The Status Of Irish.

nice_guy80 wrote: »

I think it would be just cheaper to give a grant to families who speak Irish in the home - anywhere in the country.

than wasting all this money on language promotion etc

But there has to be at least 20 families within a 5 mile radius for them to elegible. this financial incentive would mean more parents (who can) making an effort to speak Irish with kids in the home. If you cannot - then funding be provided to run proper, modern Irish language classes for adults

This would men the formation of local Irish speaking networks and communities to enable people apply for the grants. And they would use Irish between families and so would the kids.

The comparable existing system in the Gaelthachts has merit, it is a good way of encouraging families to have Irish as the language of the home(The way it is set up, it is almost impossible to get the grant if Irish isent the language of the home) It is also a good way of measuring both the health of the language in Gaelthacht areas, and for Gaelthacht development companies to be able to measure their success in promoting the Language as it works well as a target to increase the use of Irish in the Gaelthachts.

This said however, The concept of Paying people to speak Irish dosent sit well with me, I think that the money can be used more effectively else where.

As for saving money, I really dont see how, The majority of the money spent on Irish is in the education system, The Vast majority of people support Irish remaining Compulsory to JC, So even if it is made optional for LC it will still cost almost the same amount of money overall.

Most of the rest of the money is spent on service provision for Irish speakers through Irish by the state, These services are recognized as a right in the official languages act, and this right is supported by the majority of people, The money spent here could be spent differently, with better effect, same as everything else in the public sector, but again, in overall terms there is littler money to be saved here.

As for the rest of the money, A small fraction of the total, Yes savings could be made, but realistically, it is very small money both in terms of what is spent on the Irish language, and in terms of what this country needs to save.
This is not an argument against makeing such cuts, Just because its small money dosent mean it should be wasted, But in my opinion it is not for the most part wasted.

Where money is wasted, and there are areas where it is, then it should be reformed and value for money should be sought, but in overall terms, there is not much money to be cut from the Irish language once you realize that the main expenditures wont be cut significantly due to the fact that the majority support them.


As for the point on the creation of local communities of Irish speakers, I agree that it is a good aim to have and would certainly be beneficial, but I think there is a better way of achieving this, I dont think paying people in local communities is the way to go about this.
The gaelscoil movement is already fulfilling this role in many areas, and I think the state would be better served by supporting the growth of this movement than it would be by paying people to speak Irish.

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

That's the paradox of 'support for Irish' argument - if, as you say, the majority demand non-productive and wasteful expenditure on the OLA and compulsory lessons for English speakers and yet, the majority cannot and will not speak Irish.

Maybe the majority don't demand what you think?

Maybe the whole 'support for Irish' question is misunderstood?

Show me evidence to support this claim and I might believe you until you do however dont be surprised if I dont see it your way..

I agree that most people cannot speak Irish, but will not? Again you claim that most people are not open to speaking Irish but no evidence for It, Most people do not speak Irish, but most people were never properly taught to speak Irish either so thats not exactly surprising.

You have also claimed that the fact that most people dont learn to speak Irish after education proves that they dont want speak Irish and that they dont really support the Irish language, But given that most people are somewhat preoccupied with things like work/family etc that is not surprising either.

Consider the situation in Wales, 30 years ago, the Welsh language was in decline, most people dident speak it in their daily lives or at all for that matter, and im sure there were people like you arguing that this proved that people dident want to speak welsh, but since then the decline of the welsh language has been stopped, and the language is being revived. People who previously spoke English are now speaking Welsh, The children of English speaking parents are more and more being sent to Welsh speaking schools.
So would you accept that even though most people in Wales dident speak Welsh that it dident mean that most people in Wales dident support the Welsh Language?

If not then why? And if so then why is it different here?

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

It's up to you to prove that people are 'open to speaking Irish.' After 80 years of bad teaching, you want another chance? Why on earth would anyone trust you?

You're wrong, people do support Irish, but not in the way you imagine.

The fact that the majority do not speak Irish indicates where speaking Irish lies in their personal priorities - somewhere very near the bottom of the list along with learning French polishing and figure-skating. You need to accept that for most, Irish is not in their life plan. If they say they'd like to learn it sometime or they 'support' Irish, it's so as not to hurt your feelings and in the hope that you'll stop pestering them.

Why should I have to prove your arguments? It's up to you to say why Ireland would work out the same as Wales. After all, you're looking for in excess of 20bn Euro plus access to children and prospective parents. A business plan would be nice.

I will make one distinction between here and Wales - here, unlike Wales, after 80 years of state-imposed Irish teaching, after 80 years of state-subsidised Irish culture, after years of job discrimination in favour of Irish speakers, the people don't speak Irish.

They got the message and they have replied.... in English but you refuse to listen because you do not like what you hear.

Oh dear, Its the same way every time, I as you for evidence and all you respond with is your opinion,
I believe I have provided plenty of Evidence, every piece of evidence that has been put forward here has clearly shown that the vast majority support the Irish language.

You are claiming that I am Wrong, Prove me wrong, Show me some evidence.

If the people have replied that they dont support Irish then why can you provide nothing to show that you are right, and more importantly why is there so much evidence that they do support Irish?

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

Your 'evidence' is one survey sponsored, written, commissioned and interpreted by your friends in the Irish Language Lobby. Even then, no-one knows what the respondents had in mind when they agreed with the notion that Irish should be 'supported' or 'promoted'.

The 'reply' is many millions of Irish voices speaking English, every day, all of the time.

One survey with ambiguous answers as against many millions of Irish people speaking English and only English? Get real.

If I was talking about only one survey you might have a point, however im not just talking about one survey, I said every piece of evidence put forward in this thread, And I stand By it, Even further than that, all the Evidence I have seen clearly shows that a clear majority support the Irish language.

So I ask again, Where is your Evidence?

See 4.1.2 Attitudes to Irish Language

Promoting the Irish language is important both to me
personally and the country as a whole 57%

Promoting the Irish language is important to the country
as a whole, but not me personally 32%

Promoting the Irish language is important to me personally,
but not for the country as a whole 3%

Promoting the Irish language is not important 7%

I dont think there is anything vague about this result. Do You?

I think this one sums up my point nicely, If Irish people had Irish they would use it.

From the same survey:

'If I could understand the language, I would listen to Irish language radio Programing'

Agree / Strongly Agree 80%
Disagree / Strongly Disagree 19%
Dont Know 1%

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

This has nothing to do with compulsory Irish lessons for English speakers?

It's another survey commissioned by the Irish language industry (look at labels on the front cover). Not surprisingly, it is agreeable to its sponsors.

As you can see, the committee was packed with members of the Irish language lobby and the the desired outcome was stipulated.

Examples of questions:

"IRISH LANGUAGE RADIO PROGRAMMING SHOULD BE PROMOTED FULLY BY THE GOVERNMENT"

“IF I COULD UNDERSTAND THE LANGUAGE,I WOULD LISTEN TO IRISH LANGUAGE RADIO PROGRAMMING”

"Promoting the Irish Language is important..." (but no explanation given as to what is meant by 'promoting').

All the questions were designed to encourage favourable answers.

Despite the rosy picture, the stations, as you know, have quite low listernerships especially for spoken Irish material, and this report does not change the fact that the level of commitment to promoting Irish in Ireland is such that only a tiny minority of the population speak it on a daily basis and only a handful learn it voluntarily.

I dont know why I bother,
Do you think the Question was significantly vague to amount to only 7% saying that promoting Irish is not Important?

Honestly, Every piece of evidence disagrees with you, All you can do is try to pick holes in the evidence provided, I ask again, if there was such little support for the Irish language as you seam to think then why do these surveys time and again contradict you?

Surly if you are right there would exist evidence to support your Claims? That you have yet to provide any evidence to support yourself and have to resort to unconvincing waffle on the validity of the Evidence that has time and again contradicted you then I think you are burying your head in the sand.

If you bothered to look closely at the survey, you would see that the group most likely to support Irish radio programing, the gaelthacht population, were given the least weighting.

Responses from Gaelthacht areas = 207, Weighted total =28.

To compare, Dublin responses = 200, weighted total = 345

Hardly the actions of people trying to skew the results in favor of Irish.:rolleyes:

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

So, so important, that the vast majority of the population don't speak Irish and make no effort at all to learn it. If I were asked if I thought emigrants rights were important, I'd say 'yes' - that does not mean I want to be one.

Look at the carefully selected questions and think about the outcomes stipulated by the sponsors. -There are no questions asking if people thought the expenditure on Irish-language radio was good value for money, why is that?

BTW I'm looking at TG4 right now - it's Bruce Wills movie, in English.

:rolleyes: If you cant see that there are factors that prevent People learning Irish(And other languages) After leaving the Education system then you are blind, The fact is that the deck is heavly stacked against learning Irish after leaving the education system, that you ignore this and claim that people not learning Irish after leaving the Education system proves that they dont Want to Know Irish, That they reject the language, when there are clearly many factors that can explain this then I think we can see that your own conclusions are questionable

You claim that the people putting this survey together have skued the results twords what they want them to be, Considering what you are doing with your claims that people not speaking Irish is proof of rejection despite many other factors that can cause the same effect, then its a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

You can bluster your way through this point all you want, but it remains that your conclusions on peoples desire for the language to be promoted are deeply flawed.

marienbad wrote: »

Deise & Darren, you keep quoting these surveys but you are not really answering any questions. And if I may say so ye are inadvertently displaying the attitude that makes non-involved people uneasy. Ye refuse to concede an inch on anything as if to do so will bring the whole edifice crashing down ! Ye refuse to even acknowledge the seeming contradictions in your own argument , i.e if the desire for the language by the Irish people is so great why compulsion ? and dont give me all that guff about major languages and minor languages etc.

Its not guff, it as a factor is acknowledged by linguistic experts, It is wrong to assume that speakers of a high status language will learn a Low status language en mass due to love for that language, It just dosent happen in reality, ie even if there is attachment to and support for and a low status language, that dosent mean that people will learn it en mass because of their love for it.
This is clearly outlined in the article I linked to in the OP. That is why it should remain compulsory, if it is made optional, the status of the Irish language will be lowered, thus making it less likely that people will chose to learn it, This was the case in England where language learning was made optional and as a result language learning fell dramatically, And it fell not only where it was made optional, but across the education system in England.

As for the survey's, It has been suggested that Irish is being 'forced' on Irish People. For something to be forced on someone, it has to be against their will, that is why it is important to show that for the majority of people it is not against their will, but rather they support and are open to the Irish language.

In any other field 80 years and millions spent on such a failed policy would result in those involved being cast into the outer darkness, why should we even listen to one more word from all these failed entities ?

What are these failed entities? The Dept of education is the entity responsible for Irish in the education system. But to be honest, I cant see how it can be 'Cast into the outer Darkness'

Why will it be any different this time ? and Deise please dont say because the methodology is going to be state of the art, That was said 20, 30, 40 years ago. It is now a bit like waiting for the second coming.

Sorry, but the fact is that a bad curriculum has failed. That dose not mean that a better curriculum will fail. Why would you assume that it would? That dosent make any sense to me.

I believe it would be a fundamental tragedy if the language was lost but I have no doubt that that is the most likely outcome and we will not be forgiven by future generations.

I don't see why, The language is more popular now than ever, Should we actually teach it properly, like they do in wales, then I don't see any reason that it would not succeed.