QuoteYe won yer fight over a greater evil (gaa)Originally Posted by Hoops_R_Us
Explain....????Well done Shams
Ye won yer fight over a greater evil (gaa)
RIP JOHNNY
As a Hoop I'm not as downhearted as I was before the original 'JD'. Seeing as the bigots offered to withdraw their objection yesterday if ourselves and the SDCC paid our own costs, it seems that Kennedy's advisors may well have told him he won't win. Now they could possibly be looking at a) losing their application for appeal, and b)being at the loss of approx 450k. If both scenarios are what happens, it'll be a sweet sweet friday night in Dublin.
False hope is worse than no hope. Ask Sligo.
Interesting theory BD.
GAA is certainly very closely tied with individual's and the nation's psyche of what it is to be Irish - and much more so then the language is. Possibly because - whilst a large percentage of the Irish population feels some sense of shame re their inability to speak their own native tongue (even though most wouldn't articulate is as such, or possibly even admit it), it is a hell of a loot easier to buy a GAA top and 'tick' the box of reinforcing one's cultural heritage/identity than it is to go through the seriously painful effort of learning a language like Irish to a degree of competencey. Especially as the Irish psyche appears to be ratehr focused upon 'appearances' / ostentatiousness than depth for the display of a lot its traits.
For the likes of Bertie Ahern, being seen at a Dublin GAA match is the new version of the proverbial cupla focal - and it doesn't even require any cognitive preparation.
But it would be wrong to therefore put 2 and 2 together and claim that the GAA has therefore undermined the language. The main blame for the decline of Irish since Independence must rest with two groups. primarily with the early governments, who followed an absurd policy of leaving the responsibility of language re-introduction almost solely to schools, whilst combining it with token favours/restrictions for certain public sector roles based upon language capabilities (e.g. teachers, Gardai) in a way that created resentment. The other group to blame is the Irish people themselves - as we all as individuals have the power to make a direct and powerful contribution to the future of the language by learning and using the language. You can't cajole people into doing something if their heart isn't in it.
Interestingly - through use of the language at stadiums, in programmes, at events etc, and by holding lessons in many club-houses, the GAA has probably done more for the Irish language than any other large national non-linguage-focused body that I can think of !
Contrast the linguistic success of the Israeli nation - taking a language that had been dead since biblical times, and making it the everyday first langauge of c. 5m people. Despite haveing the chance to start 26 years earlier than the Isarelis, and woprking with a language that was and still is alive, we've fared absolutely abysmally. To my mind, it is the single greatest failure of Ireland post-Independence (we've largely made-up for/reversed most of the economic failures and damage they caused).
Sorry dcfcsteve, I drifted off there for a while. Can you repeat that please?
What has the Gaelic language got to do with Irish nationality? Besides, most people wouldn't be arsed having 2 languages, and certainly wouldn't want to have to watch Coronation Street dubbed by an elderly man from Galway.
The sooner people realise that being "Irish" has nothing to do with how well you speak Gaelic or how often you attend GAA matches. In fact, given that the population of native speakers in relation to the number of Irish people who have never spoken Irish beyond schooldays, **** takes or token gestures is minuscule, one could argue its Un-Irish to speak Gaelic.
Last edited by GavinZac; 19/01/2008 at 6:41 PM.
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
I'm loving the irony in your analogy that if Ireland was an Irish-speaking nation we'd watch Coronation Streeet as Gaeilge......
(Sorry to go off-piste Hoops fans...)
Put the kettle on - I'm on me way round to explain it to yee.......Sorry dcfcsteve, I drifted off there for a while. Can you repeat that please?
I don't need it explained to me, I just want to know why you felt the need to share that information with ANYBODY!!!!
It was a direct response to a question Boh Diddley posed, if you bothered to read his prior post. It wasn't just a random down-load.
I could retort by enquiring why you've felt the need to enquire about my need.
Cheer up dude- it's a forum.....
x
It would appear that Thomas Davis are adopting a Sh1t or Bust attitude. Rovers and SDCC must be sure of their ground to reject the overtures of Thomas Davis. Wonder what the ordinary members of TD think about this.
I also wonder what their trustees think about their assets being in so much jeopardy.
"Look at them. They're all out of step except my son Johnny"
Mrs. Delaney
Football forum dcfcsteve!!
I think I'd like to discuss it over a pint somewhere.Failing that, some other section of this site would be good too. Briefly, cinnte níl tú id' lúdramán as you'd have to think that if it weren't for the GAA then Irish would be much stronger given they sate much the same hungers. Maybe it's time to expose your baby to the rigours of public debate!
Oh yeah, Gav, you're cruisin for a bruisin by the way.
While you go off on a crusade, the fact is, that bar TG4 and a few disciples around the country, nobody in this country wants to speak Irish, or would class it as even a second language, never mind a first one. TG4 to their credit, attempt to bridge the divide during their live games, but really, most of the population would probably understand the commentators more if they spoke French or German for 90 minutes.
In any case, Tallaght was never a GAA town, and when we get to play there, we'll have fanatical home support from people proud to have a football club in their area.
NL 1st Division Champions 2006
NL Premier Division Champions 2010
NL Premier Division Champions 2011
Keep Tallaght Tidy, Throw your rubbish in the Jodi
Ten Years Not Out
I am not an Irish speaker, at least not a proper one, and I am not a historian, but I think the GAA v Gaeilge debate is relevant.
The reason that Thomas Davis's brazen land grab attempt will have the unthinking, kneejerk support of so many is that they are seen as carrying the cultural standard for all that is distinctive about being Irish.
Certainly, there must be more Gaelgeoirs in the GAA than in the population generally, and I think also that most of the GAA probably is well-meaning in its attitude to the language.
However, just as so much of the Irish establishment's treatment of the language has been tokenism, so too has been the association's. Despite all the lip service, the national language of GAA football is emphatically English.
It is arguable how much having a few halting words of Irish in Croke Park speeches adds to the cause of Irish. And having the Irish names of GAA clubs emblazoned in four foot letters on fancy new club houses, when most of those living nearby can hardly pronounce them, is of little value to the language, but of great significance to the GAA.
In all great conquests, the victor absorbs part of the culture of the vanquished. And so GAA's unstoppable machine has enveloped the language, which not too many generations ago had been the essence of the nation. They use the language to make themselves Irish, but it is the language, not the modern invention of Gaelic football, that is essentially Irish.
How can anyone say, as has been said here, that the Irish language is irrelevant to being Irish? Would the equivalent ever be said in Holland or Finland? The great cultural failure of the Irish state has been its failure or unwillingness to protect and nourish its language to the point where people can actually think like that.
(The Israelis might have triumphed where we have failed, but then we haven't been backed by billions of US tax dollars to bulldoze out of their homes anyone who dares to be different. Maybe that is going off-topic. But the Israelis also haven't found the need to concoct a national diversion for themselves, and to my knowledge there is no IAA, and no call for one).
The fig leaf for our cultural failure is the GAA. It promotes its inferior code above and at the expense of the authentic sport of hurling, it ignorantly defines real football as 'English' and foreign, and it dishonestly but successfully has associated this foreign sport with brutal British nationalism.
The other side of that coin, of course, is that if you want to follow football you don't have any truck with the garrison game, but you follow it from afar. You follow English and Scottish football. And so many GAA people also are happy to be fans of Liverpool, ManU, Celtic and the rest. I wonder how many TD members are in that category? Just like the dope in the Celtic jersey protesting outside Croke Park, they want it both ways. They always will.
GAA has given us a game that has everything to do with not being English but actually not very much to do with being Irish, unless you think ludicrously hopping a ball as you gallop along with it is something other peoples would just love to do too, if only they could.
As well as filling our heads with nonsense, it has filled the void left by the language, which is, or was, essential to being Irish, and it has taken up the energy and imagination that otherwise would have gone into our real culture.
We could have been a country that played great football and proudly spoke and wrote in our own language and in English. Instead, we are a country virtually with no language to call its own, that pours its passion into a sporting curiosity in which we can never play an international. What a waste.
Last edited by BohDiddley; 20/01/2008 at 9:35 AM.
BohDiddley, that's anti-GAA to dizzying new heights of inventiveness. The bar has been set.
The GAA doesn't do enough substantively for the Irish language for my liking, but I'm hard to please like that. Your rant in that direction wouldn't be as ridiculous, though, if the FAI had ever even paid the lippiest of lip-service in comparison. I must assume, therefore, that your picture of a football-playing, bilingual utopia free of the interference of the GAA is meant ironically.
The football-playing demographic in this country is far, far more anti-Irish language than the GAA demographic. You admit as much yourself. Seeing as we know that football has become the number one participation sport in this country, it would be far easier to use your methodology to construct an argument (ŕ la 'decline of pirates vs global warming') that would illustrate the overwhelmingly anglicising effect of playing association football.
In the places where the Irish language remains the vernacular of the people -- where the people have no particular need, you would imagine, to embrace the manufactured sacred cows of nationalism in an insecure fretting about their cultural identity -- the sport of the community is, overwhelmingly, Gaelic football. (There are logistical reasons for this as well -- e.g., the topography of the crap land where the native language and culture survived the longest mitigating against modern hurling -- but the fact remains.)
If there is a central thrust to your argument, possibly to the effect that Irish people are complete chancers, it gets a little bit lost amongst the breathless run of digs against this inferior code, which seems to be your real bugbear (and by the way, people are paid megabucks for ludicrously hopping a ball as they run, in the States in particular, and an international sport has been made out of it -- and they're not even allowed to kick it).
I do like the implication that GavinZac represents the great cultural failure of the Irish state, though.
Because if Gabriel doesn't rollerblade to the Chelsea Piers then the terrorists have truly won.
Good post BohDiddly. Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
Yeah, me and the four million or so others on this island who do not use Irish every day, i.e. "The Irish", those un-Irish ba****rds.
Lads, Irish culture is no more about the Irish language than England's is about Anglo-Saxon or French is about Gaulish. Languages come and go, cultures evolve. If you can't handle that the Irish language is irrelevant to today's Irish culture I'd suggest moving to the gaeltacht and shutting yourself off forthe grant aidthe "culture".
When are people going to move on from Napoleonic nationalism?
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
Completely false
Nobody wants to speak Irish? Well if thats the case my friends from galway and west kerry must be insane if they think in Irish and consider it their first language.
My post, you are entitled to your opinion but you dont speak for everyone. Maybe alot of people in dublin but theres 31 other counties in this country.
I have been watching TG4 all day (review of the year in football and hurling and pop 4) I understand it clearly.
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