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The role and usefulness of Irish

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
162 messages over 21 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 10 ... 20 21 Next >>
ummagumma
Senior Member
IrelandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5260 days ago

217 posts - 241 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German

 
 Message 73 of 162
15 February 2011 at 10:15am | IP Logged 
God damn ye. I'm now Psyched.

I'm Irish and couldn't string a sentence together in irish if my life depended on it!
Always toyed with the idea of picking up irish again. This thread and the recent resource
recommendations have now inspiring me to pick it up after terrible experiences (not)
learning irish at school.

Thanks to all the above posts for re-iginiting the fire!

Edited by ummagumma on 15 February 2011 at 11:53am

6 persons have voted this message useful



Khublei
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Yugoslavia
homestayperu.net
Joined 5351 days ago

90 posts - 141 votes 
Speaks: English*, Irish*, Spanish
Studies: Russian, Khasi, French, Albanian

 
 Message 74 of 162
21 March 2011 at 8:31pm | IP Logged 
Teango wrote:

Khublei wrote:
I'm a writer (blogger really) who writes in English and Irish.

How wonderful, I'd love to be able to do something like this one day. Do you have a link to your blogsite?


My English blog is www.tuisligh.com and my Irish one is www.tuislighbeag.tumblr.com. I don't have much on the
Irish one, but I will definitely write more soon. If it helps I can put the English version, but I put it through Google
translate, and even though the English is terrible, you can definitely understand what I'm saying.
I also have an Irish Twitter account: @GaelChlar so you can get regular little bits of Irish on that and you can try
reply to me in Irish.



Edited by Khublei on 21 March 2011 at 8:32pm

3 persons have voted this message useful



Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5560 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 75 of 162
23 March 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged 
@Khublei
Thanks for the links - very interesting projects! I particularly liked your swimming pool in Kosovo (all I've got here is a dried-up duck pond), and I really hope things pick up soon with the translation work so you can fulfil your dream of living on the seven seas. ;)

Edited by Teango on 23 March 2011 at 3:31pm

1 person has voted this message useful



ilcommunication
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6696 days ago

115 posts - 162 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin

 
 Message 76 of 162
24 March 2011 at 1:23pm | IP Logged 
My only experience with Irish was meeting a couple of Irish students while in Berlin...they said they went to a special private school ("private" in the American sense of the term) that was entirely in Irish, and so naturally they were fluent. They also said competition to get into those schools was very fierce, as those schools had a reputation for giving an excellent education overall. And yes, they used it as a secret code. It's an incredibly beautiful language, and meeting those two fluent speakers gave me hope for its future.

This is very much off the cuff, but along the lines of previous points about exposure, why doesn't Ireland institute more aggressive Irish education? Why not start teaching Irish history classes in Irish (or have part of the curriculum in Irish)? Why not have a wide program in which students can live with an Irish-speaking family in the remaining Irish-speaking regions of the country for a few months (basically like an exchange or study abroad program within the country itself)?
3 persons have voted this message useful



Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5060 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 77 of 162
25 March 2011 at 9:02am | IP Logged 
Are teachers in Irish schools native Irish speakers? I'm interested in pronunciation.
I've heard several native English speakers speaking Irish. It was awful:none of them
pronuonced broad and slender consonants correctly.
1 person has voted this message useful



tombombadil
Pro Member
Germany
Joined 5071 days ago

1 posts - 4 votes

 
 Message 78 of 162
30 March 2011 at 11:09am | IP Logged 
I think its interesting when people outside of Ireland comment that it is a pity that
Irish people don't speak Irish on the basis that it is part of our culture.

While the sentiment is nice, as an Irish person I have to say that Irish has very little
to do with my culture. Instead my culture is very much based on English and the
surrounding literature, movies etc. Therefore, for me learning Irish was like learning
Latin or ancient Greek and not so much about learning about my own culture. After all,
the great Irish writers wrote almost exclusively in English.

However, there are quite a few militant Irish speakers out there who have used the
language for more nationalistic ends..
4 persons have voted this message useful



Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 6015 days ago

4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 79 of 162
30 March 2011 at 3:57pm | IP Logged 
tombombadil wrote:
While the sentiment is nice, as an Irish person I have to say that Irish has very little to do with my culture.
...
However, there are quite a few militant Irish speakers out there who have used the
language for more nationalistic ends..

I would suggest that these two sentences are more closely linked than you'd think.

Militant minorities tend to have a bad habit of turning people off from a language, by association of the language with the militant culture.

In Scotland, many people see Gaelic as a middle-class hobby, part of that whole "Celtic twilight" romanticism. Yup, there's a lot of people like that. But this ignores that the majority of speakers are native speakers who speak it not out of any political motivations, but simply because... they speak it.

It's pretty much the same with Irish. Or Catalan. Or Corsican. To most people it is not a political statement, and politicisation (however well meaning) actually does harm.
4 persons have voted this message useful



Emily232
Newbie
Ireland
Joined 5055 days ago

19 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish

 
 Message 80 of 162
31 March 2011 at 1:37pm | IP Logged 
ilcommunication wrote:
Why not have a wide program in which students can live with an Irish-speaking family in the remaining Irish-speaking regions of the country for a few months (basically like an exchange or study abroad program within the country itself)?


These exist and summer camps in Gaeltacht areas are quiet popular and very successful in improving the students language. I worked in one before and witnessed kids who struggeled to say anything in Irish at the start of the month communicate with ease (not perfectly but able to express themselves) by the end. It's the total immersion that forces you to learn in that environment, if you are caught speaking English you get sent home- without a refund!





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