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The role and usefulness of Irish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 162 27 March 2010 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh I just realised that it seems that all Irish people are learning Irish in school... I didn't know you did that and I have never heard an Irish person actually speak Irish.
How well do you speak it and when do you use it? Do you think it's good or bad to study it? Would you like Irish to make a comeback as the first language on Ireland? How common is it for people to be better at Irish than English? /ps - people who say that English can't knock out local languages in Europe.. consider this example!/ Edited by Fasulye on 16 June 2010 at 8:06pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 2 of 162 27 March 2010 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | ||
One obvious difference from most European countries is that Ireland was under English/British rule. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5444 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 162 27 March 2010 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm eighteen and have been studying Irish since the mid nineties, but am still quite bad at it, unfortunately. I mainly
focus on German, as I feel I will have far more use for it when I'm older. Mainly I just see Irish as a subject to help me get to college. A lot of people in my school wonder why we have to learn Irish and not, say, Mandarin. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 162 27 March 2010 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Brian - because even though Mandarin is nice and I really like it, Irish is part of your own cultural heritage. It should be way easier for you to integrate Irish back into daily life, to have bilingual education in Irish/English from preschool on, than to do that with Mandarin. I am not aiming at cultural identity, but well-done bilingual education from an early age on leads, on average, to a higher linguistic ability and therefor should both facilitate the native language/s and foreign languages that are taken on later. Learning Irish from pre-school on might actually be the best thing you can do to learn Mandarin later short of learning it from pre-school on (for which Ireland obviously lacks the infrastructure, cultural background etc.) Edited by Bao on 27 March 2010 at 2:54pm 14 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 162 27 March 2010 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is impossible to guess which will be the most "useful" language for any child. Most people don't even know what they want to do until long after they leave school.
Even if you're never going to use it, Irish is a good language for schooling because it is different from English in a lot of ways, and because there are plenty of native speakers to teach (even if many teachers aren't native), and because it gives a single focus for material (kids books etc) which would be needed in the Gaeltacht areas anyway. The educational advantage is well known. Amazon moved into Ireland because Irish people are better at learning languages than most English speakers, thanks to their early experiences of school Irish. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| boon Diglot Groupie Ireland Joined 6159 days ago 91 posts - 177 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin | Message 6 of 162 27 March 2010 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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How well do you speak it and when do you use it?
Very badly. Hardly ever. I suppose if I tried I could be at an intermediate level very quickly. Do you think it's good or bad to study it? Obviously I think it's good to study it. It's taught very badly in schools. Children are taught from the age of five, but we're still rubbish at it. I think it would be better to learn Esperanto for a few years, then Irish. Would you like Irish to make a comeback as the first language on Ireland? I wouldn't like it to replace English but it would be nice to be able to speak it. How common is it for people to be better at Irish than English? Very uncommon. There are a few Irish-speaking areas, mostly in the west of the country. 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 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 7 of 162 27 March 2010 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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It always strikes me as sad when people don't want to speak or learn about their own language and cultural heritage. So very sad.
I've often spoken at length about this subject with good Ukrainian friends of mine, as well as people from other countries. They tell me that the Ukrainian language was heavily oppressed in the Soviet Union. Children studied Ukrainian at school, but no-one really spoke it or saw much use for it. Now I'm happy to say there's a big revival, and most of the country is proud to speak Ukrainian once again. One of these friends from eastern Ukraine actually speaks Russian with her parents and lives in England, but still makes the effort to raise her two children in Ukrainian as well. This is not so uncommon these days. Although her native language is Russian, she really tries to support her country and language because she feels a strong sense of Ukrainian identity, and wishes to celebrate and promote her culture and to pass this down to her children too. Returning to Celtic languages, I've heard many similar stories from Welsh and Scottish friends, all of whom are very proud of their national identity and language(s), and certainly don't wish British rule over the past centuries to vanquish the most significant aspect of their culture from the world forever without trace. I think Wales is a good model to follow, just take a quick glimpse at the stats for Welsh for example, the number of people able to speak Welsh continues to rise with whole new generations of children being raised in both Welsh and English: "The 2004 Welsh Language Use Survey shows 21.7% of the population of Wales are Welsh speakers. This is an increase from 20.5% in the 2001 census, and from 18.5% in 1991." [source: Welsh language, Wikipedia] Now compare this to Irish where only 3% use it mainly at home, and how the Gaeltact (i.e. Irish speaking regions) has ironically dwinlded away to almost nothing since the founding of the first Irish Free State in 1922 when Irish, after centuries of oppression (even though it had long previously been the main vernacular language), was finally and rightly restored as the national language of Ireland. "Irish is the main community and household language of 3% of the Republic's population (which was estimated at 4,422,100 in 2008)." [source: Irish language, Wikipedia] 
Gaeltacht in Ireland, Irish dominant as community language, 1926 
Gaeltacht in Ireland, Irish dominant as community language, 1956 
Gaeltacht in Ireland, Irish dominant as community language, 2007 So come on lads and lasses, Irish is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland (as ratified in Article 8, Section 1 of the Constitution of Ireland), as well as an officially recognised language of the European Union since 2007. It's a beautiful and amazingly rich poetic language, reaching soulfully along with music, dance and crafts all the way down to the very roots of the Irish people and their traditions, an incredible colourful heritage spanning over 2000 years. Don't give up on it all now in favour of quick-fix media moguls and pressure from English speaking economies; this is a time for the Celtic Tiger to draw upon its own rise in economic strength and resources in recent years and celebrate being truly "Irish". So many of our relatives perished in the long struggle against British occupation, with the hope and dream of one day establishing a Free Ireland with free Irish speaking people. What would they say now if they read or heard comments about replacing Irish with Mandarin in schools? I think they would feel very sad too. Let's not forget that Douglas Hyde, the first President of Ireland (1938-1945), was the founder of Conradh na Gaeilge (i.e. the "Gaelic League"), which is the main organisation that promotes the Irish language in Ireland and abroad. He and most of those who drew up the original Proclamation of Independence for the Republic of Ireland, who incidentally were fully fledged members of Conradh na Gaeilge too, fought for the right to express pride and identity in their beautiful native language. We've come so far, such a long way in fact, and have something here we can be really proud of. Let's cherish it; let's not sell out. Edited by Teango on 27 March 2010 at 6:03pm 30 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 162 27 March 2010 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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What good timing for this topic! I only recently became aware of the huge treasury of early literature in Old and Middle Irish, mostly pagan stories which were written down in the early Christian era (starting around the 7th c CE). Irish has the third oldest European literature, after Greek and Latin, it seems. I also ordered what seems like a great manual for Old Irish, by Stifter. It looks like there are plenty of texts in both Irish and English translation on-line, plus an active learners forum. I don't know when I'll get to all of this, but it looks promising.
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