Why do you hate Irish?

Dughorm · 30-01-2016 08:15PM

How to rescue the Irish Language

Link to a good Irish Times Article on this topic promoting a complete reform of the primary curriculum to focus solely on spoken and aural language skills at primary level. A good move I think. Bring it into Junior Cycle too I'd say!

sryanbruen · 30-01-2016 08:17PM

Dughorm wrote: »

How to rescue the Irish Language

Link to a good Irish Times Article on this topic promoting a complete reform of the primary curriculum to focus solely on spoken and aural language skills at primary level. A good move I think. Bring it into Junior Cycle too I'd say!

All I did in primary school for Irish was conversation and vocabulary anyways, NO GRAMMAR!

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 31-01-2016 12:32AM

Dughorm wrote: »

How to rescue the Irish Language

Link to a good Irish Times Article on this topic promoting a complete reform of the primary curriculum to focus solely on spoken and aural language skills at primary level. A good move I think. Bring it into Junior Cycle too I'd say!

We've been saying that since the start of the thread and long before. Didn't read anything new or original.

I have to wonder though: everyone knows what need to be done, but no one seems to be wondering why, exactly, it isn't being done.

Dughorm wrote: »

Include it because Irish people should be aware of their national languages perhaps?

This is for the individual to decide.

TheLastMohican · 31-01-2016 03:38AM

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

We've been saying that since the start of the thread and long before. Didn't read anything new or original.

I have to wonder though: everyone knows what need to be done, but no one seems to be wondering why, exactly, it isn't being done.

This is for the individual to decide.

Caiin deas!

Shep_Dog · 31-01-2016 08:22AM

Dughorm wrote: »

How to rescue the Irish Language Link to a good Irish Times Article on this topic promoting a complete reform of the primary curriculum to focus solely on spoken and aural language skills at primary level. A good move I think. Bring it into Junior Cycle too I'd say!

The first thing I saw when I started to read the article was this oxymoronic nonsense which severely damages the objectivity of the writer:

How often do we hear people say that they wish they could speak their native language?
Despite 14 years of learning Irish, the majority of people are unable to speak their native language with confidence.

The writer is so much part of the Irish-language apparatus, he probabably did not even realise that in two sentences he'd insulted the entire English-speaking community. Is he advocating that children be taught that English is not their native language? What effect does this have on their self-esteem?

Then, I saw this:

I propose that the focus at primary level, from junior infants to sixth class, should be on conversational Irish. This would be taught to all children in the Irish education system, with no exemptions

Same-old-same-old bigotry from the Irish language lobby.

Rabo Karabekian · 31-01-2016 10:01AM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

For a native speaker it won't make any difference in terms of difficulty and for a learner it takes very little effort to learn "v" = "bh" "w" = "mh" etc. For a totally new learner it will make no difference at all.

For etymology it won't make any difference either. Take for example the "madra" the genative case would be "do wadra" but the root would remain unchanged. This is already done in Welsh and poses no burden to learners. In fact that language is in a stronger position than Irish.

Informally yes I agree with you but in a primarily academic language like Irish it's important that changes be institutionalized.

That's interesting about Welsh: do you know whether it was a conscious change and/or by some Welsh language body? Personally, I would find that more confusing. I'm barely getting my head around the tenses in Irish at the moment!

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

You may not want Irish to lose its complex grammar but you may not have a choice if you want the language to be revived. I remember one hypothesis for the lack of cases in English many foreigners who settled in Britain, Danes and Normans spoke broken simplified English and this became institutionalized.

If Irish ever is revived the new speakers aren't going to have perfect grammar. There's going to be simplification, a hell of a lot more bearlachas and some cases might be completely dropped.

I agree with this. There is definitely a tendency amongst (some) Irish speakers (usually fluent types) to grimace when you make grammar/pronunciation mistakes which is wrong on so many levels. I think some of them want to keep 'their' language in a glass box.

Caoimhgh1n · 31-01-2016 12:42PM

It shouldn't take too long to learn bh = v/w mh= v/w to be honest.

Also, there are both slender and broad v's. Sometimes you will hear "egg woah-tall" instead of "egg vote-tall", so changing them all to v's or whatever isn't going to help.

Caoimhgh1n · 31-01-2016 12:42PM

It shouldn't take too long to learn bh = v/w mh= v/w to be honest.

Also, there are both slender and broad v's. Sometimes you will hear "egg woah-tall" instead of "egg vote-tall", so changing them all to v's or whatever isn't going to help.

Iwasfrozen · 31-01-2016 03:04PM

Caoimhgh1n wrote: »

It shouldn't take too long to learn bh = v/w mh= v/w to be honest.

Also, there are both slender and broad v's. Sometimes you will hear "egg woah-tall" instead of "egg vote-tall", so changing them all to v's or whatever isn't going to help.

But if we accept that a single letter "v" is too confusing because it can be long or short, which it really isn't this happens in English all the time, then surely a single digraph which can be long or short is even more confusing.

This would also tie in with the creation of a single spoken dialect with regular pronunciation. Perhaps based on the dead Dublin dialect for sake of neutrality. Which should be the only dialect taught in school. If you want the language to be revived it needs a standard spoken dialect.

Paramite Pie · 31-01-2016 05:48PM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

If Irish ever is revived the new speakers aren't going to have perfect grammar. There's going to be simplification, a hell of a lot more bearlachas and some cases might be completely dropped.

Yes, this is inevitable. In many countries, rural dialects are unintelligible to urban speakers -- a standardised urban dialect is important. Languages adapt and change, often to outside pressures/demographics. Irish can survive if it changes reflect the situation it's in rather than academics.

There's a proposal in Galway to establish a new Gaeltacht in the city/suburbs. Apparently there's a lot of interest. Rural gaeltachts will never achieve much, just stagnate or decline.

Dughorm wrote: »

How to rescue the Irish Language

Link to a good Irish Times Article on this topic promoting a complete reform of the primary curriculum to focus solely on spoken and aural language skills at primary level. A good move I think. Bring it into Junior Cycle too I'd say!

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

But if we accept that a single letter "v" is too confusing because it can be long or short, which it really isn't this happens in English all the time, then surely a single digraph which can be long or short is even more confusing.

Bring back the dot (or a new mark) over the consonants - it was dropped because custom printing presses/typewriters were expensive -- they wanted everyone to be able to type in Irish if they needed too.

In a digital era, that's no obstacle -- just press shift and your consonant. Also some diphthongs are probably redundant. This is also normal in languages -- my korean phrasebook tells me that younger koreans are not pronouncing the nuanced difference between certain diphthongs -- they're being streamlined subconsciously in a living language.

Irish fights to hard against changes. I'm amazed they managed one spelling reform already.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 31-01-2016 10:15PM

Caoimhgh1n wrote: »

It shouldn't take too long to learn bh = v/w mh= v/w to be honest.

Also, there are both slender and broad v's. Sometimes you will hear "egg woah-tall" instead of "egg vote-tall", so changing them all to v's or whatever isn't going to help.

It takes ****ing ages when people spend al ltheir available time teaching you decades old poetry instead.

Caoimhgh1n · 31-01-2016 10:17PM

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

It takes ****ing ages when people spend al ltheir available time teaching you decades old poetry instead.

What?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 31-01-2016 10:29PM

Caoimhgh1n wrote: »

What?

I said it takes ages to teach grammar when people focus more on teaching poetry...

Caoimhgh1n · 31-01-2016 10:29PM

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

I said it takes ages to teach grammar when people focus more on teaching poetry...

Okay.

Captain Chaos · 31-01-2016 10:34PM

If Irish was thought the way French or German is it might just sink in quicker and better. I learned more German in 3 years than 14 years of depressing Irish. Today 12 years after finishing school I can remember more German than Irish.

Paramite Pie · 31-01-2016 10:55PM

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

It takes ****ing ages when people spend al ltheir available time teaching you decades old poetry instead.

But the grammar is taught in primary school. Poetry is only taught in secondary.

Are most primary schools that bad at teaching Irish? Madra/ mo mhadra is pretty basic stuff. I never went to a gaeltacht, nor am I fluent. But I really don't think a leaving cert teacher should have to go over that. (although fcuk poetry!)

It'd be like a French teacher going over things like when to pronounce the silent letters in French -- my teacher waited til 4th year to explain that! But any half decent student had figured it out themselves by then. But it really could've helped the struggling students early on.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 31-01-2016 10:59PM

Paramite Pie wrote: »

But the grammar is taught in primary school. Poetry is only taught in secondary.

Are most primary schools that bad at teaching Irish? Madra/ mo mhadra is pretty basic stuff. I never went to a gaeltacht, nor am I fluent. But I really don't think a leaving cert teacher should have to go over that. (although fcuk poetry!)

It'd be like a French teacher going over things like when to pronounce the silent letters in French -- my teacher waited til 4th year to explain that! But any half decent student had figured it out themselves by then.

I did poetry in 3rd/4th class, long before I ever had a grasp on the language - pronunciation or grammar.

The sticking point with me were the fadas. Someone explained it to me using Danish words when I was about 12 and it took something ten seconds. Not one Irish teacher had managed it in five years. They weren't stupid, neitehr was I - they simply never explained it.

Phonetics (when I went to school anyway) was never an integral part of the language.

AnLonDubh · 31-01-2016 11:41PM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Who said we should drop words? It should be obvious to you that Irish includes many unnecessary letters. The huge numbers of digraphs are a case in point and would be unnecessary if Irish were to adopt the ISO standard Latin alphabet.

Diagraphs resulting from eclipses, lenitions, double letters that result in only minor if any changes in phonetics (like the t and double n in Itheann) could be removed fully (Ihean sé) and the unecessary "caol le caol, leathan le leathan" spelling rule scrapped

If you don't know Irish phonology, how do you know the spelling system is irrational. Adopting the iso Latin alphabet would not render the digraphs unnecessary as iso Latin has 26 letters where as Irish has 52 phonemes. Also the difference between g and gh, etc is huge, not minor. How would you indicate the velarised\palatalized distinction without "caol le caol, leathan le leathan"
If Irish were to adopt another alphabet, the Cryillic or Greek alphabets would be far more logical, not iso Latin.

mickstupp · 31-01-2016 11:47PM

Paramite Pie wrote: »

But the grammar is taught in primary school. Poetry is only taught in secondary.

Since when?

Is this a recent development? I was never taught Irish grammar.

Iwasfrozen · 01-02-2016 12:31AM

AnLonDubh wrote: »

If you don't know Irish phonology, how do you know the spelling system is irrational. Adopting the iso Latin alphabet would not render the digraphs unnecessary as iso Latin has 26 letters where as Irish has 52 phonemes. Also the difference between g and gh, etc is huge, not minor. How would you indicate the velarised\palatalized distinction without "caol le caol, leathan le leathan"
If Irish were to adopt another alphabet, the Cryillic or Greek alphabets would be far more logical, not iso Latin.

More letters to represent a greater number of phonemes is better than less. That Irish has more sound variations than English and uses fewer letters results in an abundance of unnecessary, complicated and unsightly digraphs.
As another poster mentioned above the new lenition style of placing an "h" was adopted to allow Irish be written on a standard typewriter. With computers this is no longer necessary and the dot to signify lenition can be brought back.
The indication can simply be defined by the vowel proceeding or succeeding the consonant cluster as long as the rule is consistent it won't cause confusion. There is no need to always match vowels.
Yes I agree but Cyrillic Irish isn't going to happen. ISO latin is your standard QWERTY keyboard.

AnLonDubh · 01-02-2016 12:41AM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

More letters to represent a greater number of phonemes is better than less. That Irish has more sound variations than English and uses fewer letters results in an abundance of unnecessary, complicated and unsightly digraphs.

As another poster mentioned above the new lenition style of placing an "h" was adopted to allow Irish be written on a standard typewriter. With computers this is no longer necessary and the dot to signify lenition can be brought back.

The indication can simply be defined by the vowel proceeding or succeeding the consonant cluster as long as the rule is consistent it won't cause confusion. There is no need to always match vowels.

Yes I agree but Cyrillic Irish isn't going to happen. ISO latin is your standard QWERTY keyboard.

Okay, point three is sensible enough. However the letters surrounding a consonant indicate the glide vowel produced near that consonant, this is why the bards chose them. So I think there is an argument for both cases.

Yes more letters might initially seem rto make the orthography simpler, but the missing iso Latin letters aren't usually assigned a sound similar to any of the lenited sound except y.

Use of h for lenition isn't new, it dates to the 9th century.

Iwasfrozen · 01-02-2016 12:53AM

AnLonDubh wrote: »

Okay, point three is sensible enough. However the letters surrounding a consonant indicate the glide vowel produced near that consonant, this is why the bards chose them. So I think there is an argument for both cases.

Yes more letters might initially seem rto make the orthography simpler, but the missing iso Latin letters aren't usually assigned a sound similar to any of the lenited sound except y.

Use of h for lenition isn't new, it dates to the 9th century.

The bards weren't trying to revive Irish on a completely Anglophone population, if Irish is ever revived the broken mispronounced Irish spoken by the majority of new speakers will become institutionalized and small variations such as the above will be completely changed. Expect Irish phonology to move much closer to English.

Great so let's include y. That's one extra letter we can use. If we don't bring back dots to represent lenition "bh" and "mh" could be represented by "v" and "w" respectively. We can also redefine unused latin letters to represent any of the more commonly used digraphs. We aren't constrained by English pronunciation.

Fine but there's no need for it any more.

AnLonDubh · 01-02-2016 01:12AM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

.....

Okay, fair enough this is consistent and logical.

Sleepy · 01-02-2016 09:56AM

Dughorm wrote: »

Who are the parasites? Irish Teachers?

Them, translators, TG4, Údarás na Gaeltachta and all the other's being paid from the public coffers to keep the language on life-support.

Include it because Irish people should be aware of their national languages perhaps?

We can be aware of it without needing to wasting 14 years of education on it.

Because we already speak a global language as one of our languages this isn't a "key" reason - besides we, as a nation, are shocking, at additional language acquisition, despite it being optional - an unfortunate trait we share with most English speaking countries.

I'd argue that the time we waste on Irish in our schools is one of the key reasons we're poor at additional language acquisition. Were we teaching our children a foreign language from primary level, particularly one which they could make use of on summer holidays (i.e. Spanish, French or German) this could only be improved.

Nope. Any idea what the answer might actually be?

Your question supposes that there is a valid answer. It's my contention that there isn't one: Irish isn't culturally important.

Shep_Dog · 01-02-2016 02:39PM

It's surprising that Irish civilisation never created its own system of writing.

The idea of using Cyrillic to represent written Irish words has a lot of merit. It would preserve the authentic pronunciation of the language and it would facilitate bilingualism in other languages which also use that alphabet.

It would also be an homage to the great Christian tradition of learning established by Saints Cyril and his brother Methodius.

sryanbruen · 01-02-2016 06:33PM

Paramite Pie wrote: »

But the grammar is taught in primary school. Poetry is only taught in secondary.

Are most primary schools that bad at teaching Irish? Madra/ mo mhadra is pretty basic stuff. I never went to a gaeltacht, nor am I fluent. But I really don't think a leaving cert teacher should have to go over that. (although fcuk poetry!)

It'd be like a French teacher going over things like when to pronounce the silent letters in French -- my teacher waited til 4th year to explain that! But any half decent student had figured it out themselves by then. But it really could've helped the struggling students early on.

I never did ANY GRAMMAR in primary.... it was always about vocabulary such as what's cneasta, what's milseáin, what's geansaí?

Dughorm · 01-02-2016 07:03PM

Sleepy wrote: »

Them, translators, TG4, Údarás na Gaeltachta and all the other's being paid from the public coffers to keep the language on life-support.

That's very harsh.

I don't know how many programmes on TG4 you have watched, but to call them parasites is ridiculous. It is by far my favourite Irish terrestrial channel in terms of entertainment, sport coverage etc...

Sleepy wrote: »

We can be aware of it without needing to wasting 14 years of education on it.

After 14 years of studying *anything* one should be doing better than just being "aware" of it. It reflects poor teaching - this article indicates that Maths and English are in the same boat: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/oecd-finds-literacy-an-issue-among-university-students-1.2515918

Sleepy wrote: »

I'd argue that the time we waste on Irish in our schools is one of the key reasons we're poor at additional language acquisition. Were we teaching our children a foreign language from primary level, particularly one which they could make use of on summer holidays (i.e. Spanish, French or German) this could only be improved.

Really? - see my link to the outcome of 14 years spent learning English and Maths above. Going on your logic most of our children should be learning Portuguese because it's a popular holiday destination and they *might* use it on foreign holidays? And that's assuming their families can afford a foreign holiday. No, let's study languages that are our languages.

Sleepy wrote: »

Your question supposes that there is a valid answer. It's my contention that there isn't one: Irish isn't culturally important.

That's an extreme minority view - there's no political party, lobby group or any public figure that would agree with you to my knowledge.

Iwasfrozen · 01-02-2016 07:06PM

Shep_Dog wrote: »

It's surprising that Irish civilisation never created its own system of writing.

The idea of using Cyrillic to represent written Irish words has a lot of merit. It would preserve the authentic pronunciation of the language and it would facilitate bilingualism in other languages which also use that alphabet.

It would also be an homage to the great Christian tradition of learning established by Saints Cyril and his brother Methodius.

And it would be a spit in the face to Ireland's Latin / Roman Catholic heritage. It won't happen.

Shep_Dog · 01-02-2016 09:20PM

Dughorm wrote: »

After 14 years of studying *anything* one should be doing better than just being "aware" of it. It reflects poor teaching

Or a lack of interest by the pupil. You can lead a horse to water but...

Dughorm wrote: »

No, let's study languages that are our languages.

Including Polish and Mandarin, both more popular here than Gaelige.

Dughorm wrote: »

That's an extreme minority view - there's no political party, lobby group or any public figure that would agree with you to my knowledge.

What you say is true, politicians will always try to be all things to all people. But is is also true that for the average citizen, the Irish language is of little personal importanance.

IwasFrozen wrote:

And it would be a spit in the face to Ireland's Latin / Roman Catholic heritage. It won't happen.

The Latin/Christian heritage (brought here from Britain) was the beginning of the end of Gaelic Civilisation.

The use of Cyrillic would be a great way to annoy the English. Isn't that the whole point of speaking Irish?

Iwasfrozen · 01-02-2016 09:29PM

Shep_Dog wrote: »

The Latin/Christian heritage (brought here from Britain) was the beginning of the end of Gaelic Civilisation.

The use of Cyrillic would be a great way to annoy the English. Isn't that the whole point of speaking Irish?

Ireland was Christianized before Britain and I disagree, Christianity contributed greatly to Gaelic Civilization. It opened us up to the workd and many classical greats are around today because thry were translated by Irish monks.

Even Brian Boru was called "Imperator Scottorum" such was the prestige of Latin in Irish society.

Why do you hate Irish?

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