Why do you hate Irish?

I remember feeling annoyed in Secondary School that

1) There were people who thought it was very important that I learn Irish, yet
2) Resisted changing how it was taught, despite undeniable proof that it just wasn't working at a national level.

It was hard to sit through a lesson thinking "Literally the only reason I have to do this is so this teacher can keep their job."

Irish should be voluntary in secondary school .
I,ts ridiculuous that someone who wants to be a chemist or a doctor ,
their ability to do so will depend on the grade they got in irish ,
assuming they have good grades in other subjects .
And we spend millions translating documents to irish,,
imagine if we spent that money on teaching programing, or some subject that has
a practical use in the modern world ,outside school
Does any employer apart from tg4,rte, care if someone has a a good grade in irish ?
They,ll maybe look at your grades in english ,maths ,science or maybe your degree if you have one .

Caoimhgh1n wrote: »

I never said people disabled people should be forced to learn it, I said that some children with special needs are able to learn it.

I wouldn't dream of forcing on somebody is they were badly disabled and couldn't manage it for genuine reasons.

You specifically said "people with disabilities (what the hell?)" - especilly with the brackets, that's misleading.

But why should somsone who wants their child educated in English be told to do it in a foreign country?

Irish is, as you say one of Ireland's langauges. One of. Not the only langauge. As long as children learn to communicate and function, what difference does it make whether they learn spend fourteen years leanring a few years or not?

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

I didn't want to do Maths in shcool, should I have been allowed an exemption from that.

We've been over this: Maths is a lifeskill, Irish is not.

And yes, after Junior Cert, you should have been allowed to drop it if you chose.

colossus-x wrote: »

The problem with the Irish Lanugauge is that it simply isn't 'rich'. Hardly anyone ever spoke it. There is **** all good literature in Irish. James Joyce wrote in English. Oscar Wilde spoke and wrote in English.

There simply is eff all good Irish literature. There never could be. There was f*ck all people ever to converse in it or write it in the first place.

It's wrong to say the Irish language is 'rich' just because it's difficult to pronounce. It's not rich at all. It's totally worthless.

It really isn't true that it's not "rich" or that there isn't good literature written.Some fantastic works exist in the Irish language, Sean O'Riordan who wrote in Irish has written some of the best poetry I've ever read in any language. It's just that most people can no longer read them or write their own that creates the false notion that they don't exist.
There's no denying we have had a powerful history in arts and literature in the English language. That's because the only works that most of our people can now read or that could ever have gained international acclaim were those in English, the foundation for the passion and creativity that spurred those wasn't however gifted to us by Imperialism or by enforced use of the English language. There's always been a creative vein in Irish culture and we can only deduce as this facet of our identity survived so long that at one point that was nurtured by our language, as is true in every culture.

Personally I think the problem is that at some point the language was hijacked by ideologues who believed it should reflect a culture and identity of long ago and forcefed young children a diet of irrelevance in school, like stories of the Fianna and words for foxglove and other weeds etc as mentioned in another post. No emphasis was placed on it as a living form of expressive communication, instead it was let petrify as a historical relic. Had educational curriculums let it grow with our culture as a form of communication there's no reason why we wouldn't now all be able to speak it and why there wouldn't be popular music lyrics and literature coming on stream all the time as there are in English. Lots of populations are capable of speaking more than one language, we should be too.

It's a dreadful shame however to imagine the language itself was "useless" or lacking as a means to weave just as much intelligent and beautiful art as any other.

I think the posts are going away from the original question ,Anyway,I think that if people want to learn Irish they should be provided the means to do so and maybe make it optional after third year, It is not a dead language and there does seem to be great demand for Gaelscoils etc,(some thing like 6%of pupils outside the Gaeltacht?),looking abroad it could be said that the Welsh language has not held back the Welsh but it has a higher % of speakers,maybe it might be compared to New Zealand and the position of the Maori language which is one of the official languages and is spoken by only around 4% of the population and gets state support??

Zaph wrote: »

A lot of people are saying they hate Irish because of the way it's taught, but tbh I think that's a bit unfair to the many teachers who were probably doing their best with what was available to them. It wasn't the teachers that were the problem, it was the curriculum. There was absolutely nothing relevant to life in the 1980s in the curriculum. Instead we had to endure sh*te like Peig waffling on about having to smoke tea in her pipe because she had no tobacco, or short stories from a book called M'Asal Beag Dubh, written by some guy who died in the 1920s. It was truly shocking how little thought was put into updating the course content, and it's no wonder a lot of people of my generation hate Irish so much as a result. Personally I wouldn't say I hate Irish, but rather it has very little impact or relevance in my life. However I do think that what was taught when I was in school was a monumental waste of everyone's time considering I can only string a few fairly basic sentences together despite having been taught it for over a decade.

Peig gets an awful lot of shit, but it really isn't the fault of that book (which is an interesting read in its own right). Peig was just one of the things that was taught on the curriculum. We had plenty of Irish lessons in the modern day context, with contemporary terms and items shoehorned into the language that made it laughable and simply highlight its desperate nature to be, somehow, relevant.

The problem is the language itself. It's a dead language, kept artificially alive by those with a vested interest. Interests which are entirely out of the scope of most of the population. It's not fluid, it doesn't grow and it belongs in the past. A minor subject to be studied by those who wish to do so, like Latin.

Tony EH wrote: »

You see...I'd find a line like that an intriguing opening sentence in a book.

Don't think about yourself. Think how the average teenager would respond. Not very intriguing. Especially in a language already synonymous with depression and poverty.

Tony EH wrote: »

I don't really believe in such a thing as the "average teenager". They are all remarkably different, just as I and my peers were during those years.

My cousin's 15 year old is reading 'Papillion' at the moment. There's someone who could give Peig Sayers a competition in the depression Olympics.

Peig Sayers' book isn't the problem with Irish. Irish is the problem with Irish.

You don't believe there are trends in demographics?

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

You don't believe there are trends in demographics?

I believe people are very different to one another.

Tony EH wrote: »

I believe people are very different to one another.

You don't think people tend to share traits with similar demographics? Old people tend to be conservative, young liberal?