely language and I would very much like to be able to communicate through Irish and reconnect with this language. I liked the first three years in school, as I had a good teacher. The last two years we had a desperate teacher, she's now, many years later, teaching my niece :eek:. I think they really need to change the curriculum. It could be made so much more meaningful. It is a lovely language...I was watching TG4 last night...fair play to them for providing modern tv through the Irish language. Love that Treasure Hunt show they do sometimes on Sat morning at 12...they do a treasure hunt in Irish, show beautiful parts of the country and give little tidbits of history and local folklore. Great show.

Am fully intending to either attend an Irish class in Dublin in the summer when I finish in college or maybe even go down to the Gaeltacht to immerse myself for a few weeks. I will get this language back!

lostexpectation · 08-03-2009 02:25PM

i hate exams, therefore i dislike irish,i think alot of irish speaking people mistake people hatred for exams for a hatred of irish.

Mary28 · 08-03-2009 03:10PM

I hated it in primary and secondary school. My Dad hated it and passed on his opinion to me I'm afraid. He said it was pointless learning it. When I went on to college and went on holidays with friends they would always speak Irish to each other when they didn't want people to know what they were saying. I thought this was really handy and for the first time saw the use of Irish and understood what it meant to have a native language as part of your national identity. This made me feel embarassed to be so bad at it.
Being a lazy sod I still didn't do anything about it though.
Then I met my husband and he has pretty good at Irish too having been to the Gaeltacht a few times as a teenager, he had a very positive attitude towards it.
Then I decided I wanted to do Primary school teaching so I went back and repeated Irish for the leaving cert. I had some Irish readings at my wedding and we gave my son an Irish name. I'm still very, very far from fluent but I can read well and I'm going to the Gaeltacht this summer for 3 weeks as part of my course and I'm really looking forward to it. We hope to send our son to Gaelscoils.

Múinteoir · 09-03-2009 01:37PM

Mary28 wrote: »

My Dad hated it and passed on his opinion to me I'm afraid. He said it was pointless learning it.

This is something that I think is under-estimated. Certainly, there are plenty of problems with the teaching methods, but I've met many people with bad Irish from school, who are positively inclined towards it despite this. Attitudes at home influence people hugely, especially as regards education, and how important it's perceived to be.

Remember, Irish first started to decline as the main vernacular of this country when parents, and not children, made a conscious decision to speak English in the home and to their kids.

topper75 · 09-03-2009 02:09PM

I wasn't the worst at Irish at school, but it's not like I was great either. It was just a school subject, and after sitting the leaving cert, albeit honours, I happily dispensed with what had become a tiresome imposition.

It was many years later before my interest was reawoken in Irish. This happened chiefly through trips to different parts of Europe where minority tongues were a runaway success e.g. Catalonia region of Spain, or where people practised effective bilingualism by combining their national language with English e.g. Netherlands. There was the ultimate element of shame to inspire me to look again at my national language and its worth.

Learning Irish doesn't come at the cost of English people.

There is no obligation to be fluent. Remove this self-imposed obligation I say and be proud of the few words you have and be happy to use them. Make the effort to get in touch with others who are interested via Conradh na Gaeilge. You may be surprised to find that they are not the shawl-wearing Peig-waving political extremist nutters that inhabit some secondary school staffrooms.

It feels great to string a few sentences together and make yourself understood in your own language. Bain triail as. - give it a try.

Adhamh · 22-03-2009 07:16PM

I was indifferent to Irish at primary school and for the first few years at second-level but somehow I ended up loving it; it just grew on me I suppose- it's just cooler to be multilingual!

To get it better established, we need to make more jobs available in Irish- that's the main reason the language has historically been in decline- it was bound to poor subsistence farmers along the Western seaboard. This wouldn't have a negative impact on the economy, all Western European countries trade and work with their national language and are still 'globally competitive' etc

Also, as much as I love the countryside, trad music and dance, Irish should be seperate more often- a lot of young people are discouraged from the language as the see it as being attached to all these 'old-fashioned' things- more Des Bishop, less Peig.

seaner · 29-03-2009 08:57PM

I was indifferent to Irish in school. I got an honours B in the language, but I treated it like any other subject really. I left school and went on about my life never using the language as I really had no need.

Then about a year ago, for something different my self and the other half decided to go on holiday to the Gaeltacht. We ventured up to Donegal and despite the rain we had such craic we're planning on going back this year too. Probably do a coicís if possible.

We're slowing learning it and its such a great language. We can learn so much about our selves (as a nation) from our language. It can be frustrating too as you come across the usual arguments of it being a dead language..but I can tell you when there was 40 of us packed into one of the tiny pubs in the Gaeltacht region we went to, speaking what Irish we could while enjoying some singing and dancing, it definitely wasn't a dead language to us.

Oh and there was about 50 on the course when I went...half of which weren't even Irish! I was ashamed when an old american lady started talking to me in fluent Irish and I had to pick out what little words I could understand. She was something like 4th generation Irish...but took it upon herself to learn the language.

Corum · 17-04-2009 09:59AM

I never hated the Irish language, although I'll admit I went through phases where I was less enthusiastic about it than others. I started off learning Irish in an all-Irish school (Gaelscoil Mhic Amhlaigh in Galway), my Dad was determined to have me and my sister speaking Irish if it was the last thing he did (I didn't always appreciate his prodding, but I did when sitting the Leaving Cert honours paper, for one

) and I was always pretty good at languages (and became an intolerable teachers' pet who wanted to show off my Irish to other people), all of which helped.

I'm not in Ireland now, so I don't have that many opportunities to practice the language in day-to-day life with other people. But every once in a while, when I meet Irish people who have Irish (or the frightening foreigners with better Irish than ourselves

) I'm delighted that I can speak it.

dlofnep · 24-04-2009 01:41PM

Wouldn't say I hated Irish, but I certainly didn't love it.

My love began a few years back, after finishing school.. It wasn't until about 2 years ago, I started to study it.

For me, I think a real bad stigma is created after a dozen years of study without focal to show for it.

b12mearse · 29-04-2009 03:34PM

I use to love the Irish language but now I hate it.
I spent my whole life engaged in Irish from all Irish primary school to Irish Secondry, Irish Leaving Cert and Gaeltacht summers. now i hate it.

dlofnep · 29-04-2009 05:55PM

^ Cén fáth?

Grudaire · 29-04-2009 06:09PM

b12mearse wrote: »

Gaeltacht summers. now i hate it.

Whatever about school (Which drove me against a lot of things) you cannot complain about the Gaeltacht's - If you didn't want to go you cannot blame the language for that. Surely if you had insisted at home that would have been problem solved.

luckat · 29-04-2009 06:47PM

I'm another returner. Two problems, though:

1) It's hard to find anyone to talk to
2) No Irish person can hear another say something in Irish without turning into a National Teacher and correcting them.

Very off-putting.

Grudaire · 29-04-2009 06:54PM

luckat wrote: »

2) No Irish person can hear another say something in Irish without turning into a National Teacher and correcting them.

Very off-putting.

Big style - the funny thing is that I'm bad enough to be corrected half the time, and the rest of the time I have to squirm as people make mistakes.

Yea, its hard to find people to speak with. I'm not a big fan of the Cumann Gaelach in College either

conchubhar1 · 30-04-2009 10:34AM

hhm, i understand how people dont like being corrected

but to be hoest - i want to be corrected, at every single possible oppurtunity
if i get pointed out on it i wont continue to say it and write it and think it and get used to it - thats my main problem of repeating things ive presumed right for countless years....

An gal gréine · 30-04-2009 01:32PM

Like Conchubhar1 I welcome corrections. It's one sure way of progressing in a language.

Saruman · 30-04-2009 01:41PM

Standing in line waiting to get on a ryanair flight to head home from Prague airport on Sunday, a bunch of women came up behind us and they were a little out of breath but they were clucking like hens to each other in "some language". My wife asked was it Irish and I said I do not think so but as they slowed down and I listened it occurred to me that it was actually Irish! Every now and again there was some English thrown in. My wave berated me for not recognising my national language (she is American). It was pretty impressive that they were off in a foreign country and talking in Irish to each other.

Hector made Irish cool, I wish he was around when I was in school and maybe I would have paid attention.

luckat · 30-04-2009 04:25PM

I welcome being corrected if I'm in a class. Not when I'm talking to someone - and usually the correction by the 'National Teacher' type actually isn't correct!

If I'm talking to communicate, I don't welcome people suddenly starting to edit what I say - it's rude.

Example - in English, to give a feel of how rude it is:

"I've seen him as he walked down the road."
"Actually it's 'I *saw* him *walking* down the road'."

This kind of busybodyish correction - which isn't even a correct correction! - is typical of the kind of nonsense people go on with when someone's speaking Irish. It's astoundingly rude to take it upon yourself to tell someone how he should speak - equivalent to the kind of ignorance that corrects people's grammar on internet forums.

conchubhar1 · 30-04-2009 05:40PM

ye not half way thru a sentence

i would like, never mind not be bothered by, it at the end - stop any wrong things i say from being imbedded in my mind as the right thing to say or natural if its wrong

dlofnep · 30-04-2009 05:57PM

conchubhar1 wrote: »

hhm, i understand how people dont like being corrected

but to be hoest - i want to be corrected, at every single possible oppurtunity
if i get pointed out on it i wont continue to say it and write it and think it and get used to it - thats my main problem of repeating things ive presumed right for countless years....

I'm the same. I like being corrected.. It helps me progress - But I would take issue with being corrected in a condescending manner. Thankfully, nobody in our conversational group is like that.

conchubhar1 · 30-04-2009 09:41PM

whereabouts is that group?

"I used to hate the Irish language, but now...."

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