deise go deo wrote: » You cant 'force' someone to use a language, you can however put in place a system that facilitates and encourages the use of a language. That should be put in place in the Dáil(and senate, committees etc)
Permabear wrote: » This post had been deleted.
squonk wrote: » I know there's an Is Irish a Dead Language thread but i want to start a new thread to discuss a specific point and I'd take the view that it's not dead. Did anyone see the Green Press Conference yesterday where a woman from Nuacht RTE posed a question as gaeilge to John Gormley, who then responded with the cúpla focail and handed it over to Trevor Sargent to answer. While I don't discount the argument that political ability is of higher priority, should it not be seen as a good, positive thing that a lear of a party sitting in Dail Eireann be able to have a decent command of Irish? I would expect enough to be able to give at least a decent, concise answer to a question posed. Surely it would have been easy enough for him to have had some lessons over the past few years he's been in office and, most especially, that he could have had briefinigs/lessons that gave him the terms for such items as 'Leadership heave' and 'Departing from Government'. It's not a big ask surely? Fundamentally, how can ti be seen as government policy to further the use of Irish within county councils and public bodies if the Minister for the Environment cannot converse in the language?
The 2006 census showed that 1.6 million people (of our 4.2 million population) claimed the ability to speak Irish. However, only 53,471 said that they used it on a daily basis outside the education system, while another 97,089 spoke it weekly outside education. Most of the remainder either used the language only within the education system (not surprising, given that the State makes the language mandatory for primary and secondary students) or never used it (suggesting that they lack the language skills to follow a complex political or financial debate in Irish).
If Dáil proceedings were held in Irish, the vast majority of us would need subtitles to know what was going on in our own country. That simply would not be acceptable in a democratic nation.
gimme5minutes wrote: » Ill tell you what, I am really sick to my ****ing teeth with the Irish language these days. I never it liked it, starting from back when it was forced on me in school, but I really detest it these days because of the all the BS initiatives associated with it .... all EU documents having to be translated to Irish (who ****in reads these anyway), forcibly changing the names of towns against their will (such as Dingle), requiring it as entry to basically ALL college courses in this country, and Im sick of the gaelgoirs constantly trying to force it on the rest of the country who are more than happy to speak English and who love speaking English as it has given us massive connectivity with the outside world. At this stage I am so sick of Irish being promoted (read: forced on an unwilling population) that I no longer even give a crap about its cultural value, I would be more than happy if it died off and it never had to bother us again. To anyway gaelgoirs reading: You are as bad as the Catholics were centuries ago, going around trying to convert everyone to your ways...so please just piss off with your language and leave the good people of this country alone in peace and stop costing us billions on a language that is not dead only by virtue of the fact that the government have had the life support plugged in for the last 50 years.
deise go deo wrote: » I think the demand that Dáil busniess can be conducted through the second National Language only to be far more Extreame, Thankfully Politiciens and the people have the right to conduct any business they want through Irish. I would ask what is the Justification is for Demanding that everything in the Dáil be English only? Bi-lingualism works well in many countries across Europe, it dosent affect their democracy, it is ridiculus to suggest that it would affect ours. We have as a national aim, the promotion of the Irish language, and we are obliged to promote Mionority Languages in this state through Europe. So would it not be rather ridiculus to ban the use of Irish in the Dáil as doing so would be counter to the promotion of the language.
deise go deo wrote: » Weekly outside the education system speakers TOTAL = 102,861 So this is the Irish speaking 'core', if you will. 175,000. this is just under 4% of the population.
Bilingualism works well in the countries across Europe that are actually bilingual. Ours is not a bilingual nation. (Naturally, the gaelgoirs will insist otherwise—but really, who do they think they're fooling? Walk onto any street in any major town and ask for directions in Irish, and then tell me how "bilingual" we are.)
So we should speak Irish because the bureaucrats have decreed it? I'm not convinced. (In any case, if we want to facilitate useful bilingualism in the Dáil, there is a much greater rationale for conducting proceedings in Polish.)
snubbleste wrote: » Gaeilge is given recognition by the Constitution as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland (with English being a second official language).
P. Breathnach wrote: » That's quite disingenuous: you want the Irish language excluded from the most important forum of the state. That's tantamount to saying that we should not shun it, but we should ignore it instead.
P. Breathnach wrote: » I am not aware that the use of Irish in the Dáil has ever been an obstruction to conducting the business of the state. Your going after it now, in this context, looks like spoiling for a fight that nobody is actually seeking.
Because Ireland is home to many Polish speakers who have a poor grasp of English, let alone Irish.
Eliot Rosewater wrote: » Well, yes, I think that precisely because Dail Eireann is so important it should be conducted in English only, so that all its citizens can understand it. I think that within this one setting the use of Irish is not desirable. (Perhaps it's worth adding that I think there are settings where it is very desirable: I attended a poetry night featuring John Montague before Christmas and I found the use of Irish by the MC to be very charming and in lovely harmony with the eclectic mood of the night.)
deise go deo wrote: » I dont see any justification for banning Irish in the Dáil, The state aims to promote the Language and to make Ireland a bi-lingual state. To do this Irish need to be normalised in all settings and the Dáil is one place that it needs to be heard especially, How can the state promote Bi-lingualism as an aim if it bans the very language it is trying to promote in the national Parliament?
Promoting the language is one thing. Mandating it is quite another. Free citizens have the right to decide which language(s) they or their children learn and speak, just as they have the right to decide which clothes to wear, which food to eat, or which religion to practice. Government interference with citizens' basic liberties is not justifiable in any country that wishes to call itself a free democratic republic.
Nor do I. However, I consider it impracticable to propose holding debates in the Irish language when only around 15 percent of TDs are considered able to speak that language well enough to feature on TG4 or Raidió na Gaeltachta. Theoretically, my TD goes to Dáil Éireann to represent me. How can he represent me effectively if he can neither follow debates nor contribute to them?
I can't read phrasings like this without being reminded of Orwell's 1984. The state should not be in the interest of "normalising" any language. People should be free to speak whatever language they choose, without government interference.
BKtje wrote: » I think that the number of decent politicians that Ireland has is low enough without devastating the number further by forcing them to be able to speak Irish fluently. Personally I wouldn't care if they spoke chinese as long as they ran the country in a decent and honest way.
deise go deo wrote: » That is what I mean by 'Irish needs to be normalised' Services through and the use of Irish has to be made a part of Every day life, They should be an actual option for anyone who wants it.
The Official Languages Act 2003 has imposed additional financial burdens on local authorities, which are forced by law to waste money translating documents into Irish without there being any public demand. For instance, this 2009 story illustrates how Clare County Council spent more than €30,000 translating three development plans into Irish, yet failed to sell even one single copy of the Irish-language document. I fail to see where the positive benefit is to the public when we enact requirements such as these. That's €30,000 that is not being spent on the far more essential services that cash-strapped local authorities have to maintain.
That is a hugely simplistic view. Over the course of many decades, the government has provided all manner of incentives to promote and sustain the use of the Irish language in the Gaeltachts—but the language has continued to decline there, largely for cultural reasons that have little to do with state services.
That's all very well—but I see no point in requiring the taxpayer to bend over backwards to facilitate languages that have just 7,500 speakers. Or 72,000 "habitual speakers," for that matter.
At last count, just 15 percent of TDs spoke Irish well enough to hold a coherent political debate in it. It is thus completely impracticable to propose that any TD on a whim can start debating in a language that excludes 85 percent of the house and a huge percentage of the general public.
How and where are people "forced" to speak English by the government?
If people should be free to choose Irish, then people should also be free from the state-mandated imposition of Irish, if that is their preference.
How dose the State impose Irish on people?
Rubbish, There is nothing to stop any TD from using Irish, It is not Impractible, Bi-lingualism is practiced in many Parliaments accross Europe, And can just as easily be practiced here. This is the Situation now in the Dáil and it has not caused any problems.
