CollegeTillIDie
01/12/2004, 10:11 PM
I think Irish and the eL share some of the same problems. Let me explain:
I'm a bit of a language enthusiast - I speak good French, some Italian and Dutch, and a few words in German, Spanish, Catalan, and I'm even trying to learn Japanese at the moment. However, even though I learned Irish at school (in the north, and got an A at GCSE) I have a lot of difficulty witht he language now.
The reason for learning (bits) of all those languages has generally been because I have been immersed in their environments - this makes it so much easier to pick up the language, because what you already know is constantly being reinforced. This is not the case with Irish, English is everywhere you look. This is why the official languages act is a good thing, we will begin to see Irish all around us in our everyday lives.
In Quebec, they passed a language law requiring that English not have greater prominence than French on all signs in public. This has the effect that French is constantly in public view. Such measures can be criticised as draconian, but I am in favour of them because they are a very effective way to reinvigorate a language.
To make the link to the eL is easy. All the general public see in Ireland (football related) has to do with the English Premiership - it is in our papers, on our TV, on the internet. This abundance of positive reinforcement does not exist for either the eL or the Irish language.
That's because the media when it comes to sport are a shower of West Brits :D
I'm a bit of a language enthusiast - I speak good French, some Italian and Dutch, and a few words in German, Spanish, Catalan, and I'm even trying to learn Japanese at the moment. However, even though I learned Irish at school (in the north, and got an A at GCSE) I have a lot of difficulty witht he language now.
The reason for learning (bits) of all those languages has generally been because I have been immersed in their environments - this makes it so much easier to pick up the language, because what you already know is constantly being reinforced. This is not the case with Irish, English is everywhere you look. This is why the official languages act is a good thing, we will begin to see Irish all around us in our everyday lives.
In Quebec, they passed a language law requiring that English not have greater prominence than French on all signs in public. This has the effect that French is constantly in public view. Such measures can be criticised as draconian, but I am in favour of them because they are a very effective way to reinvigorate a language.
To make the link to the eL is easy. All the general public see in Ireland (football related) has to do with the English Premiership - it is in our papers, on our TV, on the internet. This abundance of positive reinforcement does not exist for either the eL or the Irish language.
That's because the media when it comes to sport are a shower of West Brits :D