Peig Sayers

LordSutch · 15-10-2013 07:16PM

Cody Pomeray · 15-10-2013 07:35PM

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

There were of course many other factors which of turned people away from the langauge, but Peig personifies all of these reasons. To say that it's a "standard boring whinge" is to bury one's head in the sand, something even the Department of Education stopped doing when the book came off the syllabus twenty years ago.

Peig is boring because they took all the sex and drinking out of it. It's more a reflection of 20th century Irish piety than real life in West Kerry during the era under discussion. The biggest tragedy with Peig is not that it formed a compulsory part of the syllabus, it's that Peig's True Story didn't form a compulsory part of the syllabus. The people who edited Peig were notoriously retrospective, conservative urbanites.

Fred Swanson · 15-10-2013 07:48PM

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Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 15-10-2013 09:10PM

endacl wrote: »

Peig was one element of the final two year part of your 13/14 year 'official' exposure to the language! She didn't make it or break it. Give her a break. Has the poor woman not suffered enough? Ochon, ochon...

No, but she was the main contributor. The reasons for which people don't like Irish are varied, grranted, but Peig personified them perfectly.

Shakespear did not do this with English.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 15-10-2013 09:14PM

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Peig is boring because they took all the sex and drinking out of it. It's more a reflection of 20th century Irish piety than real life in West Kerry during the era under discussion. The biggest tragedy with Peig is not that it formed a compulsory part of the syllabus, it's that Peig's True Story didn't form a compulsory part of the syllabus. The people who edited Peig were notoriously retrospective, conservative urbanites.

This being the 80s, I'm not surprsied, but the fact that Peig was even on the syllabus tells you how conservative the era was.

Fred Swanson · 15-10-2013 09:22PM

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up for anything · 15-10-2013 10:08PM

If Peig was bad for the Irish language, Guy de Maupassant was a hundred times worse for French. I could never understand why both the Irish and French teachers refused to translate the stories into English so that at least we'd have some idea of what they were about instead of trying to batter them into our heads in the original.

LynnGrace · 15-10-2013 10:14PM

Anyone here do Dialann Deorai ( Diary of an exile)... He dug a lot of ditches. That was about it. Believe me, Peig was a laugh a minute by comparison.

Sarky · 15-10-2013 10:17PM

bluewolf wrote: »

That's awful
Shakespeare is wonderful and I'm disappointed in an english teacher announcing that attitude

I f*cking hated honours English during the Leaving. Except for Macbeth, which got even the most anti-intellectual arsehole in the class admitting it was clever, funny, insightful and above all a work of art. Shakespeare was the man. An absolute joy to study.

Irish wise, we were lumped with Padraic O'Chonaire. Or as I like to call him, a miserable alcoholic whingebag with no redeeming qualities that would blame everything under the sun and beyond before admitting that maybe his hard times were due to him being a miserable alcoholic whingebag with no redeeming qualities. Writers like that are why nobody f*cking likes the Irish language. I wish I did, but the Irish curriculum crushed any and all affection I would ever have for Irish.

ViveLaVie · 17-10-2013 10:31PM

I never did Peig but I hated Irish in school. I'm actually fairly handy with languages but due to a run of poor teachers in Primary I never got a foothold with Irish and so when I entered Secondary I was so far behind catching up seemed impossible.

Add to that an Irish teacher in Secondary that handed us out essays verbatim and made us learn them off every night regardless of the fact that we hadn't a clue what we were saying. Not once did she explain how Irish worked or teach us to form our own sentences.

By the time Leaving Cert. rolled around, I dropped to Ordinary. My teacher was very positive and encouraged me. She told me I could get an A1 but I didn't see the point of putting in any effort when I had subjects like Honours Chemistry with which I was struggling.

Fast forward to now, seven years on and I regret my lack of knowledge concerning my native tongue so much. I'm signing up to classes in college trying desperately to reclaim any knowledge.

RhubarbCrumble wrote: »

I didn't mind Peig, but I hated Shakespeare. Did The Merchant of Venice for Junior Cert, and got a different teacher for Leaving Cert. Still love her for doing O' Casey, The plough and the stars. She wouldn't do Shakespeare with us because she said "He's too much trouble, you need to translate him into english before you can understand him"! The other classes all got stuck with King Lear that year.

You have to do Shakespeare for the Leaving. It's a minimum requirement. I can't believe an English teacher said that!

RhubarbCrumble · 17-10-2013 10:39PM

ViveLaVie wrote: »

You have to do Shakespeare for the Leaving. It's a minimum requirement.

It wasn't when I did my leaving, but that was in 1997, so maybe it's different now?
We did Shakespeare sonnets alright, but as our play, it was O' Casey.

Fred Swanson · 17-10-2013 10:41PM

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ViveLaVie · 17-10-2013 10:42PM

RhubarbCrumble wrote: »

It wasn't when I did my leaving, but that was in 1997, so maybe it's different now?
We did Shakespeare sonnets alright, but as our play, it was O' Casey.

Well the sonnets probably had you covered. O' Casey is brilliant mind you.

dj jarvis · 19-10-2013 06:08PM

endacl wrote: »

Blaming Peig for a dislike of the language is a bit daft, in fairness. It's like saying 'I hated Hamlet so I'm never going to speak English again', or 'calculus was boring. Therefore I refuse to work out change in a shop'.

Standard boring whinge that's been trotted out for years. Maybe y'all learnt something from Peig after all...?

it was not the book as such , but the book was the tool used to beat the poor teaching of Irish into a certain generation
and beat i mean , i had the misfortune to be taught Irish by the bastard brothers in the 70's , and trust me peig did not help with the love of a the language

god dammed awful book used by bastards - for ME , the book did add to my dislike of Irish

daft maybe , but you did not experience what it did - and in fairness , i was far from the only one on this thread who expressed the same,

maybe its just us

dj jarvis · 19-10-2013 06:12PM

Smidge wrote: »

Did they just wander in or something OP or do you have an establishment?

na, i was getting married last weekend and had 10 Finns staying in my house , we just got talking about the Irish language.

Aineoil · 19-10-2013 06:21PM

dj jarvis wrote: »

na, i was getting married last weekend and had 10 Finns staying in my house , we just got talking about the Irish language.

Hi dj jarvis,

Congratulations on your marriage.

Just curious, what thoughts had the Finns on the Irish language?

dj jarvis · 19-10-2013 06:29PM

Aineoil wrote: »

Hi dj jarvis,

Congratulations on your marriage.

Just curious, what thoughts had the Finns on the Irish language?

not sure TBH , they were curious about why we dont use it more , as they all speak their native language , and its as obscure as Irish , and does not hinder business with other country's , most can speak Finnish , English and a good deal of Swedish , I think they thought that we suffer the "English language problem" , as in once English is your "native" language , you cant be arsed speaking anything else , and i think they may have a point

they were probably taught the language, rather than having it forced upon them as many Irish did.

must say i do feel embarrassment not being able to speak Irish , but , for me , Finnish gets used more and is more important

sad really

and thank you :-)

Iwasfrozen · 19-10-2013 06:40PM

Why would we speak any other language? English is our language.

inocybe · 19-10-2013 06:55PM

Yes, I have a very deep rooted hatred that bubbles to the surface at the sound of that name. That book was the reason I moved to pass Irish where thank god we threw away Peig and worked only from the book of notes. Plus I hate her personally because she was cruel to an animal, I can't remember the details exactly but didn't she injure a cow's leg to get herself out of trouble. And she was poster girl for the Irish language, Ugh :mad:

Aineoil · 19-10-2013 07:00PM

dj jarvis wrote: »

not sure TBH , they were curious about why we dont use it more , as they all speak their native language , and its as obscure as Irish , and does not hinder business with other country's , most can speak Finnish , English and a good deal of Swedish , I think they thought that we suffer the "English language problem" , as in once English is your "native" language , you cant be arsed speaking anything else , and i think they may have a point

they were probably taught the language, rather than having it forced upon them as many Irish did.

must say i do feel embarrassment not being able to speak Irish , but , for me , Finnish gets used more and is more important

sad really

and thank you :-)

That's very interesting. I suppose that in Finland everyone can speak Finnish and in Ireland we all don't speak Irish, but we all speak English.

Keeping on the topic. I never minded Peig that much. It was a social history of an old woman. That's never going to be exciting in any language for a teenager.:D

Aineoil · 19-10-2013 07:02PM

inocybe wrote: »

. And she was poster girl for the Irish language, Ugh :mad:

Poster girl for the Irish language - an old woman with a shawl?

Fred Swanson · 19-10-2013 07:26PM

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19-10-2013 07:32PM

dj jarvis wrote: »

not sure TBH , they were curious about why we dont use it more , as they all speak their native language , and its as obscure as Irish , and does not hinder business with other country's , most can speak Finnish , English and a good deal of Swedish , I think they thought that we suffer the "English language problem" , as in once English is your "native" language , you cant be arsed speaking anything else , and i think they may have a point

they were probably taught the language, rather than having it forced upon them as many Irish did.

must say i do feel embarrassment not being able to speak Irish , but , for me , Finnish gets used more and is more important

sad really

and thank you :-)

You can't really compare Irish with Finnish, as Finnish is the national language and is used everywhere. You can bet that if they grew up surrounded by English as their first language, were taught through English etc and only learned Irish as a second language for a few hours a week, that their Finnish wouldn't be as good. It must be fairly unique for a country's native language to have second language status the way Irish does in Ireland.

dj jarvis · 19-10-2013 07:35PM

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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nail on the head and all that,

we were taught it as if it was STILL archbishop ****face's time.
people who had their schooling in the 90's have no idea how harsh it was in the 70's and 80's , and funny i was talking to my dad about this a while ago and he said the VERY same thing about being taught Latin the very same way and having the same distaste for it

People forget that punishment only got outlawed in 1984 (open to correction on this ) , and that the teaching unions were opposed to it being outlawed

you could not make this up - the Finns were shocked at that little nugget , seeing 2 of them were teachers , one was a headmaster

dj jarvis · 19-10-2013 07:39PM

Garrett Chubby Spoon wrote: »

You can't really compare Irish with Finnish, as Finnish is the national language and is used everywhere. You can bet that if they grew up surrounded by English as their first language, were taught through English etc and only learned Irish as a second language for a few hours a week, that their Finnish wouldn't be as good. It must be fairly unique for a country's native language to have second language status the way Irish does in Ireland.

but Irish is our national language , and we are all taught it , but dont use it . we also get taught English but use it more,
the question is why ?
as many have said , they feel it is down to the way it was taught in the past , i cant speak for modern days , but in the past , the schooling of the language did nothing for it

** also i am not really comparing Finnish to Irish , they just happened to be the nationality who asked the question , they could have been danish or french - that is why it was mentioned **

the_syco · 19-10-2013 07:46PM

In Ordinary and Foundation Irish, you're though how to pass the test, not how to speak the language.

=-=

The bastardised version of Irish that has been taught in the schools since it was brought back in the 20's should be replaced by something like how we're taught French and German; like something we'd use, and not just for some test...!

jprboy · 19-10-2013 07:52PM

I studied Peig for the LC back in the '80's and didn't find it too bad. Had a very good Irish teacher, though, which probably helped.

My favourite Peig anecdote comes from Feile in Thurles back in the early 90's. There was a big screen to one side of the stage and during one of the interludes between bands up pops the words "Peig Sayers........" (not sure if they also showed her image). The words faded away after a few seconds to be replaced with "....... what a bitch".

Naturally enough it got a big cheer from the crowd.

19-10-2013 07:52PM

dj jarvis wrote: »

but Irish is our national language , and we are all taught it , but dont use it . we also get taught English but use it more,
the question is why ?
as many have said , they feel it is down to the way it was taught in the past , i cant speak for modern days , but in the past , the schooling of the language did nothing for it

We don't just get taught English. It's our native language that we're surrounded by from day one, if you don't live in the gaeltacht. It's our parents first language (in most cases). Of course we use it more. You can't really function in Ireland without speaking English because almost everything is in English. Irish might have been the population's first language once, but it isn't now. It's taught as a second language, like French or German. That's the difference between Irish and Finnish. It's a massive difference.

looking_around · 19-10-2013 07:53PM

I never read Peig.
What made me hate Irish was dull sh!te teachers. (and some of them were cruel...they turned the class into laughing at someone who struggled with something.......:rolleyes: yeah thats the way to encourage students, evil feckers..)

I didn't dislike the language, but how do learn like that?
Teachers need to be evaluated and if their sh!te, fired! There's too many teachers out there, who can't teach.
[/Rant] XD

Aineoil · 19-10-2013 07:55PM

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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I know this is off topic but McQuaid was a nasty piece of work. He nearly wrote Bunreacht na hÉireann - the Irish Constitution. He sent Dev daily missives.

The mother and child scheme instigated by Noel Browne was brought down by him. Such lack of empathy for poor women is incredible. McQuaid made out that Browne was irresponsible.
In hindsight we know who was......

Staying on topic, here's a quote

"Is seanbhean anois mé le cos amháin san uaigh agus an ceann eile ar thaobh na huaige."

I'm an old woman now with one foot in the grave and the other foot on the side of the grave.

Sorry if that sentence puts the fear of whatever into anyone!:rolleyes:

Did McQuaid speak Irish? I would doubt it but you never know

Peig Sayers

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