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https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058419143/important-news/p1?new=1

The Irish language is failing.

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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 895 ✭✭✭Dughorm


    FunLover18 wrote: »
    Yes, unless you can actually prove me wrong. People are allowed not partake in religion due to beliefs, surely I would be allowed not partake in maths or English when I am under no obligation to do so. The fact is that Irish is the ONLY subject required by the state at LC level, I'm at a loss therefore as to how schools can make students do English and maths, feel free to enlighten me.

    Schools do have mandatory subjects as far as I know. Ask your nearest one and ask them what their mandatory subjects are.
    FunLover18 wrote: »
    People are spending 13+ years studying Irish, you'd think such basic Irish would be covered. But of course if people aren't interested it doesn't matter What you teach them or for how long as the current state of the language proves.

    And that's a pity. I don't think the syllabus is tuned in that way to be honest. It could do with a radical overhaul.
    FunLover18 wrote: »
    And the nostalgia argument isn't a personal one that applies to only handful of Irish people?

    And yet that is the reason why Irish is being taught the way it is and failing to get a love for the language across in my opinion.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 895 ✭✭✭Dughorm


    briany wrote: »
    The argument that Irish should be thought in schools as a compulsory subject because it is one of the national languages doesn't really hold water. Paper won't refuse ink, as the saying goes.

    We'll have to agree on to disagree on that one, for the record I also believe that English should be a compulsory subject as it is a national language. By learning both languages to a relatively advanced level the student has a more rounded education in my opinion.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,507 ✭✭✭✭astrofool


    I don't want to point out the obvious but none of those are English terms - so expecting an Irish equivalent is a little unfair.

    Truth is the idea that food might be a bit more than just fuel or soakage pretty much ends at Calais.

    I think you missed the point in me exclusively picking food items which are taken in their original language....


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,793 ✭✭✭FunLover18


    Dughorm wrote:
    Schools do have mandatory subjects as far as I know. Ask your nearest one and ask them what their mandatory subjects are.

    But it's not about the schools mandatory subjects. It's about what the state's mandatory subjects are, and it's Irish. Therefore, they're not comparable unless you can prove to me that maths and English ARE just as mandatory even if the department of education doesn't say so on their website.
    Dughorm wrote:
    And yet that is the reason why Irish is being taught the way it is and failing to get a love for the language across in my opinion.

    But why is the minority's personal argument of nostalgia more valid than the majority's personal argument of usefulness?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,806 ✭✭✭recipio


    Compulsory German would serve us much better.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 895 ✭✭✭Dughorm


    FunLover18 wrote: »
    But it's not about the schools mandatory subjects. It's about what the state's mandatory subjects are, and it's Irish. Therefore, they're not comparable unless you can prove to me that maths and English ARE just as mandatory even if the department of education doesn't say so on their website.

    But it's all about the schools mandatory subjects because the school doesn't operate in a vacuum and the leaving cert is done by most students in the school context.

    It isn't mandatory by the state for people to get their children baptised to go to primary school and yet that is the practical reality for very many
    FunLover18 wrote: »
    But why is the minority's personal argument of nostalgia more valid than the majority's personal argument of usefulness?

    That's a political question - why does no political party have this as their party policy towards Irish? Perhaps its not as much of a minority position as you think?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,358 ✭✭✭Aineoil


    Grayson wrote: »
    I'd honestly never heard of that until this thread. I've tried googling it but there's feck all online about it.

    A "deontas" was a grant given to people living in Gaeltacht areas for various

    things like building a house for instance. The "deontas" was a big thing in the 1970's.

    I am not sure but I don't think it exists anymore. But I stand to be corrected.

    I still think there are grants for setting up businesses in Gaeltacht areas. You'll

    get more hits on google if you type in "deontaisí".

    deontas = grant

    deontaisí = grants

    I'm not being a smart arse (just answering your question) but if you want to find out more, google the plural word.:D


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 216 ✭✭AnLonDubh


    boardise wrote: »
    The idea of ordering a meal in Gaelic is an example of simple-minded fantasising that I played along with to make the point that hardly needs spelling out -that Gaelic can't cope with the demands of life without utter waste of time and labour.
    This is obvious though surely and doesn't need a silly "game" to spell out. Most of the items on your list do have a translation, there are native terms for them, in so far as there are in most smaller (<8m native speakers) European languages, i.e. "Peking", "aromatic" and "duck" all have cognates, but "Aromatic Peking Duck" does not without an artificial genitive construction, as is the case even in Finnish for food items like this.

    Rather than focus on the words themselves and "how you would say them" (as Finnish and other small languages would fail your test), it's better to say there is no context for them, i.e. the terms are meaningless because a scenario in which to use them does not exist (which is what really distinguishes Irish and a healthy language like Finnish).


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,683 ✭✭✭boardise


    The point about food names that derive from French is that the translation into English has already been done and done in a natural process i.e. speaker to speaker, community to community, over many centuries. It would silly to duplicate that process. Not only that -it would be an artificial exercise done by a non-native speaker to non-native speakers via a dictionary.
    No native speakers I've ever met -and I've met quite a few since I'm married to one-would try to make a play of ordering any kind of elaborate meal in Gaelic because they couldn't anyway and they know it wouldn't work.
    The best you'd get would be a jokey bilingual melange with most of the nouns in English and the connecting skeleton in Gaelic.

    In cases like this considerations of 'national language' are irrelevant ...people want something done and they use the best communication tool they have to do it. Perfectly normal and rational behaviour.
    The main point about a national language I always thought was that there was a significant national population who spoke it natively. I seek in vain for such a Gaelic nation.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,358 ✭✭✭Aineoil


    I am just waiting for the prátaí versus fataí debate.

    Bheadh na fataí nite, bruite, agus ite ag an gConnachtach sula mbeidís ráite ag an Muimhneach.

    The potatoes will be washed, boiled and eaten by people from Connacht before the people of Munster have said the word.

    It's so true!


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,358 ✭✭✭Aineoil


    boardise wrote: »
    T since I'm married to one

    Are you married to someone from the Gaeltacht?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 895 ✭✭✭Dughorm


    boardise wrote: »
    The point about food names that derive from French is that the translation into English has already been done and done in a natural process i.e. speaker to speaker, community to community, over many centuries. It would silly to duplicate that process. Not only that -it would be an artificial exercise done by a non-native speaker to non-native speakers via a dictionary.
    No native speakers I've ever met -and I've met quite a few since I'm married to one-would try to make a play of ordering any kind of elaborate meal in Gaelic because they couldn't anyway and they know it wouldn't work.
    The best you'd get would be a jokey bilingual melange with most of the nouns in English and the connecting skeleton in Gaelic.

    In cases like this considerations of 'national language' are irrelevant ...people want something done and they use the best communication tool they have to do it. Perfectly normal and rational behaviour.
    The main point about a national language I always thought was that there was a significant national population who spoke it natively. I seek in vain for such a Gaelic nation.

    I think you are hitting on an interesting point indirectly here.

    You started by creating an artificial situation, unless there are exotic menus in restaurants in Gaeltacht areas that I'm not aware of!

    But indirectly make a good point about the pointlessness of concocting language and translations in contexts where it hasn't "lived" - another good example is all the technical translation done for EU treaties etc... the legalese vocabulary of Irish which is practically incomprehensible to all and most certainly would have been to native speakers decades ago.

    It is up to our time to create a living context for the language - and indeed it has. Except the context that has been decided upon is a sterile one dedicated to administrative nonsense. How sad!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 216 ✭✭AnLonDubh


    boardise wrote: »
    No native speakers I've ever met -and I've met quite a few since I'm married to one-would try to make a play of ordering any kind of elaborate meal in Gaelic because they couldn't anyway and they know it wouldn't work.
    The best you'd get would be a jokey bilingual melange with most of the nouns in English and the connecting skeleton in Gaelic.
    Again, although I agree with your point, something doesn't ring true with me about this. Wouldn't the problem more be that the speakers would need to chain genitives rather than the nouns being in English. Whenever I've seen Irish's limitations show up for native speakers it's always that they have to say "The aromatic duck of Peking" or something like that, with it sounding like a false phrase, not that they have to switch to English nouns, I find it hard to imagine they'd need to switch to English for most of the individual nouns on a menu.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,358 ✭✭✭Aineoil


    Irish speakers use loan words from all languages, most languages use loan words.

    In Connemara they are never on their rothar. They are on their bicycle.

    Chuaigh mé ann ar mo bhicycle. :D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 781 ✭✭✭Not a NSA agent


    As long as I can speak English better than Irish I will use English, if I'm not going to use the language once I finish my LC I am only going to learn enough to pass my LC.

    The focus should be changing how it is taught in primary school so that children going into secondary school can hold a basic conversation in language. Maybe then we wont spend a class translating a poem line by line into English so we can understand and answer questions with answers we learnt off.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,683 ✭✭✭boardise


    Yes Aineoil- I am indeed married to a native speaker . I have also acquired by dint of diligent academic endeavour a knowledge of all the literary and linguistic strata of Gaelic from Old Irish down. I'm actually steeped in Gaelic Culture -having won All-Ireland Fleadh and Oireachtas prizes in singing and instrumental disciplines .I've been around long enough to have met Seán O Riordáin ,Seán O Riada, Máirtín O Cadhain and Peig Sayers' son Maidhc File.
    In 1964 there was a national campaign called Let The Language Live which involved people going around door-to-door gathering signatures for a petition to the government to redouble their efforts to do the impossible and pull off the miracle of Gaelic Revival.
    As a callow youth who had not yet shaken off the stifling mental strait-jacket of a Christian Brothers education -I braved many a suburban canine on this campaign. Enlightenment dawned formeat the end of the 1960s and I managed to extricate myself from this particular form of madness. My personal experience and my training in Linguistics have convinced me of the futility of the Gaelic Revival at all levels. It would require an extended essay to tabulate the hypocrisies ,contradictions and lies of the Gaelic Revival lobby.
    Incidentally, you made an interesting point a few pages ago when you mentioned Irish Studies. In 1973 the then Minister of Education
    -Richard Burke-floated the idea of courses in schools which would deal with Irish civilisation in general and would have a reduced Gaelic component. I'm hazy on the details now .I think it was intended to run as an alternative to the regular Gaelic course and to serve those with less capacity or inclination to take on the more demanding language-heavy course. It seemed to contain the germ of a good idea roughly akin to courses in Classical Studies which addressed issues in Greek and Roman civilisation but with no necessity to take on the burden of learning Latin. I don't know exactly why but there did not seem to be any political will to establish Irish Studies in the curriculum -although it enjoyed some success at 3rd level. It gradually fizzled out but it might be worth looking at it again.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,005 ✭✭✭Letree


    Let it die


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,879 ✭✭✭✭Grayson


    Aineoil wrote: »
    A "deontas" was a grant given to people living in Gaeltacht areas for various

    things like building a house for instance. The "deontas" was a big thing in the 1970's.

    I am not sure but I don't think it exists anymore. But I stand to be corrected.

    I still think there are grants for setting up businesses in Gaeltacht areas. You'll

    get more hits on google if you type in "deontaisí".

    deontas = grant

    deontaisí = grants

    I'm not being a smart arse (just answering your question) but if you want to find out more, google the plural word.:D

    Thanks for the help :)

    I know there are grants to set up businesses in the west but they're more about getting businesses into a area that's facing depopulation issues. Not really about Irish.

    BTW, I googled the plural and the first two pages were Irish results :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 895 ✭✭✭Dughorm


    I think this has been a very interesting thread. its been fascinating to read the stories and insights everyone has provided whether they are for reform, continuity or even abolition of irish and its learning.

    It goes to show that the language debate is also a debate about many other things; our educational philosophy, identity, irish history, culture and even irish cuisine :-)

    Threads like this bring out the best of boards imo, cheers! (Sláinte :-) )


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,879 ✭✭✭✭Grayson


    boardise wrote: »
    Incidentally, you made an interesting point a few pages ago when you mentioned Irish Studies. In 1973 the then Minister of Education
    -Richard Burke-floated the idea of courses in schools which would deal with Irish civilisation in general and would have a reduced Gaelic component. I'm hazy on the details now .I think it was intended to run as an alternative to the regular Gaelic course and to serve those with less capacity or inclination to take on the more demanding language-heavy course. It seemed to contain the germ of a good idea roughly akin to courses in Classical Studies which addressed issues in Greek and Roman civilisation but with no necessity to take on the burden of learning Latin. I don't know exactly why but there did not seem to be any political will to establish Irish Studies in the curriculum -although it enjoyed some success at 3rd level. It gradually fizzled out but it might be worth looking at it again.

    That wouldn't be a bad idea. get rid of compulsory Irish for leaving. Introduce an Irish culture course.
    At the same time change the primary school course so it's heavily focused on conversing. And add an Irish culture component to the junior cert as a lead up to it.
    Irish would still be available for the leaving cert. It'd be more heavilly focussed on literature.


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  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 16,575 ✭✭✭✭dr.fuzzenstein


    I don't want to point out the obvious but none of those are English terms - so expecting an Irish equivalent is a little unfair.

    Truth is the idea that food might be a bit more than just fuel or soakage pretty much ends at Calais.

    That is true. The Irish are the anti Italians. To an Italian a small car can be a style accessory, clothes are an expression of ones personality, and food is an artform. Its slowly changing here, but to an awful lot of people, clothes exist so you're not naked, a car drives from a to b and food is something you have to take in so you don't die.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 588 ✭✭✭Deranged96


    Wasn't there once a pin or a badge of some description worn by someone who was capable of conversing trí Gaeilge?

    I think I read of some such thing. That would be handy enough around Gaeltacht areas


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 10,087 ✭✭✭✭Dan_Solo


    Deranged96 wrote: »
    Wasn't there once a pin or a badge of some description worn by someone who was capable of conversing trí Gaeilge?

    I think I read of some such thing. That would be handy enough around Gaeltacht areas
    It was the Fainne (ring) I think, even though it was a little badge and pin. I haven't seen one in a while though, not even in Gaeltacht areas.


  • Posts: 31,828 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Deranged96 wrote: »
    Wasn't there once a pin or a badge of some description worn by someone who was capable of conversing trí Gaeilge?

    I think I read of some such thing. That would be handy enough around Gaeltacht areas
    Not really useful in the gaeltacht, but would be a help elsewhere in the country. The gaeltacht is treated a bit like a preservation area which is OK but to succeed in maintaining and enhancing the language, it really needs to be spoken outside of these preservation areas.
    A random chat in a shop in Moate or on a bus in Naas would be more beneficial than chatting in the gaeltacht.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 10,087 ✭✭✭✭Dan_Solo


    A random chat in a shop in Moate or on a bus in Naas would be more beneficial than chatting in the gaeltacht.
    What do you mean by beneficial here? Presumably to the popularity of the language?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 19,777 ✭✭✭✭The Corinthian


    Dan_Solo wrote: »
    What do you mean by beneficial here? Presumably to the popularity of the language?
    To the idea that it's still alive, I expect.

    TBH, I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard Irish spoken outside of a classroom, in my life. Reversing this would help the language's reputation as a dead one.

    Given this, it would be of limited benefit. You'd still need to be an enthusiast to bother and frankly those Fainne badges are as much a turn off as anything. Whenever I see them worn by someone it's invariably a Catholic conservative politician from Ballygospittlebackwards - even if I wanted to speak Irish, I still wouldn't be interested in striking up a conversation with someone like that.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 588 ✭✭✭Deranged96


    To the idea that it's still alive, I expect.

    TBH, I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard Irish spoken outside of a classroom, in my life. Reversing this would help the language's reputation as a dead one.

    Given this, it would be of limited benefit. You'd still need to be an enthusiast to bother and frankly those Fainne badges are as much a turn off as anything. Whenever I see them worn by someone it's invariably a Catholic conservative politician from Ballygospittlebackwards - even if I wanted to speak Irish, I still wouldn't be interested in striking up a conversation with someone like that.

    Oh well to change the conservative catholic politician image, they could have a rubber wrist band version for people and flake them out in schools and places


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,169 ✭✭✭dlouth15


    Dughorm wrote: »
    And yet that is the reason why Irish is being taught the way it is and failing to get a love for the language across in my opinion.
    But you were arguing earlier that lack of utility could not be used as an argument against compulsory Irish on the basis that it was not taught for reasons of utility but nostalgia.

    Now you are arguing that teaching Irish for reasons of nostalgia is a problem.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,630 ✭✭✭Zen65


    Dughorm wrote: »
    It is important to be aware though that you could have used your Irish had you chosen to do so.

    How? Where?


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,683 ✭✭✭boardise


    + Why ?


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