Scrap the Irish Language Commissioner

topper75 wrote: »

The 800 years is not diminished for being referred to so often.

At this stage it kinda is T. It's akin to fully grown adults doing little to improve their lot by their own independent hands who would rather witter on because they came from a broken home. '

They' are gone but the after effects of the policies are real and many.

If that's the case T that's almost entirely down to us at this stage in the game.

The Dublin parliament in place since the 20s was never clear on what it wanted to do with the language. It wanted a heritage item rather than a working vernacular. The whole thing fell between two stools. The biggest thing hurting Irish is the refusal to engage with the concept of bilingualism - both at government level and the level of the individual. In this thread, people have weighed it up against English on an either/or basis. I'm a proud native English speaker. Internationally that gives us quite an advantage. I have also acquired fluency in Irish. I would prefer Irish to be the kitchen language (as they say in Belgium) of this land, but that need never be to the detriment of our English fluency.

I'm with you there, but I just can't see it kicking off to the degree we might hope. Why? Us basically. As you alluded to earlier we need to look in the mirror. Though where we might diverge is the reasoning behind it. We're a practical, which way is the wind blowing kinda people. We tend to work in the gaps more than many if not most. We work the grey, rather than the black and white. Even the cod Irish phrase/answer in English to a seemingly black and white question, "it is and it isn't", which has roots in the Irish language and psyche sums it up. It's why it can be damned hard for others to argue with an Irish man or woman in full flight. The Irish language falls into that grey. Forget the rapidly pro or anti Irish people for a sec. They're both in the minority. The vast majority of Irish people have that duality with the language. That's what the census figures show too IMHO. Ask most "should we preserve the language" and yep the overwhelming majority will indeed say "yes", but will so so as Bearla. It is and it isn't.

Look at the Irish diaspora throughout the world. Look at them in the US. They're still the second largest ethnic group in the place, yet far from perfidious Albion's tentacles they dropped the language like a hot rock. Second largest ethnic group, yet the Irish language is seventy odd down the list of non English languages spoken. Many Italian americans have some Italian, many Jewish Americans have Yiddish, Chinese Americans have made the various dialects of Chinese the third most spoken language in the place. Us? Seventy odd... It is and it isn't.

Actually that's why I know the language will never die, even though both the rabidly antis and strangely the pros seem to love/fear that. That duality will insist it'll survive, long after this convo has been backed up to living molecular memory storage. It is and it isn't.

It is BS. I resented those impositions, but the language is still beautiful. I was able to separate the two. I was driven to distraction with King Lear, the Plough and the Stars and the miserable ramblings of 'poets' like Yeats and Wordsworth. Despite my experiences, I'm still typing to you here in English. Haven't given up

That's OK T, in another thread on the subject another poster compared that whinging wet weekend in Courtown that is Pieg Sayers to Floubert, so you're well ahead.

clairefontaine wrote: »

And Wibbs nails it.

I never touched her CF, I swear.

As Molly Bloom says "Two thinks at a time."

The Irish, the schrodinger's cat of world culture.