Are you willing to learn Irish to keep the language alive

Bayberry wrote: »

I've read some bull**** on boards, but that has to take the biscuit!

It's true though, do you ever listen to yourself when you speak? you should try it sometime and you'll notice how different you pronounce vowels to how different females pronounce them

rosobel wrote: »

In all fairness considering not one of us can speak a word of Irish he was probably just saying he wants to take the piss

Bit of a generalisation.

Grayson wrote: »

I think you missed the point. It's a very valuable skill. The next 20 years are going to make the last 20 years in computing look tame.

We're talking about teaching kids a language like Irish. We should be looking at teaching them IT skills. Knowing how to program is a very valuable skill. It will be as important as learning basic maths.

As someone who started my working life as a programmer, this is just nonsense. 99.9% of people will never have any need to program anything more elaborate than a recurring calendar entry for the rest of their lives. There is value in teaching kids the basics of problem solving that are needed to do anyting in the modern world. Kids need to learn how to learn, and programming can be an effective way to do that. But focussing on teaching "all" kids a practical language like Java will just guarantee that there will be even more crap Java programmers polluting the wor in 10 years time. If programming is to be learned, it should be a synthetic teaching/learning language, and once the innate principles are understood, the practical skill should be transferrable to any number of different langauges. The kids who can't grasp that shouldn't be allowed near a compiler :-)
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rosobel wrote: »

It's true though,

No, it's not true. It's utter bull****!

Dughorm

rosobel wrote: »

Now you are just arguing semantics, a soothing voice to you could be shrill to me, what you hear isn't what I hear so using that to argue that a voice masks the underlying flaws in the language is pointless

In other words, an ugly language to you might be a beautiful language to someone else - a matter of personal preference.

Delighted we agree

Merces

Here's how to keep it alive-stop forcing people to learn it! I hate the fact that my leaving cert depended on a dead language. Instead make it optional and get people inspired to learn it by teaching Celtic mythology as part of the curriculum.

Bayberry wrote: »

No, it's not true. It's utter bull****!

Actually it is true, I'm male to female transsexual and spend many a day being told by speech therapists that females elongate their vowels and cut off their consonants whereas males elongate their consonants and cut off their vowels. As a competent programmer I would expect you to have even the most basic understanding of how male and female speech patterns work since their speech patterns bleed into common linguistics. It's not rocket science.

Bayberry wrote: »

No, it's not true. It's utter bull****!

Actually it is true, I'm male to female transsexual and spent many a day being told by speech therapists that females elongate their vowels and cut off their consonants whereas males elongate their consonants and cut off their vowels. As a competent programmer I would expect you to have even the most basic understanding of how male and female speech patterns work since speech patterns bleed into common linguistics. It's not rocket science.

Dughorm wrote: »

In other words, an ugly language to you might be a beautiful language to someone else - a matter of personal preference.

Delighted we agree

We don't agree, you just don't want to accept that we differ.

Dughorm

rosobel wrote: »

We don't agree, you just don't want to accept that we differ.

Oh I accept that Irish might be a beautiful language to me and an ugly language to you. Just as I also accept what you said about a soothing tone to me could be a shrill tone to you. it's all a matter of taste

Merces

Dughorm wrote: »

Men from cork say "Noooo" all the time?

rosobel wrote: »

Actually it is true, I'm male to female transsexual and spent many a day being told by speech therapists that females elongate their vowels and cut off their consonants whereas males elongate their consonants and cut off their vowels. As a competent programmer I would expect you to have even the most basic understanding of how male and female speech patterns work since speech patterns bleed into common linguistics. It's not rocket science.

This is actually true. I'm male to female transsexual also, and from Cork originally, and I've been told that my accent makes my voice training a bit easier become I naturally elongate my vowels which is (generally) a prime trait of female voice intonation.

KingBrian2

I watch the occasional Irish show with the subtitles. I am poor at languages so getting interested and involved in Irish is something I would find hard to do.

Dughorm wrote: »

Oh I accept that Irish might be a beautiful language to me and an ugly language to you. Just as I also accept what you said about a soothing tone to me could be a shrill tone to you. it's all a matter of taste

I'm willing to accept that as a compromise since I'm not really arsed to get into an argument about it

Alibaba

When you think about it ,it must be costing a fortune teaching a language to

every student in the country that possibly 10% (and possibly a lot less ) will ever

use.

irishlad12345

if the make it optional after the junior cert and get rid of it as a requirement for college instead making a 2nd language a requirement which can include irish or french etc then i think the hatred of the language wont be as severe as it is today

doolox

No. English is my mother tongue. I am an anglophone and I feel that one language is sufficient in our country. Ireland always had a significant population of English speaking people who are made to feel like second class citizens in their own country because of a lack of Irish language skills.

If I were to have an official job in a gaeltacht area where there is a right to conduct business in Irish I would do it, if only to conform with peoples constitutional right to deal with government agencies in the language of their choice.

Paramite Pie

darkpagandeath wrote: »

What would I gain over speaking English ? Speaking English gives me a much better option speaking to people especially from a foreign country. At the moment if I Learnt Irish I would only be able to communicate with a very very small section of people. Where as English gives me access to the world pretty much It is basically the language of business.

No one's asking you to forget English. The statement I've bolded is absolutely ridiculous.

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

Making all primary schools gaelscoileanna would'nt be that difficult and it would revive the language.

I think this is the only way to revive the language. However there'd be too much resistance in many areas, it really should have been done post independence.

darkpagandeath wrote: »

learning Klingon would give me access to more people than speaking Irish. I mean no offence at all, It has no Practical benefits over the language I speak.

There's more to learning a language than practicality, otherwise no one would learn Klingon either.;)

Alibaba wrote: »

When you think about it ,it must be costing a fortune teaching a language to

every student in the country that possibly 10% (and possibly a lot less ) will ever

use.

Should probably scrap Shakespeare, poetry, coordinate geometry and integration from the curriculum as well then.

doolox wrote: »

No. English is my mother tongue. I am an anglophone and I feel that one language is sufficient in our country. Ireland always had a significant population of English speaking people who are made to feel like second class citizens in their own country because of a lack of Irish language skills.

Really? I have to say I have never seen any Irish person being treated like a second class citizen just because they couldn't speak Irish, I think you are exaggerating there Ted

doolox

Entry to NUI and certain civil service jobs even in English speaking areas had Irish language competence imposed on people not so long ago.

In school near a gaeltacht area I was made to feel alienated by some of the teachers for my lack of competence or interest in Irish due to my parents lack of knowledge or background in speaking Irish.

The Irish speaking pupils were never made to feel inferior for their, at that time, lack of knowledge of English and a more sympathetic view was taken in helping them through their difficulties with what was for them a strange and foreign tongue:English.

Too much emphasis is placed, in my view, on learning a very unused and dying language by people when better skills in Science and Maths would increase ordinary peoples chances of obtaining and retaining quality employment in an increasingly competitive and pressurised labour market.

The use of sarcasm, by your reference to a stupid clerical comic character in your hostile reply to my feelings about Irish were typical of the approach taken by many ineffective educators in my past which has only increased my abiding hatred for a dead language.

Alibaba

Reiver wrote: »

Should probably scrap Shakespeare, poetry, coordinate geometry and integration from the curriculum as well then.

Point taken.. But a lot of that is not compulsory.

Alibaba wrote: »

Point taken.. But a lot of that is not compulsory.

Shakespeare is for honours English. Poetry is present for pass.

Even the lads in pass maths had to do coordinate geometry. I think they got lucky with integration though and were able to miss it.

doolox wrote: »

Ireland always had a significant population of English speaking people who are made to feel like second class citizens in their own country because of a lack of Irish language skills.

Do you think a native Irish speaker might feel rather more like a second class citizen having to abandon their native language to deal with practically any state services these days, never mind any commercial entities.

doolox wrote: »

The use of sarcasm, by your reference to a stupid clerical comic character in your hostile reply to my feelings about Irish were typical of the approach taken by many ineffective educators in my past which has only increased my abiding hatred for a dead language.

I thought people still speak it? It's not Latin or Pictish.