Bringing Irish back into the public domain

Originally posted by magpie
1) You know **** all about me, I don't presume to make pronouncements on you, so I 'd appreciate if you gave me the same courtesy.
I haven't made any pronouncements about you, I've made pronouncements about the knowledge (or lack thereof) of history that you have displayed on this thread, and your lack of research into items about which you have commented. I have also given my thoughts as to why you have said the things you have.

]2) In the instance of the job I mentioned, Irish was not a required qualification. I had all the required qualifications in spades, inluding a relevant degree, post graduate qualifications and 8 years experience. Irish was listed as a 'in an ideal world' added extra. The person who got the job was a graduate with 2 years experience who happened to be a gaeilgoir. As was one of the interviewers. Go figure.
So your claim on the 19th that you had "...been turned down for a job on the grounds that they wanted someone with good Irish" is not entirely true. It was very possibly because they decided that the other person was more appropriate for reasons other than his/her knowledge of Irish. As someone who has been involved in interviewing potential employees for several companies, I can tell you that the number of years experience you have is almost meaningless in most jobs, it's the type of experience that matters most (at least for accountants, and I'd imagine for most other professions too).

3) My bitterness or otherwise should have no effect on your ability to debate the pros and cons of the language. Clearly what your education gained in Gaeilge it lost out in debating protocol.
You haven't debated the pros and cons of the language, you have made one erroneous claim after another, and when your errors in one claim are pointed out, you ignore that and make up another erroneous claim to post. I haven't had a debate with you yet, I've merely corrected your erroneous statements. When you have done some research, then you will be ready to debate, and I'll be happy to engage.


OK, ban me now please Mr Adams.
If you don't want to post here just don't. Why do you need to be banned?

I would also like to poin out that I am learning Irish and I hav had to type the organizations that have been listed into google so that I even know what the flippin letters stand for. I don't even know what a "republican" is.

And as for gaeilgeoirí speaking english, which apperently not all do, which as well I have just learned here, ask any psycholinguist, any foreigner even, a speaker who is not native will never have the same ability as native speaker. My Irish teacher is not a native speaker of Irish, her household didn't speak a word of it; yet she went to Gaelscoil everyday and was out of contact with the laguage academically and so even from this her English suffers. Now just because a native speaker of Irish can technically speak English, that will not empower them for a court defense in a language that is not natively theirs. Numerous people in Germany know English. Do you think they would rather talk to a police officer or a jury in English? In England they would be forced to, but why would they need to in Germany?

And one thing that has been bothering me a log time now: stop comparing the number of gaeilgeoirí to the number of Chinese speakers. China has 1.4 billion people in it, there are almost more non-native speakers of Chinese than native speakers of English or German. Ireland has only 4 million people (Which is only 4 times the size of the city I live in) so 100,000 people is one helluva lot. Whether or not a language is Endangered has nothing to do with the number of people speaking it and everything to do with the change in this number. As was pointed out, Ísland has only about 250,000 people who speak their language, but it would be very difficult for me to belive that it's going to die out, just because less people speak Icelandic than French.

even more then;)