Crap. Total crap. If Irish were to die, Eilis would be without a name for a start.

EU official and working status for Irish, the Official Languages Act etc is the 26 county state trying to balance the books for Irish so that people who want to avail of services as Gaeilge can do so. Admitted it's belated - but it's not too late as there are increasing numbers of people speaking Irish, learning Irish, using it in their daily lives as a matter of choice, not just because they happen to live in a Gaeltacht or not.

It's amazing that the likes of Eilis get worked up about €3.5m being spent on translating some documents into Irish when the Taoiseach last year admitted that most if not all of the documents produced by the EU in English and the other official languages don't get read by anybody. This is at a cost of a staggering €800m per year. No hulabaloo about that but plenty of ructions when a measly €3.5m (0.375%) is spent on Irish. That's the real indicator as to why the Irish language is under fire from the likes of Eilis O'Hanlon, a writer who decried the translation of Harry Potter into Irish. Perhaps she'd be less vindictive about Irish if her fantasy about a lesbian detective in Dublin was translated into the native tongue?

My own feeling is that this latest attack on Irish from various quarters, all too predictable attack, is a case of the tendency towards "Newspeak" and "Big Brotherism" in Ireland. If Irish no longer exists as a language, then the thought of an independent Ireland becomes unthinkable....

So because nobody bothers with the English versions that's more of a reason to spend money translating them into languages almost nobody is fluent in?

Gotta love the Irish logic.

So because nobody bothers with the English versions that's more of a reason to spend money translating them into languages almost nobody is fluent in?

Gotta love the Irish logic.

The point I made is that there's no outcry about the vast mountain of unread documents in English and other languages (except Gaeilge) until there's a proposal to translate a miniscule portion (0.375%) stuff into Irish.

Why isn't there an investigation into the massive waste of money on public documents in English and other languages - it's admitted nobody reads them?

The problem is to do with the way in which the government communicates with the public and nothing to do Irish. In fact it could be argued that the vast bureaurcratic morass has been created by too much English being forced down the throats of people by the state than anything else.

Those like Beano, confirmed anti Irish language bigots, will use any opportunity to attack the language. This time their bigotry is exposed.

>

"Those like Beano, confirmed anti Irish language bigots, will use any opportunity to attack the language. This time their bigotry is exposed."

Ball...?

Anyway, in actuality I totally agree with you, there is far too much bureacracy in the EU - the whole thing's a farce. But to back the idea that you should make a bad situation worse in the interests of petty nationalist pride really is disgraceful.

Also, 3.5/800 = 0.44% (nitpicking I know, but...) still disproportionate to the 0.03% of the population fluent in the respective languages.

This article and the Mal Rogers article in DI on Friday are just sad, vitriolic hate articles. Why on Earth does Irish inspire such diatribes? I'll never understand.

I wonder where Éilis gets the authority to use 'we' all through the article too?

These arguments often remind me of what happened to me once in a black taxi on the Falls. I was speaking Irish to a friend of mine and a grieviously insulteed oul' doll turned round and told us we were extremely rude for speaking Irish, because no-one else in the taxi could understand. As it happened, the driver and the passenger in the front were both Irish-speakers too, but the fact is that she hated it simply because she couldn't understand.

The fool Rogers decided that if we had kept Irish as our national tongue over English we would have no Yeats, Joyce, O'Casey etc etc. What a load of bloody nonsense.

Maybe spendng money on translations into Irish is a waste of money. I happen to think that the vast majority of bureaucracy is a waste of money, but the venomous attacks on the language (people, it's just a language, not a w.m.d.) just sadden me deeply.

The only vitriol being poured here is by Baluba and Oilbhear.

I can't ban the word bigot (much as it might encourage some commenters to think a bit more before they actually hit the comment button). But when it is used against other commenters (or any other individual) like this, it can't be read as anything other than a determination to get the (wo)man rather than play the ball.

You're both valued players here guys, but I'm forced to give you both yellow cards!!

Now play on and play clean!!

I must object to that Mick. I've never labelled anyone a bigot on here (although I suspect there are a few on both 'sides'). I think that it's clear in my post that I was attacking what was said and the general attitude of anti-Irish language. I never played the (wo)man. If anyone feels I've come in with a late tackle a la Donegal/Armagh at the weekend, my apologies.

I don't imagine too many people would describe my posts as vitriolic, but I suppose you do and you're entitled to your opinion.

While I understand how decades of shoving Irish down people's throats by the Christain Brothers and a stifling Irish Free State has vitiated enthusiasm for Gaelic, it is actually enjoying something of a mini-revival over the past decade.

Language users are growing and, after all, what's wrong with people learning and promoting a language.

If unionists are so concerned at this perceived waste of money, why not look closer to home. The NI economy is subsidised by a populace (that of England, Scotalnd, Wales) who, in poll after poll, have unambiguously expressed their desire to have nothing more to do with Northern Ireland. These people should not have to subsidise hangers-on with whom they have no affinity and unionists should now have to stand on their own feet, follow the example of the Republic and build a dynamic economy of their own. There is too much sympathy afforded to lethargic and inefficient unionists. A bit of southern efficiency might sort you out.

Maybe not vitriol, but calling Mal Rogers a fool is bsides they point you were trying make. [Skips over Donegal Armagh reference, as he nurses bruised ambitions for this year's Ulster Final].

I make no apology for labelling people bigots who, in my opinion, express a point of view which is bigoted or based on bigotry. Every time the Irish language comes up for discussion here, umpteen commenters come on with postings which are laced with vitriol against the language and those who speak it. The article referred to above - Eilis Ó Hanlon['s -was a case in point.
The headline gave the game away: "Let's be honest: if the Irish language died we wouldn't give a damn".

Who the hell is 'we' in this case. The royal we. 1.7m on the island of Ireland say they speak some level of Irish - that's one in three of the population. That's a sizable minority being wished away by O'Hanlon.

The blogs in recent times on Slugger have been deliberately loaded against Irish . O'Hanlon's piece was described as following into the 'harsh but true' catergory by Mick while Pete's "No one cares the EU's paying" was similarly biased.

I appreciate the occasional token blog as Gaeilge here but I find it impossible to have a reasonable discussion about Irish language matters without it being hijacked by posters whose bigotry is plain to be seen.

This latest so-called yellow card is an insult. But being an Irish speaker that's the kind of attitude and treatment I expect from the English 'regime'.

"If Irish no longer exists as a language, then the thought of an independent Ireland becomes unthinkable...."

I fail to see the link.

Fair play Oilbhéar! Stick it to the ref!

I think you are absolutely correct to point out the tendentious framing of both pieces on Slugger re Irish this week, and Mick's unfortunate and ill-advised "yellow card".

It is silly to suggest that one cannot use the word bigot in reference to those who are so utterly and bizarrely opposed to an ancient language, who regularly and wishfully trumpet its demise ("harsh but true" - biased and bigoted) and who seem to feel that this language is somehow the quintessence of backwardness, atavism and decline.

How utterly intellectually reduntant, how ridiculously prejudiced and yes, how bigoted.

Maith thú Oilbhéar! Ní thuigeann an bó ach an bata.

It's a reference to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, a book which spoke about a language - Newspeak - which was concocted with the sole purpose of eliminating all forms of though which would challenge the status quo.

I see the same type of process happening with irish and the most challenging thing to the status quo in Ireland today is the prospect of a United Ireland.

Now, do you see....?

".. while Pete's "No one cares the EU's paying" was similarly biased."

*rolls eyes*

Just to clarify, I haven't a problem with the word. Just the way it gets used as a shorthand. And it is rarely accompanied by any form of working out.

Re the crits of Slugger, well fire away! Having had the previlige of having the first word, I'd rather let readers have the last word on it.

Fair enough Mick. Sorry Mal, you're not a fool, but I think your article may well have been tinged with foolishness.

I thought I'd been Francie Bellew'd there for a sec Mick. Ha! Ha!

Yes but how is this related to the language? Just because the Irish language is dying, it also means that the Irish nation is dying?

Sounds like a nonsense to me. A tad melodramatic.

I do not know any Irish people that define themselves by the language. On a list of things that make them feel Irish or that forms part of their identity I would doubt the Irish language would even make the top ten.

Anyway, the article...

There might be one or two truths in the article, but unfortatly she wrapped it up in a load of the usual bull... where to start:

"nobody really cares" quite many of us do actually.

"It would be right up there with better nutritional labelling on supermarket food, more cycle ways, iodine tablets for all in case of nuclear emergency, universal peace and an end to world hunger"

Well I wouldn't say it's as important as universal peace or world hunger, but I do think it's more important than iodine tablets or nutritional labelling.

"But deep down, we don't really give a monkey's about Irish"

What's this "we" business paleface? Don't attempt to speak for anyone but yourself.

"If we really cared about Irish, then we'd do something about it. Like speak it"

A fair point. But aren't more people speaking it now that in quite some time? Has she missed the growth in Gaeilscoileanna over the past few years, for example?

"Most obviously, it's children who pay the price"

And what price are children paying? Has she spoken with any kids in the gaeilscoileanna? Does she know how proud they are to have two languages?

"It just looks like another masterful exercise in prising more jobs for the boys for the small band of Irish language junkies who don't seem to have got over the defeat of Brian Boru yet"

Says it all! I couldn't be arsed with the rest. Junk.

If she had some serious critique and presented then fairly i'd be more than willing to listen.

unfortatly = unfortunatly, typo

Bigot: One who is intolerant of views contradictory to their own.

My view is that excessive expenditure on a language spoken by a handful of people on the western fringe of the EU is a waste.

Perhaps rather than branding anyone who disagrees with you a bigot, you could tolerate their view and point out any flaws in the logic of their argument.

JKelly "It is silly to suggest that one cannot use the word bigot in reference to those who are so utterly and bizarrely opposed to an ancient language"

The point is it wasn't used in reference to such people. I have no problem with the Irish language as an element of the culture and heritage of this island. In fact I think most of us would do well to know a bit more about it. What I have a problem with its abuse by politicians and wasteful expenditure on its promotion as a 'working' language, and this is before we get into cynical manipulation of the language by certain sections of the community in Northern Ireland.

J Kelly- you owe me 20 quid to charity for your spectacularly incorrect prediction that SF would take all the SDLP's three seats in the election.

http://www.sluggerotoole.com/archives/2005/01/sinn_feins_diff.php

You can write a cheque made out to my chosen charity to avoid any prospect of me 'pocketing' it for myself

Just something that should be noted about kid's "paying the price" of Gaescoileanna and Eilis O'Hanlon's lack of pedagogical sophistication.

Because their brains become attuned at an early stage to the grammatical variations of two different languages, kids in Gaelsoileanna are actually proven to pick up other languages with greater ease in their teenage years. This means that, contrary to the inferences of insularity and parochialism that are regularly heaped upon the Irish language, these kids actually have a greater propensity for becoming more well-rounded and cosmopolitan in their learning.

Most Gaelscoileanna and Meán Scoileanna Lán-Gaeilge have high third-level attainment rates and a strong track record in instilling identity and a sense of cultural awareness that is open and embracing.

If there was a list of issues we considered important, the status of the Irish language in Brussels might be one of the boxes we ticked - assuming, that is, we were allowed to tick as many as we liked.

It there was an entry on the list that read 'spare us reproachful and reactionary Sunday paper opinion pieces that claim to know how we all think', I'm sure we'd tick that one too.

Beano - point taken.

El Matador, ah now, how did you remember that.

Very good (not so-)Slackjaw.

I haven't read much about this Eilis O'Hanlon person, but just from reading her style- the cynicism, the metaphorical arm around the silent majority, the jibes at liberal elites and progressive icons(like bike tracks)- I can sniff a hint of the neo-con op-ed head kicker. Just a guess, and I might be reading her wrongly.

This looked like a reasonable debate on the merits or otherwise of a community, (the EU in this case), collectively spending a small amount of money to satisfy the cultural demands of a tiny section of that community, (Irish speakers and those who would like to try to be). There must be hundreds of thousands of similar expenditures in the EU. The Common Agricultural policy is a similar issue on a much grander scale.

Unfortunately, and perhaps inevitably, the opportunity to have a go at the "old enemy" couldn't be resisted. JKelly started by bringing the Unionists into it.

"If unionists are so concerned at this perceived waste of money, why not look closer to home". "There is too much sympathy afforded to lethargic and inefficient unionists".

Nobody had mentioned unionists, nationalists, republicans, loyalists or any other of our popular lables up to this point.

Oilbhéar Chromaill followed up with a reference to "the English regime". To be fair, he may have been referring to an English Language movement.

It may be that those objecting to the expenditure are Unionists and that is colouring their objections to the expenditure. However they did not suggest that. The viewpoint put forward appears to me to a valid position based on "value for money". Turning this around to have a pop at Unionists devalues the debate and implys ownership of the language by one section of the community alone.

As a Unionist, I fully support promotion of the Irish language for those who wish to learn it. I believe it belongs to anyone who wants to learn it and should not be part of the constitutional debate. It saddens me that my community are too quick to surrender much of what is our culture too, just because Republicanism trumpet it. I do however suspect that Republicanism is quite happy to encourage this and use this and other similar issues as a political weapon.

It's a pity for everybody.

Mick

Well, as Mr McEniff would say, at least you're an Ulster ref refereeing an Ulster match!!

DK

That latter point is a very strong one.

My concern is twofold: a) that such movements towards making a language 'official' (in whatever way) are turned into straight black/white (or orange/green) political debates by all sides; and b) that time and resources might be better spent on promoting the spoken language in social contexts at home, rather than on political contexts abroad in which few people are really interested.

A lot of languages have collapsed because those seeking to preserve them have overplayed the political card and placed the technicality of status ahead of the reality of usage. I regret to say both Irish and Ulster Scots may well already be too far down that track.

JKelly

Because their brains become attuned at an early stage to the grammatical variations of two different languages, kids in Gaelsoileanna are actually proven to pick up other languages with greater ease in their teenage years.

I suspect this is true, but it could be said about any language. It's a good argument why languages should be taught from an early age. I doubt that kids who learn Irish are more able to pick up other languages than kids who do German, French or Japanese.

Oilbhéar Chromaill

Maybe the numbers of Irish speakers are on the rise, but there are fewer young people taking Irish exams these days, if an article I read the other day was accurate.

But being an Irish speaker that's the kind of attitude and treatment I expect from the English 'regime'.

You do realise that Mick is Irish and a fluent speaker, don't you? Still, you made me laugh, and that's what counts.

Excellent points IJP and that's entirely the issue.

No one has explained to me at all how this euro official status actually produces more speakers in Ireland? Realistically even if Irish was the day to day language of 90% of Ireland, it would still be unimportant to the bulk of Europeans who would be no more likely to learn it than I would be to learn Lithuanian. Thus promotion has to start at home.

Unfortunately arguments like this always seem to come down to emotionalist heart versus head stuff. Yes it would be great if Irish was spoken as a first language by the same number of people as languages like Estonian or Hungarian which are in the same boat with regards to another more dominant neighboring language.

However the "heart" solution of giving it equal status with those languanges and squandering money which could be better spent on promotion at home is not the way.

How about:-
- Making the Gaeltacht areas economically viable for people to remain (perhaps even creating a new town there)

- training teachers to give them the ability to pass on the language in a fun way (rather than the staid parrot fashion that I had to put up with back in the 80s)

- promoting culture+arts + literature

- ensuring that public employees actually speak the language (rather than just have a paper qualification) + encouraging its use at work?

All those are practical solutions rather than the tokenistic nonsense that making it an official language is. Sadly the biggest enemies of Irish are often those who advocate it but can't see that their solutions are actually counter-productive. They are too busy worrying about subtle political status distinctions and using the language to fight age old political battles than actually increasing its usage!

"You do realise that Mick is Irish and a fluent speaker, don't you? Still, you made me laugh, and that's what counts."
Gonzo that was a bit harsh - you just ruined a perfectly good mope.

I didn't think his description of Eilis O'Hanlon's execrable article was fair - describing it as 'harsh but true' gave it an undeserved credibility. What part of Eilis O'Hanlon's article was true ?

Gonzo
"but it could be said about any language."

Certainly. But Irish is the only language apart from English that you can learn from the age of 6 in Ireland. It's also the only language, apart from English, which you can learn through.

"It's a good argument why languages should be taught from an early age."

And Irish is in a perfect position. The resources are already pretty much there.

"but there are fewer young people taking Irish exams these days, if an article I read the other day was accurate."

No. Fewer kids are taking higher level, more are dropping to lower level.

O'Hanlon's writing is of a very poor standard.

however much noise a small handful of our most vocal citizens may have made in recent months about European Union recognition of Irish, nobody really cares.

Nobody? Or nobody she knows? Clearly somebody cares because this decision was a result of hard work by campaiginers.

Oh, we say we do. If there was a list of issues we considered important, the status of the Irish language in Brussels might be one of the boxes we ticked - assuming, that is, we were allowed to tick as many as we liked.

People say they want it but she looks into her own heart and realises that they don't really.

Mick when you ask people to build a case against her arguments I think it's fair to point out that there isn't actually an argument made. It's more a spluttering of bias in the tabloid style.

It would be right up there with better nutritional labelling on supermarket food, more cycle ways, iodine tablets for all in case of nuclear emergency, universal peace and an end to world hunger, on the infinite wish list of things which it would be quite nice to have.

So people do want it.

But deep down, we don't really give a monkey's about Irish.

She cares enough to attack it. It is a conceit to assume that everybody shares her agenda. But then that is the Sindo style.

We only pretend to because it's one of the things that educated and sophisticated Irish people are now supposed to believe, and because, well, believing in the spiritually-enhancing properties of the Irish language has become a habit we're much too intellectually lazy to breakout of.

So it's not the Irish people she is claiming to speak for at all but the educated and sophisticated who she must believe are suffering from false consciousness!

That is funny.

You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling? And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed? Pure West Virginia. What's your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamb? You know how quickly the boys found you... all those tedious sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars... while you could only dream of getting out... getting anywhere... getting all the way to the Sunday Independent

Whilst many of us with a passion for the langauge are happy enough to see the language gain EU status, it's the status and confidence of speakers themselves that will decide the fate of the language. To some extent it will be their ability to proselytise and promote the multiple benefits of billigualism, as articulated by J Kelly earlier in this thread that will save it for future generations.

There remains a concern that the meagre resources available for the promotion/continuance of the langauge should be seen to be used in the best way to effect a continued revival (mostly in the Galltacht), arresting its decline (mostly in the Gaeltacht), and above all encouraging its use by people who have up till now remained unengaged.

A nightmare scenario could be that the language dies out in fifty years with little to remember it but shedloads of documents of policies and directives that few will read in any language.

Mick

I'd suggest that's also a point that was highlighted in the statement from Fine Gael in the previous post on this topic - "Not to worry.. the EU's paying.."

"regardless of its status at EU level, preserving the language has to begin at home."

Very fair points Mick.
The issue, for me personally, has always simply been one of respect, putting Irish on an equal level with other European languages, it's not a solution to Irish's problems. At the end of the day if people don't speak it, it won't survive.

Maca I see exactly where you're coming from but this comes back to the point that respect is something that has to be earned - it can't simply be conferred on someone or something by the whim of a public body.

One reason that Irish has not had the "respect" that you speak of is due to the relatively meagre number of speakers. Numerous Europeans think that the language is a dialect of English for example. (Would be good if that could be changed by the official status!)

So first off you spend the resources promoting the language at home then you can go on later to call for official status with a MUCH stronger case than before. Otherwise it's like trying to teach someone to run before they can walk.

Personally I think the official European status is a side issue anyway. It will not lead to more people learning the language and Europeans aren't going to learn it anyway because of it's geographically peripheral status. (Think Estonian, Latvian, Romanian etc for similar examples...)

Mick, isn't this the point? Irish has not been promoted by its own government and has been allowed to dwindle. Sadly in this globalist era I think it might be beyond salvation. Only drastic measures can save it now and while the politicians have paid lip service to it, few of them seem willing to invest the time and resources to do what's necessary.

Any language which is relying on a Government to keep it going is on very thin ice. All it takes is a change of government to one that couldn't care less, or worse, is actively hostile and a language can become endangered within a generation. Spain's regional languages survived through the most rigorous persecution because enough people cared about them and found them useful as a cultural medium. Not because the government pumped money into them.

Henry94, she isn't the only one who claims the oracle like status of speaking for people. To give you an example which I'm sure you're familiar with, about a decade ago the local shinners decided that there was a huge demand in the New Lodge area to rename the 7 Tower blocks. No public consultation took place at all, but hey who cares, they can pat themselves on the back that they got a few street signs up. No matter that many of the local community still use the original names or that the younger generation use the bastardised "---- House" instead of "Teach ----." Why bother with practical measures when you can dupe yourself with a bit of pointless tokenism eh?

Valenciano

To give you an example which I'm sure you're familiar with, about a decade ago the local shinners decided that there was a huge demand in the New Lodge area to rename the 7 Tower blocks

New Lodge? 10 years ago? Why would I be familiar with that? But for the sake of consistency I would agree that if Ellis O'Hanlon shouldn't speak for the Irish people without a mandate then nobody should speak for New Lodge without a mandate either.

So who represents the area?

Valenciano
"respect is something that has to be earned..."
"One reason that Irish has not had the "respect" that you speak of is due to the relatively meagre number of speakers."

I'm not sure I agree there. I think numbers of speakers has little to do with it. And why does Irish have to earn respect? How have other languages earned it?
I think Irish deserves respect because of what it is, our national language, one of the (if not THE) most important parts of our culture, not to mention being one of the oldest written languages in Europe and having a rich literary history dating back many many centuries.

Anyway, off to my leaba (bed)

Numerous Europeans think that the language is a dialect of English for example.

I have never met anyone, let alone European that laboured under the misapprehension that Gaelic is an english dialect. Where did you find these people?

The way people are ranting and raving on slugger you'd think they were being made to proofread every document the EU translates into gaelic.

Will the hip new generation be speaking Ga3L1X?

slugger@keogh
Most Europeans I have met think "Irish" is like English (I believe that's what Val meant). But if you say "Irish Gaelic" then they know what you mean.

Eilis doesn't back up a single claim made in that article with facts. Who needs facts when supplying copy to the Sunday Independent, I would nearly be tempted to ask.

For example, how does she explain the increase in the number of Gaelscoileanna and the waiting lists for them?

How does she explain that Irish speaker numbers in the Gaeltacht remained stable between 1996 and 2002 for the first time in the history of the Irish state?

"We only pretend to because it's one of the things that educated and sophisticated Irish people are now supposed to believe."

I think this is the crux. Eilis has looked on in horror as in the last ten years Irish actually has become quite trendy - by Irish standards.

Maybe the vitriol comes from the fact that she would hate to think that her lack of grá for Irish means she isn't considered educated or sophisticated in these new circles.

Nothing worse than sitting down to an upper-middle class dinner to find that that some of that peasant vocab you jettisoned within a fortnight of leaving school is required.

Or maybe she's less than gruntled at the thought of her children not being even able to get into a Gaelscoil because mummy wouldn't pass the oral interview.
(Rant beag)

"It's amazing that the likes of Eilis get worked up about €3.5m being spent on translating some documents into Irish when the Taoiseach last year admitted that most if not all of the documents produced by the EU in English and the other official languages don't get read by anybody. This is at a cost of a staggering €800m per year"

Alot of people over the last week are talking about this 3.5 million a year, as far as I was aware this is a fee that every country in the EU will have to pay, a fee we would be paying even if the Irish language wasn't included as an official language.

I got this from the Conradh na Gaeilge website www.cnag.ie and what they are saying is true. "Íocfadh ciste aistriúcháin an AE (a chosnaíonn €3 an duine faoi láthair) as an gcúram agus íocann Éire isteach sa chiste sin pé scéal é."

This translates more or less to "The EU translation budget (which costs €3 per person at the moment) will pay for this responsibility, and Ireland pays for this service anyway".

Here are some other points that Conradh na Gaeilge mention about how this will be beneficial to speakers of the Irish language.

1. Eiseofar dlíthe an Aontais Eorpaigh i nGaeilge. Ní foláir reachtaíocht na hÉireann a chur amach i nGaeilge agus i mBéarla. Tagann 75% den dlí againne ón Eorap; anois tiocfaidh sé chugainn sa dá theanga oifigiúla againn.
2. Bíonn postanna in institiúidí an AE oscailte do shaoránaigh an Aontais a bhfuil 2 cheann (nó níos mó) de theangacha oifigiúla an AE acu. Is acmhainn anois í an Ghaeilge ar mhargadh fostaíochta na hEorpa.
3. Beidh cead Gaeilge a labhairt i bParlaimint na hEorpa.
4. Fostóidh an tAontas aistreoirí breise agus teangairí breise agus beidh deiseanna fostaíochta ann dá réir do Éireannaigh.
5. Íocfadh ciste aistriúcháin an AE (a chosnaíonn €3 an duine faoi láthair) as an gcúram agus íocann Éire isteach sa chiste sin pé scéal é.

Valenciano wrote:

respect is something that has to be earned - it can't simply be conferred on someone or something by the whim of a public body.

Official status is a sign of respect, but does not of itself confer it. The respect has been earned by those who campaigned for it over the last number of years. Not to mention the MEPs over the years who spoke Irish in Parliament.

My favourite story is of Mary Banotti speaking in Irish, being told by the chair (an English Tory) to speak in "a civilised language" and continuing in French.


Official status makes that kind of cheap snub impossible, and therefore adds to respect for the language.


It must be galling for those Irish journalists in the english language who have been trumpteting for years about Irish being a dead language to find the Foreign Ministers of 25 EU states all disagreeing with them.

Referring to blogs from yesterday night:
An elderly German couple behind us at Dublin Airport, telling each other how nice their stay here was and then she was saying to him;” But isn’t it a shame that they don’t speak the same English we learned in school.”

Did anybody see the last edition of Potardown News?
"Irish has been made an official working language of the EU. ""This a great day for the SF team in Brussels", said a party spokesman yesterday. "Now Bairbre de Bruin might actually do some work.""

I have met many people who have a) never realised that a separate Irish language existed or b) thought that it was merely an English dialect (including my current housemates, from NZ, Aus and Italy). I have been delighted to put them straight.

Much of the debate on this thread misses the main point - while welcoming the decision to make Irish "official", nobody seems to be able to say how exactly this will make the language more widely spoken - the reason being, it will not.

The main argument in favour of spending €3.5m for the Irish translations (effectively "but lots of money is already wasted in the EU") is supremely perverse - but it's given me quite a few laughs..

Respect? I think you'll find that for the massive majority of EU citizens (and I mean massive, 99%+) the over-riding sentiment towards Irish is indifference, regardless of whether it is "offical-ised" or no. I would be surprised if this decision warranted more than a sentence in "other news" in only the more Europhile papers around the continent.

To pre-empt the (by now predictable) onslaught - I am not a Unionist, I do not "hate" Irish, and in fact, when I arrive at the stage where I can speak Spanish fluently, I am minded to try to find an Irish language class somewhere in London to study it - NOTE not because it is now an "official" language in the EU..

"The main argument in favour of spending €3.5m for the Irish translations (effectively "but lots of money is already wasted in the EU") is supremely perverse - but it's given me quite a few laughs.."

A Chara, this is money that we would have been spending on official languages anyway. Regardless of whether the Irish language was official or not.

"Much of the debate on this thread misses the main point - while welcoming the decision to make Irish "official", nobody seems to be able to say how exactly this will make the language more widely spoken - the reason being, it will not."

My opinion of an answer to that statement would be that there are plenty of things that this will do for the Irish language. Unfortunately over the years the Irish language has been associated occassionaly with republican and the highly educated, people are saying that only the yuppies speak Irish...which in fairness is all crap. But with Irish now being an official EU language it will mean that it will

firstly get international recognition, so no one will be able to say they thought it was a dialect of English now.

Because Irish will be more recognised it means that more people throughout the world will learn it.

Bilingual dictionaries will be made with other languages other than English, and the Irish language will no longer be confined to the island of Ireland (which is like it or not how the case seems to be at the moment)

I think this recognition will make the language so much stronger than it is now.

I work with the Irish language every day and I use it with my family and many of my friends. Recently I was working on a campaign to promote the Irish language and I was called sectarian and a bigot because I used this brilliant language... I am not political, I don't agree with sectarianism or bigotry, but some people assumed, because I spoke Irish and because I was trying to get it on par with the English language, that I was being anti English....

Lafcadio,

For information, just two examples of articles within the EU press: in Le Nouvel Observateur and in the Corrierre della Sera

"nobody seems to be able to say how exactly this will make the language more widely spoken"

Lafcadio,
nobody campaigning for Irish to be afforded this status ever claimed this step alone would make the language more widely spoken.

Recognising somebody's rights is the beginning of the process not the end.

What it will do is afford the deserved respect to Irish speakers when it comes to dealings with the European Union while also giving Irish language qualifications that hundreds of thousands of Irish people have a new found status when it comes to looking for employment within the EU.

This status is another reason (not the overriding reason but another reason) to study Irish to an advanced level.

What amazes me is that so many English speakers get so uppity about the Irish language. Even in its current perilous state it still seems to scare the bejaysus out of a lot of Irish people.

Even though the 3 million + bill is minute and would have to be paid anyway and they won't have to see an extra word of Irish in their lives because of this decision, they still can't help getting in the digs.

The money given to Irish horseracing by the government over the next five years would pay the Irish language status bill for the next 65 years.

Anti-Irish language activists should ask themselves why they can't gain a sense of perspective?

Lafcadio wrote

nobody seems to be able to say how exactly this will make the language more widely spoken - the reason being, it will not.

The main difficulty for Irish speakers is finding employment which allows them to work in Irish. Not being able to speak Irish at work means that an important part of your life is cut off from the language. Offical status means that at the very least the translators will be able to work through Irish - and that effect will spread since the documents will be available as raw material for journalists, educators etc.


It will also make it easier to get EU funds (and therefore other funds) for cultural and educational projects in Irish, which up to now had to fight on a case by case basis for funds. Like it or not, most cultural and educational projects, regardless of language, depend on state funding.

George: "The money given to Irish horseracing by the government over the next five years would pay the Irish language status bill for the next 65 years."

Aonghus: "The main difficulty for Irish speakers is finding employment which allows them to work in Irish."

And whose fault has that been? Surely that points to the direct culpability of the Irish government which has failed to promote the language? They've done nothing to try to attract investment to the Gaeltacht areas or to ensure that public sector employees use the language at work. Why should European people have to cover the Irish governments failings?

Maca, the Europeans that I have met think that Irish Gaelic is similar to English and have been shocked when I've spoken a few words of the language to them to highlight the differences. Again while it would be nice, it's wishful thinking to suppose that official status will change that. Official status has not stopped many Irish people thinking that Latvian or Hungarian are similar to Russian for example! Which again comes back to the point that, due to it's geographic position it will remain an irrelevant peripheral language to continental Europeans. The battle therefore has to take place at home and I remain uncovinced that this will lead to more people studying the language.

Thanks for responses, folks, will come back later for fuller response, a couple of quick points:

I thought the €3.5m was the extra that would be spent on Irish; if not, then what is this €3.5m spent on? In any case, having an extra translation requirement will require some extra spend, regardless of how modest it can be made to seem by means of inappropriate comparisons (eg "..but Europeans spend £10m each month on toothpaste.." etc) and my point would be that what the EU needs, particularly given its travails right now, is less ineffectual bureaucratic spending rather than more.

I fear that the problem with this decision, is that it creates the illusion of "doing something" on the behalf of the Irish govt - so that the next time they're reproached for cutting funding to an Irish college or study programme or whatever they'll go "what do you mean we don't care about Irish, we got it recognised as an official working language in the EU don't you know.."

George - will reply later, gotta run for train..

Why should European people have to cover the Irish governments failings?

An effect of European status is that it increases the pressure on the Irish Governemnt to live up to it's commitments at home. The EU has had a positive effect on getting the Irish Government to live up to prior commitments on environmental and social issues. I'd be sanguine about it having a similar effect for Irish, where the problem has been good policies on paper, but no follow through. (until Éamon Ó Cuiv became minister, with some positive steps before that, notably TG4 set up under Michael D. Higgins).


European status is important for it's effect at home, rather than abroad. The anomaly that it was the 1st offical language on paper at home, but merely a "constitutional" language in Europe, where most of our law now comes from, was damaging at home.

Val
"the Europeans that I have met think that Irish Gaelic is similar to English"

I have to say I have never experienced that. Once I add the word "Gaelic" they always understood what I meant. The problem, I have experienced, was just with the word "Irish"

"Again while it would be nice, it's wishful thinking to suppose that official status will change that."

I don't think it will change that much, I don't think people are much too bothered by it.

"The battle therefore has to take place at home and I remain uncovinced that this will lead to more people studying the language."

There I sort of agree with you. But do we really know what effect this move will have? All we can do is guess. What negative effect will it have do you think?

George - are you referring to me when you're talking about "anti-Irish activists" and the like? If so, I'm genuinely unsure of where you're getting that idea; far from "scaring the bejaysus" out of me, the thought of Irish becoming extinct during my lifetime is depressing - and exercises in pointlessness like this make that prospect no less likely.

Further to what I was saying about the supposed respect that this will confer on the language, I had a look at the short Nouvel Observateur article above, and in the space of three paras, they mention twice that it's not widely spoken, as well as wrly observing that Dermot Ahern made his enthusiastic statement in English...

I reckon that people study languages (very broadly) because they perceive that benefits will accrue to them; these can be roughly classed into two categories, financial (to find employment, pad out cvs, communicate in business, i.e. why most of the world learns English these days) and cultural (i.e. to enrich experience of travelling, cultural appreciation, etc).

Another problem with denoting Irish as a working language of the EU, apart from the money spent, is that it maintains the pretence that learning Irish will invite benefits in the first category - when in fact, if anyone studies Irish as a route to professional gain, I would seriously question their decision-making. Of course, this will provide a handy and probably quite remunerative job for maybe 20 or 30 people, a drop in the ocean even among the slender population of people who still speak Irish.

The posters above seeming to welcome this as the start of some sort of return to widespread employment of Irish in business or politics are kidding themselves; Irish is not now, has not been for several centuries, and will probably never be again, widely spoken or useful in either of these contexts, even in Ireland.

What we should concentrate on are ways to focus attention on the benefits from the second category: a broadening of cultural experience for Irish people and people from abroad alike. It's not an easy sell, particularly for English-speakers who become very lazy with respect to languages; and I must say I can't think of any brilliant ideas for smart funding, aside from the obvious - bilingual education to be encouraged, etc.

Scríobh Lafcadio:

Irish is not now, has not been for several centuries, and will probably never be again, widely spoken or useful in either of these contexts, even in Ireland

It depends on what you mean by "widely". Within the context of the current pool of speakers, opportunities for employment are in fact increasing - mostly in the media and educational sectors. Among other things, EU official status will help consolidate that. Of course this is mostly the "cultural" sector, but that sector is an important one, where the language one speaks actually matters.


A Czech acquaintance of mine, who speaks fluent Irish, has been working with a terminology project in DCU since January, for example.


English speakers are, regretably, notoriously blind to the advantages and the normality of multilingual societies.

Lafcadio

"..exercises in pointlessness.."

The only reason Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Scots , Welsh, Manx, and Cornish went into decline in the first place was that they became "officially" nonexistant with the creation of the UK.

If you want a language to live you need to give the people who speak it access to all the official information they require in that language.

This should be viewed as a start (maybe not a particularly good place to start).

If there is to be any hope for the language this is exactly the kind of "exercise" that needs to be done.

> English speakers are, regretably, notoriously
> blind to the advantages and the normality of
> multilingual societies.

But Ireland is a multi-lingual society. Its just that none of the lanaguges that you hear on a regular basic on the streets of Ireland are Irish.

I can walk around Dublin and hear its residents speak half a dozen lanaguges. Slavic languages, Baltic languages, Asian languages, African lanaguges. Not a peep of Irish.

But apart from those who are forced to speak Irish, those who are paid to speak Irish, or those who are language cranks, you almost never hear Irish spoken in any normal situation by ordinary folk in Ireland.

In fact the last time I heard someone speak normal conversational Irish in a public place was 1992.

It was a real shock the first time I visited North Wales and discovered that the locals actually spoke Welsh in normal social situations. I had become so used to the profound hypocracy surrounding the Irish language in Ireland. Lots of cooercion, lots of compulsion, lots of lip-service, but not a word spoken outside of school and a general embarassment about the whole subject.

The Irish langauge is dead. And making it an offical EU lanaguge is not going to revive it.

J McConnell

"It was a real shock the first time I visited North Wales and discovered that the locals actually spoke Welsh in normal social situations."

Why don't you compare like with like, you're not going to hear Welsh in Cardiff, unless you look hard for it, similarly Irish in Dublin.

If you vist the right places in the North of Ireland you can hear Irish spoken in normal social situations. There's no mystery about it.

The point should be to save it and hopefully revive it, as seems to be happening with Welsh.

The point should be to save it and hopefully revive it...that'll take official recognition in practise not just theory.

I regularly speak Irish to friends and acquaintances on the DART. I suppose that makes me a language crank - I appreciate the way JMcConnell always leaves himself a get out clause to prove his argument that he never hears "normal" people speak Irish - beacuse people who speak Irish are only doing it under coercion, or because they are cranks.


There are several social occasions in Dublin where people speak Irish naturally.


As an example, there are several dozen masses in Irish every Sunday in Dublin Diocese
http://www.dublindiocese.ie/Mass_Times/IrishMass.htm
But then I suppose only language and religion cranks attend those...

"in the North of Ireland you can hear Irish spoken in normal social situations"

I suppose, if you accept that the more republican areas of west Belfast produce 'normal social situations'.

Now, now Beano.
What if I were to turn that statement around?


Besides a more just comparison would be Gaoth Dobhair, an Buailtín (Kerry), or the Aran Islands as compared to North Wales.


But that would deprive JMcConnell of a perfectly good straw man argument whoich he repeats every time the subject of Irish comes up.

Beano

"I suppose, if you accept that the more republican areas of west Belfast produce 'normal social situations'."

I'll take that as a joke you couldn't resist rather than a failure to spot the obvious analogy, which would have been somewhere like Rannafast rather than Belfast.

Maca, well your observations are as good as mine however the impression I've had in Spain, Romania, Latvia and Poland is that people either think that Irish is a dialect of English or that it's a related language (eg Spanish vs Italian, German vs Dutch etc) in Spain I've disabused them of the notion by pointing out that the Spanish words Corbata [tie] , mil [thousand] or conejo [rabbit] have more in common with their Irish equivalents than English. I even formulated the controversial theory that it would be easier for an Irish speaker to learn Spanish than Irish, but then that was after listening to a load of cliches and I was a wee bit bolloxed at the time :)

The negative affect that I think that this could have is that it could actually demote Irish in real terms within the EU.

Other languages which are spoken widely within the EU include
Russian (700.000 mother tongue speakers in Latvia alone - not counting those in the rest of East Europe!)
Catalan (8-10 million speakers in Spain, France and Italy)
Turkish (well over a million in Germany alone, not to mention Belgium etc)

add Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Chinese, Welsh, Basque, Galician, etc etc all with much more daily mother tongue speakers in specific EU regions and where do you stop? By accepting one you open the floodgates to all the others and thus Irish becomes a language among many which has to survive on its own merits which frankly it's not doing a very good job of doing at the moment.

The biggest problem is that it's a cop-out from a government that has failed to do anything to preserve the language other than a few tokenistic measures, so that that they can head off any protests by saying, hey look we achieved equal status for the language in Europe.

Lacfadio, you miss a third and arguably more important reason why people learn languages which native English speakers often overlook - compulsion. We are used to at least having some choice of languages that we study whereas many continentals compelled to learn English from early primary school through to A-Level / leaving cert. The more important though (totally alien to English speakers!) is that businesses often force their employees to attend English classes. Believe me, a class of surly adults there at compamny expense is worse than a group of 6 years olds there at parent's expense!

Biffo: "If you want a language to live you need to give the people who speak it access to all the official information they require in that language."

Fine, provided that this leads to more speakers. However I find the idea of people queueing up for Irish courses in order to decipher the latest EU document a little difficult to imagine.

Be realistic, this is a forum for those interested in politics and you could count probably count on the fingers of one hand those of us that read EU publications VOLUNTARILY. If we couldn't give a toss then what hope for the ignorant big brother watching masses?

If you want a language to live then you need to maintain the number of speakers at a high enough level to ensure that it will be passed on to the next generation. If it isn't at a high enough level (which arguably Irish isn't) then you need to increase the number of speakers. Does this do that? NO.

Irish, sadly, is dying and not just because of indifference, but also because the people that should care are doing nothing other than indulging in lip service measures rather than the hard and drastic things that need to be done.

aonghus

But you do sound like a language crank, sorry, enthusiast. You sound like a classic example. "Me and me mates speak Irish on the DART so therefor Irish is alive and well"

Well I've spent several hundred of hours traveling on the DART over the last few years and I have heard more than two dozen languages spoken, not one of which was Irish.

Just one sample point, I know, but as I said before in another thread, if there are are 40,000 Poles in Ireland and I can hear Polish spoken on a regular basis, why is it so difficult to hear Irish spoken by the 100,000+ Dubliners who claimed in the last census that they spoke Irish on a daily basis.

I heard almost no evidence of them while growing up, and one hears little evidence of them now.

And why do you feel to need to speak in Irish in public?

Does it make you feel superior to those clod hoppers around you who after 12 years of compulsory Irish can barely string together a sentence in Irish.

Or does it makes you feel like a true Irishman while all the rest of us are just ersatz west-brits?

Or is it just a attempt at cultural affectation?

Or maybe you do have a true love for the language and culture but have n't noticed yet that the coercive language policies of the last 70 years have failed to either revive the language or halt its decline as a living language.

Just wondering...

Biffo

"Why don't you compare like with like, you're not going to hear Welsh in Cardiff, unless you look hard for it, similarly Irish in Dublin."

True.

But my surprise was based on growing up in Ireland, including lots of time spent visiting many parts of Ireland, including areas nominally Irish speaking in Cork and Kerry, and never hearing Irish spoken.

I had watched lots of Welsh TV (HTV) while growing up because that was the only ITV channel you could pick up in some parts of North Dublin at the time. So not unexpectedly I thought that the situation in Wales was just like Ireland. Lots of programs in the language on TV and radio but little or no evidence of the language in day to day living.

So imagine my surprise while stranded in Hollyhead dues to canceled ferries when I discovered that in shop after shop the locals were actually talking in Welsh to each other. Very different from my personal experience of equivalent towns in Ireland.

JMcConnell wrote:

And why do you feel to need to speak in Irish in public?

and then the usual rhetoric imputing arrogance etc to me

I don't "feel the need". I grew up speaking Irish in Dublin. If I meet an acquaintance who also grew up speaking Irish, or whom I met in an Irish speaking context, then the natural language for me to speak to that person is Irish, so I do.


Case in point: This morning I met an acquaintance whom I know speaks Irish, so we had a conversation in Irish from Blackrock to Pearse (where he left the train). Apart from my jokingly pointing out to him, based on JMcConnells comments above, that the conversation we were having wasn't happening, we didn't discuss Irish or the cause or any of the other thing Irish cranks are supposed to incessantly discuss at all.

What you feel your identity is, is quite frankly, a matter of no concern to me. Several things go into my sense of who I am, and speaking Irish is one of them. So is the ten years I spent in Germany. So is my religion. So what?

Val
"The negative affect that I think that this..."
"By accepting one you open the floodgates..."

I don't necessarily see this as a negative. It may force a whole rethink of the system, perhaps they will work with a small core group of languages and leave the translating up to each individual Government, which I think might be a better system.

"The biggest problem is that it's a cop-out from a government that has failed to do anything to preserve the language other than a few tokenistic measures, so that that they can head off any protests by saying, hey look we achieved equal status for the language in Europe."

I'm not sure i agree.
Certainly there has been a serious lack of focus from the government but if you look at, for example, the Official languages act or the growth of Gaeilscoileanna, I don't see them as token measures. There still remains this lack of focus from the Government but if the growth of gaeilscoileanna can continue for a generation (vital to get kids speaking early) things might look a lot more positive then. Irish may not need token measures at that stage.

JMcC
Why do you only pop in for Irish discussions, you should join us on some other threads.

JMcConnell also wrote

Me and me mates speak Irish on the DART so therefor Irish is alive and well

I'm not saying it's "alive and well", merely that your assertion that no natural conversation in Irish has happened in Dublin since 1992 is untrue.
"alive, but could be better" is what it is, therefore I am in favour of EU Official Status, and the Language Act, since they provide opportunities for Irish speakers to live a little bit more of their lives through Irish. Something which is especially important for Gaeltacht dwellers, who, being farmers and fishermen etc. have much greater interaction with State bureaucracy than urban dwellers like us. The lack of State services in Irish in the Gaeltacht has been in factor in the falling of of Irish as a language of business there.


For the record, the Welsh Office employs 50+ translators, and contracts out translation as well:
http://www.wales.gov.uk/organipo/content/pgfa/proc-c19-e.htm

Just for info, Bairbre de Brun made her first speech in Irish at the EP today

Hardly her first - she made her maiden speech (partly) in Irish too. Perhaps her first full speech?


Irish MEPs have been using Irish in the EP for a long time - but before they had to give extra notice.


What the story says is:
became the first person to address the European Parliament in Irish since the European Council agreed to give it the status of official working language of the EU

(emphasis mine)

She did?? Why, I suddenly feel like going and learning Irish!

Hi maca

I was wondering when you were going to join in.

The reason why I only pop up in Irish language threads is because it is the only political question in Ireland that I can getting somewhat excited about - and mainly to see if there has been any advance in the arguments of the Irish language lobby in the last twenty years.

From the evidence so far, the cozy self-referential world of the Irish language lobby is still stuck firmly in the 1930's.

For the last ten days I've got to do some comparative linguistics. So I'm staying in western Brittany, just outside a town not unlike Kinsale. Not hardcore Briezh but not exactly enthusiastic francophonie either. The only French flag is on the marie.

I decided to do some Brezhoneg spotting. I've visited equivalent areas in Ireland over the years without hearing a single word of Irish spoken so I was wondering just how much Breton was spoken here. At the first opportunity to hear the locals in a group social situation, the local school fete, I heard my first Breton. A few old guys, local farmers, speaking at first why sounded like particularly impenetrably accented French. On closer listening it was Breton. Next sighting a few days later, in a hypermarket in a large town not unlike Dungarvin. A family, one small kid, mother and father, chatting away in Breton. Most recent sighting, yesterday, in a coastal town not unlike Youghal, several groups of people I passed on the street were speaking Breton.

The last time I visited a Gaeltacht area, in Kerry, it was only on the fourth day of the visit when my host told me that we were in a Gaeltacht area that I even realized I was in a Gaeltacht area because all the locals were speaking English. I did not hear a single word of Irish the whole ten days I was there.

You still haven't responed to my points JMc.


I'd like to add three points:

1) You will hear recent immigrants speaking their language more in Dublin than you will hear Irish speakers, simply because they have not been assimilated (yet). Therefore most of the contacts will be people they know from home, have travelled here with, or are in the same boat. Irish speakers are mostly Irish - and have the same number of english speaking friends, family colleagues etc as the rest of the population.

2) There is what amounts to a social taboo in Ireland about continuing to speak in Irish when a person who does not speak Irish well joins the company. That goes some way towards explaining why you personally have seldom heard Irish, even in Gaeltacht areas. (Where in Kerry were you, by the way?)

3) There is an additional problem, in that the Gaeltacht boundaries of 1926 and 1956 included areas where the language was not the language of the community for years before. So an official gaeltacht area is not necessarily a Gaeltacht area.

My personal experience in Corca Dhuibhne was that I heard plenty of Irish being spoken, even in an Daingean (dingle). I was able to conduct all my business through Irish except in one shop where the shopkeeper was a foreigner (i.e. not Irish at all).

JMac
"The reason why I only pop up in Irish language threads"

I think it really tells us something that you only pop in for these threads. I don't think "excited" really applies here but you obviously have some deep rooted hatred of the language which drives you. Which is fair enough, each to his own I say, I just don't understand it.

"For the last ten days I've got to do some comparative linguistics."

Good for you.
Have you given them much grief about speaking a "dead language"?

Btw, Aonghus touched on a very good point which I might have mentioned before. Point 1 - immigrants always group together. Always. Being an immigrant of sorts I can testify to that, it's vital for your survival in another country to have people you can talk to normally, in your own language. So Poles will find other Poles. It's not the same for minority language speakers in their own country, Irish speakers in Ireland, Swedish speakers in Finland, Hungarian speakers in Slovakia etc etc
Point 2 is also very relevant.

While we are on the subject of immigrants, there was an interesting letter from Irish speaking immigrants in the Irish Times last week
Linked here from Gaelport

(Irony) Gee, you don't have to be Irish to be an Irish language crank, JMcC.

"there was an interesting letter from Irish speaking immigrants"

Feckin forrin cranks, they should feck off home ;))

Maca,

I understand that this is the more contemporary version of cead mile failte.

Speaking of Irish speaking immigrants. I've also spoken to many Irish speaking emigrants.

Glasgow, had a large community of Donegal Irish native speakers when I lived there in 1990, though most were getting on in years.

J McConnell, if your ever doing your linguistic research in Glasgow, drop into Heraghty's on the Pollockshaws Road and ask the barman for up to date info.

"I understand that this is the more contemporary version of cead mile failte."

hah?

Aonghus

I was guilty of a little bit of rhetorical wind up in my reply to you but I did peg you in one. As I suspected you grew up in an Irish speaking household so therefor your experience of the Irish language has been fundamentally different from 90%+ of your fellow citizens.

You grew up in an environment were speaking Irish was a natural part of the environment and no doubt a fulfilling and and enriching experience.

For the rest of us it was a schizophrenic experience of varying degrees of unpleasantness. If one had the good fortune to have an enthusiastic Irish teacher then one came out of it with a fairly positive attitude about the language. But based on the fact that less than half of the people who come out of the Irish educational system leave with a positive attitude towards the Irish language this would indicate to me that the average pupils experience of the Irish language is closer to my experiences than to yours - a mind-numbingly pointless and irrelevant syllabus taught by unenthusiastic teachers just going through the motions.

JMcC
"For the rest of us it was a schizophrenic experience of varying degrees of unpleasantness"

Do NOT attempt to speak for me J !!!

JmcConnell also wrote

I did peg you in one.

Oh, I see. I speak and enjoy Irish, therefore my opinions don't count. An interesting concept.

Where is the figure of "just over half" coming from?


The BCI survey on attitudes to Irish, in particular to an Irish language radio station with english lyrics came up with ca 75% pro Irish.

Press release in Irish here with a link to the survey, which is bilingual.


Same press release in English

Looking to the future a significant 78% of respondents felt that Irish language programming should be provided by all radio stations. This compares with 31% who felt that the future development of the Irish language should be the responsibility of dedicated Irish language radio stations. A further 75% of all respondents would like to see the establishment of a dedicated Irish language radio station just for young people. 89% of respondents also felt TG4 was a good model for the future development of Irish language radio programming.

Given the dictionary definition of crank, I'm beginning to think it would be more accurately applied to you than to me.

Maca

It nice to see and hear up close here in Brittany a fairly successful conservation policy for a minority language and culture. A policy that is not based on compulsion or coercion, on language ghettos, or massive subsidies. A language that is still spoken widely despite the real and sustained policy of suppression and marginalization by the central government for most of the last 120 years.

So unlike Ireland and the Irish language, in every way.

Other point. The immigrants clumping together argument is spurious. I've lived in San Francisco, the most multi-lingual city in the US, and the frequency one hears the many non-English languages spoken by its residences in public places matches fairly accurately the home languages stated by the residence of the City and County of San Francisco in their census returns.

That's why I find the numbers about Irish usage and competency reported in the Irish census and other surveys so ludicrous. There are 60,000 Chinese and 40,000 Poles in Ireland, and no matter where I go in the country I can readily hear evidence of their presence. Little sign so far of the self-assessed hoards of fluent Irish speakers.

J McConnell,
you don't seem to be au fait with the current status of Irish in Ireland, probably because It's just not influencing your world but heh, I doubt you know what the Methodists get up to either.

So here are a few facts that might surprise you.

Over 40% of the tourists to An Daingean (formerly Dingle) go there to learn Irish.

Radio na Gaeltachta has an average listnership of 150,000.

There were just 10 Irish medium schools outside the Gaeltacht at the end of the 1950s but that there are 21,894 primary pupils and 5,213 secondary level pupils in Irish-medium education in the school year 2002-3.

There are now over 170 Irish language pre-schools with over 3,000 youngsters.

Parents were three-times more likely to speak Irish at home if their children attended such schools?

Also, the O Riagain and O Gliasain survey on "Public and state support for Irish" found that:

65% agreed leaders should use more Irish in public and in the Dail

69% found more money should be spent to improve the teaching of Irish

70% said the government should provide gaelscoileanna wherever people want them

78% said the government should support and encourage Irish language organisations while

72% said Irish speakers have the right to expect Civil Servants to be able to speak Irish with them.

It seems to me that your views are the views of a very small minority in the Irish Republic. Fortunately, a smaller minority by the day.

The immigrants clumping together argument is spurious. I've lived in San Francisco, the most multi-lingual city in the US, and the frequency one hears the many non-English languages spoken by its residences[sic] in public places matches fairly accurately the home languages stated by the residence[sic] of the City and County of San Francisco in their census returns.

And those speech groups are not "clumped together" in the city? Also, this does not address the fact that all Irish speakers are (at least) bilingual, and have (usually) many english speaking acquaintances.

J McConnell,

"There are 60,000 Chinese and 40,000 Poles in Ireland.."

So what, what's your point? What has that got to do with an argument that nobody speaks Irish, what is the relevance?

If those people choose to stay in this Ireland, their grand children will not be speaking either Chinese or Polish.

Also, your argument that nobody speaks Irish would be like me arguing that nobody speaks Polish, because, to best of my knowledge, I've never heard anybody speak Polish in person.

But I'm not going to say that no-one speaks Polish because I don't hear it, that would be stupid as I am aware that there are lots of Poles working here.

Why don't you stop exagerating, you might have a point to make but it's getting lost in all the shite you talk.

biffo

You must have missed the earlier argument in another thread.

The simple version.

We have numbers from the CSO on the number of various nationals residing in Ireland. One can easily hear these nationals speak their various natives languages while ambling around the city center of Dublin (unless one is Maca it seems), and, in my experience, most smaller towns in Ireland.

According to all these surveys (all self-assessed it seems), the number of people who speak Irish daily dwarfs the number of resident foreign national. For some reason I seemed to have heard very few of these daily speakers of Irish while growing up and have heard little evidence of it now.

Therefor I have deduced, based on the empirical evidence, that the number who actually speak Irish on a daily basis is a lot less than the number of the various resident foreign nationals.

And now back to our regular programming...

maca

So you must have got one of the good teachers.

Lucky for you. A good teacher can make all the difference.

Mine were, with one exception, from the "just doing this because we have to, not that we really care" school of teaching.

The one exception was a psychopathic thug...

I always thought it was instructive that whenever the teachers wanted to talk among themselves about some private subject in front of the pupils that the spoke quickly in Irish, working on the principal that the pupils would not understand most of what the teachers were saying.

And the teachers were right, even in Leaving Cert classes, most pupils did not have a clue what the teachers were talking about most of the time.

J McConnell

"And now back to our regular programming..."

Hold your horses.

You still haven't explained the relevance. I again repeat the question - so what?

What have Chinese and Poles got to do with it? If the Celtic Tiger goes down the tubes tomorrow. the Chinese and the Poles go somewhere else. Any who stay, their grandchildren will be monolingual English speakers - so what? It doesn't prove or disprove anything in relation to Irish

You are right that numbers of Irish speakers are exaggerated, people claim to speak it who don't.

But you exaggerate in the other direction, you claim nobody speaks it. I know you are talking nonsense.

Anyway, based on your linguistic research and experiences in Wales and Brittany, which so impressed you, what do you think could be done to encourage the use of Irish?

aonghus

Sorry for not quoting my source for my "over half" statement.

I did some quick googling a few days ago and the most interesting and informative study I could find on the subject was a U.C.C study of attitudes towards the Irish language by its staff.

http://www.ucc.ie/ace/Irish%20Language%20Attitudes.pdf

Far from exhaustive on the subject but it does make extensive references to the published literature on general attitudes towards the language in the general population.

My take. Around 20% of the pop have a very favorable attitude towards the language. Based on another source, which I cannot remember off the top of my head, I am assuming that at least half of these very favorables grew up like yourself in an environment were speaking Irish had very strong cultural support - Gaeltacht, Gael Schoile, bilingual parents etc. Another 30% of so had a somewhat favorable attitude towards the language. The rest had somewhat unfavorable view, or very unfavorable. I think the very negatives were around 10%. It seems that I'm not the only awkward bastard out there with a bad attitude...

Got any better sources from the academic literature? If so I would be very interested to see them.

And press releases dont count. Sorry.

J McConnell

Fair enough, you've moved from your original position that nobody speaks Irish. Maybe if you were consistent you could generate better quality discussion regarding your hostility to the irish language, and help enlighten us all.

JMcC
"It nice to see and hear up close here in Brittany a fairly successful conservation policy"

Fairly successful?
Currently about 450,000 understand the language, of that about 300,000 speak it to varying levels of fluency(Eurolang), this is down from about 1.3 million in 1930. At the beginning of the 20th Century, half the population of Lower Brittany knew only Breton, the other half being bilingual. By 1950, there were only 100,000 monolingual Bretons.
Fairly successful?

"A policy that is not based on compulsion or coercion"

And what has happened? Schools have stopped teaching it. So how do people learn the language if schools stop teaching it?

"The immigrants clumping together argument is spurious. ... That's why I find the numbers about Irish usage and competency reported in the Irish census and other surveys so ludicrous. There are 60,000 Chinese and 40,000 Poles in Ireland..."

You obviously completely miss the point. Irish speakers are not immigrants, they don't clump together like foreign nationals do.

p.s. i'll repeat that I never heard Polish in Ireland, therefore (by your reasoning) Polish is not spoken in Ireland.

"So you must have got one of the good teachers."

I had a complete dick of a teacher for leaving cert actually.

"Mine were, with one exception, from the "just doing this because we have to, not that we really care" school of teaching."

Pretty much the same in most other subjects actually. Few if any of my teachers had much interest.

And press releases dont count. Sorry.

No doubt you missed the link at the end of the press release to the survey.
(Irony warning) Academic staff at UCC are obviously a clearer picture of the population at large than a marketing survey carried out according to recognised principles, and recently too. After all, Éamon Ó Cuív welcomed it, so it can't be accurate.

Your skill at moving goalposts is most impressive.

BTW, when did you last see a group of Irish and Chinese socialising? What language were they speaking?

Interesting discussion. My two cents:

I grew up in Dublin, where I was taught Iri ash (alongside English) for 13 years. I left school speaking two languages badly, regretting that I'd not been educated in England.

I went abroad for several years and taught EFL. It was dismaying to conclude right away that my English was below standard, a direct result of my having grown up in a school and home environment where the language was spoken imperfectly.

It's perhaps very unfair to say this, but I can't help feeling that had there been less emphasis on Irish and more on English then I'd have had a little less catching up to do. As it is, I'm painfully aware that no amount of study in adult life can make up for that all-important grounding when a child.

I say: Let the Irish concentrate on getting the one language right.

Interesting discussion. My two cents:

I grew up in Dublin, where I was taught Irish (alongside English) for 13 years. I left school speaking two languages badly, regretting that I'd not been educated in England.

I went abroad for several years and taught EFL. It was dismaying to conclude right away that my English was below standard, a direct result of my having grown up in a school and home environment where the language was spoken imperfectly.

It's perhaps very unfair to say this, but I can't help feeling that had there been less emphasis on Irish and more on English then I'd have had a little less catching up to do. As it is, I'm painfully aware that no amount of study in adult life can make up for that all-important grounding when a child.

I say: Let the Irish concentrate on getting the one language right.

I have to say Denny that I find that totally silly, to concentrate on just one language in order to be able to speak it properly. Are you saying Irish people are thick and can't handle more than one language? Should we stop teaching foreign languages also?
If your standard of English is poor perhaps it is just your teacher/school to blame. I have met many well educated English lads whose standard of English was no better than my own yet they didn't have to learn Irish.
To suggest that one hour per day of Irish affected your English is plain silly, no offence.

Let the Irish concentrate on getting the one language right

This theory that the human brain can only cope well with one language is risible.

Scandanavians (to stay in Europe) have no problem juggling two or three languages. My kids spoke no English for about two years after we came to Ireland, but now juggle Irish, German and English at will.

All the evidence is, in fact, that those who speak and learn more than one language as children do better in both. It is no accident that irish medium secondary schools are high up in the academic league tables that the press every now and then come up with.
That is not to say that language teaching and teachers in this country could do with improvement - it certainly could. But I understand the UK and America have at least the same problems.

maca

I consider the survival of Breton a success because I can actually hear it spoken, *regularly*, by ordinary folk, while going about my business here in western Brittany. I never had that experience anywhere in Ireland (and aoenghus, I was staying in Ballinskelligs in Kerry by the way..).

Breton is an optional subject in the local schools here. I dont know what the take up rate is but I would not be too surprised if it was in the 10% to 20% range. Which I would also guess would be the take up rate for Irish if students were actually given a choice about taking the subject in Ireland...

Breton has survived despite massive and sustained attempts by the French central authorities to suppress it. Irish has declined to the point of disappearance despite sustained attempts by the central government to coerce and compel its use.

I know what conclusion I would draw from these facts.

Want to hear some Polish in Dublin? Listen to the wait-staff in most coffee shops or restaurants in Dublin talk among themselves. You'll get to hear some Polish very quickly.

Even simpler. Get off the DART in Dunleary. Turn left. See the sign for the first coffee shop. Cafe Insomnia. Go in and say hi to all the very nice Polish staff behind the counter. Then take a seat with a cup of their pretty good coffee and listen to the light hearted Polish banter.

I cannot understand a word of it but I find the experience very relaxing..

Let me try to explain further.

My point is that I grew up in a city/country where English had supplanted the original language, Irish. My background is middle class, my parents were well educated, yet the English I heard spoken in the home and elsewhere was inferior to that spoken by our "counterparts" in England. I went on to do a BA and an MA, yet no amount of third-level schooling in English could repair the damage already done. I didn't even KNOW the damage was there until I began to study grammar in real depth. Only then did I see that the Irish version of spoken English falls down badly on many fronts. And I'm not referring to charming locutions such as "I'm only after me dinner". I realize I'm crying over spilt milk but I do sometimes wish I'd been brought up and schooled in an environment where, say, a simple preposition was not quite so often confused with a preposition of direction. (And in deference to all sane people here, that's as far as I'll venture into the exciting world of grammar.)

My point is that a native speaker of English of my age (I'm 42) and social class, growing up somewhere in the home counties, would have imbibed such distinctions from an early age - at home, from his peers, at school. Instead I was forced to spend a great deal of time learning a minor language whose vocabularly was as nothing compared to the richness of English.

My point is that my parents and teachers (and indeed educators and government) might have better served my generation had they channelled their energies into improving the general use of English.

Denny Boy

"Let the Irish concentrate on getting the one language right"

That would be a dumb move according to the following research, as reported by the BBC.

"Dr Ellen Bialystok and colleagues at York University assessed the cognitive skills of" bilingual and monolingual people.

"Half of the volunteers came from Canada and spoke only English. The other half came from India and were fluent in both English and Tamil.

The volunteers had similar backgrounds in the sense that they were all educated to degree level and were all middle class.

The researchers found that the people who were fluent in English and Tamil responded faster than those who were fluent in just English. This applied to all age groups.

The researchers also found that the bilingual volunteers were much less likely to suffer from the mental decline associated with old age.

"The bilinguals were more efficient at all ages tested and showed a slower rate of decline for some processes with aging," they said.'

More at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3794479.stm

Maybe this is the reason that JMcConnell sounds like a bitter, twisted and senile OAP.

Denny Boy

You'll be glad to hear that you are not the only one who has noticed this deficiency in the Irish educational system.

Even the Dept of Education has noticed.

The Dept of Education did a study a few years ago trying to find out why Irish eleven years old did so badly on standardized language and language comprehension tests when compared with their peers in other OECD countries.

Their conclusion. Because so much school time was devoted to teaching (badly) a language with little relevance to a large proportion of the students, not enough resources were left over to teach properly the native language of the vast majority of the students.

I was surprised by the report on two counts. First that the Dept of Education would actually admit in print that compulsory Irish at primary school level was seriously impeding the education of students. And secondly that 25% of all primary school teaching hours was spent teaching Irish. I'd forgotten just how much of the school day was wasted on those pointless lessons.

Aonghus

I missed the ref at the end of the press release

And you obviously did not check out the UCC study which spends a lot of pages doing a comparative study of the attitudes of the university staff compared to the attitudes of the *general* Irish population.

Its full of lots of interesting numbers on the attitudes of the *general* population.

I did not move the goalposts. It just seems like you are pretending they are not there...

If you can find a better academic study (with sources) on the the attitudes of the general Irish population towards the Irish language I would be glad to see it.

"The other half came from India and were fluent in both English and Tamil."

Hmm. I taught in India and don't recall ever meeting anybody who was truly bilingual. Most spoke and wrote English with varying degrees of proficiency.

If you wish to put this to the test, do have a look at the fractured syntax of Anita Desai, who grew up speaking German at home and Hindi with her friends.

I did not move the goalposts. It just seems like you are pretending they are not there...

....

The Irish langauge is dead. And making it an offical EU lanaguge is not going to revive it.

....

If you can find a better academic study (with sources) on the the attitudes of the general Irish population towards the Irish language I would be glad to see it.

That looks like a moved goalpost to me. Why would you place more value in a survey carried out by academics to one carried out by a reputable market research company? And what is the relevance of attitude to your original statement that Irish is dead?


You personally hear Poles speaking polish, and chinese speaking chinese to other Poles and Chinese. You hear Irish spoken less often simply because Irish speakers are not a separate ethnic group to anglophone Irish.

Ballinskelligs was barely Irish speaking in 1956, and had its hinterland cut off when the boundaries were drawn, so that there was, for example, no Gaeltacht secondary schoool available.

Currently, the local people are reorganising to revive Irish as a community language. You will be pleased to hear that the Gaeltacht boundaries are being reviewed taking socio-linguistic factors into consideration
However, if you want to hear Irish spoken as a community language I suggest a visit to:
Inir Óirr

Inis Méain

Corca Dhuibhne west of An Daingean

etc.

Note that I have not claimed anywhere that everything is fine with Irish, merely that your assertion that it is dead is not true.

Denny Boy:

My point is that a native speaker of English of my age (I'm 42) and social class, growing up somewhere in the home counties, would have imbibed such distinctions from an early age

And therefore any English spoken elsewhere is somehow second rate? I doubt you'll find many who agree with you on that one.

biffo

Where did I change my position?

My position is quite simple.

While growing up in Ireland I heard very little casual spoken Irish. In fact I only remember hearing Irish spoken conversationally by others on three occasions. And I did not grow up in some West Brit enclave.

One was bombarded with Irish at school, on Irish TV and radio, and that bizarre phenomenon know as coupla focail-ism. But outside of that one rarely heard a word of normal conversation spoken in Irish. All very strange.

I visit North Wales, I hear the local speak Welsh. I visit Brittany, I hear the locals speak Breton. I visit a Gaeltacht, I did not hear the locals speak Irish.

I spent lots of time in Ireland the last year or two, I still hear no one speaking Irish. I do hear lots of people, residents of Ireland, speak lots of foreign languages.

I read in the census that a large number of people in Dublin claim to speak Irish on a daily basis. The number who claim to speak Irish on a daily basis is much larger than the number of foreign nationals, yet I hear the languages of the foreign nationals, but not the these Irish speakers. Very strange.

Aonghus tells us that he and a friend are the two people who speaks Irish on the DART. I am intrigued by this information but still wondering what happened to the other 99,998 daily Irish speakers in Dublin.

So my position is quite simple.

The policy of compulsory Irish has been a total failure. The number of people who actually speak Irish on a daily basic is maybe 1%. 40,000 max. For the whole country, and mostly at home, it seems. Maybe another 5% are functionally fluent and literate in Irish but really dont use it much despite all their good intentions, or what they say in surveys.

This is a truly pathetic result after 70 years of forcing every student to study Irish from the moment they start school till the moment they finish.

Maybe its time for the Irish language zealots to open their ears and listen to which language Irish people are actually speaking in their daily lives. Not what they claim to speak in surveys.

And then come up with a realistic and viable policy for saving what remains of the Irish language without compulsion or coercion.

Aongus wrote "And therefore any English spoken elsewhere is somehow second rate?"

Not at all. Some of the best English I've encountered was spoken in America and Canada. I simply wish that the educators of my time had had a better command of the language; I might have been spared a good deal of bother in later life.

JmC
"I consider the survival of Breton a success because I can actually hear it spoken"

Well then your criteria for judging the success/failure of the language is seriously flawed. You might have heard more Breton being spoken in the few places you were in but that doesn't change the figures J.

"Breton is an optional subject in the local schools here. I dont know what the take up rate is but I would not be too surprised if it was in the 10% to 20% range. Which I would also guess would be the take up rate for Irish if students were actually given a choice about taking the subject in Ireland..."

And now many schools no longer offer the language. So you end up with this 10-20% being denied the chance to learn the language. Optional? You're denying them the option.

"Want to hear some Polish in Dublin?"

Ok, you asked of Irish before, where is it being spoken, is it just spoken in the home or do speakers just speak amongst themselves, this was part of your argument before saying that Irish was dead. So let me ask you, where is Polish being spoken, in the home? In these few Polish cafes? Or can people live their daily lives through the language?

p.s. Not hearing the language is proof of nothing as you know.

Denny
"yet the English I heard spoken in the home and elsewhere was inferior to that spoken by our "counterparts" in England"

I have the opposite experience actually.

"I didn't even KNOW the damage was there until I began to study grammar in real depth."

Yeah, many Irish people possibly don't have a deep knowledge of grammar, but not many of us need to teach it.
I worked with many educated English & American people and their English was no better than mine.

"My point is that my parents and teachers ... might have better served my generation had they channelled their energies into improving the general use of English."

Probably but not necessarily at the expense of Irish. Why not drop German or French then, which most of us will never use? Or some other subjects? I can list you ten subjects which I never used after school.
I don't have an indepth knowledge of English grammar, but then again i'm not going to teach it. The level I have is perfectly fine for the area I work in, which is international business. And the same is likely true of most people. We live in a global world, and increasingly we are dealing with many people who have English as a second language. An indepth knowledge of English grammar won't help you one iota when dealing with people with broken English from China, Japan, Slovakia or wherever.

> And therefore any English spoken elsewhere is
> somehow second rate? I doubt you'll find many who
> agree with you on that one.

Actually there are lots of studies, both in the UK and elsewhere, that show a strong correlation between language accent and usage and perceived levels of education.

A person who speaks with a metropolitan middle class accent and uses grammatically correct forms and usages will be perceived by most people as being more educated that someone who speaks with a regional accent and who uses forms and usages that deviate from those that are generally accepted as grammatically correct.

This is as true in the US as it is in the UK. And true for all socio-economic groups.

Maca, if you believe that grammar isn't important then of course that's fine. Personally speaking, I do.

I also resent having had so much of my childhood hours squandered on the ingestion of a moribund language. If that language possessed a half-decent body of literature then fair enough, but I was force-fed Peig Sayers and other reminiscences of representatives of low culture. Nothing wrong with low culture in our postmodern age, you might say, but I'd rather have been reading Hardy; at least I'd have picked up some beautiful language on the way.

As it is, we Irish are all too willing to entertain poor English: from our writers and public speakers. Look at Bertie for heaven's sake. He's an embarrassment. Placed alongside an excellent speaker like Tony Blair, there's no contest.

Aonghus tells us that he and a friend are the two people who speaks Irish on the DART.

That is a misrepresentation of what I said. I gave one recent incident where I met an Irish speaking acquaintance. I have met several others and would speak Irish to all of them.

And there are social occasions where I would be with a group of up to 20 people, all of whom would speak Irish. If you are in Caife Úna or the Duke pub in Duke street this evening you will hear us.

>And therefore any English spoken elsewhere is
> somehow second rate? I doubt you'll find many who
> agree with you on that one.

Actually there are lots of studies, both in the UK and elsewhere, that show a strong correlation between language accent and usage and perceived levels of education.

I see. Linguistic snobbery is admirable when applied to English but is arrogance not to be tolerated when applied to Irish?

Ireland does very well on OECD literacy studies, so I'm somewhat perplexed by JMcC comments above.

PISA Summary Report

The mean score for Ireland on the combined reading literacy scale .... were higher than the OECD mean. And ranked 5th after Finland. (The pdf is locked, so I can't just cut and paste the quotes, and I'm too lazy to type it all).

Denny
"if you believe that grammar isn't important then of course that's fine"

Don't twist what i said. Obviously grammar is important. But the fact of the matter is you do not need advanced grammar skills to communicate with anybody. Teaching the language is a different matter.
If you think I am wrong please explain to me, briefly, how advanced grammar skills will benefit us so much?

"If that language possessed a half-decent body of literature then fair enough"

I see. And I presume you have actually tried to seek out literature in Irish? I have my doubts.

"I'd rather have been reading Hardy; at least I'd have picked up some beautiful language on the way."

That's fine, personal preference.
I'd be just as happy to pick up some "beautiful language" as Gaeilge too.

"As it is, we Irish are all too willing to entertain poor English: from our writers and public speakers."

So our writers have poor English? What writers specifically are you referring to? I'm curious to know.

"Look at Bertie for heaven's sake. He's an embarrassment. Placed alongside an excellent speaker like Tony Blair, there's no contest."

Good thing you didn't compare to George Bush ...

Of course personally I don't care how good or bad Berties English is as long as he does his job well. I don't vote for our public representatives based on how perfect their English is.

Plus, can you demonstrate how Bertie would be speaking so much better English if he didn't learn Irish?

Plus 2: Did Tony Blair not learn languages in school? In fact I think he has fluent French, doesn't seem to have affected his English too much.

"The mean score for Ireland on the combined reading literacy scale .... were higher than the OECD mean. And ranked 5th after Finland."

The Finns always do well. Of course they learn foreign languages from a very young age in school, mainly English & German, some Swedish too.
It's pretty much proven world wide, including in good-English speaking Canada, that bilingualism brings many benefits, there's a lot of information about this on the web ... just google it.

Maca, grammar is more important than you might think. It allows us to communicate clearly and unambiguously - crucial when dealing with global partners.

Most Irish people have poor grammar, a result of a childhood spent listening and learning English from less than competent speakers. My two preteen boys live in England and attend school in the university town where I teach. Their command of English causes me endless regret that I was deprived of such opportunity.

Irish writers? There's John Banville, and more recently Niall Williams and Ronan Bennett, each a producer of exquisite prose and each in complete mastery of the language. If there are any other good contemporary Irish writers then I haven't come across their work.

You're not seriously defending Bertie, are you? Oratory is part of a politician's job. If he can't speak well, then he can't enunciate his policies. I for one don't vote for mumblers.

It should be pointed out that Swedish is a compulsory subject in Finnish schools, since Finland has a significant Swedish speaking minority. There is an example of successful coercion. The problem in Ireland is not that the policy is wrong, but that it is shoddily implemented, if at all.

Oh, I forgot. Can somebody point me towards the Irish literature I may have missed when at school? Just curious.

How about here.

or here or even here

There are a couple of thousand listed here for you Denny.

Forbhais Droma Dámhgháire by Seán Ó Duinn might be interesting. Haven't read it myself but I would like to.

Denny
"grammar is more important than you might think. It allows us to communicate clearly and unambiguously - crucial when dealing with global partners."

Again, you don't need an advanced knowledge of grammar in order to be able to communicate clearly and unambiguously. Quite often the best strategy is just to keep it simple.
"Global partners" - I deal with global partners on a daily basis, 99% of which have English as a second langage.
I (with my C in LC English) have often been told that I am much easier to understand than most English or American people they have had to deal with.
We have to do business with more than just the UK, US, Canada or Australia. More and more we're dealing with people from the Asia and Eastern Europe, these people generally have good but limited English. An advanced knowledge of grammar won't help me get the point across any clearer than I already do.

Ok, must dash. May answer your other points later if I have time...

Denny Boy,

I am a native Irish speaker who learnt English second and I speak perfectly good English.

I also have a Japanese sister-in-law and many German friends who speak a strange brand of textbook grammar bound English that sounds completely unnatural to the Irish, the Americans, the Aussies and yes, to the English.

Saying you wish you had learnt English in England that you may speak it properly is a bit funny when I think of my two good mates from Birmingham. Another mate from London. Another mate from Manchester........who all would not know grammar if you poked them with it!

As for your comments on Irish literature, I'm afraid you just displayed some cultural and literary ignorance that saddens me.

Er yes, Aonghus and George, I'm sure that's all very fascinating, but could you be a little more specific? Had I enquired about French literature would you have directed me to www.amazon.fr?

Perhaps I can make this easier for you (and me). Can you quote me a line or two of Gaelic literature that can stand its own with the work of the greats of Britain, America, Germany, Russia - and indeed France?

Oh and do be discerning; I teach English literature to some VERY discerning postgraduate students.

And Baluba, do feel free to haul me out of my "cultural and literary ignorance" by producing some tasty quotes yourself.

Had I enquired about French literature would you have directed me to www.amazon.fr?

Very probably, given I know nothing of your tastes. Whom do you consider to be the "greats" of Britain, America, Germany, Russia - and indeed France?

My discernment is likely to differ from yours, since I don't teach literature (I'm a software engineer).

I teach English literature to some VERY discerning postgraduate students.

Then perhaps you (or one of your students) would be able to show us how a quote in Irish or English can stand on its own beside a quote in Russian or French.

Aonghus wrote: "Very probably, given I know nothing of your tastes. Whom do you consider to be the "greats" of Britain, America, Germany, Russia - and indeed France?"

Personal taste is not at issue. Woolf, Faulkner, Mann, Tolstoy and Valéry were all considered to be great writers when I was a schoolboy. Still are. Each wrote original, beautiful prose that touched the soul.

Had Ireland produced their equals, writing in the Irish language? If so, names and quotes please....

You teach literature to discerning postgraduate students yet you wish to judge an entire language's wealth of literature on quotes that I may provide you? Mmm...I'm sure your lectures are enlightening, it seems you are very discerning yourself.

Feel free to read Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Myles na gCopaleen, Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Séamus Heaney, Breandán Ó hEithir etc etc. Or what about that fellow Yeats who also wrote in Irish?

What about Somhairle Mac Lean the Scottish Gaelic poet who narrowly missed out on the Nobel Prize for literature.

It's odd that many of the great Irish writers of English had such great respect for Irish and also wrote in it (Behan springs to mind too), but that you, a literature lecturer, are so closed and unappreciative.

And I'm not going to go any further back because you're obviously a philistine when it comes to oral literature.

It's funny how a literature scholar such as yourself can dismiss one of the oldest written languages in the world as redundant in literary terms. I think you are missing out.

Perhaps you shuld have been more studious in your loathsome Irish classes and then you would be in a position to read it and enjoy the beauty of Irish literature.

Poor Michael Davitt is turning in his grave.

I have to say it makes me laugh to hear a man trying to be a great exponent of the English language, and a postgraduate lecturer too using the term 'tasty quotes'.

How perfectly literary and sophisticated your own English is my friend.

Slackjaw wrote: "Then perhaps you (or one of your students) would be able to show us how a quote in Irish or English can stand on its own beside a quote in Russian or French."

Dear slackjaw, isn't this the reason we have such a lucrative market for translators?

Baluba wrote: "I have to say it makes me laugh to hear a man trying to be a great exponent of the English language, and a postgraduate lecturer too using the term 'tasty quotes'.

How perfectly literary and sophisticated your own English is my friend."

You're confusing the messenger with the message. I don't claim to be anything but a lecturer. I don't write for a living (well, nothing apart from my doctoral thesis and a few papers which would hardly be of interest to you).

Now, are we going to have those tasty quotes or not?

Again DB, do you really want to try and judge an entire body of literature on quotes that I may provide? And you are a literature lecturer? If I provide them will you understand them or do you want me to provide them and somehow become a literary translator too? (Not that I have the slightest intention of fulfilling such a ridiculous request).

I also have studied German literature and I would find it absolutely ridiculous, not to mention disrespectful to that body of literature to, for example, pull out two lines of Faust, Die Blechtrommel, Doktor Murkes Gesammtes Schweigen, Der Tod in Venedig etc etc to justify it as 'great literature' or literature superior to another language.

The request is ridiculous DB, just ridiculous and I fear for your students.

Apologies, Baluba, I missed your rant the first time round. You'll no doubt be providing us in due course with a choice line or two from those people you allude to.

"Or what about that fellow Yeats who also wrote in Irish?"

WB Yeats? I wasn't aware he could even speak the language. Do direct me please to that Gaelic work of his. But good that you mention him because he's a very good example of an Irishman educated in England, who was exposed to a broader English lexicon than he'd have experienced in Sligo and Dublin. His work testifies to this. I think you'll find that most of the great Irish writers learnt their English abroad.

And remember: I'm only the messenger :0)

Baluba wrote: "I also have studied German literature and I would find it absolutely ridiculous, not to mention disrespectful to that body of literature to, for example, pull out two lines of Faust, Die Blechtrommel, Doktor Murkes Gesammtes Schweigen, Der Tod in Venedig etc etc to justify it as 'great literature' or literature superior to another language."

Here, let me do it for you. This is Mann writing in Der Tod in Venedig, known to us anglophones as Death in Venice:

"For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide."

and

"With astonishment Aschenbach noticed that the boy was entirely beautiful. His countenance, pale and gracefully reserved, was surrounded by ringlets of honey-colored hair, and with its straight nose, its enchanting mouth, its expression of sweet and divine gravity, it recalled Greek sculpture of the noblest period."

(Googled if you must know; a child can do it.)

As I told slackjaw, this is why we have translators, so that those who can't speak, say, German can still appreciate great literature. And I said nothing about Irish work having to be "superior to another language". I wish only to know whether Ireland has produced work in Irish that's on a par with the work of the international greats.

Insulting me won't convince me. Written evidence might.

Seosamh Mac Grianna's An Druma Mór.
Multilingual Bio here

Don't have the quotes to hand, since I don't have a photographic memory. But I'll try to come back in a day or two. I had hoped to find some online, but time presses. And I certainly won't try to translate them. The quotes you gave from Mann cause me concern. Pale shadows of his German prose is what they are, and they were presumably committed by an accomplished translator. I don't pretend to be one.

Aonghus wrote: "The quotes you gave from Mann cause me concern. Pale shadows of his German prose is what they are, and they were presumably committed by an accomplished translator."

I speak fluent German and have the original to hand. I assure you it's a very capable translation. I doubt it can be improved upon.

"Mit Erstaunen bemerkte Aschenbach, daß der Knabe vollkommen schön war. Sein Antlitz, - bleich und anmutig verschlossen, von honigfarbenem Haar umringelt, mit der gerade abfallenden Nase, dem lieblichen Munde, dem Ausdruck von holdem und göttlichem Ernst, erinnerte an griechische Bildwerke aus edelster Zeit..."

and the translation again:

"With astonishment Aschenbach noticed that the boy was entirely beautiful. His countenance, pale and gracefully reserved, was surrounded by ringlets of honey-colored hair, and with its straight nose, its enchanting mouth, its expression of sweet and divine gravity, it recalled Greek sculpture of the noblest period."

I doubt if Thomas Mann himself could have taken issue with that translation. "Pale shadows"? I think not.

Translators do us a wonderful service. They afford us access to hidden treasures. The flip-side of course is that they also expose shoddy work for what it is....

Denny Boy

I don't mean to be personally insulting here. I am reacting to your comments but you do come across as a phony with a big inferiority complex.

You say you've had a lot of bother in your life with grammer. You blame this on your Dublin background, with the result that you can't speak English properly.

Perhaps you blame your Dublin background in order to console yourself when the fact is you've always lacked the ability and competance to teach language or literature.

I don't know if you do lack competance or not. Maybe you are just a moaner who is embarassed by Ireland, Irish accents, and the Irish Language, and you're just whinging.

It certainly sounds like it...

"Instead I was forced to spend a great deal of time learning a minor language whose vocabularly was as nothing compared to the richness of English."

That is an incredibly stupid statement to make for a man who says he has experience with languages.

I'd like you to put your money where your mouth is and explain, giving examples, what Irish lacks in comparison with the richness of English.

Are you claiming to be a fluent Irish speaker? If you weren't you couldn't possibly hope to back up such a stupid statement?

Your problem seems to be that you are a moaner with an irish accent who wants to sound like Prince Charles because of your perception that people will think you are smarter than you actually are.

Jaysus lads, did none of ye see fit to give Sean O Riordain a mention?

Denny Boy,

Dear slackjaw, isn't this the reason we have such a lucrative market for translators?

Lucrative? I wish!

Thank you for pointing out that translators are there to help us understand and appreciate great works of literature. The problem is, translators aren’t really much use when it comes to explaining us things about the richness of the language from which they are translating. So while I am a big fan of Chekhov, I wouldn’t be able tell you how rich his Russian is compared to Maupassant’s French, and even if I could, I don’t know if it would make any sense trying to explain in English why Chekhov is a better writer of Russian than Maupassant is a writer of French. But I suspect you know this, and may be trying to wind up the more sensitive souls among us.

Your underlying point appears to that if Irish was as rich a language as other European languages, it would have produced accompanying canonical works of literature. Of course, the first language for most of us here is English, so perhaps the only way we could ever reach some sort of agreement would be to compare English translations of quotations from Irish, French or whatever. But what about someone like Baluba, whose first language is Irish? If I understand you correctly, he should be entitled to judge the richness of English or French is based on how well someone like Evelyn Waugh or Balzac translates into Irish….do you agree? If not, why not?

As I’m sure you also know, it takes more than just a language to produce ‘great’ works of literature. Patrons, publishers and punters all come in handy, as does leisure time, as well as some sort of an educational environment (Personally I don’t know what I would have done without my governess).

You point out in one of your previous posts that WB Yeats was a ‘very good example of an Irishman educated in England, who was exposed to a broader English lexicon than he'd have experienced in Sligo and Dublin’. If this is true, and if we are looking for an analogous poet to Yeats in Irish (which is of course impossible, but bear with me), then there would have to be a broadly comparable educational environment for exposure to Irish, which, of course, there wasn’t. So no ‘Irish Coleridge’ or ‘Irish Wordsworth’, but there was no ‘Irish Cambridge’ either.

Frankly, I blame Da Brits for this. Well not completely, but the fact that there wasn’t really much of a market at The Globe Theatre for aspiring playwrights in Irish sort of meant that the ‘Irish Hamlet’ was never really going to happen. Meanwhile back in Ireland, the majority of Irish speakers didn’t really have time to try and get a play staged around that time, just as a novel in Irish wasn’t really foremost in their minds around the time of the famine. Not much interest from the paying public, see.

(Oh and by the way, if we're going to judge Irish works of literature on the basis of how English translations compare with English poems and poems from other languages translated into English, have a butcher's at The School Bag.)

Biffo

You are beginning to sound like that description of the well balanced gaeilgore as someone who has a chip on both shoulders...

Guess what? In the anglophone world the Irish accent and the Irish dialect are both low status signifiers. They are traditionally associated with uneducated manual labourers not educated middle class professionals in both the UK and US. That's just the way it is.

Want to get on in the big bad world out there then you better start speaking and writing grammatically correct Anglo / American English, not the mish mash that was acceptable for your Leaving Cert papers. Or that one can hear daily on RTE.

Have a strong regional accent then you better loose it fast. Because no one outside of Britain or Ireland will understand a word you are saying. Move to Dublin 6 for six months and knock off some of those rough edges...

Irish literature? Well almost all of it seems to have been written in English...

The only book written in Irish in the last one hundred and fifty years that's worth reading in translation is “The Poor Mouth”, and it's a parody of most of the other books written in Irish during the last one hundred and fifty years..

Of course English is a much richer language than Irish. English has an immense corpus of some of the finest works in world literature, and modern Irish is, well, the rump end of a peasant oral culture on the cultural fringes of Europe.

No contest.

In fact the more I think about it the funnier that even an attempt at a comparison seems.

Ah, Biffo, I wondered about the long silence following my last post. I thought you'd assembled some gems of Irish literature to show me how wrong I was. I guess not. But while we're waiting for those gems, let me explain that I have no wish to sound like Prince Charles; people think I'm smart anyway, accent or no accent. I am a simple Dubliner who left that city many years ago, taking with me a number of regrets concerning the education I received there. My principal gripe was that too much emphasis was placed on Irish, and no one has ever been able to justify this to me.

At school I was told that Peig and An tIolanach were examples of great literature. When I questioned why it was that Irish "literature" when translated into English turned out to be no more moving than "We fed the pigs on Thursday before bringing them to market", the response was: "Ah, but you see, it's impossible to translate the Irish into English. You miss the melody of the language." When I pointed out that the original sounded less melodious to my ears than, say, a passage from a French author we were studying at the time, I was told that the Irish writers were unable to write much more on account of the Penal Laws. The English had robbed the Irish of their language (no doubt in the same way that the English had felled all the trees). And so it went.

This is what makes me angry. In my schooldays we wasted hour after hour on a language that had a tiny vocabulary and an even tinier corpus of worthwhile books, when we could have been immersing ourselves in the vast body of English literature. We were given two plays of Shakespeare. Two!

My schoolfriends, Dubliners all, were bright lads, and didn't need to be told that what we were presented with as great Irish literature was anything but. We read the better English and American novels in private, away from the classroom, and thus educated ourselves. And yes, we thought it risible that the Irish educational system was in the grip of "culchies" who made homophones of "tie", "toy", "Thai" and "thigh". A harsh judgement, I know, but we took no prisoners in those days.

We keep in touch from time to time and follow the course of Irish education. We're agreed that the prognosis is not good. Certainly, things have improved a great deal since our day, but children are still being force-fed the Irish language.

My sons do not speak a word of Irish and have never expressed the slightest interest in the language. Should they do so later on, then I shall encourage them as best I can. But why should they, when knowledge of Irish is unlikely to enrich their lives in any meaningful way?

Now: let's have those quotes!

hahahah. What a load of tosh J.

"In the anglophone world the Irish accent and the Irish dialect are both low status signifiers"

Bullshit. And anyway who really gives a shit what some narrow minded anglophones think.

"They are traditionally associated with uneducated manual labourers not educated middle class professionals in both the UK and US."

Bullshit again J.

"That's just the way it is."

No it isn't. Care to back up your statements ... if you can?

"Want to get on in the big bad world out there then you better start speaking and writing grammatically correct Anglo / American English,"

Absolute rubbish. For starters the Irish accent is generally easier to understand that the English accent, and definitly easier to understand than the Scottish or Welsh accent. Some American accents are extremely hard to understand if you are not a antice English speaker. Of course if you'd spent some time aborad (in non English speaking countries) you might know this.

"Have a strong regional accent then you better loose it fast."

Same applies to every English speaking country. Doh!

"Of course English is a much richer language than Irish."

Oh do explain knowledgable one.
You might find it hard to prove considering you don't speak Irish so i'll look forward to this one.

...waiting.

antice = native, bloody speed typing.

Maca

School holidays started this week so I cannot ask the very nice lady who teaches Breton in my sons school exactly what are the nuances of the availability of Breton language classes in the various departments of Brittany. Whether the situation here in Finistere is different from, say, Morbihan or Ille-et-Villane. Or if Breton is a subject for the Bac. If you are still interested I can get back to you in September..

When I ran your comment in a previous thread about not hearing all the foreign languages that I have heard spoken in Ireland past several people in Dublin the reaction was uniform. After they had stopped laughing, they all asked - Where does this guy live? And when was the last time he visited Ireland? Ten years ago? And one comment of – Is he deaf?

So I have a simple proposition. The next time we are both in Dublin lets meet and play a drinking game. Lets walk around the city center along an uncontrived route, as one would travel while going about ones daily business. Every time we hear someone speak one of the foreign languages I have discussed in these threads I will buy you a beverage of your choice at the nearest hostelry. And every time we hear someone speak Irish you can return the favour.

I am willing to bet that you would be legless within the hour - and at the end of a whole day of trapesing around Dublin I would be as sober as a Pioneer at the end of a novena.

Good post, slackjaw! Didn't this thread begin with translations? :0)

"But what about someone like Baluba, whose first language is Irish? If I understand you correctly, he should be entitled to judge the richness of English or French is based on how well someone like Evelyn Waugh or Balzac translates into Irish….do you agree? If not, why not?"

Of course I agree! Good writing is ALWAYS translatable, and a translator who contends it's not should seek other employment. We are at a point in history where translation is coming into its own and this can only be for the good.

JMcC
"I cannot ask the very nice lady ... availability of Breton language"

Well one can easily check the internet and read of the schools dropping Breton...

"When I ran your comment..."

Gas. But somehow I doubt it. There aren't Polish cafes all over the country J. And to say you haven't heard Irish in Ireland is equally laughable. Are you deaf?

"The next time we are both in Dublin lets meet and play a drinking game"

Sure, take your pick, Polish or Latvian?

Care to answer my 11:02, if you are able?

Denny
"Good writing is ALWAYS translatable,"

Though, OBVIOUSLY, quite a lot can be lost in translation. As we all know.

J McConnell,

Hello again,

"You are beginning to sound like .. someone who has a chip on both shoulders..."

Funny, that's the way you sound to me. You actually sound like you've got a grudge against a language. That would require a deep seam of bitterness and resentment.

"Want to get on in the big bad world out there then you better start speaking and writing grammatically correct Anglo / American English"

So, Eminem made his money by making himself sound like an upper class twit.

"..not the mish mash that was acceptable for your Leaving Cert papers."

We don't do Leaving Cert in NI. I benefited from a British grammer school education. We didn't get taught "mish-mash". Our education didn't leave us with a sense of self-loathing. But I feel your pain, it must be difficult.

"Have a strong regional accent then you better loose it fast. Because no one outside of Britain or Ireland will understand a word you are saying. Move to Dublin 6 for six months and knock off some of those rough edges..."

I worked in the USA some years ago, yeah, I realised I had to modify my speech within 1 minute of arriving there in order to make myself understood, it wasn't a problem, I found the level.

Very curious, where did you think I was from? You seem to have placed me in the Republic of Ireland but outside Dublin. Did you read my comments in a broad imaginary accent?

Also the Dublin accent, it's a distintive irish accent, does that not contradict your previous advice.

"Of course English is a much richer language than Irish."

If it is you'll be able to demonstrate how it is. Give me examples that contrast the richness of English compared to the poverty of Irish. You must have something in mind.

English has an immense corpus of some of the finest works in world literature..."

Of course it has, so does Chinese, French, German, Russian, Italian, Scots etc etc, so what?

" and modern Irish is, well, the rump end of a peasant oral culture on the cultural fringes of Europe."

Actually it's an Indo-European language, just like English.

J McConnell,

Hello again,

"You are beginning to sound like .. someone who has a chip on both shoulders..."

Funny, that's the way you sound to me. You actually sound like you've got a grudge against a language. That would require a deep seam of bitterness and resentment.

"Want to get on in the big bad world out there then you better start speaking and writing grammatically correct Anglo / American English"

So, Eminem made his money by making himself sound like an upper class twit.

"..not the mish mash that was acceptable for your Leaving Cert papers."

We don't do Leaving Cert in NI. I benefited from a British grammer school education. We didn't get taught "mish-mash". Our education didn't leave us with a sense of self-loathing. But I feel your pain, it must be difficult.

"Have a strong regional accent then you better loose it fast. Because no one outside of Britain or Ireland will understand a word you are saying. Move to Dublin 6 for six months and knock off some of those rough edges..."

I worked in the USA some years ago, yeah, I realised I had to modify my speech within 1 minute of arriving there in order to make myself understood, it wasn't a problem, I found the level.

Very curious, where did you think I was from? You seem to have placed me in the Republic of Ireland but outside Dublin. Did you read my comments in a broad imaginary accent?

Also the Dublin accent, it's a distintive irish accent, does that not contradict your previous advice.

"Of course English is a much richer language than Irish."

If it is you'll be able to demonstrate how it is. Give me examples that contrast the richness of English compared to the poverty of Irish. You must have something in mind.

English has an immense corpus of some of the finest works in world literature..."

Of course it has, so does Chinese, French, German, Russian, Italian, Scots etc etc, so what?

" and modern Irish is, well, the rump end of a peasant oral culture on the cultural fringes of Europe."

Actually it's an Indo-European language, just like English.

Maca wrote: "Though, OBVIOUSLY, quite a lot can be lost in translation. As we all know."

I for one do not know. An example please?

Sorry, I ballsed up there.

Maca

"Though, OBVIOUSLY, quite a lot can be lost in translation. As we all know."

Nice one!

Denny
I'm sure you do, if you're honest. It's the way languages work. What do you do when you translate something from one language to another? You can't translate literally obviously, you have to translate while preserving the meaning of the original as much as possible. But there's more to it than just meaning, it's also the way something is said, the words used can convery more that just meaning and that can be hard to translate.
Your someone who seems to appreciate good literature, i'm sure anything you read can be expressed in many different ways while preserving the meaning. No doubt you can understand this.

Your = you're, it's late here.

now now maca, you are starting to loose it.

There I was offering to buy you a drink, and you were abusing me all the time.

So you talk to non-native English speakers during the course of you work, good for you. So you live in a country where most of the people speak English better as a second language than most people in Ireland (and large parts of the UK) can speak English as a first language. Again, good for you.

Well I lived for many years in a city where the majority of my neighbors were not native English speakers. Were maybe a third of the people one came into contact with while going about ones business had minimal or no English.

I've worked for many years in a industry were the majority of my co-workers came from a total more than three dozen countries, most of whom were not native English speakers.

I've heard every permutation of accent and degree of fluency possible, and I've witness much misunderstanding and confusion among people attempting to communicate in English. Guess what? I've found that the anglophone accents that non-native speakers have the most problems with are – strong Irish and Scottish accents.

This whole speaking better English than the English myth is just another load of b.s the Irish feed themselves.

Has it never crossed your mind that maybe these people were just being polite when they complimented your English?

There are not too many Scots in the Bay Area but there are lots of Irish, who are, guess what, working in construction or in pubs. Not too many middle class Irish professional make it out there. Maybe they are all on the East Coast...

Socio-cultural stereotypes come from somewhere, you know. Maybe if the millions of emigrants to the US and UK over the last 150 years had gone into accountancy or chartered surveying, rather than construction and blue collar jobs, the Irish in the US and UK would not have such a strong stereotypical association with manual labour and blue collar jobs.

Again, just an observation.

Denny Boy

"people think I'm smart anyway, accent or no accent."

I don't know why people would think that, you haven't said anything remotely smart. You just sound conceited, and, if i may be so bold, full of sh*t.

"In my schooldays we wasted hour after hour on a language that had a tiny vocabulary .."

No language has a tiny vocabulary, language by it's nature gives a person the ability to express any idea they can conceive or descride any object they can conceive. No language has any more or less ability to do this. You make extravagant claims for yourself, but you seem to be unable to understand what the fundamental nature of language is.

By the way, I never promised to name any great works of irish literature, see Slackjaw's comments. He said it better than I could.

"And yes, we thought it risible that the Irish educational system was in the grip of "culchies" who made homophones of "tie", "toy", "Thai" and "thigh". A harsh judgement, I know, but we took no prisoners in those days."

Hopefully the culchies gave you all the boot up the arse that you all richly deserved.

(see they way I had to use the "you all" to express the "you plural" concept so that you understood that I was talking about all you "bright lads" and not just you in particular."

Where's your tiny vocabulary now? Irish has two words and a clear distinction, where English has only one and no distinction.

I don't subscribe to your bullshit school of comparative linguitics, but it is an interesting aside to your claims of a tiny vocabulary.

What is lost in translation?

Well, puns, just for example.

The intelligence, and menace, of the pun in shakespeare's Hamlet-

'a little more than kin, and less than kind'

is completely lost in translation to most languages.

In losing that pun we lose already a flavour of the hero, and the antagonism he feels.

In the english translation of 'the poor mouth', the particularly witty bilingual pun on the english word 'sir' and a much ruder irish homynym is lost so thoroughly, that the english translation requires a footnote to explain it.

Right boys, I'm off to read An tOileanach. I'm on chapter 3 and I'm dying to find out what happens.

Imagine living on an island surrounded by ignorant pigs. Anyway..

Good night

Hello, I'm back. Had an interesting email from one of my students who'd been following our little exchange. He's willing to bet hard currency on your not being able to produce a noteworthy passage from Irish literature.

His reasoning? "Give me any nationality, Portuguese say, and I'll go to Google and key in 'Portuguese literature'. Within seconds I have a name, in this case Jose Saramago. Within minutes I have a quote: 'Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is.' Can't the same be done with Irish writers?"

A fair point, I'd have thought. Perhaps J McConnell is correct when he writes:

"Irish literature? Well almost all of it seems to have been written in English...

"The only book written in Irish in the last one hundred and fifty years that's worth reading in translation is "The Poor Mouth", and it's a parody of most of the other books written in Irish during the last one hundred and fifty years."

In the absence of evidence to the contrary...

As regards translation, I believe I demonstrated with that quote of Thomas Mann how accurate it can be. The Beach Tree, would you so kind as to produce evidence to support your claims regarding punning and Shakespeare? I'm afraid it isn't enough to say that something is "completely lost in translation to most languages".

JMcC
"So you talk to non-native English speakers during the course of you work"

More accuratly 99%+ of the people I work/communicate with are non-English speakers

"you live in a country where most of the people speak English better as a second language than most people in Ireland"

?? Maybe your own English isn't so good if that's how you understood it.

"Well I lived for many years ... had minimal or no English."

So pretty much the same as me.

"I've worked for many years in a industry were the majority of my co-workers came from a total more than three dozen countries, most of whom were not native English speakers."

So pretty much the same as me.

"I've heard every permutation of accent and degree of fluency possible"

I'm inclined to not believe that actually.

"I've found that the anglophone accents that non-native speakers have the most problems with are – strong Irish and Scottish accents."

strong Irish and Scottish accents, of course. A strong accent from anywhere is difficult to understand.

"This whole speaking better English than the English myth is just another load of b.s the Irish feed themselves."

I've never heard anyone saying that.

"Has it never crossed your mind that maybe these people were just being polite when they complimented your English?"

They weren't complimenting my English, they were comparing how easy/difficult it is to understand the various English accents.
And they would often look to me to clarify what someone else had said.

"Not too many middle class Irish professional make it out there. Maybe they are all on the East Coast..."

Well most of the Irish lads that I know out here are middle class professionals. Maybe we just hang in different circles.

p.s. The previous unanswered point...

"Of course English is a much richer language than Irish."
"Oh do explain knowledgable one.
You might find it hard to prove considering you don't speak Irish so i'll look forward to this one."

Are you able to answer?

-- Biffo

Actually I had pegged you as a Nordie quite a while ago. Thanks for the confirmation.

So you really have not a clue what Denny Boy or I are talking about.

-- To the others

A quick survey.

Hands up all those who actually learnt Irish courtesy of the Republic of Irelands Dept of Education "we'll beat this dead language into ungrateful little bastards one way or another" policy?

I know that there is a least one, maca. And no aonghus, you dont count. You learnt it at home.

Now all you foreigners out there (because thats what you all are in the eyes of the vast majority of the citizens of the Republic of Ireland – read the surveys). How many of you learnt Irish because of a genuine love of other languages and cultures? And how many of you learnt the language because it is vital part of your national self identification and political beliefs?

So far I've read little evidence of the “beauty of the language brigade” but lots of the de-facto “how dare you question my political and national self identity” brigade.

Wrt the Shakespeare discussion, on a related note at the 2006 World Shakespeare Congress in Brisbane one of the topics to be discussed will be the translation of Willys work ... in case anyone is interested ...

JMcC
1. Care to answer the previous point about English being a much richer language than Irish? If you are able???

2. I'm afrid you pegged me wrong. I don't know of any such policy in Ireland.
I did however study Irish in school because, like all other subjects, it was on the curriculum.
I did also study the language after I had left school because I like & value the language.
How does that fit in with your survey?

Baluba

Just checked out your great writers in Irish list and my reaction is – eh?

That's it.

With the exception of Heaney and O'Nolan all are obscure literary non-entities.

And Heaney and O'Nolan mostly wrote in English.

Talk about small fish in a very very small pond.

Sorry, a small bunch of poets, memoirists and short-story writers, no matter what their literary merit, does not constitute an world important literary tradition.

Now lets make a short list of important Irish writers who wrote in English. Joyce, Yeats, Shaw, Beckett, etc etc etc.

I could go on and on with the list but the sheer one-sidedness of the list of important Irish writers who wrote in English, against your list of 'important' writers in the Irish language makes the whole exercise ludicrous.

J McConnell

Now all you foreigners out there (because thats what you all are in the eyes of the vast majority of the citizens of the Republic of Ireland – read the surveys).

Are people from the North considered foreigners? If so, that would include me then.

How many of you learnt Irish because of a genuine love of other languages and cultures?

It was compulsory at secondary school until age 14, then you could choose to study it further. I chose to study it to GCSE level and I suppose I chose it because I liked learning new languages. Other cultures? Not so sure about that one...

And how many of you learnt the language because it is vital part of your national self identification and political beliefs?

I posted my own thoughts on learning Irish at my own site a few days ago.

This discussion has gone way off the original topic. I think perhaps we can take it that there are plenty of people who would care if Irish died, and plenty of others who are dying for a chance to dance at the wake of Irish, and that the broad majority don't care much about any subject. I have no desire to continue chasing JMcConnell's ever shifting straw men, especially as when the crú is on the tairne, he decides my opinions don't count because (shock horror) I actually speak the language he claims is dead.


On the subject of literature, I haven't got the time to do Denny Boy's research for him, even if I had the inclination. I also speak fluent German, and stand over my comment that the English translation does not do justice to Mann's prose. And I do not claim to be a literary translator, and would not attempt to translate excellent Irish into excellent English.


Since Denny speaks German, I offer this site which has Irish and some German versions of several contempary Irish poets.


Not to mention this google on literature+irish+language which those interested may peruse at will.


As a parting note, Heinrich Böll considered an tOiléanach worth translating into German, although he had to work from a poor English translation.

J McConnell

"Actually I had pegged you as a Nordie quite a while ago. Thanks for the confirmation."

You're welcome

"So you really have not a clue what Denny Boy or I are talking about."

Probably not, but then it is all a bit incoherent. I note that both myself and Maca challenged you on some of the more blatent nonsense you posted and you didn't bother to get back to us.

If you'd have stuck to a coherent argument about why there shouldn't be compulsory Irish then I'd have sympathy for you.

But all you are saying here is that Irish is an inferior language with a "tiny vocabulary". It's just a nonsense argument that you wouldn't be able to sustain.

Aonghus wrote: "On the subject of literature, I haven't got the time to do Denny Boy's research for him, even if I had the inclination."

No one's asking you to. My point was, and remains, that when at school I was given to understand that hour after hour wasted on Irish was in fact justified, as a knowledge of the language would allow me to read some wonderful literature in the original. If you agree with my teacher then the burden of proof is on you.

"I also speak fluent German, and stand over my comment that the English translation does not do justice to Mann's prose."

It's practically word for word, Aonghus! If you speak fluent German then you'd know this. If anything the translator has slightly IMPROVED Mann's text by rendering "dem lieblichen Munde" as "its enchanting mouth". "Lovely" would have sufficed.

"And I do not claim to be a literary translator, and would not attempt to translate excellent Irish into excellent English."

Once again, I have only your word - and the word of my teachers - that the Irish is excellent, that it can stand its own with the literature of, say, the United States. Odd that it can't bear the light of day on Slugger O'Toole.

Believe it or not, I'm keeping an open mind on this. I should like to believe that those 13 years of Irish lessons were not entirely wasted.

"As a parting note, Heinrich Böll considered an tOiléanach worth translating into German, although he had to work from a poor English translation."

Sorry, this makes it a work of literature? And what do you mean by "poor"? If memory serves, the book was written in very simple language, language a child could translate (and that is precisely what we were tasked to do as children).

I do hope you're not using the same ploy you used with the Mann translation, Aonghus, and that when you or someone else FINALLY come with a line or two of Irish "literature" in translation you can say: "Ah, but the translation is but a pale shadow of the original."

If translations are as suspect as you try to make out then I'll just have to chuck out my Turgenev and Tolstoy. Or perhaps we pought to insist that the publishers of translated books insert a caution message in the preface: "The following is a pale shadow of the original."

An tOiléanach was not on any school course that I know of. Anyone who thinks the language in it is simple is misled. I mentioned Böll translation because he considered it literature. Literature is your profession, not mine.

Lieblich, by the way, does not mean lovely.
see here

Denny Boy

"I do hope you're not using the same ploy you used with the Mann translation, Aonghus, and that when you or someone else FINALLY come with a line or two of Irish "literature" in translation you can say: "Ah, but the translation is but a pale shadow of the original."

This one, or along these lines, from a great work of literature, the poor mouth:

"Ní mise a bhí ag an gafta leis an scaifte...".

My translation is. "It wasn't me at the gate with the crowd..."

If you try to translate it into English the dialect jokes gets lost completely.

I read it in the original, later in English, it was a heavy-handed but quite funny joke in the original. It didn't work in the English translation.

Nothing new in that. If you don't think things can't be lost in translation, then you takling through your arse. You are unlikely to be who you say you are.

Now, how about answering some of the questions I posed you? Let's establish your bona fides.

Here is a bibliography for you, Denny

A Bibliography Of Modern Gaelic Literature In Translation. Since you are a lecturer, one presumes you have access to a good library, and will be able to get some at least of the works concerned.

“If anything the translator has slightly IMPROVED Mann's text by rendering "dem lieblichen Munde" as "its enchanting mouth". "Lovely" would have sufficed.”

Either your German or your English is insufficient.
But that just shows you.

maca

But I thought you said you lived in Finland?

When my brother went to college in Finland he found no need to learn any Finnish as all the Finns he came across spoke perfect English. When he later moved to Italy he had to pick up a working knowledge of Italian pretty fast as it was a very different situation there.

Living in Finland is very different linguistic kettle of fish from living a melting pot city like San Francisco.

I'd be interested to discover exactly which of my arguments are straw arguments.

Like me to give a more precise definition of dead language?

Like me to explain in detail why a language like Irish, a language of peasants filtered by pedants, has little or no cultural attraction for me?

Like me to explain in detail why I find no need to define my nationality by the shibboleths of failed 19'the century cultural nationalism that raised the language of a culturally and economically backward minority to the defining element of nationality?

Have n't you noticed that my problem is with the policy of compulsory and coercive Irish, of which the Dingle signs are a perfect example.

If want to chat in Irish among yourselves, that's fine by me. If you can persuade the government to pour hundreds of millions of euros per years into the various Irish language bureaucracies and pork-barrels, that's fine by me too. But if you want to pretend that the Irish language is alive and kicking, that one can easily hear it spoken in the four corners of Ireland, or that there has been a material improvement in the number or competency of speakers over the last 30 years, or that it is a hearth language and not a public discourse language, then I am afraid I'll have to disagree with you there.

I was referring to your imputing opinions to me which I do not hold.
See Definition number 2.


You ignore pertinent points I bring up, or else you claim that my opinion "doesn't count" because I speak Irish. Your sense of identity or shibboleths are of no concern to me.

"Like me to explain in detail why a language like Irish, a language of peasants filtered by pedants, has little or no cultural attraction for me?"

Explain in detail what a "peasant language filtered by pedants." is and name the other examples apart from Irish.

JMcC
"But I thought you said you lived in Finland?"
Indeed I do.
Many Finns have very good English, but many have little or no English. Like any country really.

"Living in Finland is very different linguistic kettle of fish from living a melting pot city like San Francisco."

Probably. Doesn't change anything though. My experiences with non-English speakers is not confined to just Finland.

Anyway before you start with your definitions and explanations can you go back and answer the point about 'language richness'. Alternatively an acknowledgement that you were bullshitting would suffice :)

I decided to see if we could clear up this whole, English v Irish, which is the 'richer', argument by comparing what's on offer in this year Leaving Cert syllabus.

I am working on the assumption that the Dept of Education would try to offer us the best of what was available in the Irish language corpus, and though somewhat half-hearted in it's attitude toward English, would at least offer a reasonable selection of the better works in English.

We can find the Honors Irish syllabus here

http://www.skoool.ie/homeworkzone_sc.asp?id=2642

Its kind of sad actually. It really is as weak as I remember it. Just look at the prose selection. Not great works of world literature standard here.

The Honors English syllabus is here

http://www.skoool.ie/homeworkzone_sc.asp?id=3162

A lot more middle brow than it was twenty five years ago but still a reasonable selection of the great and the good.

I wonder do they still use those wonderful prose, short-story and poetry anthologies we had for Leaving Cert English? The certainly helped wile away many hours of mind-numbingly boring classes and were a nice introduction to a lot of very good literature.

aonghus

Could you point out exactly where I used straw man arguments. Maybe I did not explain myself clearly enough.

I only time I remember making statements that your opinion was not relevant was with regard to how people were exposed to the Irish language. Your exposure to the language was in a home environment, so I assumed it was completely natural and effortless.

This is in great contrast with the large majority of Irish people whose main exposure to the Irish language was purely in a school environment. Even though you went through the same regime as all of us your experience would have been very different from the rest of us. By being brought up in an Irish speaking environment you already had a huge built-in advantage in dealing with the syllabus, and unlike almost all the rest of us, you went home to more positive reinforcement in the Irish language.

So I am not too surprised that you cannot really relate to people like me who had a very different experience of the Irish language.

Biffo

The “peasant language filtered by pedants” statement refers to the way standardised modern Irish a.ka. Dept of Education Irish, a.k.a Civil Service Irish was created by a committee of Irish language experts from the various rural dialects.

Other languages with a similar history. Well Nynorsk comes immediately to mind.

Anyone fancy translating 'the peasants are revolting' into any language at all and keeping the double meaning?

Can anyone translate 'faightear gach laoch in aisce' and maintain the cultural idiom? And no 'age conquers all' as it is most often translated has not even any resemblance of maintaining the integrity of the original.

This thread has decended into nonsense and, I suspect, a healthy dose of cac bó or bs (and no the translation into Irish is not cac tairbh).

It is incredibly sad that an alleged literature teacher's main proof that there is no worth in Irish literature is that when you 'google' it, not much happens. Go to a library in Ireland. Whether google provides info or not is neither proof nor evidence of a language's literary worth.

The following piece comes to mind reading this thread.

Tá cime romham,
Tá cime i mo dhiaidh,
Is mé féin ina lár,
I mo chime mar chách.

It seems there are one or two 'cimí' on this thread.

I'm damned if I'm going to attempt a translation of it, but hey, maybe Google will save us...

Jesus J McC,

If you actually believe that any kind of Civil Service exists on this island you're even more out of touch than I thought.

Oh for the day when we move towards a central dialect...

And by the way, the amount of literature in one language compared to another has no bearing on the worth of the language at all. At a rough guess, 99.999% of what is printed in English (including a lot of bloggery) is worthless pulp.

Maybe that's why some Irish oral literary geniuses thought that 'paper would mute my words, steal their nuances and take the life's breath out of them'.

of course that should have read 'any sort of civil service Irish', but maybe the other suffices too...

Oh my God! Will the pretence never end? Even Microsoft haven't realised that Irish is a dead language!!!!

As I said elswhere the money would be far better spent improving the command of English-right across the Island. I am fed up being gibbered at in Limerick,Dublin and west Tyrone to name but a few. No it wasn`t Irish it was a barely comprehensible slabber of speech.

I sent two Swedes (friends) to Dunloy (they were big into megalifs). On their return they described some difficulty in finding the cairn in question. I expressed surprise and asked why they had not stopped and asked for directions.
We did they replied -unfortunately the person did not speak english. --Education anyone?

J McConnell,

"The “peasant language filtered by pedants” statement refers to the way standardised modern Irish a.ka. Dept of Education Irish, a.k.a Civil Service Irish was created by a committee of Irish language experts from the various rural dialects.

Well why didn't you just say you were talking about the Official Standard version and not Irish in general?

Barnshee,
"We did they replied -unfortunately the person did not speak english. --Education anyone?"

These people are educated, as educated as anywhere else in the world, they just don't speak what you would call the Queen's English.

Believe it or not, you don't have to sound English to be educated. Maybe if you and your pals were more linguistically lithe then there wouldn't be a comprehension issue.

The ignorant always expect others to bend to their world view, the enlightened bend to comprehend. You seem proud to fit into the former category.

This is a display of desperate linguistic snobbery, like when they provide subtitles of Arabs or people from India speaking English because the audience is too ignorant to learn.

biffo

> Well why didn't you just say you were talking
> about the Official Standard version and
> not Irish in general?

Because, guess what, that's what they teach in schools. When most people in the South talk about Irish they mean the language they learnt at school. Not Munster Irish or Connaught Irish or any of the other native dialects.

baluba

I must be a lot older than you (or else you are another of those Nordies unfamiliar with the strange ways of South) because the term Civil Service Irish was a term I heard on more than one occasion while growing up.

If I remember the story correctly if you did really really well in your Honors Leaving Cert Irish there was some fairly cushy jobs translating all those riveting government documents from English to Irish. But they had to be translated into a very particular form of Irish. It had to be both legally precise and bureaucratically correct.

Any differences between the English and Irish versions could give years of employment to the legal profession, or end a previously high flying civil service career.

And that is what I understood to be Civil Service Irish.

"or else you are another of those Nordies unfamiliar with the strange ways of South"

On the evidence above we seem to be better informed about you than you are about us.

JMcC
"I decided to see if we could clear up this whole, English v Irish, which is the 'richer', argument by comparing what's on offer in this year Leaving Cert syllabus."

Are you actually serious J? Nah, you must be taking the piss. Don't make yourself look like a bigger fool.

Evening all. What, STILL no examples of literary Irish writing? What can it all mean? You do know I've money riding on this, don't you?

Sorry, Aonghus, on two counts. I must have been confusing An t-Iolanach with Peig. Easy mistake after so many years. They're both set on the Blaskets aren't they? The day-to-day lives of simple fisher folk? (Mine eye glazeth over at the memory of those riveting tales.)

But no doubt you'll be providing us in due course with a sample or two of this far from simple language...

Sorry on the second count, but "lieblich" does indeed mean "lovely". That page you pointed me to actually says so! It's number 9 from the top. It also offers "charming" as a possibility, and this is close (in its original definition and usage) to "enchanting". The only way of obtaining a closer translation of that passage would be to adopt the German syntax, and that would be downright silly.

And why are we arguing about this at all? [Denny heaves a sigh] I suppose that were I to translate "I am a dog. My name is Spot," as "Ich bin ein Hund. Mein Name ist Spot" somebody here would take issue with that.

Biffo, I have a policy of not entering discussion with people who use personal insults instead of arguments. But since you're so determined to defend the Irish language, come what may, just this once I'll make an exception...

You say: "If you don't think things can't be lost in translation, then you takling through your arse."

I said nothing of the sort. Maca wrote: "Though, OBVIOUSLY, quite a lot can be lost in translation. As we all know."

to which I responded: "I for one do not know."

If "quite a lot" can indeed be lost in translation then why do we continue to translate? Certainly SOMETHING may be lost from time to time, but that is not the same as saying quite a lot can be lost.

Of course puns and other pieces of wordplay are difficult (at times) to translate, yet a good translator will usually (though not always) find a way. Why otherwise would so many translations of Ulysses exist?

You quoted a line from The Poor Mouth. I read it in English. If you wish to consider it literature, fair enough; for me it was a humorous little book along the lines of Spike Milligan's Puckoon.

"Ní mise a bhí ag an gafta leis an scaifte...".

Your translation is: "It wasn't me at the gate with the crowd..."

You say: "If you try to translate it into English the dialect jokes gets lost completely. I read it in the original, later in English, it was a heavy-handed but quite funny joke in the original. It didn't work in the English translation."

I don't know the context so I'm working in the dark here, but does it depend on "gafta" being a near-rhyme of "scaifte"? If so, did you consider "gate/spate"? Just a thought. I'm no translator either but I assure you that a good one will explore every possibility.

Puns do work across a surprisingly large number of languages. For instance, somebody wondered if it's possible to translate "the peasants are revolting". Of course it is. The Dutch might say: "de boeren veroorzaken onlust". I say "might" because I'm neither a native speaker nor a translator and no doubt have overlooked a more "voor de hand liggende" translation.

I seem to recall your taking offence at my description of the Irish vocabulary as being "tiny" compared to that of English (the greatest language the world has ever seen, whether you like it or not). Can you honestly say that this isn't accurate?

Consider the facts. The OED lists 615,000 words, Webster offers 450,000. This isn't taking into account the millions of scientific terms out there (and in daily use in laboratories, factories and science faculties around the globe). There are 200,000 English words in common use. German comes in second with 185,000, while French speakers and writers use only 100,000. How does Irish measure up against those world languages?

J McConnell wrote: "Sorry, a small bunch of poets, memoirists and short-story writers, no matter what their literary merit, does not constitute an world important literary tradition."

To which I can add that the small bunch are given a disproportionate amount of notice and acclaim for their work. I attribute this in part to post-colonial guilt, and the feel-good factor present when larger nations "recognize" the work of ethnic minorities or small nations. I sometimes think that a surefire way for a mediocre poet to succeed is to write in Irish, but perhaps that's the cynic in me speaking.

Well, I can't say much more on these issues without repeating myself, so I'll sign off. I'll look in again from time to time to check for those quotes.

maca

OK. As you are such a brilliant student of comparative linguistics and literature....

Tell us why the Irish language is so much superior to the English language.

And please explain to us lesser minds why the majority of your fellow citizens are too stupid to realize this. After all they have had more than seventy years to discover the error of their ways.

Tell us all about all the great works of world literary genius that are written in the Irish language that all us English speaker are too ignorant and stupid to have heard of.

Tell us were we can find all the special sections in foreign book stores of great works of literature written in Irish in local translation. Works that transcend the unique condition of the Irish language cultural world-view and communicate to other cultures that overwhelming superior and sophisticated experience of life, the universe and the human condition that can only be truly expressed in the Irish language.

I'm going up to Paris next week, give me a reading list of all these great work of literature written in Irish and I'll look for the French translations.

Biffo

> "or else you are another of those Nordies
> unfamiliar with the strange ways of South"
>
> On the evidence above we seem to be better
> informed about you than you are about us.

Actually I was just double checking...

Baluba said earlier that he was a native speaker but somehow a lot of his postings sounded a bit more like Norn Iron than the Free State gaeilgore he claimed to be.

J McConnell

You got the quote, stop putting down a great work of literature, no need for that, you leave yourself open to the charge of Philistine.

You got the untranslatable pun, but it passed right over your head, you didn't know enough dialect Irish to get it and your own, perfectly correct, English translation couldn't get it across. Lost in translation indeed.

OK, English is the greatest language in the world because it's got so many words they can't be counted.

That's like me saying Chinese is better than English because it's got thousands of characters, whereas English has only got 26 letters.

Denny we know you are no English lit lecturer, you are a bullshitter posting nonsense on a website.

I'm am almost sorry that you won't be sharing your thoughts with us anymore. It's been entertaining.

What will you bullshit about next?

J McConnell, apologies that should have read
Denny Boy

(assuming you are not one and the same person)

JMcC
"Tell us why the Irish language is so much superior to the English language."

Did I say it was? Care to highlight where I might have even suggested such a thing?
You stated that "Of course English is a much richer language than Irish", I want you to back up that claim. So far you've been unable to do so.

Maca,

"I want you to back up that claim"

Of course he can't, he'll resort to the "English has 650,000 words, Irish has only XXXX?" nonsense.

The logical outcome of which - that Sheakespeare used only 30,000 so his works would have greatly benefitted by using an additional 300,000 medical, legal and scientific terms

(a lot of them latin derived anyway, which gives him the option of arguing that the Book of Kells was written in English)

These boys talk more shit than you'd want to deal with in a lifetime.

maca

Of course English is a much richer language than Irish

It's got an immense and deep literary tradition. The Irish language does not.

It would take many years to work ones way through the English literary canon. The Irish language literary cannon looks like it would fill a few wet Sundays.

The English language has got a very large and expressive vocabulary and rich palette of literary idioms. Irish seems to be great if you are some rural type insulting your neighbour.

The English language opens up to me a huge universe of cultural and historical experiences covering large swaths of history and most areas of the world.

The Irish language opens up to me the world of the miserable farmer and a bunch of profoundly provincial minor poets.

The English language opens up to me the cultures of the other English speaking cultures, the UK, US, Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa, India, West Indies, Nigeria, etc. etc. etc. whose literature I can read and appreciate in its native language and , at least for first five countries, seem to be able to carve out their own distinct national self-identity with needing the prop of their own separate language.

The Irish language limits me to a narrow, inward looking reactionary culture that seems to be obsessed with its own victimhood.

With the English language I can communicate with many hundreds of millions of people all over the world. With the Irish language I can communicate exclusively with, well, nobody probably. Are there any monoglot Irish speakers left in Ireland?

JMcC
"Of course English is a much richer language than Irish"

Well then explain how! All you have done there is waffle on with more narrow minded nonsense. Having more books & more speakers does not mean English is a richer language. The truth is you know absolutely nothing about the Irish language and are completely incapable of proving your point.

maca

The please show me where I am wrong. Explain to me why the Irish langauge is a richer language than English.

What do you mean by richer?

Culturally? Artistically? Morally?

Richer in expression? Richer in nuance? Richer in emotion? Richer in humour? Richer in pathos?...

Or is it quite simply that you personally associate more value with the Irish language and that, de-facto, makes it a 'richer' language.

Just wondering.

maca

You keep forgetting one thing.

I am the typical product of 13 years of Compulsory Irish.

The Irish I know is the Irish I was taught at school.

Not good enough for you then write a letter of complaint to the Dept of Education in Marlborough St about the terrible quality of teaching of the Irish language.

If the Dept of Education decides that most of the Irish literature we were exposed to was straight out of The Poor Mouth then dont be too surprised if we make the natural assumption that its all like that.

So is there any literature of merit written in the Irish language that does not fit the sterotype?

JMcC
"Explain to me why the Irish langauge is a richer language than English."

Once again ... i'm asking you to back up YOUR claim.

"Culturally? Artistically? Morally?
Richer in expression? Richer in nuance? Richer in emotion? Richer in humour? Richer in pathos?..."

I suppose if you start there it would be something. Though not knowing Irish i'm don't know how you'll manage the comparisons.

JMcC
"I am the typical product of 13 years of Compulsory Irish"

Are you? I don't think so. I can easily claim that also. I think 'the typical product' doesn't hold such a grudge against the language. IMO.

J McConnell,

"Irish seems to be great if you are some rural type insulting your neighbour."

Point taken, the best you came up with up here was "Nordie", and I didn't feel insulted, in fact I quite liked it.

maca

Eh? You really seemed to have argued yourself into a corner this time.

I say that the English language is a richer literary language than Irish. I give you a bunch of reasons for my *subjective* opinion.

You refuse to give any reasons for your *subjective* opinion on the (implied) superiority of Irish over English as a literary language, or even what your definition of a richer languge actually is.

Now you want me to prove to you that your *subjective* opinion, which have not so far volunteered, is wrong. But it does not matter anyway because my standard of Irish does not reach an acceptable standard.

I'll ask it again. By what criteria do you want me to compare and contrast the English and Irish languages? And which literary works in the Irish language do you consider valid for such a comaprison?

biffo

> "Irish seems to be great if you are some rural
> type insulting your neighbour."

> Point taken, the best you came up with up here was
> "Nordie", and I didn't feel insulted, in fact I
> quite liked it.

I can claim no originality. I first read the term on the Portadown News message board...

And it was not meant as an insult, more an informal term of endearment. You all know how much you come to mean to me during the last few days...

> Are you? I don't think so. I can easily claim that
> also. I think 'the typical product' doesn't hold
> such a grudge against the language. IMO.

According to other studies referred to by the UCC study, about 10% of the population hold very neagtive views about the Irish language, and another 30% to 40% are not terrible enthusiastic about the whole subject either.

Maybe its just that I am the first person you have run into who actually says what a lot of other people are really thinking.

JMcC
"You really seemed to have argued yourself into a corner this time."

Really? You're the one who's not able to back up his claims.

"I give you a bunch of reasons for my *subjective* opinion."

Note now it's just a subjective opinion, it was stated pretty much as fact earlier. Trying to back out now?

"You refuse to give any reasons for your *subjective* opinion on the (implied) superiority of Irish over English"

You're having trouble with this one. For the third time (maybe it will sink in this time), I have never claimed (or implied) that Irish is superior.

"But it does not matter anyway because my standard of Irish does not reach an acceptable standard."

It just seems obvious to me that in order to examine the 'richness' of a language one must know the language. Othewise all you can do is guess.

Both Chinese & Spanish have more native speakers than English, but I wouldn't claim they are richer languages because without an indepth knowledge of the languages what could I base such a claim on, gut feeling? just a hunch?

"about 10% of the population hold very neagtive views about the Irish language, and another 30% to 40% are not terrible enthusiastic about the whole subject either."

IF that survey is right it means you are part of the 10% and hardly "the typical product" as you claim. 30-40% may not be 'terribly enthusiastic' but are not negative towards it and it must mean the remaining 50%-60% hold positive views about the language.

"Believe it or not, you don't have to sound English to be educated. Maybe if you and your pals were more linguistically lithe then there wouldn't be a comprehension issue."

Says it all really --when your use of your native language is less effective than a foreigners(whose english is immaculate)--its their fault ---there is no excuse for levels of poor diction and grammar which render your speech incomprehensible to anyone outside your immediate circle.

JMcConnell wrote (although not to me)

Or is it quite simply that you personally associate more value with the Irish language and that, de-facto, makes it a 'richer' language.

This is an example of what makes discussion with you so wearisome, JMcC. It is not sufficient to counter your points, you expect us to prove the opposite argument for Irish which none of us have made.

The only case I have been making from the start of this thread is that Irish is not a dead language, and that there are people who would really care if it died. That is in the context of the article at the start of this thread.

nobody really cares.

.

I am not a lecturer in literature as Denny Boy is. Personally, I prefer Tomás Ó Criomhthain's island wit to Thomas Mann's bourgeouis decay. So what? (And yes, I have read both in the original, again so what?)

English is currently in the ascendant because it is the language of the current military and economic superpower - the USA. It's literature is irrelevant to that fact.

There is a broad and wide discourse in Irish on Irish. But one thing that all Irish speakers are agreed on is that An Roinn Éadochais [sic] has done a perfectly appalling job of teaching Irish. That is why the Gaelscoil movement was started - as a grassroots movement, not state sponsored. And getting a new Gaelscoil approved in the 26 counties is slightly easier than in the North, but it is still like pulling teeth.

If you are genuinely interested in Irish speakers ideas on Irish, then I suggest you read this book:
Who needs Irish which will give you a flavour of what Irish speakers actually think, although we are not some gleichgeschaltete bunch of idelogues as you persist in implying.

Maca

I'm beginning to have a greater appreciation for what Denny Boy was talking about.....

Let me explain. Richness is a quality. So when I make a statement about the richness of a subject I am by definition making a statement about my perception of, and my opinion about, that quality. And by definition I am making my value judgment about quality (either implicitly or explicitly) in comparison to something else.

So the statement “English is a richer language than Irish” is not a statement of fact. It cannot be a statement of fact because there is no objective criteria by which one can measure the absolute or relative richness of a language or literature. One cannot say Spanish has a relative richness quotient of 7.3, or Farsi has a relative richness quotient of 8.1.

So the statement “English is a richer language than Irish” was written under the assumption that the reader, having a reasonable command of the English language, would understand that it was a statement of preference or opinion.

The statement can be no more proved or disproved than a mathematic axiom.

I gave reasons why English, for me, was the richer language. And why the Irish language, as I was taught it, had little cultural attraction.

So I would like to know why you find Irish to be a richer linguistic and cultural experience than English.

Maca,

I feel your pain.

JMcC

You very clearly were stating it as fact.
Look at your 10:56pm yesterday
"Of course English is a much richer language than Irish"

Not "I think it is.." or "in my opinion" but very clearly "of course it is".

And if you wanted to clear up this debate (June 29, 03:45pm) up why not say it was your opinion rather than trying to actually prove it by comparing LC Eng & Ir?
Why, when we challenged you the first few times, didn't you just say it was personal opinion?

I believe you're right (though I happy to bow down to someone with greater knowledge of the subject) that "there is no objective criteria by which one can measure the absolute or relative richness of a language" (although a net search will highlight some interesting articles) & "The statement can be no more proved or disproved", which is why I pulled you on your claim.

"I gave reasons why English, for me, was the richer language. And why the Irish language, as I was taught it, had little cultural attraction."

Shifing the goalposts there. You just said "Irish", which implies the entire language, not just the bit you learned in school.

If you personally think English is a much richer language I have no problem with that, and I can understand why you might think that. When you claim it as fact then i'll question your claim.

"So I would like to know why you find Irish to be a richer linguistic and cultural experience than English."

Do I have to repeat myself for the 3rd time?

Btw, i'm off on my holidays in a couple of hours. It's been an interesting one J, take care.

Cya lads!

Aonghus

Thanks for the book reference. I'll check it out when I'm back in Dublin.

Maybe I should elaborate at this stage on my “Irish is dead” statement.

The criteria for my opinion is one that is based on the stated goals and aims of the people who put into place the current national Irish language policies back in the 1920's and 1930's. Their goal was not to turn the Gaeltachts into slowly dying language reserves, to create small islands of fluent Irish speakers and a large mass of people with a marginal fluency in the language.

They fully expected that in a generation or two they would have created a vibrant Irish speaking nation were the Irish language was the daily language of the majority of people. I think they would be horrified if they could see the status and use of the Irish language in Ireland today.

So the current Irish language policies have been a failure by the standards set by the originators of the policy.

Are there any signs that there will be a radical change in current policies any time soon? Not that I can see. The last major push for radical reform was in the 1960's and that fell apart very quickly.

So I just see more of the same. Inexorable decline.

One of the more interesting conclusions I drew from the data in the UCC study was the Gaelic Revival Movement was not a total failure. Over the last 100 years or so it has been very successful at building the link between the Irish language and national self-identity. More than 70% considered the language a key part of the Irish national identity, even though the total with any kind of positive attitude toward the language was around 50%.

So a success at cultural nationalism but a failure at cultural revival.

Where the movement failed was to build any kind of large scale personal commitment or enthusiasm for the language. I thought it was interesting that all the questions in the surveys were about how much more the government should do for the language not how much the responded was willing to personally do for the language.

In my opinion a living language needs more than small groups of committed enthusiasts, a few shrinking rural communities, and a general population though generally favorable disposed towards the language that rarely use it.

J McConnell

"So the statement “English is a richer language than Irish” was written under the assumption that the reader, having a reasonable command of the English language, would understand that it was a statement of preference or opinion"

If you said "Today is a colder day than yesterday". I would therefore understand that you mean you prefer the colder weather today in comparison to yesterday.

What bollocks!

What you've concisely illustrated is that most of what you posted above is nonsense that you don't actually believe.

"In my opinion a living language needs more than small groups of committed enthusiasts, a few shrinking rural communities, and a general population though generally favorable disposed towards the language that rarely use it."

That's true.

JMcC
still here...

You're 11:38 was a good post, more of that kind of opinion would be appreciated :)
You're last two paragraphs in particular I completely agree with.

'Baluba said earlier that he was a native speaker but somehow a lot of his postings sounded a bit more like Norn Iron than the Free State gaeilgore he claimed to be.'

When exactly did I make any such claim? I am from Norn Iron. I am a native speaker of Irish. But I suppose I'll be derided as a liar now because if you come from the 'Black North' you can't possibly be native speaker of Irish?

Did people never move? Was there/is there no rural-urban drift.....?

Are there any signs that there will be a radical change in current policies any time soon? Not that I can see.

Perhaps you should research current policies before you make such a sweeping statement. The main thrust of the Official Languages Act is to "provide[s] a statutory framework for the delivery of services through the Irish Language". That is a change for the better
You will find a summary of Government policy here
The revival policy was never implemented. The assumption that an under-resourced education system could single handedly reverse the decline in Irish was incorrect. None of this is news, Irish speakers have been saying this from the beginning.
Now we are finally getting services in our own language, and the end of what was effectively compulsory English for Irish speakers is in sight.

You will find Conradh na Gaeilge's policy here. Regretably, they do not find it necessary to translate that policy into english (yet).

maca

Have a nice holiday.

From the somewhat tortured logic of your last few postings it sounds like you need a break...

Hope you are going somewhere nice..its pissing rain here in Brittany at the moment.

So much for those warm sunny French summers..

See you when you get back.

In the context of this board, and this discussion, it is noteworthy that the Minister for Communication included an Irish speaking Unionist Journalist in the new RTÉ Authority:

Press Release here

Ian Malcolm has a regular column in Lá.

Hullo again. I've just scrolled through the intervening posts - and no quotes yet! Didn't Aonghus say he'd do his best to provide some in "a day or two"?

Their continued absence seems to cast doubt on whether they actually exist. Sorry, but that's the conclusion I have to draw. When I joined this discussion I voiced my suspicion that my thirteen years of compulsory Irish couldn't be justified. So unless somebody produces the goods soon to prove otherwise, can I state now that I was conned by my teachers and the government?

They told me that fluency in Irish would allow me to read some astonishing literature in the original. Well, where is it? It doesn't exist, does it? Had they been honest with me (and given the choice) then I'd have wished to learn, say, Russian. Now THERE is literature. And it's a useful language too - unlike Irish.

Or, failing a foreign language, more emphasis on English would have been welcome. J McConnell reminded me of those poetry-prose anthologies we had in secondary school, and they were indeed wonderful. They certainly stimulated my interest in so many writers. More such teaching aids, more English lessons, more drama and more debating would have been infinitely better than all those hours wasted on Irish.

As it was, when I went to university in England I found myself (despite my earlier extracurricular reading) seriously disadvantaged compared to my fellow students. Quality time that should have been spent knocking back pints and getting laid was instead given over to cramming English, not only Eng Lit but grammar too.

And you wonder why I'm miffed!

I have given up on providing you quotes for several reasons.

1) I don't think you really want them. You did not react to the poetry links (with German translation) I provided, or the bibliography.

2) Our opinions on literature are clearly divergent. What I consider great literature is probably not what you consider great literature.

3) I am not confident of my ability to do the Irish justice in an English translation. You don't want the original, you want a translation. Literary translation is difficult.

4) By your own admission, the time you spent learning English at school was wasted. Since (I assume) you wanted to learn English, I have no reason to believe that the time you spent other subjects was not also wasted.

5) I have made my opinion on the teaching of Irish in schools perfectly clear. I see no reason why I should prove what I consider to be a failure to be a success.

Táimse ag dul ar saorie anois pé scéal é. Go Corca Dhuibhne. Áit, pacé JMcC, a bhfuil Gaolainn beo le clos go flúirseach. Slán tamall.

My dear Aonghus, do you recall that little Saramago quote? Easily arrived at, and posted here for all to read and assess.

It might not be an outstanding snippet of writing but it does answer several of the criteria by which we judge literature, i.e. it's well formulated, precise, defines a universal truth, and is thought provoking.

Lastly, we're reading it in translation and it stands up to scrutiny.

Surely to God you can produce at least ONE such line from the much-vaunted Irish literature, translated (like the Portuguese quote) for the benefit of those who do not speak minor languages.

An fiu bacaint leis na boic seo? Is leir gur fuath leo an Ghaeilge, go bhfuil naire orthu faoi rud ar bith a bhaineann leis an nGaeilge, go bhfuil coimpleacs isleachta ar a laghad duine amhain acu...
Ta rudai iontacha le fail i litriocht gach teanga. Is teanga iontach i an Bearla agus scriobhadh agus scriobhfar a lan leabhar maith sa teanga sin. Ach leigh me ait eigin go gcuirtear amach milliun leabhar i mBearla gach bliain. Is cinnte go bhfuil cuid mhaith cac le fail ina measc sin chomh maith.
Nach dtuigeann na boic seo gur uirlis ar doigh i gach teanga le litriocht a chruthu?
Nil a fhios agam an bhfuil moran ceille leis an teachtaireacht seo, ach ta na boic seo agus a ndearcadh sotalach ag cur isteach orm agus nil me ag gabhail a aistriu seo go Bearla mar nil siad ag gabhail a dheanamh athchomhairle ar scor ar bith.

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Denny Boy,
I gave you a link where you can buy over 2,000 titles in the Irish language, did you find nothing to tickle your fancy?

How about this Irish phrase Denny Boy,

Fad a bhíos an cat amuigh bíonn na luchain ag rince

Translation:

While the cat's away, the mice will play.

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Muise, is fear léinn é Denny Boy. Rasúr Ockham anseo aige. Agus?
Beatha teanga í a labhairt.
The life of a language is in its being spoken.

Tuigeann fear léinn leath-fhocal.
An educated man understands the half-spoken word

Ní h-ualach do dhuine an fhoghlaim.
Learning is no load for a person

Nó fiú
Saíocht ár Sinsear, sa Sacs Bhéarla do lucht léinn

Damnú air.

Seo an nasc

Gentlemen, I just KNOW your sense of pride in the Irish language will produce a line or two yet. And don't worry: nobody's sitting waiting to criticize unfairly. It would be genuinely pleasing to learn that my 13 years had not been wasted and that there are in fact untold delights awaiting me should I decide to renew my acquaintance with the language. There's also £20 I stand to collect. So come on, put up or shut up!

Hint: links to bibliographies, and aphorisms don't count. I want to read a line or two of literature. Sweep me off my feet with lyricism! Is that really so much to ask?

Must dash. I've been dragooned into helping with the preparations for an awards ceremony. What an exciting life I lead :0)

I want to read a line or two of literature. Sweep me off my feet with lyricism!

Have you so much as glanced at the poems to which I directed you?


I have not found the kind of canned quote you are looking for online, in the brief time available to me. I do not have Irish works in translation at home to quote to you from, for reasons which should be obvious. I have explained why I will not translate prose. And I am now going on holiday. I would however point out that almost all aphorisms originated in works of literature. Irish has the oldest literature in western Europe, and is therefore rich in aphorisms. The aphorisms I quoted were a reply to your quoting Ockham's razor at me.

Tosach feasa fiafraitheacht.

Denny Boy

"Quality time that should have been spent knocking back pints and getting laid.."

So the Irish language is responsible for you remaining a virgin. Hee hee hee hee (out loud)!

Extraordinary. Another week begins and still nothing....

Had a foreigner made deprecatory remarks about my language, and suggested that English writing had no literary merit, then I'd have pulled out the stops to prove him wrong. I'd have quoted from any number of wonderful writers to support my position. Emerson alone would have provided enough material to silence all criticism.

But Irish? Nada, no quotes. So thanks a heap, fellas. I lose a £20 bet.

On the other hand I'm grateful to you. In the unlikely event of my sons' asking me whether learning Irish is worthwhile, I can point to this thread and say "No, clearly not".

I'll suggest that Algonquin might be more rewarding:

"Many, many moons ago, there lived an old man alone in his lodge beside a stream in the thick woods. He was heavily clad in furs; for it was winter, and all the world was covered with snow and ice. The winds swept through the woods; searching every bush and tree for birds to chill, and chasing evil spirits over high hills, through tangled swamps, and valleys deep. The old man went about, and peered vainly in the deep snow for pieces of wood to sustain the fire in his lodge. Sitting down by the last dying embers, he cried to Kigi Manito Waw-kwi (the God of Heaven) that he might not perish. The winds howled, and blew aside the door of his lodge, when in came a most beautiful maiden. Her cheeks were like red roses; her eyes were large, and glowed like the fawn's in the moonlight; her hair was long and black as the raven's plumes, and touched the ground as she walked; her hands were covered with willow-buds; on her head were wreaths of wild flowers; her clothing was sweet grass and ferns; her moccasons were fair white lilies; and, when she breathed, the air of the lodge became warm and fragrant."

Now, isn't that more fun than boring old Myles na gCopaleen? :0)

Extraordinary. Another week begins and still nothing....

Had a foreigner made deprecatory remarks about my language, and suggested that English writing had no literary merit, then I'd have pulled out the stops to prove him wrong. I'd have quoted from any number of wonderful writers to support my position. Emerson alone would have provided enough material to silence all criticism.

But Irish? Nada, no quotes. So thanks a heap, fellas. I lose a £20 bet.

On the other hand I'm grateful to you. In the unlikely event of my sons' asking me whether learning Irish is worthwhile, I can point to this thread and say "No, clearly not".

I'll suggest that Algonquin might be more rewarding:

"Many, many moons ago, there lived an old man alone in his lodge beside a stream in the thick woods. He was heavily clad in furs; for it was winter, and all the world was covered with snow and ice. The winds swept through the woods; searching every bush and tree for birds to chill, and chasing evil spirits over high hills, through tangled swamps, and valleys deep. The old man went about, and peered vainly in the deep snow for pieces of wood to sustain the fire in his lodge. Sitting down by the last dying embers, he cried to Kigi Manito Waw-kwi (the God of Heaven) that he might not perish. The winds howled, and blew aside the door of his lodge, when in came a most beautiful maiden. Her cheeks were like red roses; her eyes were large, and glowed like the fawn's in the moonlight; her hair was long and black as the raven's plumes, and touched the ground as she walked; her hands were covered with willow-buds; on her head were wreaths of wild flowers; her clothing was sweet grass and ferns; her moccasons were fair white lilies; and, when she breathed, the air of the lodge became warm and fragrant."

Now, isn't that more fun than boring old Myles na gCopaleen? :0)

Extraordinary. Another week begins and still nothing....

Had a foreigner made deprecatory remarks about my language, and suggested that English writing had no literary merit, then I'd have pulled out the stops to prove him wrong. I'd have quoted from any number of wonderful writers to support my position. Emerson alone would have provided enough material to silence all criticism.

But Irish? Nada, no quotes. So thanks a heap, fellas. I lose a £20 bet.

On the other hand I'm grateful to you. In the unlikely event of my sons' asking me whether learning Irish is worthwhile, I can point to this thread and say "No, clearly not".

I'll suggest that Algonquin might be more rewarding:

"Many, many moons ago, there lived an old man alone in his lodge beside a stream in the thick woods. He was heavily clad in furs; for it was winter, and all the world was covered with snow and ice. The winds swept through the woods; searching every bush and tree for birds to chill, and chasing evil spirits over high hills, through tangled swamps, and valleys deep. The old man went about, and peered vainly in the deep snow for pieces of wood to sustain the fire in his lodge. Sitting down by the last dying embers, he cried to Kigi Manito Waw-kwi (the God of Heaven) that he might not perish. The winds howled, and blew aside the door of his lodge, when in came a most beautiful maiden. Her cheeks were like red roses; her eyes were large, and glowed like the fawn's in the moonlight; her hair was long and black as the raven's plumes, and touched the ground as she walked; her hands were covered with willow-buds; on her head were wreaths of wild flowers; her clothing was sweet grass and ferns; her moccasons were fair white lilies; and, when she breathed, the air of the lodge became warm and fragrant."

Now, isn't that more fun than boring old Myles na gCopaleen? :0)

Extraordinary. Another week begins and still nothing....

Had a foreigner made deprecatory remarks about my language, and suggested that English writing had no literary merit, then I'd have pulled out the stops to prove him wrong. I'd have quoted from any number of wonderful writers to support my position. Emerson alone would have provided enough material to silence all criticism.

But Irish? Nada, no quotes. So thanks a heap, fellas. I lose a £20 bet.

On the other hand I'm grateful to you. In the unlikely event of my sons' asking me whether learning Irish is worthwhile, I can point to this thread and say "No, clearly not".

I'll suggest that Algonquin might be more rewarding:

"Many, many moons ago, there lived an old man alone in his lodge beside a stream in the thick woods. He was heavily clad in furs; for it was winter, and all the world was covered with snow and ice. The winds swept through the woods; searching every bush and tree for birds to chill, and chasing evil spirits over high hills, through tangled swamps, and valleys deep. The old man went about, and peered vainly in the deep snow for pieces of wood to sustain the fire in his lodge. Sitting down by the last dying embers, he cried to Kigi Manito Waw-kwi (the God of Heaven) that he might not perish. The winds howled, and blew aside the door of his lodge, when in came a most beautiful maiden. Her cheeks were like red roses; her eyes were large, and glowed like the fawn's in the moonlight; her hair was long and black as the raven's plumes, and touched the ground as she walked; her hands were covered with willow-buds; on her head were wreaths of wild flowers; her clothing was sweet grass and ferns; her moccasons were fair white lilies; and, when she breathed, the air of the lodge became warm and fragrant."

Now, isn't that more fun than boring old Myles na gCopaleen? :0)

Extraordinary. Another week begins and still nothing....

Had a foreigner made deprecatory remarks about my language, and suggested that English writing had no literary merit, then I'd have pulled out the stops to prove him wrong. I'd have quoted from any number of wonderful writers to support my position. Emerson alone would have provided enough material to silence all criticism.

But Irish? Nada, no quotes. So thanks a heap, fellas. I lose a £20 bet.

On the other hand I'm grateful to you. In the unlikely event of my sons' asking me whether learning Irish is worthwhile, I can point to this thread and say "No, clearly not".

I'll suggest that Algonquin might be more rewarding:

"Many, many moons ago, there lived an old man alone in his lodge beside a stream in the thick woods. He was heavily clad in furs; for it was winter, and all the world was covered with snow and ice. The winds swept through the woods; searching every bush and tree for birds to chill, and chasing evil spirits over high hills, through tangled swamps, and valleys deep. The old man went about, and peered vainly in the deep snow for pieces of wood to sustain the fire in his lodge. Sitting down by the last dying embers, he cried to Kigi Manito Waw-kwi (the God of Heaven) that he might not perish. The winds howled, and blew aside the door of his lodge, when in came a most beautiful maiden. Her cheeks were like red roses; her eyes were large, and glowed like the fawn's in the moonlight; her hair was long and black as the raven's plumes, and touched the ground as she walked; her hands were covered with willow-buds; on her head were wreaths of wild flowers; her clothing was sweet grass and ferns; her moccasons were fair white lilies; and, when she breathed, the air of the lodge became warm and fragrant."

Now, isn't that more fun than boring old Myles na gCopaleen? :0)

Extraordinary. Another week begins and still nothing....

Had a foreigner made deprecatory remarks about my language, and suggested that English writing had no literary merit, then I'd have pulled out the stops to prove him wrong. I'd have quoted from any number of wonderful writers to support my position. Emerson alone would have provided enough material to silence all criticism.

But Irish? Nada, no quotes. So thanks a heap, fellas. I lose a £20 bet.

On the other hand I'm grateful to you. In the unlikely event of my sons' asking me whether learning Irish is worthwhile, I can point to this thread and say "No, clearly not".

I'll suggest that Algonquin might be more rewarding:

"Many, many moons ago, there lived an old man alone in his lodge beside a stream in the thick woods. He was heavily clad in furs; for it was winter, and all the world was covered with snow and ice. The winds swept through the woods; searching every bush and tree for birds to chill, and chasing evil spirits over high hills, through tangled swamps, and valleys deep. The old man went about, and peered vainly in the deep snow for pieces of wood to sustain the fire in his lodge. Sitting down by the last dying embers, he cried to Kigi Manito Waw-kwi (the God of Heaven) that he might not perish. The winds howled, and blew aside the door of his lodge, when in came a most beautiful maiden. Her cheeks were like red roses; her eyes were large, and glowed like the fawn's in the moonlight; her hair was long and black as the raven's plumes, and touched the ground as she walked; her hands were covered with willow-buds; on her head were wreaths of wild flowers; her clothing was sweet grass and ferns; her moccasons were fair white lilies; and, when she breathed, the air of the lodge became warm and fragrant."

Now, isn't that more fun than boring old Myles na gCopaleen? :0)

Extraordinary. Another week begins and still nothing....

Had a foreigner made deprecatory remarks about my language, and suggested that English writing had no literary merit, then I'd have pulled out the stops to prove him wrong. I'd have quoted from any number of wonderful writers to support my position. Emerson alone would have provided enough material to silence all criticism.

But Irish? Nada, no quotes. So thanks a heap, fellas. I lose a £20 bet.

On the other hand I'm grateful to you. In the unlikely event of my sons' asking me whether learning Irish is worthwhile, I can point to this thread and say "No, clearly not".

I'll suggest that Algonquin might be more rewarding:

"Many, many moons ago, there lived an old man alone in his lodge beside a stream in the thick woods. He was heavily clad in furs; for it was winter, and all the world was covered with snow and ice. The winds swept through the woods; searching every bush and tree for birds to chill, and chasing evil spirits over high hills, through tangled swamps, and valleys deep. The old man went about, and peered vainly in the deep snow for pieces of wood to sustain the fire in his lodge. Sitting down by the last dying embers, he cried to Kigi Manito Waw-kwi (the God of Heaven) that he might not perish. The winds howled, and blew aside the door of his lodge, when in came a most beautiful maiden. Her cheeks were like red roses; her eyes were large, and glowed like the fawn's in the moonlight; her hair was long and black as the raven's plumes, and touched the ground as she walked; her hands were covered with willow-buds; on her head were wreaths of wild flowers; her clothing was sweet grass and ferns; her moccasons were fair white lilies; and, when she breathed, the air of the lodge became warm and fragrant."

Now, isn't that more fun than boring old Myles na gCopaleen? :0)

DB,

Do you not want to read my post of June 29 at 4:39? Or as I suspect (from your non-sensical criteria for judging literature) that you just refuse point blank to accept that there may just be some literature in the world about which you are not well-versed? You are obviously an eminent scholar (even though unlike many, many, many people who came through ROI schooling) you were 'seriously disadvantaged' in English.

You can get the translation elsewhere. Try your belove Google which you seem to think is the greatest source for literary students, ye genius.

How curious: my post repeated four times, or is it five? :0)

Today I got a 500 Error and wondered what was going on. I made a little post to another thread, "All Ireland soccer team a non starter", as a sort of test (though my sentiments were sincere).

Denny Boy

"On the other hand I'm grateful to you. In the unlikely event of my sons' asking me whether learning Irish is worthwhile, I can point to this thread and say "No, clearly not".

I doubt very much whether you believe a word of your own rubbish.

Aonghus

Thanks for the refs.

I've been doing some digging of my own through primary sources and academic studies, my favorite hunting ground for settling argument points.

While rummaging around I found explanations for some of my personal observations about the usage of the Irish language.

Why did I never hear spoken Irish while visiting official Gaeltacht areas? Well it seem that less than 10% of the current Gaeltacht areas would qualify as a Gaeltacht area using the original 1926 criteria for inclusion, an area where more than 70% of the inhabitants speak Irish. And its seems that I have never spent much time in that particular 10% of the Gaeltacht areas were they actually speak Irish.

Well that explains that observation.

Then there is the missing 100,000 daily Irish speakers in Dublin. I found a Dutch organization which has a very detailed website on the various minority languages in Europe.. http://www.mercator-education.org/sjablonen/3/default.asp?objectID=967.

What I missed when reading the census report, and the Dutch guys caught, was that most of the daily Irish speakers seemed to be in the 5-24 age cohort.

“Of the 25% of regular users of Irish, among those with competence in the State, up to 80% are also currently in the education system or have recently left it, in the age cohorts 5-24. If these are removed, the real figure for regular users throughout the State is 71,000, or 3% of the population.”

http://www1.fa.knaw.nl/mercator/regionale_dossiers/regional_dossier_irish_in_ireland.htm

Which tallies pretty closely with my own personal experience. I have personally heard very little Irish spoken outside of the school environment.

Well that solves that little mystery.

Regarding state language policy in its current form. I checked out the official documents, and some of the academic analysis of the official documents, and it looks to me that the discussion has not moved very far in the last 25 years. Still very much business as usual. The last serious attempt to question the fundamental purpose and implementation of language policy that I am aware of was the the big push to challenge compulsory Irish in the mid-60's by the Language Freedom Movement and we know how that ended.

Aonghus

Thanks for the refs.

I've been doing some digging of my own through primary sources and academic studies, my favorite hunting ground for settling argument points.

While rummaging around I found explanations for some of my personal observations about the usage of the Irish language.

Why did I never hear spoken Irish while visiting official Gaeltacht areas? Well it seem that less than 10% of the current Gaeltacht areas would qualify as a Gaeltacht area using the original 1926 criteria for inclusion, an area where more than 70% of the inhabitants speak Irish. And its seems that I have never spent much time in that particular 10% of the Gaeltacht areas were they actually speak Irish.

Well that explains that observation.

Then there is the missing 100,000 daily Irish speakers in Dublin. I found a Dutch organization which has a very detailed website on the various minority languages in Europe.. http://www.mercator-education.org/sjablonen/3/default.asp?objectID=967.

What I missed when reading the census report, and the Dutch guys caught, was that most of the daily Irish speakers seemed to be in the 5-24 age cohort.

“Of the 25% of regular users of Irish, among those with competence in the State, up to 80% are also currently in the education system or have recently left it, in the age cohorts 5-24. If these are removed, the real figure for regular users throughout the State is 71,000, or 3% of the population.”

http://www1.fa.knaw.nl/mercator/regionale_dossiers/regional_dossier_irish_in_ireland.htm

Which tallies pretty closely with my own personal experience. I have personally heard very little Irish spoken outside of the school environment.

Well that solves that little mystery.

Regarding state language policy in its current form. I checked out the official documents, and some of the academic analysis of the official documents, and it looks to me that the discussion has not moved very far in the last 25 years. Still very much business as usual. The last serious attempt to question the fundamental purpose and implementation of language policy that I am aware of was the the big push to challenge compulsory Irish in the mid-60's by the Language Freedom Movement and we know how that ended.

Aonghus

Thanks for the refs.

I've been doing some digging of my own through primary sources and academic studies, my favorite hunting ground for settling argument points.

While rummaging around I found explanations for some of my personal observations about the usage of the Irish language.

Why did I never hear spoken Irish while visiting official Gaeltacht areas? Well it seem that less than 10% of the current Gaeltacht areas would qualify as a Gaeltacht area using the original 1926 criteria for inclusion, an area where more than 70% of the inhabitants speak Irish. And its seems that I have never spent much time in that particular 10% of the Gaeltacht areas were they actually speak Irish.

Well that explains that observation.

Then there is the missing 100,000 daily Irish speakers in Dublin. I found a Dutch organization which has a very detailed website on the various minority languages in Europe.. http://www.mercator-education.org/sjablonen/3/default.asp?objectID=967.

What I missed when reading the census report, and the Dutch guys caught, was that most of the daily Irish speakers seemed to be in the 5-24 age cohort.

“Of the 25% of regular users of Irish, among those with competence in the State, up to 80% are also currently in the education system or have recently left it, in the age cohorts 5-24. If these are removed, the real figure for regular users throughout the State is 71,000, or 3% of the population.”

http://www1.fa.knaw.nl/mercator/regionale_dossiers/regional_dossier_irish_in_ireland.htm

Which tallies pretty closely with my own personal experience. I have personally heard very little Irish spoken outside of the school environment.

Well that solves that little mystery.

Regarding state language policy in its current form. I checked out the official documents, and some of the academic analysis of the official documents, and it looks to me that the discussion has not moved very far in the last 25 years. Still very much business as usual. The last serious attempt to question the fundamental purpose and implementation of language policy that I am aware of was the the big push to challenge compulsory Irish in the mid-60's by the Language Freedom Movement and we know how that ended.

Aonghus

Thanks for the refs.

I've been doing some digging of my own through primary sources and academic studies, my favorite hunting ground for settling argument points.

While rummaging around I found explanations for some of my personal observations about the usage of the Irish language.

Why did I never hear spoken Irish while visiting official Gaeltacht areas? Well it seem that less than 10% of the current Gaeltacht areas would qualify as a Gaeltacht area using the original 1926 criteria for inclusion, an area where more than 70% of the inhabitants speak Irish. And its seems that I have never spent much time in that particular 10% of the Gaeltacht areas were they actually speak Irish.

Well that explains that observation.

Then there is the missing 100,000 daily Irish speakers in Dublin. I found a Dutch organization which has a very detailed website on the various minority languages in Europe.. http://www.mercator-education.org/sjablonen/3/default.asp?objectID=967.

What I missed when reading the census report, and the Dutch guys caught, was that most of the daily Irish speakers seemed to be in the 5-24 age cohort.

“Of the 25% of regular users of Irish, among those with competence in the State, up to 80% are also currently in the education system or have recently left it, in the age cohorts 5-24. If these are removed, the real figure for regular users throughout the State is 71,000, or 3% of the population.”

http://www1.fa.knaw.nl/mercator/regionale_dossiers/regional_dossier_irish_in_ireland.htm

Which tallies pretty closely with my own personal experience. I have personally heard very little Irish spoken outside of the school environment.

Well that solves that little mystery.

Regarding state language policy in its current form. I checked out the official documents, and some of the academic analysis of the official documents, and it looks to me that the discussion has not moved very far in the last 25 years. Still very much business as usual. The last serious attempt to question the fundamental purpose and implementation of language policy that I am aware of was the the big push to challenge compulsory Irish in the mid-60's by the Language Freedom Movement and we know how that ended.

Please excuse the multiple posts.

Looks like a php script burp.

"Now, isn't that more fun than boring old Myles na gCopaleen? :0)"

No- No- No Myles had wit (and a perhaps overdeveloped sense of the bizarre) An over fondness for "the drink" may have restricted his output but Brian O'Nolan is up there with the best of Irish writers.

"“Of the 25% of regular users of Irish, among those with competence in the State, up to 80% are also currently in the education system or have recently left it, in the age cohorts 5-24. If these are removed, the real figure for regular users throughout the State is 71,000, or 3% of the population"

I say that rather shits on the nest of the Irish Language movement-better surpress that but look --its a "Dutch organization" - an orange plot ??

If JMcC and friends were aware of the discussion among Irish speakers, they would be aware that we are painfully aware of the points he brought up. In fact, if he read my posts, I certainly mentioned as much with regard to the gaeltacht area he was in, and explained why the language declined there.

Denny Boy, I've been away for two weeks in a Gaeltacht (a real one - west of an Daingean, as I mentioned). But I've decided I couldn't be bothered getting you your potted quotes. The literature argument and the cultural nationalism arguments are no part of my reasons for speaking and liking Irish, so I see no particular reason why I should prove them, any more than I should prove that the educational system has not failed miserably in teaching Irish, since I consider it has.


By any rational measure, 71000 daily speakers (and many more with a knowledge of the language) is not a dead language , although the language is still on the endangered list.


One thing I would like to see, but haven't yet, is an analysis of how many of the under 24 years daily speakers live in households with an over 24 years old daily speakers - i.e. how many families speak Irish as one of the languages of the household.

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