Why do you hate Irish?

recipio wrote: »

Bord Failte say that after pricing, poor signage is the second most common complaint by tourists who have taken a holiday here.
Putting single signs in Irish is simply arrogance.

There is poor signage on roads alright but a lot of those signs are in English and Irish in Dublin and may or may not be covered by bushes! Irish alone is nor the issue. You seem to have a pathological fear of ANY word in Irish! If I went to France and had no French I would eventually cop on what "sorti" is for example they didn't have a lot of signs in English, example I visited there as a 10 year old!. You seem to be very antagonistic towards Irish it is not going to jump out and hurt you You did not answer my question about your disingenuous comment relating to "Mna" I noticed.

LordSutch wrote: »

Remove it as a compulsory subject after Inter Cert.

Honestly, we should only be introducing it as a subject choice at Junior Cycle imo.

A romance language would be far more useful as an introduction to learning a second language at primary level as a decent grounding in one not only teaches one language acquisition skills, it provides an extremely strong basis for picking up any of the others. From 5 years of studying French, I find I can interpret quite a bit of Spanish and Italian due to the inherent similarities in those languages, all of which have more practical application than Irish.

OldNotWIse wrote: »

If you want to keep it alive it should be optional.

That would kill it quicker than anything else.

The number of people selecting it as an option would be just tiny.

Sleepy wrote: »

Realistically though, there is enough interest in Irish to keep the language as "alive" as it currently is without massive state funding or forcing kids with no interest to waste their education spending time on it

I don't think there is enough interest.

Sleepy wrote: »

There's a hard core of support for the language which won't go away.

I think the hard core support would turn out to be much much smaller than we'd imagine when shorn of funding and so on.

LeeLooLee wrote: »

I'm pretty sure they have to be because Wales is part of the UK. Still, I agree that monolingual Irish signs would be silly, not least because tourists wouldn't understand them and the country still makes a load of money from people visiting. We all know where Baile Atha Cliath and Gaillimh are, but how many tourists would?

Parts of Wales can be very nationalist but not so much as to use exclusive monolingual signs -- unlike our Gaeltacht.
The mythical tourist using MNA as a gents convenience thinking the Irish can't spell MAN is not so far fetched. :rolleyes:

Because you go into learning it, knowing that, at best, you will be able to less efficiently talk with someone else in the language (because everyone who knows Irish also knows English).

That it's not optional if you're "Irish", when foreigners applying here don't need it for 3rd level (the uni requirement is about all that keeps it going in secondary school).

It represents a very oppressive twiddle dee dee version of a church controlled Ireland that is, thankfully, dying off rapidly.

The only reason it exists is to perpetuate itself, rather than add much of value to the world, all Irish jobs are state sponsored, walk down any Irish road, and the only Irish will be the state signage, all shops will use English (barring the odd Irish named house).

The plain people of ireland do not speak it,
its dead ,its not growing and changing,
i,m sure 1000.s of people would learn latin if they were gauranteed jobs with a nice pension for speaking it ,
set up radio tg4 latin,or tv latin classic .
its like there,s 100,s support workers. medical staff for drug addicts ,
there,s a whole industry of teachers, radio presenters, translaters for tg4 programs ,
who depend on the language to give them a job.
english is a growing vibrant language spoken all over the world.
IT,S mainly being kept alive by government support.
I,m in favour of gaelscoils but i don,t think everyone should be forced to learn it past the age of 12.
It should be like art or music,let those who want to study irish ,and good look to them.

recipio wrote: »

So your argument is that non-Irish speakers should just hump off because they don't understand monolingual signs.? I have travelled abroad and even in nationalist Wales the signs will be in Welsh and English.
I have no objection to the fanatical use of Irish on signage but to give it priority over English is stupid and selfish.

I never said that at all. I think it is you who is being fanatical your probably bursting to go to the toilet and Mna and Fir is confusing you. Or else you understand it but resent yourself for understanding it and want to p on the floor!
Your not helping your argument. There are some signs only in Irish but there are others in English and Irish. Have you ever been to Hungary the two languages they use are German and Hungarian.
See below:
http://https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Road_signs_in_Hungary#/media/File:Pharmacy_sign_Szeged.JPG

Am I supposed to get ultra offended like you because the sign above is not in English?
I think it comes down to the basic facts that you have unresolved personal issues with Irish. Mna and Luas freaks you out. I think you would rather get lost then attempt to read a road sign in Irish....
Your going around the round in circles here...I am surprised you go out the door!

By the way roundabout is "timpeallan" there is another word for you be terrified of and go around in circles to avoid...:D

Shep_Dog wrote: »

So, in your opinion, people who don't speak Irish are irresponsible? That's an idiotic opinion. It's a free country and unless you're a schoolchild, you don't have to speak Irish and have no obligation or responsibility to do so.

The buck-passing is when Irish enthusiasts try to make others responsible (and pay) for the support of their fantasy world.

In fairness he has a point people have Irish but don't speak the thing. I would be writing this in Irish only for my writing is worse then the few words I know. I think I could converse in Irish if the conversation revolved around GAA matches? Why because I regularly watch them on TG4 and we used to watch the minor matches in irish at school before TG4 was invented.

It's basic practice is all that is needed but people like myself are discouraged from speaking irish from the likes of that Recipico person above. There is also a fear of being sneered at by the Gaelgoir elite.
Then the middle ground gets squeezed out of it.

The Hungarian language was dead over a 100 years ago now they all speak it. I suppose someone will say it was because they did not have a modh c! But it looks a lot harder then Irish to me!

Dughorm wrote: »

How do you know this with such certainty? What other languages are you fluent in that you have no interest in?

None. I'm only proficient in French rather than fluent (though I have an interest in it). If I can make a fair comparison to another area of study, I'd be more knowledgeable about the bible and the tenets and dogma of Catholicism than most Catholics yet still have no interest in the religion whatsoever.

I think there has to be an element of personal responsibility here - if you want to waste your time in school with whatever subject then that is your choice, but that is no reason for the education system to accommodate your attitude problem!

You're rather making the argument for the removal of the compulsory status for me here. It wasn't my choice that my time was wasted.

Even as a 13 year old I knew that Irish was of no use to me (so much so that I had my mother look into finding a loophole to allow me opt out of it in the same way kids who've spent time in education abroad can). I had no interest in the subject and it has no practical, or educational purpose.

By reading fiction and playing tetris I chose to "waste" my time in another fashion than the Dept of Education wanted me to. TBH, I can legitimately state that my career benefited more from the time spent on the Tetris than it did from Irish - the first software issue I diagnosed and resolved for a client was based on the same size limitation of integers that I'd discovered in that version of Tetris back in fourth year. I've yet to have a single moment where Irish could have been of use to my career - though I have seen tens of thousands wasted on the professional translation of reports to Irish that have never been run in that language and which were meaningless according to a fluent Gaelgoir on our team as the terminology used in the report didn't exist in the Irish language it had been largely made up by the university doing the translation.

Had Irish not been compulsory, that time wouldn't have been "wasted" as I would have been spending those 5 classes a week studying a worthwhile subject (or even a different non-useful subject that I had an interest in e.g. Latin, Classics etc).

Yet another poster reaches to an analogy from economics to drive our education policy! There is good reason to have core subjects for a balanced education - if there isn't "demand" for English Literature does that mean it should be optional? Of course not.

None of that is an argument for Irish to be one of the core subjects.

I could pick dozens of more useful or worthwhile subjects to form part of that core. You mentioned one, economics: how that isn't a core subject in a country where anyone can end up Minister for Finance regardless of their qualifications is beyond me tbh.

Any major world language would be a worthwhile inclusion in the core subjects, though perhaps in the interests of a diverse skillet in our population it would be best to stipulate solely that at least one of them must be studied (I know it's already a requirement for many of our Universities).

I'd argue that Applied Mathematics, Home Economics, History or Geography would be all better suited to forming a core part of our curiculum than Irish and that's before even getting to subjects we should be teaching but largely ignore such as Health (sexual, mental, physical, nutrition etc.), Personal Finance, Programming, Critical Thinking, Logic, Debate, Driving etc.

I don't think it's fair or accurate to describe Irish as a hobby, it's a language of the State and used in the State. Even if you don't like Irish you have to acknowledge this.

I think you're stretching the definition of the word "used" tbh. That implies utility. Irish has none, ergo, imo, it's best described as a hobby or a past-time.

That it's an official language of the State (and that we've foisted it upon our EU partners as one) is, lamentably imo, undeniable. That such a designation was a political decision rather than a reflection of the reality of our society, however is also undeniable.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

So forcing teenagers who aren't interested achieves what, exactly?

Maybe you think I am some kind of advocate for the language - I'm not. My point is that i think the 'make it optional to help it survive/flourish' is really misguided.

As for your question, it achieves very little I'd say.

Still, making it optional would result in even fewer speakers.

osarusan wrote: »

Maybe you think I am some kind of advocate for the language - I'm not. My point is that i think the 'make it optional to help it survive/flourish' is really misguided.

As for your question, it achieves very little I'd say.

Still, making it optional would result in even fewer speakers.

You want to continue embarking on an expensive and lengthy operation, using the efforts of about 100,000 people a year while denying them any say in the operation whatsover, in the full knowledge that it will achieve "very little"?

The survival of the welfare langauge is neither the reponsbility of the student nor the goal of the Irish syllabus.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

You want to continue embarking on an expensive and lengthy operation, using the efforts of about 100,000 people a year while denying them any say in the operation whatsover, in the full knowledge that it will achieve "very little"?

Where did I say I want to continue that?