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Why do you hate Irish?

LeinsterDub

Given the other thread it was surprising to the level of hatred for Irish. Having been over in Wales recently the English speakers would generally be apathetic to Welsh. No one seemed to hate it. Why do people hate a language so much?

Cen faith mar is fuair a lán daoine Gaeilge?

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donalh087

From the department of 'you could make this **** up but why bother?'.

A new quango has been set up by the Irish government under the Department of Irish to promote the Irish language. They are setting up loads of events and classes and conversation circles all over the country. Brilliant stuff, all for it. Wait for it though.

It is quite techy and web based and the key words are community, information, multimedia, Irish. All good stuff so far. So they translate the words into Irish to get the catchy title Pobal, Eolas, Ilmheain, Gaeilge. Yup. It's called Peig.ie.
HMOTDJ

Annasopra

What does HMOTDJ mean?

AnonoBoy

Not many people know that quango is an Irish word.

Named after Charles Quango from the 1880's.

Barry Badrinath

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

What does HMOTDJ mean?

How Might One Touch Dav's Junk

AnonoBoy

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

What does HMOTDJ mean?

Hold Me Close Tiny Dancer.

But he spelled it incorrectly.

donalh087

holy mother of the devine jesus. Don't get stuck there though.

Tony EH

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I wouldn't go this far. I firmly believe that the best way to save it, assuming that such a feat is possible is to completely separate it from the state. One rarely thinks of "successful enterprise" when they think of "Irish government". Let volunteers and enthusiasts preserve it though innovation and a love for their heritage.

I agree. But it's still a dead language. That's what I mean by "the problem with Irish is Irish." There's nothing inherently wrong with language itself. It's just pretty useless. It's basically an endeavour to be engaged in by someone who holds a particular interest.

Tony EH

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

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

What has this got to do with what I am saying about Irish or Peig?

Mr. CooL ICE

Mod:

Merged threads

Shep_Dog

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Now I am going to say something that many may not like, but sometimes I think Gaeilge enthusiasts can be associated with Nationalist/Republicans and all that fekkin baggage.

Sorry, but it is something that cannot be denied. And that may be a factor in its decline too.

Irish culture as marketed today is the product of the Gaelic Revival movement, a nationalistic collaboration between the isolationist 'Sinn Fein' (ourselves alone) party and the radical cultural organisation 'Conradh na Gaelge' which wants to replace English with Irish as our daily language.

glynf

What an unfortunate acronym for anything to do with the Irish language. That fúcking book still gives me nightmares...absolute misery distilled.

Spanish Eyes

Anyone know how Welsh is commonly spoken and totally accepted in Cymru?

Roger Hassenforder

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Gaelscoilleana.... keep the riff raff out. No question about it. Sorry and all that but there we are.

My Irish stays with me after XXXXX number of years, I can read and listen to TG4 but I cannot speak it at all
all
.

A lot of merit in that point, I imagine the rates of attendance of traveller, immigrant and disadvantaged kids is rather low in the 'Gael scoiles' is low? Will we see a revival in Irish's fortunes in the coming years?

I can speak a bit of Irish after 14 years of it, but haven't a clue what they're saying on TG4. something is definitely wrong.
I like that there is a Gaeltacht 30 miles away, and I think it needs to be preserved, but it's future looks to be linked to middle class snobbery

Del.Monte

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

I think there are a lot of enthusiasts and volunteers out there already. And good luck to them.

Heard that Clondalkin may be made an urban Gaeltacht soon. Who'd a thunk it, but they have a great tradition out that way anyway

http://www.thejournal.ie/clondalkin-could-be-dublins-first-official-gaeltacht-350427-Feb2012/

http://www.araschronain.ie/

Now I am going to say something that many may not like, but sometimes I think Gaeilge enthusiasts can be associated with Nationalist/Republicans and all that fekkin baggage.

Sorry, but it is something that cannot be denied. And that may be a factor in its decline too.

Another of my reasons for disliking the language, but in fairness it's not a good reason. The fact that the language has been hijacked by the Chucky Heads, the GAA, the diehard Gaeilgeoirí, and has had a fortune spent on it down the years just makes me want to blank it out. Throw in the insulting tokenism on State forms and Newstalk with their Gaeilge Gasta with Donal o Donovan and I want to spew. Guess I don't like Irish.

Spanish Eyes

Del.Monte wrote: »

Another of my reasons for disliking the language, but in fairness it's not a good reason. The fact that the language has been hijacked by the Chucky Heads, the GAA, the diehard Gaeilgeoirí, and has had a fortune spent on it down the years just makes me want to blank it out. Throw in the insulting tokenism on State forms and Newstalk with their Gaeilge Gasta with Donal o Donovan and I want to spew. Guess I don't like Irish.

That is funny, must remember that!

Rabo Karabekian

Tony EH wrote: »

I agree. But it's still a dead language. That's what I mean by "the problem with Irish is Irish." There's nothing inherently wrong with language itself. It's just pretty useless. It's basically an endeavour to be engaged in by someone who holds a particular interest.

I'm pretty sure it's not a dead language as there are still people speaking it as their main tongue. Dying, perhaps, although I haven't seen (reliable) figures from the last few decades.

Another aspect of whether a language is dead is if it's not evolving organically. There was an interesting study that I read about recently suggesting that it's innovating even within the small area of the Aran Islands. I think this article talks about that study:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/irish-language-is-far-from-dead-linguist-claims-1.2384395

And of course, there's the possibility of reviving dead languages, if that's your thing. I think Israel are the only example of such a thing being successful (and pretty damned successful). Whether there's any point to such a thing is debatable, although having a grounding in two languages is supposed to make learning more languages even easier.

Shep_Dog

Rabo Karabekian wrote: »

I think Israel are the only example of such a thing being successful (and pretty damned successful).

The Israelis used Hebrew to unify Jews of different nationaliites who'd immigrated there. Being a religious state and Hebrew being the liturgical language of Judaism, it was a very good fit.

The argument for Irish seems to be more about isolation and separation (Ourselves Alone etc...) than anything else.

The Welsh apear to have taken to the Welsh language as a way of annoying the English who've bought holiday homes there.

Oddly enough, the Scottish separatists don't seem to be using Gaeilic in the same way,.

riclad

I think its a dead language, in that 95 per cent of people ,do not speak it ,
in daily life.
Most gardai or public officials are not fluent in irish,
i know in the gaeltacht alot of people speak it.
try running your business in irish in most area,s it not practical .
Most irish writers and singers ,write and sing in english.
try going into a chipper or a pub and making your order in irish ,in most towns .
most people will have no idea what you are saying.
people under stand basic phrase,s ,
will cead agam, conas a ta tu,
after studying it for years in school .
I think its sad that millions are spent on it,
when theres other things more important ,
like employing more nurses in a and e .

HIB

Crimsonforce wrote: »

I attended scoil gaeilge .

My issue is the really really heavy accents they use on tg4 from connemara or donegal. Its even difficult for me to understand.. they should try to appeal to the masses and try and mix up the accents... that said tg4 is a great station and they do wonders on sport coverage..

Interesting to hear you say that. I've always found the accents on tg4 impenetrable. That said, my irish would be poor anyway.

Ironically, while TG4 seem to be in love with regional accents, RTE seem to be allowed to speak D4 only!

Rabo Karabekian

Shep_Dog wrote: »

The argument for Irish seems to be more about isolation and separation (Ourselves Alone etc...) than anything else.

I don't think it is, at least not anymore. There are definitely elements that are more old-fashioned in their world view, but I think most of the fluent Irish speakers definitely don't fit this, and their love of Irish has nothing to do with it either.

Dirty Dingus McGee

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

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.

But I wasn't and more than likely that won't be changed so it's pretty much the same argument as the one about Irish.

Shep_Dog

Rabo Karabekian wrote: »

I don't think it is, at least not anymore. There are definitely elements that are more old-fashioned in their world view, but I think most of the fluent Irish speakers definitely don't fit this, and their love of Irish has nothing to do with it either.

Do most fluent Irish speakers support Conradh na Gaeilge and its aim of reinstating Irish as the common language of Ireland?

Rabo Karabekian

Shep_Dog wrote: »

Do most fluent Irish speakers support Conradh na Gaeilge and its aim of reinstating Irish as the common language of Ireland?

I don't know. I guess you'd have to take a survey or something. As for the people I know, I would very much doubt it.

Making Irish the common language of Ireland isn't (necessarily) about isolation and separation, if that's what you're getting at. You know there are lots of bilingual nations? And the bilingual nations tend to be better at learning languages, which is one of those 'life skills' that people keep talking about.

Shenshen

I'm a bit of an outsider to this discussion, as I'm not Irish and didn't grow up here, so never was directly exposed to any attempts of reviving the language.

I do however come from a country which has an official language, and a plethora of local dialects, some of which differ significantly from the official language - to the point of actually belonging to a different sub-family of languages.
None of these dialects are taught in school, there are next to no TV programs in them (with the exception of the occasional amateur theatre productions), and there's no literature worth mentioning in any of them. Yet they're thriving.
People feel a very deep connection to them.

I suspect the reason for that is because their dialect is what they grew up with, the language their parents taught them first. It would be the language they regard as their own. And I don't think many people will ever feel such a connection to a language they learn at school. Much as I love the English language, I will never understand and appreciate its facets and intricacies the way I do the dialects I grew up with. With English, I've got an intellectual connection, with my dialect I've an emotional connection.

I can't imagine that reviving Irish will ever happen unless a significant number of parents decide to teach it to their children, long before they ever start school. Trying to revive it mainly through schools and TV is, to my mind, a waste of money. As shown in this thread, it will only create resentment.

masti123

gormdubhgorm wrote: »

I think it goes back a few generations, when the use of Irish was viewed as only for the lower class and English was for those who wanted to be upwardly mobile. The proliferation of American television also has some bearing now.

We became the degraded and feeble imitators of our tyrants. English fashions, English material tastes and customs were introduced by the landlord clss or adopted by them, and by a natural process they came to be associated in the minds of our people with gentility. The outward sign of a rise in the social scale became the extent to which distinguished us as Irish and the success with which we imitated the enemy who dispised us. - Michael Collins

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

But I wasn't and more than likely that won't be changed so it's pretty much the same argument as the one about Irish.

So the basis of the cmpulsory Irish argument has boiled down to, "I couldn't give up Maths so others should be forced to do Irish"?

Compulsion of a non-vital task does nothing for the student and, in the case of Irish, does nothing for the language and yet we insist upon it being an integral part of the education system. That, in a nutshell, answers the question posed in the title.

Ferris_Bueller

Crimsonforce wrote: »

I attended scoil gaeilge .

My issue is the really really heavy accents they use on tg4 from connemara or donegal. Its even difficult for me to understand.. they should try to appeal to the masses and try and mix up the accents... that said tg4 is a great station and they do wonders on sport coverage..

I completely agree with this actually. I could probably live my life in Irish through speaking, reading and listening, however I find it very difficult to understand what a lot of commentators etc are saying on TG4. Definitely because of the accents.

I also notice some people who speak perfectly normal when speaking English but on a very thick accent when speaking Irish which makes it more difficult to understand.

Paramite Pie

Shep_Dog wrote: »

Because the lesson they will learn is that it's OK for a langauge and culture, which is not their own, to be imposed on them? How do parents explain to their children that the for 14 years, the apparatus of state will bear down on them and their parents have no say in the matter?

Or vulnerable to exploitation by members of radical cultural groups.

Or because, as children we quickly saw through the lies of the cultural commissars?

Your post reads like someone with a persecution complex.:rolleyes:

I get that it's not their language but how is it not their culture? Everything on this island is part of our collective culture. Culture is shared and not individual.

For the record, I only support optional Irish in secondary school but I believe everyone should get a basic foundation level in primary. I also support demoting Irish's Official Status to Minority Status. It not only reflects the reality, might also give the movement a good kick up the hole to try something new.

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

I like that there is a Gaeltacht 30 miles away, and I think it needs to be preserved, but it's future looks to be linked to middle class snobbery

I would've thought the same thing -- however there are two gaelscoileanna in Ballymun.:cool:

riclad wrote: »

Most irish writers and singers ,write and sing in english.

This is one of the biggest reasons for it's decline in the first place. After the flight of the Earls, ie the ones funding the Irish literature and music scene, the language was doomed. Some of the Ascedancy made their best efforts to protect and preserve the Irish schools but Westminster came down on them really hard. A language needs Patrons.

People need to be inspired. If Irish can't do that...

Shenshen wrote: »

I can't imagine that reviving Irish will ever happen unless a significant number of parents decide to teach it to their children, long before they ever start school. Trying to revive it mainly through schools and TV is, to my mind, a waste of money. As shown in this thread, it will only create resentment.

I believe there are Irish language Creches which might help and I personally know some people who learned it from their parents who were acquired speakers. I don't see a full-on revival happening but something is.

The King of Moo

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

If "being taught well" you mean encountering it in the real world, then maybe - but that outlet is not available to most Irish kids. I'd also argue on the baiss that French is taught as a means of communication, Irish is not.

Being taught well is not enough: you have instill an enjoyment for it as well as an outlet outside of the school environment. Kids are usually very practical people: if they don't see the need for something, they will question it.

By "being taught well" I'm referring to the bread-and-butter teaching in the classroom. It's tough to change how we teach languages in general in English-speaking countries because we don't encounter other languages much in our day-to-day lives, we don't tend to be taught much of English grammar (knowing your own grammar really helps to learn that of other languages) and have little experience of having to speak other languages.
So we don't do a lot of speaking practice and independent production, and can't get our heads around foreign tenses because we don't know the names of our own.

If we look at how English-language schools here, and secondary schools on the continent teach languages, and subsequently change the way we train language teachers, we'll see a big change in students' language ability.
That's easier said than done though, as it would mean having to step outside the way we think of language for a lot of people.

Encountering Irish outside the classroom (and there a lot of opportunities for that: TV and Radio stations, and thousands of publicly visible examples of often complex Irish) is an important bonus to that teaching, and teachers should manoeuvre students towards doing so, but it has to be made engaging and comprehensible in the classroom first. That's good teaching.

I wouldn't say French is always taught as a spoken language: it varies on the teacher. However, it wouldn't be difficult to do that with Irish (just put students in groups of three and tell them to talk about something specific!). The problem is that English speakers very generally don't tend to be in a rush to speak in other languages, so teachers grow up learning languages without ever having spoken them in the classroom, and then teach in that way as adults. It's a vicious cycle.

mickstupp wrote: »

You weren't talking about teaching languages, you were talking about learning them. They're very different things. It may be your day job to teach, but that doesn't mean you have a single clue about the psychology of language development. Just to put my hands up, neither do I. I certainly don't have a PhD in child psychology or whatever would be relevant. All I can say is what it was like for me.

But I was not taught Irish grammar. I was given pages of text and expected to know what was going on. End. Of. Story. I wasn't taught about moods and cases and various types of conditionals. I was barely taught about tenses and verb endings. If I had been taught those things, then I would agree with you, because I would've had a solid grammatical base to help me with other languages.

What you're effectively suggesting, at least in my case, is that despite not retaining 20 words of Irish, and zero Irish grammar since I was never taught it... is that that experience of having random inexplicable crap thrown at me somehow magically helped me learn other things. But then... if it had helped me learn other languages, I should've gotten better at Irish too, because I should've understood what was going on. But I didn't.

After my experiences with other languages, I can certainly say that if I was taught Latin or ancient Greek alongside Irish, I'd have far far better Irish than I ever would have going through the Irish school system.

But all that's just my opinion. I'm not claiming to understand the psychology of childhood language acquisition.

You can't be a competent teacher without understanding learning, they're not completely different at all. That's why when you apply to train to teach English one of the first things they ask you is if you've learned any languages. To teach you must understand your students' perspectives, so having been a language learner is a huge advantage.
Any half-decent teacher will at least unconsciously know something of the psychology of language development. It's that knowledge that makes them good teachers.
I also oversee all aspects of teaching of young learners where I work, so I really, really know what I'm talking about, from knowing the relevant theory, the way English is taught around the world, and primarily from my own extensive experience in the classroom (as student, teacher and mentor).

What you're suggesting is that my being taught Irish for however many years, aided my quick uptake of French, Latin and Greek, to the extent that after a single year of each of those languages I knew and understood more than after thirteen years of Irish. Your suggestion doesn't make sense. If I had been given a deep grounding in Irish grammar, then yes, I'd agree. I can say I'd agree because my grounding in Greek grammar helped me learn Latin extremely quickly. Highly structured languages help you learn other languages.

I'm actually not suggesting that. I said that being taught a language well or at least competently, as a child (with a solid understanding of grammar and lots of speaking and independent relevant language production) you'd more than likely have an improved ability to learn other languages later in life.
But I've already stated that the way we teach (and learn) languages here, and especially Irish, needs to be overhauled.

Huntergonzo wrote: »

Finally, again why not have the option to learn another language like Spanish or French from an early age instead of Irish? they have far more practical use.

Children can't passively encounter French or Spanish in everyday situations in Ireland.
Encountering a language in such a way, if they're being taught well in school, boosts their language retention.
If Irish were taught better at primary level they would have the opportunity to learn the language quite well, given the opportunities for passive language acquisition to consolidate their learning.
Children who learn a language as a child are generally better able to learn other languages later in life.
For the reasons mentioned above, children have greater potential to learn Irish well as children compared to other languages.
If they did so, they'd be better able to learn French or Spanish as teenagers.
Therefore if you want Irish people to learn French or Spanish, you're better off teaching them Irish (well) as children, so it's more logical to overhaul the way we teach Irish to children.

Ok folks, I don't feel like repeating that, so I probably won't be back to this thread.

Slán libh!

Dughorm

The King of Moo wrote: »

Ok folks, I don't feel like repeating that, so I probably won't be back to this thread.

Slán libh!

Thanks King of Moo, your posts are a pleasure to read.

The aim for a successful Irish language policy in the next 5-10 years, in my opinion, should be to tackle the attitude problem in threads such as these, similar to the way we don't have other "why do you hate <<random subject>>" threads here.

Unless as Shenshen explained, there are many parents who teach their babies and toddlers the language, then it really falls to the primary school teacher to give the next generation their first taste of the language.

One or both of (i) Anti-Irish language parents and (ii) incompetent teaching (i.e. where the teacher refuses to speak Irish) is bound to sow the seeds of the dislike we see on this thread from an early age.

What can be done? A syllabus that actually teaches phrases that people use in conversation would be a start!

Who learned phrases such as "I could do with one of those", "Would you go way out of that?!!", "He's acting the bollocks" at school?

You know.... the phrases that people actually use in everyday speech and that native Irish speakers know naturally and love! Who'd hate Irish then?!