Is Irish a dead language?

caseyann wrote: »

Might be a good idea ban English like the English did to Irish;)

When did this occur?

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

Facts about the vitality of Irish seem very thin on the ground.

I am not going to bother trawling through the internet for you, if you want to find out details about either Irish media or use, I am quite sure you have the ability to use your computer and a browser.

Irish is a minority language and this does not automatically mean that the people who do not speak or want to speak it are actually against it, to actually believe people are actively against something just because they don't do it is a very weird attitude.

I will state this one last time, Irish is the native language of many people of this land, and the chosen method of communication of many more, therefore it is one of our national languages. It is not dead, and since its use outside the Gaeltachts is growing, and the Gaelscoileanna are over flowing and going from strength to strength, it doesn't look like dying any time soon.

A huge number of people in Ireland support efforts to keep the language alive, either financially or actively (by learning it) and dismissing them or ignoring them would be undemocratic.
I have no interest in many things and dislike many others but I will not demand my tax money is not spent on supporting them, because that is not how a modern democratic state is run.
All across the planet, governments and people are putting efforts into supporting minority languages, and we here are no different.

Linguistic variety is something to be treasured.

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Extract from an email I just received which is supposedly from a woman living in the Ivory Coast, but using a japanese email address:

Irish is truly an international language!

She could be Irish for all you know.

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

When did this occur?

If you had of read the link i gave you.It was known fact Irish was banned and if caught using it you faced imprisonment or death.:mad:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/26544868/The-Irish-Conflict-and-Its-Origins Thats just one of many links.Funny people would have you believe Irish stopped speaking it of their own free will :rolleyes:

Cú Giobach wrote: »

I am not going to bother trawling through the internet for you, if you want to find out details about either Irish media or use, I am quite sure you have the ability to use your computer and a browser.

What a pity. If you did were to take the trouble to find statistics about Irish-language media, voluntarily paid for by its practitioners, you would be able to put forward a valid argument for the vitality of Irish.

But, I suspect that when it comes to statistics, metrics, measurable costs and value for money, the Irish-language lobby is very afraid.

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Irish is a minority language and this does not automatically mean that the people who do not speak or want to speak it are actually against

This of course is backed up by a survey sponsored by the Irish language lobby and using questions that elicited favourable responses.

Support is not absolute, it can be measured. People not speaking the language is a strong measure of just how much they support it. For example, I have nothing against black people and believe they should not suffer discrimination. But I don't actually want to be one. That's the measure of support Irish has.

Cú Giobach wrote: »

I will state this one last time, Irish is the native language of many people of this land, and the chosen method of communication of many more,

'Many' is very imprecise. We know that the highest circulation of a paid-for Irish language newspaper was just 10,000 before they started giving it away. That's a measure of support. 'Native' means that the person was born to at least one parent for whom Irish is a first language. So, how many 'Native' speakers are there? That would be a useful measure of the vitality of the language. Is the number growing? Give sources.

Cú Giobach wrote: »

A huge number of people in Ireland support efforts to
All across the planet, governments and people are putting efforts into supporting minority languages, and we here are no different....Linguistic variety is something to be treasured.

How much is 'huge'? How much money have they agreed to spend?

cyclopath2001:

A native speaker of a language is someone who grows up speaking a language and has it as their first language. The language of their parents is irrelevant, eg the children of many immigrants whose parents are non native or even non English speakers will grow up here with English as their native tongue.

Judging whether someone "supports" or wishes to see a language supported based on whether or not they can speak it is ridiculous, there are quite a lot of people who wish they could speak the language but never get around to learning for personal reasons, I know a great many.


Census 2006 In here you will find the following figures.

These figures don't include use in school. (and I have rounded them off)
50,000 main daily method of communication.(= to the pop of Limerick city)
100,000 use it at least weekly
581,000 less than weekly
413,000 claim ability but never use it.

Taking the daily and weekly speakers 150,000 people speak Irish regularly.
and over half a million are at least willing to use it even if they rarely do.
Then there are people who don't speak the language but who would support efforts to keep it alive and growing.

Gaelscoileanna
(couldn't get linkable graph)
Total no of Irish language medium primary and secondary schools outside the Gaeltachts
1972---15
1982---30
1992---80
2002---175
2010---210
(these fig are approx, graph hard to read accurately )

These figures show that a sizable proportion of the Irish population do support and care about the Irish language.

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

All I could see was a first year project written in childish language by some foreign college students It said that Irish was not allowed in schools. Nothing in it about imprisonment or death for speaking Irish.
Then read my post again. I said 'vitality', a term very relevant to the a discussion of the 'death' of Irish. I did ask if you had any valid statistics relating to media 100% sustained by Irish speakers. You dodged the question.

It's a measure of how much they support it. It is highly relevant and not ridiculous in any way unless you are irrational.

Just 50,000 regular/daily speakers, 413,000 could (a bit) but don't and another 3 million can't and don't?

But what is meant by 'support'? That could just mean they think it's a nice idea if someone else learns it and if it does not cost anything.

Do you have no grandads? Or are you not even Irish
All of what the British did is played down now :rolleyes:
http://www.irishlanguage.net/irish/history.asp
Only real truth is what was passed down,i am lucky enough to have had the part of Irish history not die,the true atrocities of what happened here.
How do you think they got all those people to not speak Irish??
They had hidden meeting where Irish spoke Irish and sang Irish songs and look outs incase someone was coming.
Did you learn nothing?
http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Ireland_culture__religion_1912-49

cyclopath2001:

Check the time I edited my post.

Because 150,000 people use Irish regularly and another 580,000 are willing and have some ability to speak it, and you made no comment on these figures, nor did the fact of the growing numbers of gaelscoileanna seem relevant to you, it would be a total waste of my time giving you any more information, that you could find yourself.

I have asked you a number of times already, so what if the majority speak English?? What does the fact 3,000,000 people don't speak Irish got to do with this discussion??
Are you dismissing the 3/4 of a million people who are willing to speak the language as irrelevant. (that is more people than the pop of Co's Cork, Kerry and Waterford combined)

Your belief that only people who can speak, or have the time and money to learn the language are the only ones who would support keeping the language alive, shows a total naivety regarding people and life. Time and experience usually solve this.
Adding the 730,000 people who are willing to speak the language and the people who don't speak or use the language but would support the efforts made with it, we have a sizable no' of people of this state. Quite enough for me to have made my point, and quite enough to show Irish is far from dead.

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Because 150,000 people use Irish regularly

You're stretching 'regularly'. The concept 'speaking Irish' could just be a polite 'cúpla focal' out of respect to an Irish-speaking friend. Not much meat on your facts. But it's typical of the exaggerations and distortions in the business cases of the Irish language industry.

Cú Giobach wrote: »

the fact of the growing numbers of gaelscoileanna seem relevant to you,

Which seems to have more to do with the generous funding they receive and which has had negligable impact on daily use of Irish as a first language.

Cú Giobach wrote: »

I have asked you a number of times already, so what if the majority speak English?? What does the fact 3,000,000 people don't speak Irish got to do with this discussion??

It puts Irish into its modern cultural context.

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Are you dismissing the 3/4 of a million people who are willing to speak the language as irrelevant.

Isn't a this bit like saying that 'I am willing to speak French, if I do not actually have to learn it'?

And, still there is no daily newspaper in Irish, supported 100% by Irish speakers. And no statistics for listeners for independently funded Radio and TV stations. These are all measures of cultural vitality.

The language is 'dead' in the sense that's it's an artificial confection of regional dialects, divorced from its original cultural context, not spoken by the majority of Irish people and surviving on state handouts.

paky wrote: »

native irish speakers annoy me. why the hell do they say dia bheir mbeatha sa at the opening of the news when most people grew up learning to greet dia dhaoibh? is there no standard national irish language or does it just depend on where someones from?

Hmm..
How are you?, How's it going?, Are you well?, Are you keeping well?, Greetings? How do you do?
These are just a few of the greetings in English, and there are a hell of a lot more.
In any language there are many ways of saying roughly the same thing.

Latin is a dead language 'cause nobody knows how to pronounce it. I personally experience live irish living on the west coast. Not very often but still.

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

The language is 'dead' in the sense that's it's an artificial confection of regional dialects, divorced from its original cultural context, not spoken by the majority of Irish people and surviving on state handouts.

Utter bull sh*t, since you obviously don't have the slightest clue what you are talking about and don't even seem to understand the concept of a living yet minority language I'm finished with this. Slán.