Is Irish actually spoken in the Gealtachts?

deise go deo · 13-11-2011 07:04PM

An gal gréine wrote: »

On a recent short visit to An Rinn in Co. Waterford, I found Irish speakers sure enough but they have been surrounded by blow-ins who make no effort. In Ráth Cairn they have tight control of who moves in to their area.

I don't think that's entirely fair, sure there are plenty of blow in's who make no effort, but there are those who do, the Local development officer is a blow-in from Dublin.

An gal gréine · 13-11-2011 07:17PM

deise go deo wrote: »

I don't think that's entirely fair, sure there are plenty of blow in's who make no effort, but there are those who do, the Local development officer is a blow-in from Dublin.

I did add to above at post 141 but you are right, I was'nt clear enough as regards those who have made a significant difference. Did'nt mean any disrespect to them.

deise go deo · 13-11-2011 07:22PM

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Yes, as I said Irish was dangling in around 50% (lower if you count just irish speakers, higher if you count bi-linguals) before the famine. The point is in was in decline before the famine.

Ó Cúiv and fitzgerald and a lot of other people agree on this.

40% only spoke Irish before the famine (ie, the most irish speakers ever) so 30% outside of the east had started to move to english and the percentage of young adults, teens and children was much lower too.

I have not read it all either.

Its impossible to know with any kind of accuracy how many people spoke Irish before the famine as there are no reliable figures.

We can guess all day, but it makes no difference to where the language is now.

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 07:22PM

deirdremf wrote: »

Probably (if true) because all languages are incredibly flexible etc.
One small question, though: where did it get "its immense lexical range" (to the extent that such exists)?
Mostly, I think from Latin, Greek and French - or in other words, it was lacking and rather than being able to develop it from its own resources, it went begging and robbing, with the result that in English we have hydrogen and oxygen, but in German they used their own resources and came up with wasserstoff and sauerstoff.
Now I'm not saying one is better than the other, but as you mentioned its lexical range, and supple syntax ...

For various historical and purely linguistic reasons (related primarily to the openness of its grammatical structures to lexical borrowing), English is replete with a linguistic corpus derived from many sources, giving it throughout its vocabulary a nuanced spectrum of full, partial and quasi-synonyms, and of a blending of shades of meaning across this entire semantic spectrum, which is clearly not found in any other extant language. It accounts for the sheer length of our dictionaries, but it also powers the language to the forefront of international use, since it allows for both the rudimentary and crude communication that is also possible in simpler languages, but also for the cartesian clarity made possible by its use across its full lexical range, by, for example, masterful writers and diplomats.

Syntactically it permits the highest level of precision, otherwise achievable, I understand, only in mathematical statements; this is not to say, however, that some speakers are not capable of egregiously defective use of the language, both intentionally or inadvertently.

deise go deo · 13-11-2011 07:39PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

I was not referring to the Irish there, but to people speaking supposedly living languages worldwide.

As an instrument for communicating thoughts with the finest degrees of nuance and discrimination, English has never been surpassed, because of its immense lexical range and the suppleness of its syntax. Small wonder that it is the lingua franca of all of humanity, as we strive to engage with each other across cultural and political boundaries. Such linguistic transparency is an objective support for human understanding, for the reduction in international tensions, and for the creation of a happier and economically more productive humanity.

It is the compartmentalization of humanity into exclusive and hermetically sealed linguistic cells that propels us to conflict, that reduces our economic activity and that puts us into the often self-seeking hands of translators and interpreters.

Floreat lingua Anglica!

Nonsence, it is not even close to being the lingua franca of the majority of humanity.

For native speakers, its not even in the top two.

Fuinseog · 13-11-2011 07:45PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Sadly, my dear Enkidu, I think it at least plays into ill-informed perceptions of crafty, deceitful peasants, unwilling to articulate what they mean in the clear light of day. This may be wrong, and Connemara is clearly not Surrey, but we could do with a touch of clarity, even in a society with no tradition of elocution training or rhetoric.

I think the people of Conamara are more influenced by the Gaelic tradition while people in the East tend to be more Saxonised.

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 07:49PM

deise go deo wrote: »

Nonsence, it is not even close to being the lingua franca of the majority of humanity.

For native speakers, its not even in the top two.

Taking lingua franca in its conventional sense, English is the lingua franca of the world. I cannot help further with explication, since we seem to have reached first principles here and I do not intend rummaging in a dictionary, the last redoubt of a pedant.

Fuinseog · 13-11-2011 07:49PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

For various historical and purely linguistic reasons (related primarily to the openness of its grammatical structures to lexical borrowing), English is replete with a linguistic corpus derived from many sources, giving it throughout its vocabulary a nuanced spectrum of full, partial and quasi-synonyms, and of a blending of shades of meaning across this entire semantic spectrum, which is clearly not found in any other extant language. It accounts for the sheer length of our dictionaries, but it also powers the language to the forefront of international use, since it allows for both the rudimentary and crude communication that is also possible in simpler languages, but also for the cartesian clarity made possible by its use across its full lexical range, by, for example, masterful writers and diplomats.

Syntactically it permits the highest level of precision, otherwise achievable, I understand, only in mathematical statements; this is not to say, however, that some speakers are not capable of egregiously defective use of the language, both intentionally or inadvertently.

what a load of rollocks. every language has foreign influences. English is a major language not because of the English, but because of the control the Americans have over the world.
on the subject of languages the Irish appear to be the worst in Europe in terms of acquiring a second language.

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 07:51PM

Fuinseog wrote: »

I think the people of Conamara are more influenced by the Gaelic tradition while people in the East tend to be more Saxonised.

Yes, I agree with the previous poster, there is a sense in which the further east one goes in Ireland, the more clearly people seem to express themselves (both in English and in Gaelic, as it happens). This may be a matter if dialect or "accent", or it may be the influence of good television and radio, but there you are, it cannot be gainsaid. The closer to Montrose, the better the enunciation, perhaps.

byhookorbycrook · 13-11-2011 08:02PM

The Scientician wrote: »

I think it'll be interesting to see the result of the current Gaelscoil movement in the next generation. Will kids who went to a gaelscoil send their kids to a gaelscoil?

Yes, we have a lot of children of past pupils. We also have children of parents who always wanted to use their school Irish and are making an effort to learn with/speak to their child in Irish when they can.

deise go deo · 13-11-2011 08:10PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Taking lingua franca in its conventional sense, English is the lingua franca of the world. I cannot help further with explication, since we seem to have reached first principles here and I do not intend rummaging in a dictionary, the last redoubt of a pedant.

You made the claim that English is the lingua franca of all humanity, that is not true nor is it even close to being true, it is the lingua franca of a fraction of humanity.

There are some people who hold that the English language is the only useful language and that all others are unnecessary and of less value, that idea is a dangerous nonsense and should be challenged whenever it is espoused.

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 08:13PM

deise go deo wrote: »

You made the claim that English is the lingua franca of all humanity, that is not true nor is it even close to being true, it is the lingua franca of a fraction of humanity.

There are some people who hold that the English language is the only useful language and that all others are unnecessary and of less value, that idea is a dangerous nonsense and should be challenged whenever it is espoused.

OK, I relent, on this one occasion. The international lingua franca of all humanity is English. All truth is on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca

Mike 1972 · 13-11-2011 08:18PM

An gal gréine wrote: »

In Ráth Cairn they have tight control of who moves in to their area.

Pitchforks and Torches ?

conor.hogan.2 · 13-11-2011 08:54PM

Is there even a single mono-lingual irish speaker left? When was the last mono-lingual irish speaker?

deise go deo wrote: »

Its impossible to know with any kind of accuracy how many people spoke Irish before the famine as there are no reliable figures.

We can guess all day, but it makes no difference to where the language is now.

I would hardly call what Garret did "guessing" now. But yes it has little to do with now, kind of.

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 08:55PM

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Is there even a single mono-lingual irish left? When was the last mono-lingual irish speaker?

I believe a few were extant until the 1930's.

General Michael Collins · 13-11-2011 09:10PM

Some older Irish speakers refuse to speak English ... whether they speak it or not, that's effictively monolingual.

deise go deo · 13-11-2011 09:10PM

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

I would hardly call what Garret did "guessing" now. But yes it has little to do with now, kind of.

As far as I am aware he studied the 1911 census results for people who were born before the Famine who spoke Irish.

That study would naturally miss all those who had died between the Famine and 1911 and all the people who had left the country.

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 09:11PM

General Michael Collins wrote: »

Some older Irish speakers refuse to speak English ... whether they speak it or not, that's effictively monolingual.

Perhaps they just don't have much to say that's of any interest?

deise go deo · 13-11-2011 09:16PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

OK, I relent, on this one occasion. The international lingua franca of all humanity is English. All truth is on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca

I am fully aware of what the term Lingua Franca means.

Which means that I know for instance that a language you do not speak can not be a lingua franca for you.

Given that at most only about 1.5 Billion people speak English either as a native or subsequent learned language, then English cannot be the lingua franca of all of humanity, But rather it is the lingua franca of a fraction of humanity, 1.5/7 to be precise.

General Michael Collins · 13-11-2011 09:24PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Perhaps they just don't have much to say that's of any interest?

This is some persistent Trolling, a chara, I must admit I thought you were serious at first. Do you speak Irish?

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 09:29PM

deise go deo wrote: »

I am fully aware of what the term Lingua Franca means.

Which means that I know for instance that a language you do not speak can not be a lingua franca for you.

Given that at most only about 1.5 Billion people speak English either as a native or subsequent learned language, then English cannot be the lingua franca of all of humanity, But rather it is the lingua franca of a fraction of humanity, 1.5/7 to be precise.

I would suggest turning the mind back to the Middle Ages, and consider the case of Latin; or in the Baltic, and consider the case of the Hanse; or the 18th century, and consider the place of French. In each case there was a lingua franca; not everyone spoke it; some people had other languages in common, though these were not the regional lingua franca; the lingua franca, allowing someone in Portugal to speak to a cleric in Poland was Latin; later, French functioned between North America and the court of Catherine the Great and in all places between. Now, if two people from widely separated parts of the world or from widely different countries need to communicate without the need for interpretation, they must use the universal lingua franca, English, unless, by unusual chance, they speak some other third language in common.

English it is.

conor.hogan.2 · 13-11-2011 09:39PM

So you never heard of Chinese or Spanish then?

parrai · 13-11-2011 09:40PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

I would suggest turning the mind back to the Middle Ages, and consider the case of Latin; or in the Baltic, and consider the case of the Hanse; or the 18th century, and consider the place of French. In each case there was a lingua franca; not everyone spoke it; some people had other languages in common, though these were not the regional lingua franca; the lingua franca, allowing someone in Portugal to speak to a cleric in Poland was Latin; later, French functioned between North America and the court of Catherine the Great and in all places between. Now, if two people from widely separated parts of the world or from widely different countries need to communicate without the need for interpretation, they must use the universal lingua franca, English, unless, by unusual chance, they speak some other third language in common.

English it is.

We are talking about the present Hugo, the present... Not harking back to times of yore....

parrai · 13-11-2011 09:46PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

I would suggest turning the mind back to the Middle Ages, and consider the case of Latin; or in the Baltic, and consider the case of the Hanse; or the 18th century, and consider the place of French. In each case there was a lingua franca; not everyone spoke it; some people had other languages in common, though these were not the regional lingua franca; the lingua franca, allowing someone in Portugal to speak to a cleric in Poland was Latin; later, French functioned between North America and the court of Catherine the Great and in all places between. Now, if two people from widely separated parts of the world or from widely different countries need to communicate without the need for interpretation,

Ironically, this is exactly how business is done, through the medium of an interpreter. All the rest is irrelevant to the post.

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 09:57PM

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

So you never heard of Chinese or Spanish then?

Yes, as it happens, I have heard of Chinese and Spanish, and I have some competence in one of them. However, neither one is a universal lingua franca. Both have large numbers of speakers, and are widely spoken in many countries. The position of English is that it is the lingua franca even in countries where it is not generally spoken as a daily language by more than a small minority. A flight crew from Shanghai to Mexico City will conduct their ATC business in English.

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 10:00PM

parrai wrote: »

We are talking about the present Hugo, the present... Not harking back to times of yore....

This is beginning, sadly, to resemble a pass degree class coming towards their supplemental examinations.

I used examples to demonstrate that before English became the universal lingua franca, other languages served as lingua franca. Even today, the role of regional lingua franca is filled by Swahili, by Chinese, by French, by Russian, and so forth. None, however, is a universal lingua franca.

parrai · 13-11-2011 10:05PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

This is beginning, sadly, to resemble a pass degree class coming towards their supplemental examinations.

I used examples to demonstrate that before English became the universal lingua franca, other languages served as lingua franca. Even today, the role of regional lingua franca is filled by Swahili, by Chinese, by French, by Russian, and so forth. None, however, is a universal lingua franca.

This, of course, relates to Gaeilge as a spoken language in the Gaeltachts?

An gal gréine · 13-11-2011 10:07PM

French is the universal lingua franca in the communications industry.

HugoBradyBrown · 13-11-2011 10:08PM

parrai wrote: »

This, of course, relates to Gaeilge as a spoken language in the Gaeltachts?

This relates to a wrongheaded post; in-context enlightenment has been offered, and is, I imagine, welcomed by all reasonable people who wish to improve themselves, even if English is only their second language.

deise go deo wrote: »

Nonsence, it is not even close to being the lingua franca of the majority of humanity.

For native speakers, its not even in the top two.

parrai · 13-11-2011 10:11PM

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

This relates to a wrongheaded post; in-context enlightenment has been offered, and is, I imagine, welcomed by all reasonable people who wish to improve themselves, even if English is only their second language.

This topic looks quite clear to me... maybe you just wandered off topic a tad..No harm done...

Is Irish actually spoken in the Gealtachts?

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