Why can nobody speak Irish?

jimmytwotimes 2013 · 22-07-2013 10:43PM

Mr. G wrote: »

For instance, some LC student who finds languages difficult (as I said I can tell you Irish is not easy from my own experience) and wishes to go into IT and has always had an interest in IT will not want to go off and waste time on a language; which gets funding from the EU and the state, and in Gaeltocht regions where Irish is only spoken, it gets funding from the EU as a second class region.

Someone at 17 or 18 doing their LC should know whether Irish is for them or not. I think it should not be compulsary as an exam in leaving cert. I think it weighs too much pressure on kids to learn a language solely for an exam which nobody speaks.

Some find it easy, I never did and I can tell you now that if I had to speak Irish every day I would crack up. I don't mind speaking it, (heck its our heritage!) But every day is a head melt.

how much of all the LC subjects do people ever use? besides the actual area you end up working in, very little i would say.

school is designed to give as broad an education as possible, and students specialise when they go to college.

i did french, biology, physics, irish, english, maths and tech graph- i've couldn't even tell you what was on most of those courses at this stage. the LC is a means to an end- which is progressing along the ladder of education. all you learn is of some benefit, and not exactly harmful, or completely useless- depends on your point of view i guess. even PE and religion- havent been inside a church since confirmation- and shur PE is PE!

jimmytwotimes 2013 · 22-07-2013 10:46PM

Captain Chaos wrote: »

They have practical every days uses, Irish has none. It's the most useless subject in the LC.

For the LC, compulsory subjects should be maths, english, one EU language and at least one science subject. The rest up to the student.

the higher level leaving cert maths course was good if you wanted to do a bit of gambling or whatever seen as you'd study probability, but you weren't exactly studying how to count your change in a shop at that stage either! integration and differentiation have not arisen in my daily life to be honest though.

i've never quoted yeats or keats since either!

Captain Chaos · 22-07-2013 10:48PM

I use maths, engineering, construction studies and chemistry very regularly since I did my LC 10 years ago in various jobs and day to day stuff. That's a massive chunk of what I learned as a base for other stuff and was and still is of great benefit.

shruikan2553 · 22-07-2013 10:52PM

Going off on a bit of a tangent here but really Irish, maths and english shouldnt be compulsory in their current form. There should be maths and then mathematical science. Maths just does the basic everyday stuff while mathematical science does integration and differentiation. English should have a basic version that just does grammar etc and literary english where you do novels and poetry. Irish just shouldnt be compulsory for leaving ceet, no reason for it.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 22-07-2013 10:57PM

riclad wrote: »

FOR leaving cert no language should be compulsory,
if you are gonna study to be a programmer ,chemist, engineer ,
learning french or irish is of little use to you.
LOOK at countrys like japan, south korea,
They would not think of spending billions teaching a language with little economic of practical value.
i SEE no harm in irish signs as long as there,s an english translation avaidable where its necessary .
we can,t expect tourists to understand all irish signs.
I,D be more annoyed by ridiculous cliched estate names lakeview etc where theres no lake in sight.
I think at the moment we spend about 3 per cent of our total budget ,
on teaching irish ,at at time when we are cutting healthcare,and basic services .

I disagree, to an extent, because an education should be an eduction, not a five-year trainging course for a job. While I agree, there should be a focus jobskills, there is more a hell of a lot more to life and education than just that.

That said, no subject should be compuslory.

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

having anything as compulsory closes off options going on that logic, can we boot maths and english too?

Absolutely. If a student, by the time they hit 15, has not masteed enough maths or english for everyday life, then something far more drastic has gone wrong, and studying eitehr Shakespeare or quadratic equations is going to be a serious waste of time.

jimmytwotimes 2013 · 22-07-2013 10:57PM

we're looking at education as a tool for preparing people solely for employment, it is more than that, at least it should be.

my original post on this topic argued for a serious change in the existing irish course. but, like i said, not every subject is going to be of practical benefit to everyone and maybe we shouldn't be looking at schooling in this way.

riclad · 22-07-2013 11:10PM

ENGLISH is not a hard subject,say you are in an engineering ,or finance ,or
science job, you,ll need to able to examine and analyse documents ,
in a precise logical way.And express your point of view .
ENGLISH is not just about remembering a particular book or poem.
You do not need to be artistic or poetic to use english in your job.

When you do the leaving ,you have a choice of subjects,
technical or academic.
BUT irish stands out as being of no practical use for 99 per cent of users.
I DON,T consider history or geography to be a waste of time ,even
if you end up being a lawyer or chemist.
MAYBE in 30 years time ,people who want to be a chemist will do chemistry, biology, english ,maths
in the leaving .
BUT we are not at that stage yet.

Studying history ,geography broadens the mind ,
education is a cultural process,
NOT just to get you ready for work.
I think english and history should be compulsory at least for the first 3 years of secondary school.
if someone wants to learn irish let them sign a form to do so,
like someone chooses to study german.

THE present situation is a disaster ,
we spend billions teaching a subject that most people do not wish to learn.

probably what would happen is 5- 10 per cent would choose to learn irish ,
the other 90 per cent would study french or another useful subject.

I think employers want students that studied at least 5 subjects,
not someone thats too narrow minded.
The ones that choose to study it will likely enjoy it and learn it properly.

MOC88 · 22-07-2013 11:48PM

Right I imagine nobody is going to read it this far back but here is the real problem with learning Irish.

The whole way through the system it is rigid what you have to learn so basically in baby infants you learn a,b and c things in senior infants you learn d,e and f things in first class you will learn g,h and i things.

Now a well thought out plan of development is fine but heres the problem. IN the whole primary school system in Irish you have to fully understand whats gone before ie. to know thing 'd' you need to have understood a,b and c first. If you missed anything or didn't understand it you were lost from there on. I assume because so many people were having this problem it was assumed that Irish was just a hard language and only the most studious would really ever have any hope of learning it - when it is actually just the same as any other language - learn the basic structure and expand from there.

There was no revisiting of topics - you may have been a fantastic student and missed two weeks with sickness missed basic structures in sentences. You may have been a late bloomer (a lot of people are) but there is absolutely no chance of learning to understand the language unless you now do it in your own time - how many kids would bother with that.

There would have been a big chance in the beginning of secondary school but instead you were thrown chunks of the most stories/boring paragraphs to learn ie. I went to the cinema, I went to the concert etc. and since you didn't have the basics all of this was just loose information with nothing interconnecting. Plus you have all the negative baggage from previous years.

Generally I liked all the subjects I done and Irish was the only pass subject which I done mainly because I had no ####ing clue what was going on in the language since I was about 6 and not once did it cross anyone in the department of education's mind that there are such things called children who may not pay the most attention in class when they're 6,7, and 8 years old (I got what I think is a respectable 460 points and a d in pass Irish so I don't reckon its because I'm stupid that I got a d in it, I reckon its because any of my interest was killed with the constant sick feeling I picked up whenever I was doing Irish because I felt so unable to get anything right as a child and I only felt my ignorance was getting bigger and bigger as time went on).

riclad · 22-07-2013 11:58PM

I JUST remember the reading material in irish was either sad or all about farmers ,peasants who had an awful life etc
IT had no relevance to students growing up in modern urban ireland.
IT Was old fashioned and sexist.
IT was like something that was written by a 90 year old priest from kerry who hated anyone under the age of 40.

Stheno · 23-07-2013 12:00AM

I blame Peig

jimmytwotimes 2013 · 23-07-2013 12:01AM

riclad wrote: »

IT Was old fashioned and sexist.

all the best stuff is!!

Tomk1 · 23-07-2013 12:02AM

If you want to force people to hear Irish everyday, then using the most unpleasant way wins no favours, I mean who thought that reading the news in Irish was a master plan, the news is hard enough to bear hearing in English. News is cold emotionless usually depressive, now as a public service lets make it even worse, mention banks and international words that have no Irish translation.

I use to like hearing on the radio a couple of Irish words thrown in here and there, a pop song introduced in Irish from someone who loves the language. That travel show with Hector was great. Instead we are force to listen to: Irish-word "troka Irish-word Irish-word Irish-word AIB Irish-word Irish-word Enda Kenny Irish-word troka Irish-word" every time I hear that it makes me just hate the Irish language. If you want to save the Irish language first thing to do is ban An Nuaght (whatever word it is) and then let the language be like fresh cut grass, a warm summer breeze, a few pints in the pub, just give the language some love.

Hearing someone speaking passionately and naturally falling in and out of Irish is beautiful.

donegal_man · 23-07-2013 12:09AM

We weren't taught a living spoken language. The entire emphasis from the beginning seemed to be on the written word and on learning to conjugate lists of verbs parrot fashion also as another poster noted above virtually all of the texts were deeply deeply depressing.

MOC88 · 23-07-2013 12:11AM

donegal_man wrote: »

We weren't taught a living spoken language. The entire emphasis from the beginning seemed to be on the written word and on learning to conjugate lists of verbs parrot fashion also as another poster noted above virtually all of the texts were deeply deeply depressing.

They're probably using the same books still

Tomk1 · 23-07-2013 12:33AM

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

i never used algebra or Pythagoras after school either, didn't kill me to know it though.

You never went into a shop and saw eg: 2 for €1.50 and 1 for €.80 or 8 cans for €12, 1 can for €2 this is call algebra: x=€2 but 8x-b= €12, so you save b€
People use algebra nearly everyday with money, pay/hr -tax, but then math is literally the universal language.

jimmytwotimes 2013 · 23-07-2013 12:39AM

Tomk1 wrote: »

You never went into a shop and saw eg: 2 for €1.50 and 1 for €.80 or 8 cans for €12, 1 can for €2 this is call algebra: x=€2 but 8x-b= €12, so you save b€
People use algebra nearly everyday with money, pay/hr -tax, but then math is literally the universal language.

2 x €1.50, is that not just multiplication? i've never gone in to a shop saying, let x be the loaf of bread i'm looking for!

you wouldn't need leaving cert maths to do a bit of shopping, was the point i think

OhYaBugger · 23-07-2013 12:41AM

Mmm, largely because it's a pointless language spoken by a pretentious few trying to prove a point no one really cares about.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 23-07-2013 01:31AM

Tomk1 wrote: »

You never went into a shop and saw eg: 2 for €1.50 and 1 for €.80 or 8 cans for €12, 1 can for €2 this is call algebra: x=€2 but 8x-b= €12, so you save b€
People use algebra nearly everyday with money, pay/hr -tax, but then math is literally the universal language.

This sounds like basic multiplication and division to me....

2 x 1.50 = 3
1 x 0.80 = 0.80
Total = 3.80

12 / 8 = 1.333 euro per can

1 can for 2 euro - 1 can at 1.33 euro = A saving of 0.67c per can

Mr. G · 23-07-2013 02:02AM

Thing I think about Maths is that those statistically who are good at maths are good at problem solving. And if your good at problem solving that is a life skill. I suppose without thinking of maths having anything to do with problem solving you would have thought, well, that maths was useless. Its used in every day life.

Irish is pretty daunting for me. There are some that just find it incredably difficult. I would find it very hard to remember and learn off stupid vocab, but if I did a maths problem or something I would learn it by doing it. I don't see why we should have to do a european language for LC if you know for definite that your not going to need it.

tim3000 · 23-07-2013 02:06AM

Tomk1 wrote: »

You never went into a shop and saw eg: 2 for €1.50 and 1 for €.80 or 8 cans for €12, 1 can for €2 this is call algebra: x=€2 but 8x-b= €12, so you save b€
People use algebra nearly everyday with money, pay/hr -tax, but then math is literally the universal language.

In that case I just look at the price per litre or kg for the item

An Riabhach · 23-07-2013 02:49AM

I absolutely love Irish-always have and always will.
I am not from the Gaeltacht but I use it as often as possible,even though I am not fluent-tis one thing I hope I never lose.

I suppose it is down to the individual-in order for them to want to speak it they would have to like it and have a real genuine interest in it-and the way it is taught has a huge part to play in this.It is something which I would hope to see thriving and going from strength to strength continuously.After all,love it or hate it,Gaeilge is the language of this country and even a few small words daily would show appreciation of it.This language,our language,does have a future.

Teanga álainn is ea í,agus is breá liom í a úsáid chomh minic agus is féidir.
Is fearr Gaeilge briste ná Béarla cliste.

Tír gan teanga;tír gan anam.

BognarRegis · 23-07-2013 07:00AM

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

my original post on this topic argued for a serious change in the existing irish course. but, like i said, not every subject is going to be of practical benefit to everyone and maybe we shouldn't be looking at schooling in this way.

The most serious change you could make to the course would be to allow people to decide what second language they wish to learn. Until you recognise that not everyone wishes to speak Irish, you'll just tinker with the course and waste both the teacher's time and the the child's time. The needs of the child should be central.

23-07-2013 08:55AM

Seasan wrote: »

I absolutely love Irish-always have and always will.
....After all,love it or hate it,Gaeilge is the language of this country........

No. English is the language of this country, it doesn't make us English.
Portuguese is the language of Brazil, it doesn't make Brazilians Portuguese.
Spanish is the language of Cuba, It doesn't make Spaniards..... etc..........

Wibbs · 23-07-2013 09:07AM

Seasan wrote: »

After all,love it or hate it,Gaeilge is the language of this country and even a few small words daily would show appreciation of it.This language,our language,does have a future.

It has a future. There are enough people using it today. Small though they may be as a percentage of the whole, but the downward spiral has stopped. The using the cupla focal daily is on a hiding to nothing too. It cheapens the language. Either learn it to the point of fluency or don't IMHO. That said I don't personally see the point. If I decide to move to France and learn French, even when I become fluent I'll still sound like a foreigner to some degree and that's OK, but why would I want to sound like a foreigner in my own bloody country?

Gaeilge briste ná Béarla cliste.

TBH I can't abide this sentiment(broken Irish is better than clever English). So having an incomplete set of tools to communicate is held up as a good thing? That's beyond crazy.

Tír gan teanga;tír gan anam.

As is this; "A country without language; a country without a soul" stuff. As 9959 points out it makes no sense beyond the banally emotive and it insults a huge number of nations and their cultures.

Slutmonkey57b · 23-07-2013 01:51PM

donegal_man wrote: »

We weren't taught a living spoken language. The entire emphasis from the beginning seemed to be on the written word and on learning to conjugate lists of verbs parrot fashion also as another poster noted above virtually all of the texts were deeply deeply depressing.

That's because ...

There isn't a living spoken language! There was a dead language that was resuscitated for political purposes. Then there was a zombie language which was forced on people for decades and copied all its requirements for new vocabulary by using the tried and tested method of "say the English word in a thick cliche bogger accent and write down what it sounds like".

Now there is a zombie language which wastes our time, costs us a fortune, and has even been shamefully forced into the eu as an "official" language, costing everyone else in Europe a fortune.

Waste of time.

Slutmonkey57b · 23-07-2013 01:55PM

Seasan wrote: »

I absolutely love Irish-always have and always will.
I am not from the Gaeltacht but I use it as often as possible,even though I am not fluent-tis one thing I hope I never lose.

I suppose it is down to the individual-in order for them to want to speak it they would have to like it and have a real genuine interest in it-and the way it is taught has a huge part to play in this.It is something which I would hope to see thriving and going from strength to strength continuously.After all,love it or hate it,Gaeilge is the language of this country and even a few small words daily would show appreciation of it.This language,our language,does have a future.

Teanga álainn is ea í,agus is breá liom í a úsáid chomh minic agus is féidir.
Is fearr Gaeilge briste ná Béarla cliste.

Tír gan teanga;tír gan anam.

It's not "our" language at all, what condescending arrogant crap. It's *your* language, *you're* welcome to it, leave the rest of us alone.

Nemesis · 23-07-2013 02:25PM

Dr Bob wrote: »

Regardless of how badly its taught, theres one sentence in Irish most people never forget

"An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas, más é do thoil é?"

Most people!

8 years and not once used.

On the plus side I do have exceptional bladder control now.

solas111 · 23-07-2013 05:02PM

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

That's because ...

There isn't a living spoken language! There was a dead language that was resuscitated for political purposes. Then there was a zombie language which was forced on people for decades and copied all its requirements for new vocabulary by using the tried and tested method of "say the English word in a thick cliche bogger accent and write down what it sounds like".

Now there is a zombie language which wastes our time, costs us a fortune, and has even been shamefully forced into the eu as an "official" language, costing everyone else in Europe a fortune.

Waste of time.

If your head wasn’t stuck up your arse you might see what’s around you.

It is very much a living language where I come from and it was not resuscitated for political or any other purposes. It amazes me how thick some people are but the old saying comes to mind: “Empty vessels make the most noise”.

riclad · 23-07-2013 10:48PM

LET it be voluntary, if you want to learn it great.
go for you,
MOST people don,t speak it in ordinary life,
its like music or art ,if you want to you,ll do it.
The plus side is we,ll save billions in teaching costs ,books,training courses etc AS most students will choose a different subject with some useful application or value outside school People are not paid to play gaa or hurling ,
BUT they still do it anyway.

I presume they must enjoy it in some way .
IF everyone in the gaeltacht wants to speak irish good luck to them.

MOST musicians make no money , but they still play music.
even if only as a hobby.

as far as i can see its not really taught as a spoken language,
its read these books,write some essays ,
IT ,LL give you a few extra points if you want to go to college.

Reamer Fanny · 23-07-2013 11:01PM

riclad wrote: »

LET it be voluntary, if you want to learn it great.
go for you,
MOST people don,t speak it in ordinary life,
its like music or art ,if you want to you,ll do it.
The plus side is we,ll save billions in teaching costs ,books,training courses etc AS most students will choose a different subject with some useful application or value outside school People are not paid to play gaa or hurling ,
BUT they still do it anyway.

I presume they must enjoy it in some way .
IF everyone in the gaeltacht wants to speak irish good luck to them.

MOST musicians make no money , but they still play music.
even if only as a hobby.

as far as i can see its not really taught as a spoken language,
its read these books,write some essays ,
IT ,LL give you a few extra points if you want to go to college.

What's wrong with your keyboard?

Why can nobody speak Irish?

Comments