Trouble at Derry vs. Rovers and Irish language debate!!

[Macy]

It is far from a dead language, it seems to be getting stronger and more popular every day as Gaelscoil's and Irish speaking bars and resturants are popping up all over the place (well in Galway city they are)

Gaelscoil's are becoming more popular because of the smaller class numbers compared to normal national schools. Certainly that's the reasoning with several parents I know who send their kids there - the language is a factor, but the quality of the overall education due to smaller class numbers is the over riding one (on the east coast anyway).

[Eire06]

Gaelscoil's are becoming more popular because of the smaller class numbers compared to normal national schools. Certainly that's the reasoning with several parents I know who send their kids there - the language is a factor, but the quality of the overall education due to smaller class numbers is the over riding one (on the east coast anyway).

Ya I agree that is part of the attraction in some places but it is not the main one there is now a new generation of people who want their children to speak our national language and regret themselves not paying attention in their school days to Irish and struggle with it now. They are encouraging their children not to make the same mistakes they made..

A lot of GaelScoils in citys now have class numbers just as high as Irish speaking primary and secondary schools and even go as far to have waiting lists for entry to the schools.. So small calss sizes cannot be a factor there

[Cosmo]

Look, Im not anti Irish language but I wouldve liked to have got the option of dropping it in secondary school just in principle and also as Macy suggested without it effecting what collage course i couldve done.

If given the choice I wouldve dropped it and concentrated more on a foreign laguage as it wouldve been more beneficial to me than speaking a language that ill never need.

Ended up getting a C1 in honours irish and only a pass in French but I could speak more french id say and if given the choice would prefer to be able to speak fluent french than fluent irish as it would give me an option to live in a non english speaking country.

However in an ideal world we would be having this debate in irish but hey thats life

[mypost]

Ya I agree that is part of the attraction in some places but it is not the main one there is now a new generation of people who want their children to speak our national language and regret themselves not paying attention in their school days to Irish and struggle with it now. They are encouraging their children not to make the same mistakes they made.

About 1% of people in this country speak Irish on an everyday basis. Irish is no use to us outside our country, so it's no wonder that people want to learn French/German/Spanish instead, languages that they may/will need to speak at some point. Irish is too hard, too complicated, with too many rules, it has too many different dialects on how you should speak it, and with it being compulsory in schools, kids don't want to know about a language they don't really need in later life. We must be the only country in Europe, where domestic football is covered in a language, that the locals don't understand.

In Dublin, practically nobody speaks the language on a daily basis. Quite what it has to do with "trouble" at a NL match boggles me. Talking about the Irish language is all very well, but it's in the wrong place. Split the thread.

[Eire06]

In Dublin, practically nobody speaks the language on a daily basis.

From what I've seen of dublin lately not many speak English never mind Irish

Thats the point, you've learned nothing if you've no practical experience of having a conversation in irish.

you may not have had any practical experience but all lot of us do.. I regularly had conversations in Irish growing up and was sent to an Irish college every summer..
Its up to your parents and teachers to help teach you the language and if you have a poor teacher or parents who don't feel it is necessary for their children to speak their native language the child is less likely to show any interest or make an attempt to learn it and try to incorporate it into their daily lives

[pete]

When we "learn" irish from age 5 til 17-18 & still the vast majority of people can't speak a word of it shows a complete & absolute failure of the educational system. Imagine if the same happened with Maths?

Still we do about 5 years of french/german etc... & will have better oral skills.

[Philo]

According to Newstalk last week, there's more people speaking Chinese as their first language than Irish in this country. Pretty soon Irish will also be overtaken by Polish and beaten into fourth place. What's the point of Irish? Nothing against it personally, but in reality it's just a museum piece.

The Irish language requirement has been dropped by the police to recruit from immigrant communities, though they are offering Irish classes to new gardai in Templemore as an excercise in pointless tokenism to keep a dwindling number of fanatics happy. What a waste of valuable teaching time... I can't imagine Irish EVER gets used by the law unless some looper decides to be irritating by demanding all procedures are carried out in the language.

[redgav]

When we "learn" irish from age 5 til 17-18 & still the vast majority of people can't speak a word of it shows a complete & absolute failure of the educational system. Imagine if the same happened with Maths?

Still we do about 5 years of french/german etc... & will have better oral skills.

Thats it exactly - In schools,French and German and other languages are taught in a modern way that keeps kids interested , with Irish they are forced to learn things over and Over
Peig Sayers should be in a classic litrature or for people who do Irish outside of schools cos it has nothing whatsoever to do with teaching a language....If they spruced up the way its taught,you'd be surprised how quick it would catch on .....

[DruggyDrog]

I can add, subtract, multiply and divide. The vast majority of the maths I learned at school (and was quite good at) I'll never use, nor have I any wish to use. The education system fails in every subject (I've a degree in French which i would have got with or without doing french in school), so to single out the way Irish is thought is just the easy way out.

We'll cheer when England lose, we'll wear our national colours in lansdowne, but when the wafer thin cover is stripped back, the vast majority of this country have little or no interest or knowledge about their country and its identity.

[dcfcsteve]

the main problem is the department of education. Schools should teach conversational Irish not poetry, novels or essay writing. You need to know how to walk before you can run.

The key mistake the state made back in the 1920's was to believe that the language revival effort was best left in the hands of schools and the classroom. In hindsight, that was always going to be a flawed policy.

But the principle problem with the current state of the Irish language is - shock, horror - the Irish people themselves ! The people have to take a very large degree of the blame - not just systems and policies.

We don't learn and/or speak the language to any great extent ourselves, we don't apply any political pressure whatsoever to protect it (e.g. the Gardai no longer having to speak Irish is another nail in the language's coffin), and we don't go out of our way to support initiatives (financially, politically or morally) who seek to improve the standing of the language at any level. We just sit around putting the language down, then think we're great when people open a speech with the proverbial cupla focal, or some new public service or body gets named 'as Gaeilge' to remind us all that we're not actually English. Unless people's attitudes change, the language will continue to die as a living, working tongue.

[Eire06]

I can't imagine Irish EVER gets used by the law unless some looper decides to be irritating by demanding all procedures are carried out in the language.

Try taking a trip to Gweedore or An Rinn and you will see Irish being used by the 'law'
But sure they're outside the pale you wouldn't know about them

[mypost]

so ****ing what. its an interesting debate.
do you be sitting in the pub and when conversation changes from one subject to another start giving out about straying off-topic??i doubt it. complaining about this on-line is just pedantic

Yes it's an interesting debate, but by this stage, it has nothing to do with football, so why is it still in the EL section?? Either split the thread, or move it to where it should be, please.

[Poor Student]

There's a fundemental underlying problem in Ireland as a whole that impedes any progress with Irish and makes it a torment. Awful grammar. We do not learn our grammar in English and have no notion of linguistic concepts, terms, structures, tenses etc. I myself haven't got a clue. Do you know how many tenses we have in English? Are you aware of them? Can you name them? Like most of the English speaking world we are badly equipped to learn other languages. For the most part we can only pick them up through being immersed in them and for the main part that is not possible with Irish. Irish is a partly inflective language which means it is fundementally different to English which makes it hard to grasp. We need better teaching of grammar in schools before we even attempt to tackle other languages.

[pineapple stu]

On the language, I'm not anti it being compulsory but do have reservations about it counting towards university points...For example, is it fair that someone doesn't get into medicine because they're not that good at languages?

You do seven subjects for Leaving Cert (or at least most schools do; we were given an optional eighth as well). Only six count. You can do badly in Irish but still get into medicine. In any case, you can apply that argument to any subject. Is it fair someone doesn't get into medicine because they did badly at economics?

[Cosmo]

You do seven subjects for Leaving Cert (or at least most schools do; we were given an optional eighth as well). Only six count. You can do badly in Irish but still get into medicine. In any case, you can apply that argument to any subject. Is it fair someone doesn't get into medicine because they did badly at economics?

But dont ye need a minimum grade in irish to get into some collages or do some courses that have nothing to do with the irish language (if definitely was a few years ago anyway)

[Poor Student]

On the language, I'm not anti it being compulsory but do have reservations about it counting towards university points...For example, is it fair that someone doesn't get into medicine because they're not that good at languages?

Good point. Other states have college application systems which revolve more around the relevance of the secondary school subjects with regards to the subject you are applying for. In Ireland I think this only happens with Engineering where you get bonus points for Maths and also very loosely with subjects like Science where you must have taken and passed one Science subject to be allowed to do it at third level.

[Poor Student]

But dont ye need a minimum grade in irish to get into some collages or do some courses that have nothing to do with the irish language (if definitely was a few years ago anyway)

You need to pass Ordinary Level Irish to get into any of the NUIs (i.e. UCD, UCC, UL, UCG, Maynooth) but not for Trinity. Possibly not for the other colleges too?

[Macy]

You do seven subjects for Leaving Cert (or at least most schools do; we were given an optional eighth as well). Only six count. You can do badly in Irish but still get into medicine. In any case, you can apply that argument to any subject. Is it fair someone doesn't get into medicine because they did badly at economics?

I thought Irish had to be one of the 6, along with English and Maths (maybe just specific to the medical schools). Difference is you can drop economics, you can't drop Irish....

[pineapple stu]

Irish is no use to us outside our country, so it's no wonder that people want to learn French/German/Spanish instead, languages that they may/will need to speak at some point.

Dutch is no use to the Dutch outside Holland, Hungarian is no use to the Hungarians outside Hungary, etc., etc. and yet those languages thrive. In fact, most languages are no use to the locals outside of their country. That's an invalid argument, I think.

Irish is too hard, too complicated, with too many rules, it has too many different dialects on how you should speak it

Aw diddums. If something's hard, it's not worth doing? Have you ever stopped to consider how hard English is? No, because you pick it up naturally as a kid. Foreigners have trouble with it, though. Do native Irish speakers (over the past couple of thousand years) ever consider how hard Irish is? No, for the same reason. There are many many harder languages than Irish, but people - especially young kids - have a remarkable knack for learning. But then they get old and lazy...

and with it being compulsory in schools, kids don't want to know about a language they don't really need in later life.

Kids are idiots. Kids at 14 or 15 don't have a clue about their future life. The old-fashioned view that kids should be seen and not heard is, to an extent, correct. If kids were let do everything they wanted, they'd have TVs in every classroom and would have MTV and Coronation Street as subjects for the Leaving Cert. Many people, when they've left school a few years, are very thankful for what Irish they have learnt. For that reason alone, Irish should be compulsory.

BTW, can people stop going off topic asking for the thread to be split? It's been asked for about five times at this stage - PM the mod instead of repeating posts.

[Poor Student]

According to Newstalk last week, there's more people speaking Chinese as their first language than Irish in this country. Pretty soon Irish will also be overtaken by Polish and beaten into fourth place. What's the point of Irish? Nothing against it personally, but in reality it's just a museum piece.

For some bizarre reason we are adding languages like Chinese, Arabic and Russian to the Leaving Cert which mainly end up benefiting minorities. If you look at the results in such minority languages there is a huge success rate as immigrant families are picking up A1s in these subjects with ease, while natives often struggle to scrape a pass in our alleged native tongue.

This is not a racist or immigrant rant, just something I observed when looking at results in these subjects.