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Irish language revival

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    #92
    Filmer Paradise
    Registered Users Posts: 1,339 ✭✭✭Filmer Paradise


    Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »
    Literally sat across the aisle from a young mother and her three young kids as they chatted away in Irish on a train from Galway to Dublin the other day too. This is normal enough when I'm visiting Galway. I hear it very often, and I think it's brilliant.

    Really? I go to Galway a lot.

    In laws are there. Been going up there more than 15 years.

    Never heard a word of it in all those years.:confused:

    Language Hawks have a fair habit of distorting the facts from reality.

    100 years of practice really.:rolleyes:


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    #93
    Junkyard Tom
    Registered Users Posts: 10,117 ✭✭✭✭Junkyard Tom


    _blaaz wrote: »
    Dulingo app

    I tried it - I don't have the discipline. I need to be in a group/social environment to do something like that.
    A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »
    Unfortunately you're not missing much.

    I'm interested in Irish for more technical reasons, its being in the nomenclature, our geography, and how it has influenced the way we speak English.


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    #94
    Sardonicat
    Registered Users Posts: 12,378 ✭✭✭✭Sardonicat


    dd973 wrote: »
    I understand the viewpoint of bad memories of sitting bored in class having Peig rammed into your brain but can't see why so many people are apparently anti our language especially when it's a demarcation of not being perceived as English or British which is something most Irish people regard as their raison d'etre.
    I'm not anti-Irish language at all. I just don't want to speak it myself and don't feel it has any significance to me. Most of us can't speak it, but can understand a little bit , depending on the dialect. It's a nonsense persisting in pretending this is a bilingual country. Using it solely for the purpose of not seeming English is just pathetic and I would imagine, quite insulting for those whose mother tongue is Irish and can actually speak it.


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    #95
    whisky_galore
    Registered Users Posts: 15,832 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    What I find interesting is statistics showing declining numbers of native speakers due to shrinking Gaeltacht areas (usually as a means of giving a kick up the arse for more funding and supports) and simultaneously language enthusiasts professing that because of Gaelscoils etc the language has never been in a healthier state.
    There's people here hearing Irish being spoken everywhere and people claiming not to hear it at all, picking areas where it's more likely to hear Irish to reinforce their point of course.... Galway, Connemara... Not inner city Dublin or Roscommon.

    It's either in decline, is stable, or increasing in usage. It can't be in all states like a linguistic Schroedinger's Cat.


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    #96
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    whisky_galore wrote: »

    It's either in decline, is stable, or increasing in usage. It can't be in all states like a linguistic Schroedinger's Cat.

    It can in a way. There are more gaelscoils than ever. Yet the native gaeltacht speaking population is shrinking.

    More people have 'learnt Irish' than ever. So it is both in decline and increasing.

    Half of my family didn't come from Irish roots the other half on my dad's side did.I was born here and went through the Irish school system. I have some Irish.


    People brought Hebrew back.

    Irish could do the same.


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    #97
    whisky_galore
    Registered Users Posts: 15,832 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    ILoveYourVibes wrote: »
    People brought Hebrew back.

    Irish could do the same.

    People also built the Great Wall of China.
    Doesn't follow that we'll build one.

    If we were bothered, we would have revived it a century ago.


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    #98
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    whisky_galore wrote: »
    People also built the Great Wall of China.
    Doesn't follow that we'll build one.

    If we were bothered, we would have revived it a century ago.

    People weren't interested in reviving hebrew either. Infact rabbis were against it because it was a holy language. Rabbis tried to BAN it. (which probably helped reverse psychology)

    I mean it was dead for like 15 hundred yrs.



    Then ben yahuda said 'bitch hold my beer!'



    One crazy dude literally did it alone.

    Don't worry about it will be fine. And its not gonna be this huge laborious chore either. It will happen naturally.


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    #99
    _blaaz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,646 ✭✭✭_blaaz


    whisky_galore wrote: »
    If we were bothered, we would have revived it a century ago.

    In other words nothing to stop us now??


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    #100
    whisky_galore
    Registered Users Posts: 15,832 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    _blaaz wrote: »
    In other words nothing to stop us now??

    Knock yourself out.


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    #101
    Wanderer78
    Registered Users Posts: 28,876 ✭✭✭✭Wanderer78


    Genfella wrote:
    Cén chaoi a bhfuil an Bhreatnais in ann dul chun cinn le níos mó ná 20% á labhairt, ach níl ach 10% ag labhairt na Gaeilge againn. Cén fáth?


    What fcuking planet is that language from?


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    #102
    Del.Monte
    Registered Users Posts: 12,363 ✭✭✭✭Del.Monte


    Dr Turk Turkelton wrote: »
    Modh coinníollach.

    Two words to explain why it won't be revived.


    Tiocfaidh ár lá.

    Three words to explain why it will only ever be accepted by a part of the population and will alienate a further part. Banning the language would probably do more for its popularity and take-up than anything else.

    ****



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    #103
    janfebmar
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,424 ✭✭✭janfebmar


    It's an ugly dead language and a waste if taxpayers money.


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    #104
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    Wanderer78 wrote: »
    What fcuking planet is that language from?

    We should do research into that. What planet IS Irish from?


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    #105
    whisky_galore
    Registered Users Posts: 15,832 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    ILoveYourVibes wrote: »
    People weren't interested in reviving hebrew either. Infact rabbis were against it because it was a holy language. Rabbis tried to BAN it. (which probably helped reverse psychology)

    I mean it was dead for like 15 hundred yrs.



    Then ben yahuda said 'bitch hold my beer!'



    One crazy dude literally did it alone.

    Don't worry about it will be fine. And its not gonna be this huge laborious chore either. It will happen naturally.

    It doesn't need any of that funding so?

    Take away the props and supports and see how it revives. Or not.


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    #106
    Wibbs
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,094 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    ILoveYourVibes wrote: »
    People brought Hebrew back.

    Irish could do the same.
    Hebrew came back under very different circumstances ILoveYourVibes, circumstances not applicable to the Irish situation. The primary difference is that Israel from the earliest settlers was receiving people from all over the world from different backgrounds and languages and required a common language. English was in the running for a time, German of all things was a front runner before WW2. This need for a lingua franca accelerated massively after WW2 and the foundation of the state of Israel and the massive influx of people into the country. There is also a strong element of a need for at least one aspect of a cohesive bond in a new country, with an understandable element of cultural and actual siege mentality coming into it too. Modern Hebrew had a long list of positive selection pressures for it to succeed.

    By comparison Irish and Ireland had none of the above, beyond that understandable element of cultural and actual siege mentality which fostered its massive support after the foundation of the Irish state and continues to foster it today. Problem was we already had and have a lingua franca, English. And a very useful one too as it turned out(If we'd been a colony of say Norway, I suspect Irish would have gotten a lot more traction after independence).

    When independence came we had more Irish speakers than we do today. That has steadily decreased even in the face of the billions and man hours spent on it. Our connection with the language has been fading for a long time even before then. Look at the Irish diaspora and compare it to others. Take America. Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, Chinese Americans and so forth are communities that have tended to keep at least some of their original language going, even if only in slang. German was the second language of the US until the First World War. Spanish is the second language now. Dutch Americans are a small group, yet more Americans can speak Dutch than Irish Americans can speak Irish and Irish Americans are numbered in the tens of millions(and seem to love the oul country and the diddly aye stuff).

    We dropped Irish as a language almost the second we dropped anchor in new countries and that's reflected everywhere we went and we went pretty much everywhere. Now there are all sorts of reasons and reasons given for this, but the plain fact is these reasons applied to all the other diasporas, but the Irish are pretty unique in dropping the language so quickly and completely.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



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    #107
    Wanderer78
    Registered Users Posts: 28,876 ✭✭✭✭Wanderer78


    ILoveYourVibes wrote: »
    We should do research into that. What planet IS Irish from?

    an unusual one id say


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    #108
    nice_guy80
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,723 ✭✭✭nice_guy80


    A lot of the problem with Irish is that when the geniuses of the 19th century were codifying and standardizing it they made a balls of it


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    #109
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Hebrew came back under very different circumstances ILoveYourVibes, circumstances not applicable to the Irish situation. The primary difference is that Israel from the earliest settlers was receiving people from all over the world from different backgrounds and languages and required a common language.


    Very true. But hebrew wasn't really a front runner. It could have easily have been Arabic.

    And still today Russian is spoken at home by 20% of the Israeli population.

    For all practical purposes it should not have been hebrew.

    It could have been any living language.

    Only 49 % of Israelis call Hebrew their native language.

    10% of Israelis speak Arabic at home.

    It would have been easier to pick of of these.

    Hebrew is a lingua franca which is why many Jews want their kids to learn modern Hebrew and not lets say Yiddish.

    The Israeli Authorities actually banned yiddish for a while. Now its the second most widely spoken Jewish language after Hebrew cuz it had a revival. Although still only a handful of people speak it.

    If you want something to have a revival ban it.

    You would think since half the population of Israel are descended from Mizrahim they would all be speaking Arabic least likely was Hebrew.


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    #110
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    nice_guy80 wrote: »
    A lot of the problem with Irish is that when the geniuses of the 19th century were codifying and standardizing it they made a balls of it


    I am not a linguist i wouldn't be able to tell you whether they made a balls of it or what. :pac:


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    #111
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    Wanderer78 wrote: »
    an unusual one id say


    Uh huh....it is from another dimension alright ....

    Numbers are like diff for ..people ...time ..things ...



    that would be an interesting subject.


    Maybe kids should study that in school along with the language make it interesting ...linguistics with Irish as a model.

    That whole inside when i am inside and inside when i am outside thing ....istigh isteach..like where did that come from??

    Thuas suas???

    THESE ARE QUESTIONS THAT NEED ANSWERS!

    We don't need to know verb conjugation we need to know why space moved around these people?




    Don't say to me you have never wanted to know these questions!

    Whose universe am i stepping into ..??:eek:

    We are not in Kansas anymore.

    Why does this **** sound like a cross between an inter-dimensional space alien, a native american and a german???


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    #112
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

    Why does this **** sound like a cross between an inter-dimensional space alien, a native american and a german???

    That is the most accurate description of the Irish language in all history.

    Some linguist has to tell me why its like that and more importantly WHAT that means and who these people were and how their minds worked.

    Because language is the key to thinking so it is.


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    #113
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    Whoever these people were the fact that

    1. they swapped their kids and had the richest raised by the ordinary or by their enemy

    2. they had such a strange extreme abstract language

    Makes me think they had much higher thinking than the British who came after them.

    And since all of that is gone ....the language is possibly the only key we have to their insights and inter dimensional space minds.

    Like if a dude traveled in time from ancient Ireland to here now ...we'd probably think he was weird ..but deep in our hearts we would want to make him our leader or something ..

    Except for the male guardianship thingy ...

    But did you know the law didn't apply to women ??..I could get away with everything.


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    #114
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 13,712 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    janfebmar wrote: »
    It's an ugly dead language and a waste if taxpayers money.
    Ugly?!

    I know all beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think Irish is the most beautiful language I've ever even encountered. Not just the sounds, where the vowels are pricked and drawling as if stabbed with centuries of tragedy, like a half-dead crow, but it's meanings too. Only in Irish are your emotions ort - on you. Take sadness. Tá brón orm, You seem to wear it. Tá tú faoi bhrón, sadness is literally coming down on you from above.

    There are such beautiful ways of speaking about emotion in Irish, that i am convinced that our forebears were far more tuned-in to discussing emotions than we are even today.

    People associate the Irish language with a backwards, Catholic Ireland. But I'd say go back further, to a Catholic Ireland, yes; but one whose language is emotional, wild, bizarre and full of imagination, sex and mythology.


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    #115
    Greyfox
    Registered Users Posts: 3,727 ✭✭✭Greyfox


    Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »
    You use the word "our" a lot there - have you checked with everyone else?

    I'm Irish, was born and raised in Ireland, but it most certainly NOT a part of my culture or my identity.

    I'm Irish and the English language is part of my identity and culture as everything I have done and learned in life has been through English. I've nothing against Irish, its just I dont have the time to learn a language that has no practical benefit to me


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    #116
    El_Bee
    Registered Users Posts: 933 ✭✭✭El_Bee


    Irish isn't taught to be spoken in schools it's taught to pass exams. Compared to French and German teachers Irish teachers are amateurish at best, is there even an Irish language institute? literally nothing done to improve the language, which is crude & inexpressive (before people have a go at me, what's the Irish word for inexpressive?).


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    #117
    Wibbs
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,094 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    ILoveYourVibes wrote: »
    Very true. But hebrew wasn't really a front runner. It could have easily have been Arabic.

    And still today Russian is spoken at home by 20% of the Israeli population.

    For all practical purposes it should not have been hebrew.

    It could have been any living language.

    Only 49 % of Israelis call Hebrew their native language.

    10% of Israelis speak Arabic at home.

    It would have been easier to pick of of these.
    Oh sure, but my point still stands IL. If anything you've reinforced it. Israel and its peoples come from many different backgrounds and language cultures and need some common ground. It is not close to the homogeneity of Ireland and its culture. Down the centuries and outside of smaller language enclaves Ireland has been a culture of two languages and for all sorts of reasons one ended up being more useful on a daily basis. When the language of trade and especially education drifted from Irish a couple of centuries ago it was on a sliding slope, destined to be a minority cultural artefact. Plus even among bilingual Irish people, the vast majority are more fluent in English than Irish. The numbers who learn Irish as a first language are tiny and when they do it's the language of childhood by necessity.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



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    #118
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 13,712 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    El_Bee wrote: »
    (before people have a go at me, what's the Irish word for inexpressive?).
    No interest in having a go, but I'd say 'in ísle brí'


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    #119
    Franz Von Peppercorn II
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,398 ✭✭✭Franz Von Peppercorn II


    We dropped Irish as a language almost the second we dropped anchor in new countries and that's reflected everywhere we went and we went pretty much everywhere. Now there are all sorts of reasons and reasons given for this, but the plain fact is these reasons applied to all the other diasporas, but the Irish are pretty unique in dropping the language so quickly and completely.

    You mean people stopped speaking Irish in the US and UK. Hardly surprising. Most Irish speakers in the famine era would have known some English anyway. Ireland was a duo-lingual society.


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    #120
    _blaaz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,646 ✭✭✭_blaaz


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Plus even among bilingual Irish people, the vast majority are more fluent in English than Irish. The numbers who learn Irish as a first language are tiny and when they do it's the language of childhood by necessity.

    The most of bilingual people i knows think in irish as it comes easier to them...now they speak in english etc



    The best example i could think of is....when my grandmother mind was starting to go of old age etc.....a childhood friend came to visit her and she was able to converse grand in irish with her.....but she struggled to keep up converstaions in english......

    .its same for cousins of mine...when off their face/drunk its too much effort to talk in english as they think in irish......you really would have to see it to believe it


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    #121
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    El_Bee wrote: »
    Irish isn't taught to be spoken in schools it's taught to pass exams. Compared to French and German teachers Irish teachers are amateurish at best, is there even an Irish language institute? literally nothing done to improve the language, which is crude & inexpressive (before people have a go at me, what's the Irish word for inexpressive?).




    I am making it up gan leiriu.????..i forgot some fadas.


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