Why do you hate Irish?

Introduction of Cyrillic would be beyond stupid.

Shep_Dog wrote: »

So, a foreign religion and a foreign language had the highest prestige in Irish civilisation? And what have the Roman Catholics done for us?

Foreign, :rollseyes: by that definition Irish is foreign too.

Well they opened us up to the wider European world, safeguarded and kickstarted the concept of institutionalized education after the fall of Rome, translated priceless works from Greek and Latin that otherwise would have been lost, they wrote down much of Irish mythology that was oral at the time, they encouraged the formation of a unitary state centered around the High King, they made progreses in animal husbandry and selective breeding crops, they studied old architecture for the purpose of building catherals, they served as missionaries in Europe, spread the knowledge of European languages, other technologies from Europe and served in the court of Charlemagne the Roman Emperor.

Shep_Dog wrote: »

Cyrillic would be a fun intellectual challenge and it would preserve the correct pronunciation of the language.

I don't think you know the Cyrillic alphabet or you wouldn't say it's a good match for Irish! The sounds are completely different.

But I'm done, you're clearly being contrarian for the sake of it.

Shep_Dog wrote: »

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

Do you mean like Ogham? I know it wouldn't work in the modern world but it was there. We did a bit of it in secondary school many years ago. (No, not when it first came out.)

Shep_Dog wrote: »

It does not appear to have been used for literature of any kind, mostly for land marking? Hardly comparable to the elegant script of the English, Greeks or Romans. And, like Irish, It was abandoned by us when something better came along.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the Irish language was the only language in western Europe that do not use the Latin script ,but of course it does use the Latin script/alphabet.

Dughorm wrote: »

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...

It's a business that wouldn't have even been able to open it's doors, nevermind stay afloat for six months without public funding. If you can convince enough others of your mindset to pay for a subscription to it, great. If not, it should be scrapped and the tax-payers money currently wasted on it diverted to provision of state services such as education, health etc. I'd say the same of RTE too tbh. I don't watch TV3 outside of their awful Rugby coverage either, but at least they're self financing.

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

I couldn't care less if Irish were the best taught subject on the curriculum, it still has no place being a mandatory part of it.

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.

Irish isn't "our" language. It's the hobby horse of an arrogant minority of the population who believe they have the right to force it on the rest of us.

Portuguese is the native language of an estimated 205 million people, it's the 6th most widely spoken language on the planet. That makes it an excellent choice to be taught to schoolchildren in an anglophone country imo.

The purpose of language is communication. A language that increases the number of people with whom you can communicate is infinitely more useful than one allows you to communicate less effectively with others who already share your native language.

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.

I think the vigour of the debate on boards every time this issue is discussed proves rather unequivocally that my views are far from an "extreme minority" but I'd agree that our political classes would shy away from expressing such an opinion even if they held it privately. As Shep_Dog pointed out, our political system encourages politicians to try and be all things to all people and to fear powerful lobby groups (even when they represent minorities). Given that Fine Gael have actually tried to remove the mandatory status of Irish for the Leaving Cert, I suspect you'd be wrong in that many of them would agree with me: they're just too cowardly to admit it.

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

The 3% figure on the wiki looks unsourced. The source below says 1.74%.
A couple of Google searches show that TG4 spend at least 4 times as much per viewership as RTE. Probably more since RTE also fund radio. Producing content for tiny audiences is bound to be more expensive though I suppose.

http://www.tamireland.ie/box-clever/tv-basics/share-and-reach

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

And you've yet again failed to make a cogent argument for why TG4 should be allowed to continue draining the state's coffers.

Saying it drains the states coffers is a bit much. It doesn't cost that much even if it is pretty much a waste of money.