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How to revive the Irish language.

paullyons00

In my opinion, the only way we can possibly revive the Irish language to make it the first language of the people, business and pleasure, is as follows:

All citizens below the age of 30 and above the age of 17 have 5 years to reach an agreed level of fluency.

Each will be assessed through an oral and written exam at the end of those 5 years.

If the candidate does not pass on his/her first exam, they will be given a second chance to pass but at a higher pass mark.

Any candidate who fails the second exam should be stripped of their rights and citizenship and should face a hefty prison sentence.

This may seem autocratic or communist, but in my view its the only way we can revive the language or else it will die out in years to come.

I'd love to hear your opinions on my way of thinking and alternative views on how we should go about reviving the language.

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indioblack

Clareboy wrote: »

First of all, our family names are for the most part derived from the Irish language as well as our place names. Our most basic sense of identity is firmly rooted in Irish. Even the way we think and use English has its origins in Irish. The Irish language represents the very soul of Ireland and essence of what it means to be Irish.

Then why can't your own citizens see that?

Interest in History

Clareboy wrote: »

" we " as in the ordinary people of Ireland. I am not talking about any special group in society.

The "we" in your suggestion was in relation to a group that would mobilise the population to a commitment to reviving Irish. So, now, you say that the ordinary people are going to mobilise the ordinary people.Which in he firts place is a bit circular.

And in the second, the ordinary people have opted to speak English.......

Interest in History

Clareboy wrote: »

....The Irish language represents the very soul of Ireland and essence of what it means to be Irish.....

Nice case of 'quasi-religious' thinking.

Interest in History

Cú Giobach wrote: »

...........

All over the planet the speakers of endangered languages are trying to ensure their languages will not die out in the face of encroachment by the world's major languages, and in many there is a growing emphasis on actual revival coming from both native speakers and people who are culturally linked to them but for historical reasons mainly speak the encroaching language.
Now because this is a worldwide phenomenon looking at our little part in this from a purely Irish political (or indeed just Irish) perspective, though interesting and well worth looking into, does not and cannot give a proper and well rounded view of why such things happen.
If you read/listen to the people involved in such revival movements worldwide the reasons become much clearer.
A good place to start is here, National Geographic's Enduring Voices Project.
We are not unique in this and because today we are very much on the edge of loosing so much after the industrialisation of the last century and the mass media of the last half century, people who aren't even connected with these disappearing languages and cultures are actually getting involved due to an "awakening" and realisation of what is happening.

I feel it is something inside most of us, this desire to preserve the unique, special and irreplaceable that sadly, often only becomes apparent when we actually get to the very edge, which although results in the saving of much, means we also loose a lot, and our small part in all this just seem to be a natural human response, and not some "quasi-religious" movement unique to this island.

This is worth quoting in full.

In response:

Can you relate these general sentiments with the action of forcing pupils in Ireland to sit Irish in the Leaving Cert?

If a nation or tribe has adopted another language and if they have employed their new language for a long time, should their choice be opposed? What would be the purpose of opposing it? Is human experience a clock that can be turned back? And what if the people in question don't want to turn it back?

poeticseraphim

I woould love to speak it...but there is no one to speak it with ...and nowhere

Not like in a real language exchange programme for real immersion..

The facilities are not there to learn

Maybe i can find a sexy Gaeilgoir man to teach me

OOoh please let it be Maolra Mac Donnachadha off TG4

Well ..there may be another way...'Irish is sexy and anybody who is anybody speaks Irish ' .'all the beautiful people speak it'.Try it..high class aspirational fashion mags with gorgous models ...as Gaeilge...what is the Irish for vogue??? Don't let them learn it ...OOoh BAN IT!!

Porn...as gaelige..:D or Pornagrafaíocht!!:D

Something really cool has to happen ...as a movement.. as Gaeilge

Grayson

Clareboy wrote: »

First of all, our family names are for the most part derived from the Irish language as well as our place names. Our most basic sense of identity is firmly rooted in Irish. Even the way we think and use English has its origins in Irish. The Irish language represents the very soul of Ireland and essence of what it means to be Irish.

I'd agree 99% with that. But the thing is that even though I can barely speak a word of irish, I still speak english with an irish accent. I still use Irish phrases etc.. And that will be the same for everyone whether Irish is compulsary or not. The manner in which we speak english marks us out as Irish more than our ability or inability to speak irish.

I don't believe Irish will die out. The gaeltacht will remail. Irish would still be taught in primary school. It would still be optional in secondary school and kids would take it as a subject (Assuming we change how it's taught). There would still be a large interest in it in universaties and colleges. But I don't believe there's any way for us to reach a point where the country is fluent. And trying to make it so it damaged the language more than anything else.

Cú Giobach

Interest in History wrote: »

Can you relate these general sentiments with the action of forcing pupils in Ireland to sit Irish in the Leaving Cert?

There are two (among many more) answers to this..
1. Compelling people to learn a language in school can foster a dislike of the language which can be counter-productive, and though the evidence appears to show this is a short time dislike here, the oppertunity to learn quite a bit of the language is then lost due to a lack of interest. Plus an educational system alone will not automatically produce viable speakers of a language that is then brought to "community use".
2. For the revival of a language, having it as a non-optional subject in the educational system combined with other initiatives is indeed beneficial if there is demand for it, and here there does appear to be demand for it that is actually increasing.
The reason I try to avoid the subject of compulsion, is that after years of thinking about it I cannot decide in my own head between the pros and cons, therefore it would be just a choice of the moment which side I could debate. I could actually do both here, which would just get confusing for all concerned.

If a nation or tribe has adopted another language and if they have employed their new language for a long time, should their choice be opposed?

Nope, but the question relevant here to Ireland is; If a nation or tribe has adopted a new language for a long time and would like to revive another, should their choice be opposed?

What would be the purpose of opposing it?

Wanting to revive a language is not opposing the choice of those who want to speak the "majority" one, for the simple reason that those who want to continue using the majority one will still do so.
I think you will find the situation here in Ireland is actual opposition to those that would like to have Irish as a viable language, not an opposition to the speaking of English.

Is human experience a clock that can be turned back?

If by that you mean, can we take something from the past and make it relevant to today, yes absolutely.
The recent events in London are a great example of that, on a linguistic side the amazing resuscitation of the Hebrew language another and the revival of the Navaho language another.
There is a reason history is taught in practically every school in the land, we can learn so much from the past and not all that went before is worthless.

And what if the people in question don't want to turn it back?

Then don't do it, but again the relevant question here is, what if they do?
Though the use of the phrase "turning back the clock" is quite misleading, for example, there was a time when Traditional Irish dancing a la say your 1960's céilí was considered quite vibrant, exciting and relevant to the time, then after years of stagnation along came Riverdance, the art then became once again vibrant, exciting and relevent to the world of today, was that "turning back the clock"? Or just taking something many viewed as "in the past" and using it to enrich our lives today.

Finally the Irish language is not in or from the past any more than any other language living today.

indioblack

Cú Giobach wrote: »

There are two (among many more) answers to this..
1. Compelling people to learn a language in school can foster a dislike of the language which can be counter-productive, and though the evidence appears to show this is a short time dislike here, the oppertunity to learn quite a bit of the language is then lost due to a lack of interest. Plus an educational system alone will not automatically produce viable speakers of a language that is then brought to "community use".
2. For the revival of a language, having it as a non-optional subject in the educational system combined with other initiatives is indeed beneficial if there is demand for it, and here there does appear to be demand for it that is actually increasing.
The reason I try to avoid the subject of compulsion, is that after years of thinking about it I cannot decide in my own head between the pros and cons, therefore it would be just a choice of the moment which side I could debate. I could actually do both here, which would just get confusing for all concerned.

Nope, but the question relevant here to Ireland is; If a nation or tribe has adopted a new language for a long time and would like to revive another, should their choice be opposed?

Wanting to revive a language is not opposing the choice of those who want to speak the "majority" one, for the simple reason that those who want to continue using the majority one will still do so.
I think you will find the situation here in Ireland is actual opposition to those that would like to have Irish as a viable language, not an opposition to the speaking of English.

If by that you mean, can we take something from the past and make it relevant to today, yes absolutely.
The recent events in London are a great example of that, on a linguistic side the amazing resuscitation of the Hebrew language another and the revival of the Navaho language another.
There is a reason history is taught in practically every school in the land, we can learn so much from the past and not all that went before is worthless.

Then don't do it, but again the relevant question here is, what if they do?
Though the use of the phrase "turning back the clock" is quite misleading, for example, there was a time when Traditional Irish dancing a la say your 1960's céilí was considered quite vibrant, exciting and relevant to the time, then after years of stagnation along came Riverdance, the art then became once again vibrant, exciting and relevent to the world of today, was that "turning back the clock"? Or just taking something many viewed as "in the past" and using it to enrich our lives today.

Finally the Irish language is not in or from the past any more than any other language living today.

I'd have thought Riverdance was so successful because it broke away from the past.
The reason compulsion cannot be considered is that it wouldn't work.

Cú Giobach

indioblack wrote: »

I'd have thought Riverdance was so successful because it broke away from the past.

I've been playing Irish trad and folk for some years now, and often for the sheer fun of it play stuff with mates in a "punk" style (al a The Dropkick Murphys or the Pogues), the people who tend to call that "breaking with the past" are often rather annoying purists, who hate anything done other than in the style of a céilí band, the rest of us feel we are influenced by the past, big difference.
I would look on Riverdance as just the continuation of a traditional style of dance that has changed with the times, as much good art does. If it had actually broken with the past it wouldn't have been based on traditional music and dance, though I guess there are some old folks out there who might think differently.
I can't speak for dancing (not my thing) but I do know folk music changes with each new generation as new instruments are added and each puts its own slant on it, we don't break with the past, we learn from it.

indioblack

Cú Giobach wrote: »

I've been playing Irish trad and folk for some years now, and often for the sheer fun of it play stuff with mates in a "punk" style (al a The Dropkick Murphys or the Pogues), the people who tend to call that "breaking with the past" are often rather annoying purists, who hate anything done other than in the style of a céilí band, the rest of us feel we are influenced by the past, big difference.
I would look on Riverdance as just the continuation of a traditional style of dance that has changed with the times, as much good art does. If it had actually broken with the past it wouldn't have been based on traditional music and dance, though I guess there are some old folks out there who might think differently.
I can't speak for dancing (not my thing) but I do know folk music changes with each new generation as new instruments are added and each puts its own slant on it, we don't break with the past, we learn from it.

Good reply, no argument there - when Riverdance was out on disc the rest of the family got the DVDs - I got the soundtrack cds - I preferred the music.

opti0nal

Cú Giobach wrote: »

I would look on Riverdance as just the continuation of a traditional style of dance that has changed with the times, ... I do know folk music changes with each new generation as new instruments are added and each puts its own slant on it, we don't break with the past, we learn from it.

Just a new instruments have been added to the repertoire of Irish music, the predominant language of our culture has changed too.

Irish culture and tradition has changed and adapted with the times. Along the way, English was adopted by the Irish people as their preferred common language and it is in this langauage that almost everyone here expresses their cultural identity.

An Coilean

opti0nal wrote: »

Just a new instruments have been added to the repertoire of Irish music, the predominant language of our culture has changed too.

Irish culture and tradition has changed and adapted with the times. Along the way, English was adopted by the Irish people as their preferred common language and it is in this langauage that almost everyone here expresses their cultural identity.

I think it is quite disingenuous to claim that English was 'adopted' by the Irish people in the same way that new instruments were included in traditional music.
No one was ever beaten for not using a banjo or piano when playing trad music.

You are simply propagating a false narative, surely we have moved on enough to stop trying to invent pleasant falshoods and accept the reality of our linguistic past.

Grayson

An Coilean wrote: »

I think it is quite disingenuous to claim that English was 'adopted' by the Irish people in the same way that new instruments were included in traditional music.
No one was ever beaten for not using a banjo or piano when playing trad music.

You are simply propagating a false narative, surely we have moved on enough to stop trying to invent pleasant falshoods and accept the reality of our linguistic past.

Beaten? Most of the coercion was financial. You just needed English to be able to get civil service jobs etc...

dubhthach

Someone mentioned Hiberno-English, of course Hiberno-English as we know it now is a pale shadow of 100 years ago. Then again the fact that anyone with a stronger hiberno-irish accent is derided for it doesn't help. It ties in with the whole "speak proper english" -- no doubt in 100 years the English spoken in this country will be even more of a mid-atlantic type.

Of course why is this important to this thread? Simple Hiberno-English is heavily influenced by Irish language, both in terms of phonology (preservation of Irish R in say the Cork accent) as well as syntax.

Of course the changes in English have been noted by linguists, people talk about "New Dublin" accent, which is having affects around the country. One term I've heard for this newer more "neutral" irish accent is: Supraregional Irish English

Interesting blog post here:
http://dialectblog.com/2011/04/10/supraregional-irish-english/
http://dialectblog.com/2011/02/02/dublin-a-tale-of-two-accents/

Sometimes I think reason why the like of Cork and Kerry accent are often made fun of by comedians is that it ties into social stigma regarding English as spoken by newly anglisced Irish people. In other words they had perfect Irish but they insisted in speaking in what was basically "English with Irish phonology and morphology" -- this was seen as "bad english" and something to be corrected. There does seem to be a viseral reaction in Irish people to way the "Irish accent" is protrayed in Hollywood etc. I think this ties in with the insecurities felt during the process of anglisication. In otherwords too much of an accent marked "broken english". It's for this reason that Hiberno-English has gradually been dieing over the years. The salient features been progressively stripped out for more neutral accent.

Accents like that of Cork preserve more features from Irish and thus attract negative commentary as a result as it ties into underlying neurosis on how we perceive other's opinion of "hiberno-English"

An Coilean

Grayson wrote: »

Beaten? Most of the coercion was financial. You just needed English to be able to get civil service jobs etc...

Yes, Beaten.

Children who spoke Irish in school were beaten, add to this the prior destruction of the Irish speaking upper class, and as a consequence a large part of the the literary class. The exclusion of Irish from all official state and legal afairs. (It is still actually illigal to speak Irish in court in the North) The dispossession of Irish speakers of their lands, especialy in the east of the country and the plantation of English settlers into formerly Irish speaking communities.
As well as this the Catholic Church also decided to use English to the exclusion of Irish in all parts of the country, Irish speaking or not.
The Final nail in the coffin being the Famin which wiped out Irish speaking communities up and down the country.

Liam90

I started school when i was 5yrs old .I finished when I turned 18 . At the end of it I only knew a small amount of the Irish language . I am not stupid so why can'tIspeak my native tongue. p.s . The 5year old polish kid on my street can speak 4 languages and he does'nt start school untill september

LordSutch

Liam90 wrote: »

I started school when i was 5yrs old .I finished when I turned 18 . At the end of it I only knew a small amount of the Irish language . I am not stupid so why can'tIspeak my native tongue.

An all to common story, so no you are not stupid and neither are you slow, you are just an average Irish person who has gone through the schooling system over many decades only to come out the other end not being able to speak Irish, (English being your native tongue).
As another poster has already said, the Irish language mostly died out during the great famine after faltering & stuttering into a flicker over the previous century, (A great loss to gaelic speaking Ireland no doubt), but I am not so sure if the implemantation of an artificial resurrection was ever going to work in the 1920s/30s, unless the greater Irish population got behind it, this clearly has not happened in the interveining decades, and today we have this stubborn anomaly wherby you must do Irish in school, (not learn Irish), but just do Irish, a subtle difference you'll appreciate, but the chances are you will never speak Irish, or have conversations in Irish after you leave school, this is where the cupla focal comes in, and we all have a bit of that for the craic.

Make Irish a non mandatory subject In school, and then those who love it and wish to speak it will embrace it, and those who don't, let them free to study other languages, French, German, Spanish, languages that may come in very handy when the next crop of school leavers get on the plane in search of work abroad . . . .

opti0nal

Grayson wrote: »

Beaten? Most of the coercion was financial. You just needed English to be able to get civil service jobs etc...

They were beaten not by their teachers but by their parents. Speaking English was seen as the path to a more prosperous future.

The fact is that we are now an English-speaking country and this is integral to our identity. Reverting to Irish makes no sense.

Cú Giobach

LordSutch wrote: »

As another poster has already said, the Irish language mostly died out during the great famine after faltering & stuttering into a flicker over the previous century, (A great loss to gaelic speaking Ireland no doubt),.

In the 1830's the number of Irish speakers is estimated at 4 million, more people than who actually lived in (the republic of) Ireland at any one time during most of the 20th century.
And which was also more people than who lived in cities (or towns over 20,000) in England & Wales at the time (about 3.5 million).

oldmangrub

Cú Giobach wrote: »

In the 1830's the number of Irish speakers is estimated at 4 million, more people than who actually lived in (the republic of) Ireland at any one time during most of the 20th century.
And which was also more people than who lived in cities (or towns over 20,000) in England & Wales at the time (about 3.5 million).

Yes indeed.
I think there's a tendancy to over-state the compliance of the poorer classes with the decline of Irish. The Great Famine was the main factor in its decline in peasant Catholic communities, not mass-succumbing to the penal laws. The west coast of Ireland was densely populated pre-Famine. Our demographic changed massively.

opti0nal wrote: »

The fact is that we are now an English-speaking country and this is integral to our identity. Reverting to Irish makes no sense.

Reverting to Irish as our first language is massively different to reviving it. According to research carried out by NUIM approximately 40% of people would like Ireland to be bilingual and of that only 3.4% would like Irish to be the only language of the country. Approximately 32.1% of people want Ireland to be bilingual and mainly English speaking. http://www.mayococo.ie/en/Services/OifignaGaeilge/Publications/PDFFile,15645,en.pdf

If the majority of people don't want Irish to be compulsory then it shouldn't be. I do think from a pedagogical stand-point we should be teaching two languages from the age of four or younger and from a practical stand-point Irish is the only one we can acquire the resources for. Reducing the amount of time spent studying Irish in primary school while maintaining its compulsory status in secondary seems the wrong way to do things. It seems to have come from an uninformed theory that teaching Irish can damage literacy in English. If students reached B1 standard in the European framework by the time they left primary school we would improve language proficiency in general; English, French, German etc included. I would take the exact opposite approach to the government; increase bilingual teaching in primary schools and when the present infants get to secondary, have Irish optional (at least at Leaving Cert level) and let them do whatever languages they want. This would require improvement in the standard of Irish among primary school teachers. I would actually have English and Maths optional for the Leaving Certificate too; a different story.

Did you know that Fine Gael challenged the policy of compulsory Irish as far back as 1961? I didn't! Interesting stuff here (though a bit long-winded): http://anghaeltacht.net/ctg/altveritas.htm

Much less detailed history of the Irish language with relevant acts here too for anyone that's interested:http://www.iontaobhasnag.com/english/historyoftheirishlanguage.html

Cú Giobach

opti0nal wrote: »

The fact is that we are now an English-speaking country and this is integral to our identity. Reverting to Irish makes no sense.

Says someone who thinks that Irish speakers should live in ghettos where they can live their, quote "traditional Gaelic way of life" and not annoy the English speaking population, isn't that right cyclopath/opti0nal.

oldmangrub

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Says someone who thinks that Irish speakers should live in ghettos where they can live their, quote "traditional Gaelic way of life" and not annoy the English speaking population, isn't that right cyclopath/opti0nal.

I was thinking wrongly stating but seemingly approving of the notion of widespread parental beatings of kids if they spoke Irish was a bit odd but gave the poster the benefit of the doubt.

Interesting idea optional....

Now my own silly stereotyping is shoring up all kinds of images; Irish-speakers rapping "Tá nócha naoi fadhbanna agam ach níl bitch ina measc", Daithí Ó Sé in a bandana....

Cú Giobach

oldmangrub wrote: »

Reverting to Irish as our first language is massively different to reviving it. According to research carried out by NUIM approximately 40% of people would like Ireland to be bilingual and of that only 3.4% would like Irish to be the only language of the country. Approximately 32.1% of people want Ireland to be bilingual and mainly English speaking. http://www.mayococo.ie/en/Services/OifignaGaeilge/Publications/PDFFile,15645,en.pdf

Well said, two things many are unable to disentangle.

I have only read the very start of that link so far, but due to the sheer number of people here who say "the people have rejected Irish", I give them the following quote, which shows how many of us though wanting to use more Irish actually end up speaking English.

As long ago as the early 1970', in a major research report, the Committee on Irish Language Attitude Research (Report 1975) drew attention to the effect of social language norms on the speaking of Irish.
The norms identified restrict the speaking of Irish to situations in which the participants know each other's language competence, know that each participant wishes to speak Irish and know that none of the participants is a non-speaker of Irish.
The absence of any one of these conditions will normally guarantee that the conversation will be in English.

[.........] Because the existence and influence of the norms has never been explained to the public and no effort made to change them, opponents of the language frequently claim that the failure to convert learning of the language in the schools since independence into widespread use is an indication that the current people of Ireland have rejected Irish.

Grayson

An Coilean wrote: »

Yes, Beaten.

Children who spoke Irish in school were beaten, add to this the prior destruction of the Irish speaking upper class, and as a consequence a large part of the the literary class. The exclusion of Irish from all official state and legal afairs. (It is still actually illigal to speak Irish in court in the North) The dispossession of Irish speakers of their lands, especialy in the east of the country and the plantation of English settlers into formerly Irish speaking communities.
As well as this the Catholic Church also decided to use English to the exclusion of Irish in all parts of the country, Irish speaking or not.
The Final nail in the coffin being the Famin which wiped out Irish speaking communities up and down the country.

Honestly I don't believe children were beaten on a large scale for not speaking Irish. That was a time when children were beaten for anything at all. Didn't make their bed? Beaten. Didn't finish dinner. Beaten. Spoke Irish? beaten. Spoke English? Beaten.

Aquinas said that single parent families were bad because a woman lacked the physical strength needed to discipline children. It was thought that children needed a bloody great smack every so often.

Can anyone here bring up and good source to show that there were widespread systematic beatings of children over hundreds of years by parents to prevent the speaking of Irish? Otherwise I'm just going to treat those claims as spurious and political.

You said it was needed for for state jobs. That's actually what I said. It was needed for financial reasons.

And the plantations didn't discourage people from speaking Irish. It moved irish speakers elsewhere.

An Coilean

Grayson wrote: »

Can anyone here bring up and good source to show that there were widespread systematic beatings of children over hundreds of years by parents to prevent the speaking of Irish? Otherwise I'm just going to treat those claims as spurious and political.

Have you not heard of the Bataí Scóir?

Every time a child spoke Irish in school a notch was marked on a stick, the child later got beaten for every notch.

Needless to say English was the medium of Instruction in all areas, Irish or English speaking, making The state making English the Language of Education obviously further undermined the status of the Language.

And the plantations didn't discourage people from speaking Irish. It moved irish speakers elsewhere.

Prior to the plantations, only a very limited area around Dublin could have been said to have been English speaking, though Irish speaking was prevalant in that area too.
With the advent of the Plantations in the east of the country, Irish speaking Communities were broken up, Irish speaker were dispossesed of their lands and shoved into poorer areas, those that resisted were killed or sent into slavery. In much of the east of the country, what had been up to that point Irish speaking communities were flooded with English speakers who were in a position of power over the dispossesed Irish speakers. Further more, the new settlers were under official order not to learn Irish, or employ native Irish.

Needless to say, this had a major impact on the linguistic makeup of those areas and did quite a lot to discourage the use of Irish in much of the eastern part of the country.

opti0nal

oldmangrub wrote: »

Reverting to Irish as our first language is massively different to reviving it.

'Reviving' is not what the Irish language movement really wants:

Conradh na Gaeilge is the democratic forum for the Irish-speaking community and promotes the language throughout the whole of Ireland and around the world. Is main aim is to reinstate the Irish language as the common tongue of Ireland.

oldmangrub wrote: »

According to research carried out by NUIM

That was not an NUIM publication. It's a personal publication.

oldmangrub wrote: »

Our demographic changed massively.

As did our choice of language. Those Irish-speakers have died or emigrated, we cannot bring them back.

oldmangrub

opti0nal wrote: »

'

That was not an NUIM publication. It's a personal publication.

Did you think I was implying that NUIM is some kind of book-publishers....

Research carried out in NUIM tends to be done in survey and research units by academics. It's not infallible, it is what it is; third level research. Make of it what you will, that's how it's generally done.

opti0nal wrote: »

'Reviving' is not what the Irish language movement really wants:

Conradh na Gaeilge would like Irish to be the common tongue of Ireland. Hardly surprising. The topic was ordinary Irish people, not organisations. Most revivalists it appears want Irish to be the second language, not the first. Some 'revivalists' want Irish to be the first language, with English the second (Conradh na Gaeilge adopt this view). Very few want to actually revert to speaking Irish and eliminate English. In fact, there's about twice as many people who'd like to actively eliminate Irish. So if we're talking about ordinary people people in general, the "Anti-Irish Movement" (and I state this in jest to demonstrate the misuse of these labels) express more extremist views than the "Irish Language Movement".

opti0nal wrote: »

As did our choice of language. Those Irish-speakers have died or emigrated, we cannot bring them back.

Well there wasn't a lot of "choice" involved in truth. There is more choice now and Irish has made a wobbly underwhelming revival as a result.
Gaelic culture wasn't completely eradicated. We can still experience that culture if we want to, and we can become Irish-speakers ourselves if we want to. If you think there should be more choice in terms of non-compulsory Irish I'd tend to agree with you.

Again, I believe it would be to our betterment economically and culturally if we became a multi-lingual country, and Irish can play a role that would benefit all of us in that, regardless of whether we want to buy into the culture behind the language or not.

When you quote me so selectively and then write with such brevity I am left making assumptions about your point of view that might be false. Apologies if that's the case, but if you could respond to my posts in kind I'd appreciate it.

Originally Posted by GraysonCan anyone here bring up and good source to show that there were widespread systematic beatings of children over hundreds of years by parents to prevent the speaking of Irish? Otherwise I'm just going to treat those claims as spurious and political.

The tally stick was used by priests and educators rather than parents. I can't verify links but there's a lot on google: https://www.google.ie/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=tally+stick+irish+language&oq=Irish+tally+st&gs_l=serp.1.1.0i30j0i8i30.6862.8974.0.11795.14.11.0.3.3.0.142.713.10j1.11.0...0.0...1c.NaPS4pMSEBU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=198b8ece192c4796&biw=1777&bih=878

Birroc

I think we need to create a new thread entitled "How to kill off the Irish language"

LordSutch

Birroc wrote: »

I think we need to create a new thread entitled "How to kill off the Irish language"

Well that isnt going to happen (killing off the Irish language), and killing it off wouldnt help anyone either. But what would be nice would be a re-evaluation of how irish is taught in our schools, and should it be mandatory for all, from Primary school right up to leaving Cert ???

oldmangrub

LordSutch wrote: »

Well that isnt going to happen (killing off the Irish language), and killing it off wouldnt help anyone either. But what would be nice would be a re-evaluation of how irish is taught in our schools, and should it be mandatory for all, from Primary school right up to leaving Cert ???

What do you think of my idea m'Lord? I'm thread hogging.

oldmangrub wrote: »

If the majority of people don't want Irish to be compulsory then it shouldn't be. I do think from a pedagogical stand-point we should be teaching two languages from the age of four or younger and from a practical stand-point Irish is the only one we can acquire the resources for. Reducing the amount of time spent studying Irish in primary school while maintaining its compulsory status in secondary seems the wrong way to do things. It seems to have come from an uninformed theory that teaching Irish can damage literacy in English. If students reached B1 standard in the European framework by the time they left primary school we would improve language proficiency in general; English, French, German etc included. I would take the exact opposite approach to the government; increase bilingual teaching in primary schools and when the present infants get to secondary, have Irish optional (at least at Leaving Cert level) and let them do whatever languages they want.