How to revive the Irish language.

I'd say its in a better position now than 20 years ago. Huge demand for Gaelscoils, huge investment in promoting the language and the success yes the success of TG4, have all helped to promote the language. What would really help is if we finally stopped teaching kids in school Irish, as if it was their first language and having to deal with all the bull**** poems and started teaching it as a foreign language then the language would start to grow.

Who here uses a bit when abroad? I do. Handy way of insulting the locals without them known.:cool:

nice1franko wrote: »

Google recently put it on their Endangered Languages Project:

They also say there are 52 different dialects of Irish...

I met a Bostonian last weekend who was here studying Irish. He was fecking awful, though.

I am just going to jump in to this, on page 36/37.

I am going in to 5th Year, and I quite like Irish. I am Irish and I take pride in being from Ireland as we have such an amazing image (for the most part) abroad. Being able to speak Irish is a source of pride in me. Admittedly, my Irish is of a mediocre standard (but, in 1st Year I knew barely a word, now I am up on a B - awaiting my JC results).

My friends (all of them but about two) are anti-Irish-language. If you mention it; they'll just say "it's a dead language; no one speaks it!" That kind of... unsettles me (maybe not the best word). As in, people died years ago to save this language. The amount of people that devoted so much time to saving Irish, and now we are just saying "Ah, no one speaks it..."

My friends often claim it is "dead". No, it's not. Irish is alive, clearly. People still speak it. Latin is dead (I think we can all agree it is not spoken bar science and such). Irish is spoken daily. On a few occasions, I have heard people converse on Shop St in Galway in Irish. It was quite alien, if I am honest.

I was at the Volvo Ocean Race in Galway a few weeks back. A family were speaking Irish. I said to my friend "that's so weird!" Then, later I realized... it's bad that it's weird to hear Irish people speak Irish in Ireland. I mean, come on...

I really think that Irish needs to be taught recently. One of the main complaints my friends have (and I agree) is that the pros and poetry is bull. Every poem is depressing, and our novel is about a lad getting shot. I mean, how can we be expected to enjoy Irish when we read depressing sh!t all day?

The language must be made... more accessible. I really don't know how, to be perfectly honest. Bands such as The Coronas help, I guess - doing songs in Irish. Or, the Rubberbandits. We need more of that to get people my age interested. I would love to see (well, hear) more people speak Irish. Maybe try make it more (cringe alert) "cool". Not like those stupid chewing gum ads doing the rounds atm. I mean, why not promote it through popular books? The Hunger Games in Irish? Or more music in Irish? Or more movies in Irish? Or just encourage people to speak it, and not to be afraid to make mistakes ("You forgot a h! How dare you?!"). I am always afraid of making grammatical errors, which takes away from the language.

As an anecdote of some kind, my friend works in a shop (bear in mind, this girl lives in the "Gaeltacht" and went to a "half Irish school", as she calls it), and one day a man came in. He asked how much an item was, in Irish. My friend had no idea what he said (she's going in to 5th Year, and she'll be doing Higher Irish and she doesn't understand a basic sentence...) The man was very disappointed that she didn't understand. A few weeks later, a German woman came in and she managed to have a conversation in German with my friend. Hm...

I know some of you will say "tl;dr" but I just thought I'd give my two cents, from the point of view of a secondary school student. It is just my opinion on Irish, a language I do not want to see die. I really hope by the time I leave school, I will be near fluency in Irish.

Pen Rua wrote: »

I am just going to jump in to this, on page 36/37.

You can make it so this thread is only 14 pages. Control Panel -> Edit Settings -> 40 posts per page.

I know some of you will say "tl;dr" but I just thought I'd give my two cents, from the point of view of a secondary school student. It is just my opinion on Irish, a language I do not want to see die. I really hope by the time I leave school, I will be near fluency in Irish.

I read all your post, so I didn't just skip it. I will point out though, whatever about fluency you acquire throughout school, you are going to end up barely ever using it outside the school environment. So, there'll be isolated people who could speak it if they had to, but never will have to. I don't see the victory, or the point in it to be honest.

You can get books from any library in ireland delivered to your local library, look into it.