Anyone in Ireland that can speak Irish only?

anplaya27 wrote: »

Its actually called Irish Sign Language as its native to Ireland. It's a language not only of the hands, but the body and face.

All native sign languages worldwide are different. They have regional variations and accents etc too. They are evolving languages, just like spoken ones.

Would take longer than a year to be fluent. For example, the interpreters you see on tv spend 4 years in trinity colleges school of linguistics learning and then have to shadow for a while before they can attempt to interpret by themselves. They are immersed in not only Irish sign language, but Deaf culture, identity, history, traditions etc.

Yes. I understand it would take a long time to be fluent. I wouldn't expect anyone to be fluent in a language in a year.

But as an introduction really.

I met a few in Galway in the 1970s. As another poster has said, it is believed that the last monolingual died in 1998.
My wife shared accomodation with two sisters from a Munster Gaeltacht in the 1970s and one day they told her that their mother was doing very well with English since she got the television. That was what finished monlingualism, Mr. Ed and The Riordans.
The only possibility now, a very vague one, is that there is some mentally handicapped person out there who was born with Irish and didn't have the capacity to learn a second language. That was the case with the Slovene-language minority in Austria, but I would think that regarding Irish even that scenario is past its sell-by date.

P.S. I've now read the whole thread and I see what people have written about Alzheimers. Point taken. Interesting.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Yes. It's not uncommon on the Continent. Particularly when you grew up speaking two (English and Irish), moved from an area that speaks a specific dialect (Basel Deutsche) to live in an area that speaks a third official language (French), work in an area that speaks a fourth (Italian), have a mother-in-law who only speaks a fifth (High German), adopt a child who only spoke a sixth (Portuguese) and once you get into the habit of learning languages and in the course of your business deal with people across Europe it becomes a no brainer to continue to learn. He drew the line at Dutch however.

One of his daughters speaks 9, but she is Swiss educated.

Just because you appear to have difficulty conceiving of people being polyglots as you live on a fairly monoglot island you really shouldn't extrapolate that to mean people who live surrounded by different languages don't learn many languages.

Anyway, I don't care what you believe.

My brother is a ployglot who began his study of languages while in school in Ireland.
He credits doing his LC through Irish with helping him get to grips with studying various languages.

Whether or not some stranger on the internet is sceptical makes no difference. He is happily fluent in many languages and you are not.
I am not either but I can get by in French and Irish.

He just seems a bit of a 'benny lewis' that's all.

riclad wrote: »

everyone speaks english in ireland,
How many people leave school who can speak irish fluently, maybe a few per cent.
i have never met anyone who speaks irish as part of their daily life, going to the shop,s , going to work etc
lets say you learn french or spanish in school, it might help you get a job
with a company like facebook or google.
You might actuually use the language as part of the job.
irish is like the horse and carriage in 2020,
people drive cars and use a bus or the luas.
Young people know irish has a very limited use in modern life.
its nice to be able to speak irish,
i think its like playing the fiddle or the bodhran.
For most people it has very limited value in real life.

There are more people than you know who speak Irish,

The total number of persons (aged 3 and over) who could speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, representing 39.8 per cent of the population. This is a decrease of 13,017 on the 2011 figure of 1,774,437. More females than males identified themselves as being able to speak Irish with 968,777 female speakers (55%) compared with 792,643 males (45%), a pattern repeated from previous censuses (excluding not stated).

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp10esil/p10esil/ilg/

All those people were happy to say they spoke Irish on a government document. I use Irish daily when shopping in Lidl and talking to my kids because I love the sound of the language.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

If by that you mean a wealthy and successful businessman then yes he is.
All due to hard work and being able to converse with clients in their native language - including in the Gaelteacht.
He's also a bit 'Swiss' which just proves all silver linings have a cloud. :P

Benny Lewis is a guy who swears he has fluent spanish but can't barely put a sentence together.

Goddamit ....i've lost my routledge spanish grammar book now!

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

As someone who had to compete in a class in school with native speakers in their native language. Yes it is. It's enjoyable at times. But if you want to do it well. Its not always going to be easy.

Or maybe for YOU because you are a genius it is. But i am just a normal average dummie!

Its grammar drills. And more grammar drills. Its intensive vrs extensive listening. Its intensive vrs extensive reading. Its writing. Its tenses. Its vocab. Its expressive vrs receptive vocab. Its grammar. Its idioms. Its speaking.

Yes its singing songs and dancing and just talking and listening etc.

But yes it has its difficulties for most people.

You dont need to be a genius, in fact I have met quite a few profoundly stupid, multilinguists. Fact 54% of people in Europe are Bilingual, 14% speak 3, 2% speak 3 or more. So the majority of people have no problem learning 2 languages. 2% or 1 in 50 speak 3 or more, that is too large a number to be difficult.

I am no genius and I learnt my 5th language at the age of 40.

KevRossi wrote: »

The last monoglot Irish speaker in Co. Dublin was recorded in the 1831 census in Glenasmole (past Bohernabreena). Her family descendants still live there.

And the last person with native Dublin Irish, (not a monoglot) is said to have died in Kimmage in the 1930s, a native of the same area, one of the glens, probably Glenasmole itself.

paul71 wrote: »

You dont need to be a genius, in fact I have met quite a few profoundly stupid, multilinguists. Fact 54% of people in Europe are Bilingual, 14% speak 3, 2% speak 3 or more. So the majority of people have no problem learning 2 languages. 2% or 1 in 50 speak 3 or more, that is too large a number to be difficult.

I am no genius and I learnt my 5th language at the age of 40.

Si hablas espanol puedo practicar contigo?

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

Si hablas espanol puedo practicar contigo?

Ne, ale mluvím česky jako opilý námořník.

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

Im sorry with all due respect. I don't believe his LC gave him the necessary level of any language.

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

I am extremely skeptical.

According to you he speaks 7 languages.

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

Its grammar drills. And more grammar drills. Its intensive vrs extensive listening. Its intensive vrs extensive reading. Its writing. Its tenses. Its vocab. Its expressive vrs receptive vocab. Its grammar. Its idioms. Its speaking.

Yes its singing songs and dancing and just talking and listening etc.

In fact, for the vast majority of humanity, "learning a language" is only the last bit - singing songs and dancing and just talking and listening etc. That's exactly how children learn, and they're usually pretty fluent in the basics of grammar by the age of about seven. After that, any "improvement" in language skills is essentially nothing more than increasing your vocabulary.

You might be sceptical about the abilities of friends of other posters, but I can tell you from first-hand experience, that I came to France fifteen years ago with nothing more than the French for which I'd got a B in the Leaving Cert more than ten years previously. I have never been to any top-up classes, and yet I can work, rest and play with the French without any problem.

I also spent one single year learning German at first-year secondary school level, way back in 1980. That's enough for me to be able to explain to Germans in German (or Swiss in German, for that matter) how to dance French traditional dances. And no, that's not a hypothetical situation - my work takes me to the Franco-Swiss-German triangle, where I like to spend my weekends trad-dancing with the natives, some of whom have never been to such an event before. It does not take much learning to be able to give instructions, nor to engage in small talk. Ditto for Italian.

And arising from an embarrassing incident, when I was given a microphone, asked to "speak Irish" and failed (more due to the pressure of an unexpected spotlight than a lack of vocab, but still ...) I've made a conscious effort to listen frequently to Radio na Gaeltachta, to keep my ear attuned to the rhythms and some useful words and phrases in an accessible part of my brain.

FWIW, I had two Bretons stay with me this week, and it became a running joke that they had to communicate between them in reviled French and English because they guy from North Brittany couldn't understand the guy from South Brittany when they spoke Breton - a language that suffered exactly the same fate as Irish at the hands of the colonial powers.

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

Damn its proving hard to find native spanish speakers in dublin.:mad:

Nice czech tho.

It was the only language I learnt without being taught. (other than Irish or English) while the the grammar, vocab is vastly different to my other languages the fact that I speak Irish was a huge advantage in terms of pronouncing certain things. This is an advantage we are casting aside by not embracing bilingualism in Ireland.

Learning a 3rd language is vastly easier then learning a second and we have the perfect vehicle to that in a language that is in a separate group to the Germanic languages.

paul71 wrote: »

It was the only language I learnt without being taught. (other than Irish or English) while the the grammar, vocab is vastly different to my other languages the fact that I speak Irish was a huge advantage in terms of pronouncing certain things. This is an advantage we are casting aside by not embracing bilingualism in Ireland.

Learning a 3rd language is vastly easier then learning a second and we have the perfect vehicle to that in a language that is in a separate group to the Germanic languages.

True

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Rather like people who claim to be fluent in English?

Yes it actually happens.