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Should Irish be an optional subject not a cumpulsory one

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    #362
    mloc
    Registered Users Posts: 2,567 ✭✭✭mloc


    I would add that if Irish needs to be compulsory to keep itself alive, then it's already dead.


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    #363
    KeithM89_old
    Closed Accounts Posts: 12,806 ✭✭✭✭KeithM89_old


    Seanchai wrote: »
    Arguments.

    Before lecturing Irish speakers on how awful Irish is, it's always advisable to know English as well as them. Education is the key. :rolleyes:

    Banned.


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    #364
    GaryIrv93
    Closed Accounts Posts: 512 ✭✭✭GaryIrv93


    Before anyone accuses me of hating my country, or wanting to exterminate the Irish language, I just want to ask what's the point in wasting piles and piles on money every year on teaching compulsory Irish, on countless students who won't ever need or want Irish again, when the government could spend less on teaching Irish better and at the same time actually promote it and get people to enjoy learning it by making it a non-compulsory subject, and replace it with a more useful subject? eg. Driving Skills would be useful. Or better still, take it out of the cirriculum entirely and just let people learn it on their own time and pay for their own lessons? Because seriously, having it as a complusory subject and force feeding students a language that isin't even taught well is harming Irish to no end.

    If anyone thinks I'm against the language, I'm not in any way. I'm merely saying it needs to be taught better and the government also needs to accept that Irish is irrelevant to most students and therefore needs to cop on and stop wasting so much money on something that most students won't even use again. It baffles me.


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    #365
    mloc
    Registered Users Posts: 2,567 ✭✭✭mloc


    Seanchai wrote: »
    Well thanks be to Jaysas that the Queen's English or Mathematics isn't "rammed down the throats of an unwilling population".

    Oh, wait. :rolleyes:

    Let me just play this through a bit more. I'm all for making all subjects optional on a state level. Let the school, and if not the school, the parents, decide.

    Most colleges will require students to have studied English, probably for 99% or upwards of courses. So nothing would really change there; parents or schools will ensure that everyone continues to learn English in school.

    Maths will probably be required at a basic Leaving Cert level for most 3rd level courses and schools will more than likely keep it compulsory until the very least Junior Cert. There may be a slight decline, initially, in people taking Maths at LC but the job market will adjust to this as they realise that the skills gained in learning maths are transferable to many areas. So not much change there.

    I don't think there's any need for me to go into detail as to what would happen if Irish become optional, but suffice to say, numbers taking the subject would certainly change.


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    #366
    Cú Giobach
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,772 ✭✭✭Cú Giobach


    mloc wrote: »
    I would add that if Irish needs to be compulsory to keep itself alive, then it's already dead.
    Ha ha!! :D
    You should send that statement to this site.


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    #367
    marienbad
    Registered Users Posts: 9,463 ✭✭✭marienbad


    Cú Giobach wrote: »
    Ha ha!! :D
    You should send that statement to this site.

    Despite the sarcasm he/she has a point though.


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    #368
    Namlub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,298 ✭✭✭Namlub


    Seriously, every time I see a new Irish language thread in AH a small part of me dies. Without fail, they just descend into lame point-scoring and the same few people popping up to stifle any chance of a reasonable discussion.


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    #369
    lividduck
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,250 ✭✭✭lividduck


    Seanchai wrote: »
    Arguments.

    Before lecturing Irish speakers on how awful Irish is, it's always advisable to know English as well as them. Education is the key. :rolleyes:
    I would refer you to the moderator notes on grammer nazis.


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    #370
    lividduck
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,250 ✭✭✭lividduck


    lividduck wrote: »
    I would refer you to the moderator notes on grammer nazis.
    Yeesh, note that poster was banned, should not have responded, apologies to all.


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    #371
    lividduck
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,250 ✭✭✭lividduck


    Seanchai wrote: »
    Yes, I'm just itching to use Sonnet 112 or Pythagoras's Theorem. I just can't wait. :rolleyes: Just what sort of people do you hang around with?

    PS: I'm far more educated than you in English, Maths or anything else you've learnt in school, so don't even bother trying.
    How do you know how well educated anyone else is, do you hold some kind of Phd that only one person, you, are allowed to hold?


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    #372
    lividduck
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,250 ✭✭✭lividduck


    Cú Giobach wrote: »
    Ha ha!! :D
    You should send that statement to this site.
    Never inthe field of human endevour has so much been spent by so many for the benifit of so few.
    Because less than 1% of the population insist that they can speak Irish, the state forces students to study it against their will, and spends millions translating doocuments into a hobby language.
    I have no problem with Irish being optional, none at all, but the idea that a few can force the majority to waste their time on any useless subject offends both my democratic principles and my logic.
    Why are you so afraid to let Irish be optional, could it be that you know very few would willinging choose it? Are you that insecure? Or just that aware that you are in a tiny minority that will never convince the majority of the validitity of your position.


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    #373
    deise go deo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,677 ✭✭✭deise go deo


    TeddyTedson wrote: »
    I thought they were working towards making the majority of primary schools gaelscoils, or going along those lines anyway.
    It seems like it would be easy to revive the language. Have the first four year of primary thought through Irish.

    I remember reading on boards in another thread last year that apparently there's a lot more going on in schools towards Irish nowadays though anyway. They play Bingo in Irish for fun and the likes.

    Sounds a awful lot more fun than what I remember. I was absolutely atrocious at the language, unfortunately, because now I'd like to be able to speak it fluently.


    Unfortunatly not, the state has been consistantly blocking and holding up the opening of new Gaelscoils for years, going so far as to stop recognising new ones compleatly in 2008. They have agreed to allow a few more since, but it is still a painfully slow, and even more dificult process these days.

    Anything like bingo through Irish etc, is taken on by the school/students themselves, its not the state that does it. The state is still quite happy to do the bare minimum.


    Nothing stoping you from learning, there are groups that meet up and chat informally and help each other learn all over the country, why not give one of them a go?


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    #374
    Cú Giobach
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,772 ✭✭✭Cú Giobach


    lividduck wrote: »
    Never inthe field of human endevour has so much been spent by so many for the benifit of so few.
    Because less than 1% of the population insist that they can speak Irish, the state forces students to study it against their will, and spends millions translating doocuments into a hobby language.
    I have no problem with Irish being optional, none at all, but the idea that a few can force the majority to waste their time on any useless subject offends both my democratic principles and my logic.
    No.
    1-2% are native speakers, many more are fluent speakers and many many more again can speak it but wouldn't be considered fluent.
    By the way, the number who claim they speak Irish is not 1-2%, but 1-2 million.

    The reason it is compulsory is not because of the 1-2% ie native speakers (many of whom don't like compulsion either), but more to do with most of the Irish population wanting it, because they believe it is important. I already said this earlier to you. :confused:
    Why are you so afraid to let Irish be optional, could it be that you know very few would willinging choose it? Are you that insecure? Or just that aware that you are in a tiny minority that will never convince the majority of the validitity of your position.
    What makes you think I am afraid?
    Over 50% of the Irish population is hardly a tiny minority.
    I already said to you (here) I would like to see it compulsory up to junior cert but if it's removed by popular demand so be it, it still won't die.
    Or to put it simply and I'll put it in bold for you, it being optional doesn't bother me. Is that clearer?

    Why don't you read what people actually write? :confused:


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    #375
    conor.hogan.2
    Registered Users Posts: 5,246 ✭✭✭conor.hogan.2


    Wattle wrote: »
    At least Mathematics and the Queens English have some practical applications in real life whereas Irish has virtually none.

    Yes all that research on people knowing more languages leading to being more intelligent are lies. (You can do Irish and a european language and another optional one if you want the more the better)

    Knowing the language also leads to knowing what place names mean and countless other things embedded in our culture as it is our national language and has been for a long long time.

    The language has also been in use by the majority of the islands inhabitants for the majority of our known history too, but letting that go because students are too lazy to do one extra subject is not the right thing to do.


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    #376
    deise go deo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,677 ✭✭✭deise go deo


    lividduck wrote: »
    Never inthe field of human endevour has so much been spent by so many for the benifit of so few.
    Because less than 1% of the population insist that they can speak Irish, the state forces students to study it against their will, and spends millions translating doocuments into a hobby language.
    I have no problem with Irish being optional, none at all, but the idea that a few can force the majority to waste their time on any useless subject offends both my democratic principles and my logic.
    Why are you so afraid to let Irish be optional, could it be that you know very few would willinging choose it? Are you that insecure? Or just that aware that you are in a tiny minority that will never convince the majority of the validitity of your position.


    Where are you getting your figures from? Please provide a source for this less than 1% because as far as I am aware, thats bulls**t.

    As for the few forcing it on the majority, every poll ever taken has shown it split roughly 50/50, the most recent ones have shown a majority in favor of leaving it compulsory.

    The idea that only those that speak Irish fluently want it to remain compulsory has always been one of the more laughable arguments presented by those who want Irish made optional.


    As for insecurity, we have been on the receving end or a rightious crusade against compulsory Irish here in this thread, why are none of you willing to actually do something worthwile about your convictions?
    Go out and campaighn to get Irish made optional if you feel so strongly about it, if there is so little support for Irish as you seem to think, it should be easy, right?

    Start a petition, set up a facebook group, test your convictions, go and see how many people actually support your stance. Just don't come crying to me if they don't.


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    #377
    Nodin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    gigino wrote: »
    Far less than 1-2% of the newspapers, books + magazines sold are in ugly old Irish.

    You were asked before - what do you mean "ugly" Irish?


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    #378
    grindle
    Registered Users Posts: 6,026 ✭✭✭grindle


    Nodin wrote: »
    You were asked before - what do you mean "ugly" Irish?

    It's guttural. That, to a lot of people, is ugly.
    Most people I know think this anyway.


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    #379
    Elmo
    Registered Users Posts: 23,641 ✭✭✭✭Elmo


    I am in favour of compulsory Irish but we need to change the format of the Language exams. And we need to get over the Leaving Cert. (You don't have to sit the Leaving if you don't want to, there are other roads to 3rd level).

    On other threads on this subject I have proposed:-

    1. Literature Exam in all Languages i.e. The current Honours papers in English and Irish, but provided also in German, French, Polish. (Worth 120 points).
    2. The current exam in foreign languages, but also provided in both Irish and English (100 points)
    3. Ordinary Literature, also provided in German, French, Polish etc (The current Pass Leaving English and Irish). Worth 80 points.
    4. Ordinary exam for foreign languages but provided in Irish and English (or in other words a beginners course). Worth 60 points. <<< I could prob do with this course before ye start into me on this :)

    This would allow for Fluent Irish speakers take a literature exam and learners to take basic courses. Those who live in a home that speak polish, german and french to get better at their parent's languages, while also learning English at a basic level (this would allow for new secondary students who may need to be provided with extra English help, rather then doing the Lit Junior cert course they work on their English language skills in the same way as English speakers do in French, German and Spanish).

    The Irish course is just as much about Culture as it is about Language, the poetry and pros.


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    #380
    Dostoevsky
    Registered Users Posts: 1,023 ✭✭✭Dostoevsky


    grindle wrote: »
    It's guttural. That, to a lot of people, is ugly.
    Most people I know think this anyway.

    Ha. English: the new French. Can you believe it? Del Boy or Hyacinth won't be able to believe their luck.


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    #381
    Wibbs
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,092 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Cú Giobach wrote: »
    No.
    1-2% are native speakers, many more are fluent speakers and many many more again can speak it but wouldn't be considered fluent.
    By the way, the number who claim they speak Irish is not 1-2%, but 1-2 million.
    "claim" is right. Are you seriously suggesting that around half the population of this nation can speak Irish beyond a hamfisted cupla focal? Oh god. LOL. No really and I rarely use memes like LOL, but it is entirely apposite in this case. That is the very definition of subjective delusional thinking. If half the population of any given group claimed some understanding of a language we wouldn't be having this conversation.

    Good god, if this is the thinking behind those who would support the worthwhile aim of the languages revitalisation, then it may well be doomed. Luckily those who don't think like this will ensure it isn't.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



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    #382
    grindle
    Registered Users Posts: 6,026 ✭✭✭grindle


    Dostoevsky wrote: »
    Ha. English: the new French. Can you believe it? Del Boy or Hyacinth won't be able to believe their luck.
    You're implying Irish dialects are prettier, or as fluid?


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    #383
    Dostoevsky
    Registered Users Posts: 1,023 ✭✭✭Dostoevsky


    grindle wrote: »
    You're implying Irish dialects are prettier, or as fluid?

    I am. More importantly, you're not in a position to judge because you only know one and naturally enough you side with the one you're most familiar with. Not that you'd ever let personal prejudice get in the way, of course.


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    #384
    Wibbs
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,092 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    grindle wrote: »
    It's guttural. That, to a lot of people, is ugly.
    Personally I find Irish, particularly "Donegal" Irish quite kind to the ear. Far from ugly. Guttural? Hardly an argument. Arabic, German and many others, hell English can be thought of as guttural. Doesn't mean jack. The wealth of history, culture and practicality of communication in those examples makes a fool of that argument. If you're going to reject or denigrate a language at least do it with some sense attached. Don't go for some narrow minded populist effect.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



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    #385
    grindle
    Registered Users Posts: 6,026 ✭✭✭grindle


    Wibbs wrote: »
    If you're going to reject or denigrate a language at least do it with some sense attached. Don't go for some narrow minded populist effect.
    Eh? If I thought the language practical, I'd learn it, guttural or not. But it isn't. So I don't.
    I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything there. Someone asked why somebody called it ugly. I gave the answer.
    German also sounds ugly, and Arabic too. English is uglier than Italian or French. Is this me conceding some sort of point to you?
    No. I'm just noting aural attributes.
    Nobody on the 'pro-' side has acknowledged and accepted the greatest reason to make it optional.
    No practical use.
    The arguments out of ye suggest you think the language'd die in a week if it was made optional.
    It won't. People who are happy learning Irish will get to stay that way. People who are currently frustrated, bored, disinterested with Irish and are having the opportunity to learn something practical stolen from them, would be happy.
    Your argument: one side wins.
    My argument: both sides win.

    Or are you a particularly miserable soul, and want to pass that wonderful trait to the rest of us?


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    #386
    BrianOFlanagan
    Closed Accounts Posts: 179 ✭✭BrianOFlanagan


    I reckon the best solution is to make Irish compulsory for EVERYONE up to junior cert level and give it an extra points system like maths for the leaving cert but for honours level ONLY. That way if you're bad at it and or hate studying it you can drop it but if you like it and or need it for the college course you want then you can continue with it. Everybody wins.


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    #387
    Iwasfrozen
    Registered Users Posts: 16,250 ✭✭✭✭Iwasfrozen


    BrianOFlanagan wrote: »
    I reckon the best solution is to make Irish compulsory for EVERYONE up to junior cert level and give it an extra points system like maths for the leaving cert but for honours level ONLY. That way if you're bad at it and or hate studying it you can drop it but if you like it and or need it for the college course you want then you can continue with it. Everybody wins.
    Except medical students who will have to do higher irish even though they don't need it.


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    #388
    Princess Consuela Bananahammock
    Registered Users Posts: 33,061 ✭✭✭✭Princess Consuela Bananahammock


    BrianOFlanagan wrote: »
    I reckon the best solution is to make Irish compulsory for EVERYONE up to junior cert level and give it an extra points system like maths for the leaving cert but for honours level ONLY. That way if you're bad at it and or hate studying it you can drop it but if you like it and or need it for the college course you want then you can continue with it. Everybody wins.

    Exactly. but for some reason, that's unacceptable to a lot of people.

    Everything I don't like is either woke or fascist - possibly both - pick one.



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    #389
    grindle
    Registered Users Posts: 6,026 ✭✭✭grindle


    BrianOFlanagan wrote: »
    Everybody wins.

    Everybody except the people who don't want to learn it. Knocking two/three years off the plan isn't a win.
    I really don't understand this fervent need to have other people's time and drive wasted and depleted.


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    #390
    BrianOFlanagan
    Closed Accounts Posts: 179 ✭✭BrianOFlanagan


    grindle wrote: »
    BrianOFlanagan wrote: »
    Everybody wins.

    Everybody except the people who don't want to learn it. Knocking two/three years off the plan isn't a win.
    I really don't understand this fervent need to have other people's time and drive wasted and depleted.

    I hated learning Irish more than you can imagine, I spent 14 years thinking the exact same thing everyday "this is a waste of my time". But we must be realistic, it does have a modicum of importance and therefore cannot be dropped completely so making it optional for the LC is the best choice because those 2/3 years are the only important ones after all.


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    #391
    Cú Giobach
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,772 ✭✭✭Cú Giobach


    Wibbs wrote: »
    "claim" is right.
    Are you seriously suggesting that around half the population of this nation can speak Irish beyond a hamfisted cupla focal?
    Oh god. LOL. No really and I rarely use memes like LOL, but it is entirely apposite in this case. That is the very definition of subjective delusional thinking. If half the population of any given group claimed some understanding of a language we wouldn't be having this conversation.

    Good god, if this is the thinking behind those who would support the worthwhile aim of the languages revitalisation, then it may well be doomed. Luckily those who don't think like this will ensure it isn't.
    If you are unable to distinguish the blindingly obvious difference between someone saying, "1-2 million CLAIM to speak Irish" and "1-2 million CAN speak Irish",
    then may I suggest you take some basic English lessons, before wasting your time posting crap like that above.

    mod: banned.


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