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The Frontline on compulsory Irish

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caseyann

donegalfella wrote: »

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All other nationalities are taught in compulsion their national language in school for nouns verbs grammar proper sentence formation.So why not Irish also.I am taught English compulsory,i speak it everyday.Then why do i need English classes;) Called reading and writing and spelling.
I would like to see you spell a word in any language you speak every day without someone telling you how to.

I read in a language survey(500 fluent speakers of their native language means the language is less likely to be in trouble,and 1000 even less likely to be in trouble.How many fluent and reasonably well speaking Irish is there?
What Irish did you learn in school?

aDeener

caseyann wrote: »

Irish language activists want a bilingual nation. Some blame a curriculum that focuses on grammar and rote memorization, rather than teaching conversational Irish. Others say that the complex language must be modernized,following Israel's success in reviving Hebrew.
The growth of Irish-language schools, or gaelscoileanna, has lifted hopes for the language's survival. Outside Gaeltacht areas, 52 Irish-language elementary schools have been created since 1993, bringing the number to 120. And more books are being translated into Irish; students can now read Harry Potter in the old language.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=66450069#post66450069

The other rubbish about it Irish language if spoken fluently in Ireland causing economic problems is a load of scare mongering smoke screens.

Its apart of our lives what we hid and preserved under threat of death if spoken.Books destroyed to buy it.But its still going and before brought back into the schools was spoken in secret.
People may complain about Irish but that's fault of English speaking schools not dedicating proper time to speaking it and turned it into a chore not something they should love to have.
Luckily as i went to all Irish schools,it felt like a natural thing to me to speak it.

what is meant by this? having more english sounding words? if it is that is a massive pet hate of mine - nothing more annoying than seeing "irish" words basically being the english with a fada thrown over the vowel, especially when there is a perfect irish equivalent. fón instead of guthán being an example. i would always say craolachán instead of raidió too

Noreen1

Stark wrote: »

For UCC, you need 3 languages for pretty much any course in the Commerce Faculty, Arts Faculty, Law Faculty or Medicine Faculty.

Agreed. As is the case for several of the University of Ireland Institutions , together with various colleges, particularly those offering level 8 courses.
In addition, there are course-specific requirements for certain courses, and, finally, there is the requirement to obtain the required number of CAO points.

It would be quite impossible to go into any depth on the subject here - suffice to say that any changes to the core curriculum would have far-reaching, and unexpected, consequences without the involvement of the H.E.A, as well as the Dept. of Education.

It's not quite as simple as saying "Let's make Irish optional", I'm afraid.:D

Noreen

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caseyann

aDeener wrote: »

what is meant by this? having more english sounding words? if it is that is a massive pet hate of mine - nothing more annoying than seeing "irish" words basically being the english with a fada thrown over the vowel, especially when there is a perfect irish equivalent. fón instead of guthán being an example. i would always say craolachán instead of raidió too

I know its like murder the language more.
Personally i would not in anyway English our Irish words.
I would hope not.
No the point i was making is they revised Hebrew so with the amount of fluent Irish speakers in Ireland,and reasonable amount of Irish who can read and write and speak a fair bit in Irish.Irish is not a dead language does not need to be modernized but needs to be nurtured and better educationally wise taught in English speaking schools.I know going to all Irish speaking school never had a problem with grasping it for full time speaking.

SkepticOne

Noreen1 wrote: »

It would be quite impossible to go into any depth on the subject here - suffice to say that any changes to the core curriculum would have far-reaching, and unexpected, consequences without the involvement of the H.E.A, as well as the Dept. of Education.

It's not quite as simple as saying "Let's make Irish optional", I'm afraid.

This is true. It is the Irish language policy in general that needs to be looked at and not merely compulsory Irish in schools.

Having said that, a lot of the other issues such as the requirement to have a pass in Irish to get into the NUI universities should be fairly easy to deal with given its artificial nature. If there was a genuine need for a pass in Irish to get by in these universities then it would be a different matter.

It should be a fairly simple matter to go through the various places where Irish is a requirement, determine whether there is a genuine need for it and, if not, simply drop it.

I think one of the things holding us back in Ireland is that if something has been in place for a while, we tend to use complications (inventing them if necessary) as an excuse to keep things the way they are, even if there's no rational basis for continuing with them.

caseyann

donegalfella wrote: »

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Oh so you are telling me if you didnt learn English spelling and writing sentence construction in english you would still be writing and reading here,just because you can speak it and use it every day?
Right

aDeener

donegalfella wrote: »

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how on earth do you know this? there is no reason or benefit for people to lie about that. or is this just yet another of your wild statements?

Permabear

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Pace2008

caseyann wrote: »

I know its like murder the language more.
Personally i would not in anyway English our Irish words.
I would hope not.

But how are you supposed to come up with new words when Irish is spoken by so few? English has a huge speaking base so the language evolves naturally; neologisms and new words appear every day. In the last decade, internet speak has been a huge driving force, to the disgust of literary purists.

To form new terms in Irish you'd need people to sit down and pull words out of thin air. This is the definition of a dead language if ever there was one.

caseyann

Here is the solution to the problem again.All Irish schools stay and leave them alone.None of your business.Don't send your kids there.
English speaking schools primary secondary school for those of you who would like to deprive your children of their native language,have special classes for those who cant get their kids to Irish speaking schools and want them to learn,and in secondary schools make it optional for yous to have your way:D

caseyann

Pace2008 wrote: »

But how are you supposed to come up with new words when Irish is spoken by so few? English has a huge speaking base so the language evolves naturally; neologisms and new words appear every day. In the last decade, internet speak has been a huge driving force, to the disgust of literary purists.

To form new terms in Irish you'd need people to sit down and pull words out of thin air. This is the definition of a dead language if ever there was one.

I didnt say it needs to be modernized i didnt say new Irish need to be formed.And sorry for you seen as there is 155 thousand known fluent Irish speakers( who use it everyday). It is far from dead language as they have studied.And it increases everyday.In order for a language to be dead it has to be not ever spoken again and only survive in writings.;)

caseyann

donegalfella wrote: »

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So all them illiterate people who didn't go to school,just knew off their own back how to read and write in English?

Again what Irish did you learn in school?

Pace2008

caseyann wrote: »

I didnt say it needs to be modernized i didnt say new Irish need to be formed.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

And sorry for you seen as there is 155 thousand known fluent Irish speakers( who use it everyday). It is far from dead language as they have studied.And it increases everyday.In order for a language to be dead it has to be not ever spoken again and only survive in writings.;)

What you're referring to is an extinct language:

"An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers. Extinct languages may be contrasted with dead languages, which are no longer spoken by anyone as his or her main language."

Under this definition, Irish is arguably a dead language, or dying at the least.

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SkepticOne

caseyann wrote: »

Here is the solution to the problem again.All Irish schools stay and leave them alone.None of your business.Don't send your kids there.
English speaking schools primary secondary school for those of you who would like to deprive your children of their native language,have special classes for those who cant get their kids to Irish speaking schools and want them to learn,and in secondary schools make it optional for yous to have your way:D

I think most people would agree that it is the compulsory (note title of thread) nature of Irish in schools as well as the various artificial requirements put in place for getting government jobs or attending universities that is the problem.

caseyann

Pace2008 wrote: »

Sorry, I misunderstood.

What you're referring to is an extinct language:

"An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers.[1]dead languages, which are no longer spoken by anyone Extinct languages may be contrasted with as his or her main language."

Under this definition, Irish is arguably a dead language, or dying at the least.

And that's why i showed statistics and links about how student go down to the gaeltacht voluntarily more and more,parents paying for them to go so they can learn it.That's why more Irish schools were opened,and parents sending their children to those schools when they have options to send them to English speaking schools.And in some areas of the country they learn how to speak english.
Dying dead to you perhaps,not to the majority,no its not.

aDeener

Pace2008 wrote: »

But how are you supposed to come up with new words when Irish is spoken by so few? English has a huge speaking base so the language evolves naturally; neologisms and new words appear every day. In the last decade, internet speak has been a huge driving force, to the disgust of literary purists.

To form new terms in Irish you'd need people to sit down and pull words out of thin air. This is the definition of a dead language if ever there was one.

no its not, you hardly call french a dead language where they "pull words out of thin air" to describe new things. they use the massive vocabulary already in place to describe new things. they have a committee to prevent the anglicisation of the language, called the ""Académie Française". irish is massive - the 3 dialects in many regards have 3 different words for many things

Noreen1

Sleepy wrote: »

As far as I can see from what Noreen (who seems to be involved in education) posted above, most schools don't offer two languages at present. I know that in order to study German for Junior Cert when I was in school, I had to take it as an optional lunch-time class and that option wasn't even available for Leaving Cert.

Er, depends what you mean by "involved in education". I am a parent with children in both secondary and third level education. I have served on parents committees for a number of years - hence the familiarity with some of the regulations regarding schools. I am no expert, though! Since parents committees regularly liaise with one another, I have some broad knowledge of the difficulties that schools throughout the country are having at the moment - hence my comments about the typical language groupings for example!
Just thought I'd clarify that, in the interests of transparency!

By the way - most schools do offer 2 languages - but students are restricted to learning one, since optional subjects are timetabled in subject groupings. Hence, if we have two groupings of say French/German and Art/Music/Geography, then students can only choose one subject from each of those groupings. Therefore, the child who wishes to study art and geography, for example, cannot do so!
Subject groupings are arranged, in so far as possible, to ensure that the majority of students will not be excluded from the majority of third level institutions/courses. Obtaining the course of ones' choice is by no means guaranteed, though!

To complicate the matter further, subject groupings vary according to annual pupil numbers in any individual school (pupil/teacher regulation), and also vary from school to school, due to the qualifications of available teachers.(Whether qualified to teach to Junior or Leaving Cert. standard, and range of subjects individual teachers are qualified to teach), and the pupil/teacher ratio (again!). Since any subject outside of the core syllabus does not have to be taught, schools are sometimes forced to drop desirable subjects. This year, in my local school, German will no longer be taught, (For the first time, ever:mad:) - and French will be placed in a general subject grouping, which will mean that students wishing to study French will have to drop some other subject:(.

Hence, "optional" subjects often restrict the actual choices available to students (and schools).

For this reason, I am not in favour of increasing the number of optional subjects, since what may pander to one students' dislike of a particular subject, will undoubtedly restrict opportunities for another.

Apologies for the length of this post! I just thought some detail might be appreciated!

Noreen

caseyann

SkepticOne wrote: »

I think most people would agree that it is the compulsory (note title of thread) nature of Irish in schools as well as the various artificial requirements put in place for getting government jobs or attending universities that is the problem.

And i have agreed with that part,no need for it to be used as a basis to get into college unless your studies will include Irish.
But half of these people are coming across to be saying Irish is of no use i didnt learn it to be of use maths was no use to me,Neither was English grammar or poems.But i didn't complain.
I personally preferred and enjoyed learning Irish poetry and history which i view as far more important.

The compulsion of Irish in secondary school is then up to the child whether they want to do it not,that's fair enough.
They should do a all around school survey beginning of every second year students and see how many want to keep Irish compulsory.
On basis of demand by the children.Then make their decision for compulsory.
Most kids have to be forced to want to learn anything.
Did you look at the statistics of Irish children in junior and leaving cert level,how they did? last year in Irish.

Permabear

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Stark

caseyann wrote:

Neither was English grammar or poems.But i didn't complain.

English grammar might not be important to you but to anyone's who's ever written any sort of business letter that they don't want to see thrown in the bin (for example, when applying for a job), then it's extremely important.

caseyann wrote:

I personally preferred and enjoyed learning Irish poetry and history which i view as far more important.

Anyone who thinks "A Thig Ná Tit orm" is more important than say Hamlet or Macbeth is fairly deluded.

Pace2008

caseyann wrote: »

And that's why i showed statistics and links about how student go down to the gaeltacht voluntarily more and more,parents paying for them to go so they can learn it.

You're deluded if you think everyone who goes to the gaeltacht does so because of their love for the language. For many, it's their first holiday away by themselves; a chance to meet people their age, maybe have a piss-up or two and score a few girls. For those that do go to learn, many are doing it because it's a compulsory subject, required by some colleges to gain acceptance, and they're looking to achieve a high grade.

Dying dead to you perhaps,not to the majority,no its not.

Where are you getting "the majority" from? I don't think the majority of Irish citizens are proficient in the use of the language.

aDeener

Stark wrote: »

English grammar might not be important to you but to anyone's who's ever written any sort of business letter that they don't want to see thrown in the bin (for example, when applying for a job), then it's extremely important.

Anyone who thinks "A Thig Ná Tit orm" is more important than say Hamlet or Mac Beth is fairly deluded.

anyone who thinks hamlet or macbeth or any such shite in any language is important is deluded imo

pooch90

caseyann wrote: »

And that's why i showed statistics and links about how student go down to the gaeltacht voluntarily more and more,parents paying for them to go so they can learn it.That's why more Irish schools were opened,and parents sending their children to those schools when they have options to send them to English speaking schools.And in some areas of the country they learn how to speak english.
Dying dead to you perhaps,not to the majority,no its not.

That has more to do with the fact that you learn more in two weeks in the Gaeltacht than you would in 2 years of school and that people had money the last few years.

The fact of the matter is that if we want to make Irish an intrinsic part of irish life, we have to concentrate on the spoken word and forgo loftier goals like idiotic literature. Make it compulsory to junior cert and strive to have them fluent in the language after 9 years (not too big a task surely). When people are fluent they will want to do it at LC level as it will become easier points.

It would also help, at primary level at least, if an Irish degree was seen as a bigger plus than being able to kick a football or sing. Unfortunately for the language it's the other way around so we end up with teachers who can barely string a sentence together out of a book and who cannot natter away in irish - surely a core ability to be able to competently teach a language!

caseyann

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Is that some low brow personal statement towards me?

caseyann

Stark wrote: »

English grammar might not be important to you but to anyone's who's ever written any sort of business letter that they don't want to see thrown in the bin (for example, when applying for a job), then it's extremely important.

Anyone who thinks "A Thig Ná Tit orm" is more important than say Hamlet or Mac Beth is fairly deluded.

Same as pronunciation and structure of sentences is in Irish

Matter of opinion.I didnt learn English poetry for fun i did it because forced to.I didn't want it and many a student is failing English because??? They don't need it or like it.That should be a choice made by individual to learn or not.
Anything Irish history poems lit wise is far more important then English!

aDeener

caseyann wrote: »

Is that some low brow personal statement towards me?

i wouldn't pay much attention to someone who claims the gaa is alien to people in ireland and that people just lie about their level of irish tbh

caseyann

Pace2008 wrote: »

You're deluded if you think everyone who goes to the gaeltacht does so because of their love for the language. For many, it's their first holiday away by themselves; a chance to meet people their age, maybe have a piss-up or two and score a few girls. For those that do go to learn, many are doing it because it's a compulsory subject, required by some colleges to gain acceptance, and they're looking to achieve a high grade.

Where are you getting "the majority" from? I don't think the majority of Irish citizens are proficient in the use of the language.

I wont replying to the other part so long as you make personal statements towards me without reason or provocation.

That may well be,the majority don't have a high level of Irish,I am telling you the majority will want their children to learn Irish as they did.And then it is up to that individual to try incorporate into their lives.
They go off down to the parts of Ireland where they do speak fluent Irish 24 hour basis and they will feel the importance and proud of themselves.

caseyann

aDeener wrote: »

i wouldn't pay much attention to someone who claims the gaa is alien to people in ireland and that people just lie about their level of irish tbh

I know i shouldnt.
Irish just means you have to be born on the island to be Irish