PlaneShift
Fan Area => The Hydlaa Plaza => Topic started by: Parallo on December 09, 2006, 12:03:42 am
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The Irish language. A simple Celtic language. Is it useless as a communication skill? Should it be thought in schools in Ireland? I think so. Why, I hear you ask.
Well I live in the Gealtacht. I use it to communicate every day.
Well now for the why nots as there is at least one other Irish person here that I know won't agree with me. emeraldfool, the floor is yours.
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If it has been a significant language in irelands history, then sure. go for it. Yay National Pride!!!!!!!!!!!!
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It sure was! There was a time before Anglicisation when the only tongue spoken was Irish.
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It sure was! There was a time before Anglicisation when the only tongue spoken was Irish.
That doesn't necessarily make it any more relevant for our modern culture. A lot of people spoke Latin at a time when their culture was being formed, but once it died out their culture persisted as strong as ever. How many Italians speak Latin as a first language? Very few, anyway, but you can't say they're any less patriotic.
The thing about Irish is it isn't even as relevant as Latin or Greek or anything else. Even in Ireland, there's very few manuscripts written in Gaelic because we were mostly illiterate, so it's not like you'll need to be fluent to be a historian or study Irish history (most of the important stuff is written in Latin from the English's perspective, anyway).
The ONLY reason we keep it around is because the government is too afraid to let go of the past.
Being Irish isn't a conditional response to knowing how to confuse tourists with a weird language. Being Irish is about seeing the humour in any situation, and making sure others do too. ;)
(Hehe, a debate thread just for me... I feel special...)
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You think its good that Latin has died? Are you one of the people that find Shakespeare boring as well? Should the people that do speak Irish stop and learn English just to keep up with 'the times?'
By the way, I'm in no way refering to nationalism. I can't stand the idea that someone might think that one country is better than another... just because. It is in my view almost as bad as racism. Anyway back to the topic.
I know a few people that only speak Irish, nothing else. I appreciate Irish as a language because its our past. Why should we let it go? From the way your speaking its as though you don't want your cultural identity.
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My personal opinion is that if you lose your native language you are also losing a large part of your cultural history.
It does make me wonder whether you are both from Eire? Or is one of you from northern Ireland? Also, are you both from Catholic families? or are you Protestant
I only ask these questions because im well aware that many Cahtolic families from northern Ireland send their children to summer schools in Eire to learn Gaelic. The answers would help in people understanding your points of view.
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I'm from an atheist family in Donegal. In the past the family was catholic but that faded with time. Donegal, although in the north of the country, is according to political borders in the 'south.' Glad to see your interest by the way.
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I agree with Idoru... about losing your native language.
Here in Argentina, when the Spanish colonized this territory there were many tribes of natives, like: Quechuas, Diaguitas, Mocovies, Tehuelches..(if I remember well its about 28 different tribes)
All of them massacred by spanish people...
Today there are little communities that preserves their own languages and habits and they are respected (well, :oops:sometimes not). Although they speaks spanish because they are Argentinians.
And Parallo, let me say that Saint Patrick School in Argentina has a very very very good Irish school dance, and they won the contest in the last Communities' Fair (a Fair every year with communities about all the world: Irish, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Irak, Iran, Serbia, Greek, Italy).
I liked very much the dances and the music... :thumbup:
Why this fair in Argentina? Because here are many immigrants. My ancestor were from Italy.
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The music? Oh the music is nothing unless its live. I'm lucky enough to have the world Ullian pipes player as a neighbour. The differences county to county in the music is amazing too. The music looses something unless its played live in a noisy pub.
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I don't know if it's the same situation as Welsh, but in Wales kids are forced to learn it, most don't actually learn it and hate it. Everything is becoming pro-welsh (forced by the local government.. and it feels forced) and it's a load of crap :P It doesn't help that a good chunk of welsh is English because the language didn't keep up with the times, so it's a bit obsolete now.
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Personally I think its silly how its forced on kids, it should be taken as an extra language if they want to do it. But I also think that should be the case in Northern Ireland, they cant learn it in schools so they have to go to summer schools if they want to. If your parents speak it you will have picked it up alongside english but it seems that isnt enough for the assembly in Wales. which I think is the problem, you get extremely nationalist assembly members elected and they think its a great idea to force it on the kids while at school.
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I am just wondering how much difference there is between Irish and Scottish dialects of Gaelic and is Welsh something else entirely or is it related? In Canada there is a fair bit of Scottish and Irish tradition and a Gaelic College in Cape Breton N.S (St. Annes I think) which hosts a festival every year. Also there is a largish Highland Games in Maxville Ont. every year.
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The Irish version and Scottish version are similar but still different, the Welsh version and Cornish versions are even more different. When I say similar im meaning the way that french and english are similar ;)
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I'm not sure I follow. English and French are not very similar as the structure of sentences are quite different and there is no concept of masculine or feminine nouns or verbs requiring different modifiers. Perhaps a better comparison would be between various romance languages or germanic ones. I am not a linguist and am mostly unfamilliar with other languages than English but I would think the differences between the Gaelic variants would be more similar to Spanish<->Portuguese or Austrian<->German<->Dutch or even Latin<->Italian
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Its similar in the way Dutch and German are similar. In retrospect I don't think Religion has a lot to do with the language as Douglas Hyde(1869-1949), The foremost figure of de-anglicisation, was a member of the Church OF Ireland(The localised Church of England.) He was in fact the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman. Here is a quote of his lecture to the National Literary Society:
Every Irish-feeling Irishman... should set himself to encourage the efforts which are being made to keep our once great national tongue. The losing of it is our greatest blow, and the sorest stroke that the rapid anglicisation has inflicted upon us.
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When I say similar im meaning the way that french and english are similar
Sorry, that was supposed to be a flipant remark. I didnt think it through
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You mean that Irish and Scots and Welsh and Cornies all hate each other? :detective:
Just kidding. There is a fair amount of bad blood between French and English (at least here in Canada) but hate is a bit strong of a description.
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what I was really aiming at was that Cornish and Welsh are closely related to each other and Irish, Manx and Scots are closely related to each other. they are effectively two seperate branches of the same language. Although they all have multiple dialects anyway.
As for the bad blood between the English and French, trust me that it does exist in the UK, after 300 years of war we have a certain, good humoured, dislike for each other. Hence we regularly call them Frogs and they call us Le roast beef lol
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frankly, pure and simple, i think the irish should be able to learn their own native language. im not saying FORCED, but yeah its nice to be able to actually say that you can speak your country native language.
i wouldnt compare it to latin because well...a lot of languages have its roots in it.
i dunnos if it should necessarily be a required thing in school, but i think it might help the adorable little irish kiddies have pride in their cultural identity. if america had a native language other than english i would want to know some phrases just so that i can show off my pride for being american. not saying "ooooo im awesome look what i can do!" but more like "ooo i have respect for my past :D"
i dunnos hahahha
edit--bad blood between french and english?? oh nos :/ i know here in america after the 9/11 attack we got all pissy with the french and called french fries "freedom fries" (just another reason i hide my face at the stupidity of my country)...but for the most part i dont know of any bad blood (maybes its cause im an idealist and choose not to see it?) from the engglish to the french *shrugs* i hope there isnt, theres no need for it :/ why cant we all get along :P and hugs trees to :D wed all feel better ahahah
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People will look back and say 'I wish I could speak Irish.' Thats the point of making them learn it. I don't know any Irish people over the age of 30 that don't wish they could speak better Irish.
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if america had a native language other than english i would want to know some phrases just so that i can show off my pride for being american. not saying "ooooo im awesome look what i can do!" but more like "ooo i have respect for my past :D"
America does have a native language other than english - there are more than 800 surviving Amerindian languages in 25-30 family groups spread across South Central and North America. There are some 25 million native speakers of these languages, with about half a million of these in Canada and the United States.
Search in Google for "Native American Language"
There are quite a few online resources to groups dedicated to preserving as many of these indigenous languages as possible.
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if america had a native language other than english i would want to know some phrases just so that i can show off my pride for being american. not saying "ooooo im awesome look what i can do!" but more like "ooo i have respect for my past :D"
America does have a native language other than english - there are more than 800 surviving Amerindian languages in 25-30 family groups spread across South Central and North America. There are some 25 million native speakers of these languages, with about half a million of these in Canada and the United States.
Search in Google for "Native American Language"
There are quite a few online resources to groups dedicated to preserving as many of these indigenous languages as possible.
im part choctaw indian. none of my relatives even the full blood knows the native american language specific ot the tribe. waht i meant by a native language was
in ireland you have irish
in france you have french
in germany you have german
etc...
in america you have english. i wasnt pointing to details. i was just saying that i dont have a cultural identiy with any other language other than english. im aware of the other indiginous languages, but since america is a HUGE melting part of different cultures and identites, we are basically all mutts...that you dont really teach any other language other than english in schools. itd be too confusing. i understadn what youre saying though, but what i meant was in the context of ireland=irish. not america=native american. the english adn a bunch of other people came over and took america as their "own", thats my cultural identity. sorry if im misunderstanding what you say...but...america doesnt have the purest background when it comes to defining a "native" language. if i ahd to learn all my "native" languages id learn phrases form choctaw, cherokee, irish, french, etc...i siad my previous comment in the naivety that most irish are purely irish...i know thats not necessarily the case but thats what i meant by it
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Wow, this discussion is incredibly interesting! Thanks Parallo for bringing it up. :thumbup: I agree with what you said about the problem of teaching a "native" language as part of a nationalist project. I think that nationalism definitely DOES have an inherent racism to it, if it has an ethnic or racial focus (I suppose you could have non-racist nationalisms that were politically based... like maybe a communist nationalism, or a decolonizing nationalism of indigenous land still occupied by colonizers). This is because any kind of nationalism that is based on race or ethnicity is claiming that a certain kind of person has legitimate claims over territory to the exclusion of others - who are of different races/ethnicities.
So how does this relate to the topic? Well, if we look at the historical shift of European languages, we can see that smaller peasant and vernacular (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernacular) languages were erased with the rise of print-capitalism, where regional print-languages were developed so that the print industry could profit from publishing. Since most early print was done in Latin (which was a language used primarily by the elite), it was no longer profitable to print solely in Latin since the market wasn't very big. Printers/publishers wanted to selling more books and newspapers to more people, so print languages were adopted - usually one of the dominant vernacular language. Languages like French, English, German, Italian, etc... are all examples of this process. So as these print languages developed, they began to be adopted at the administrative level as well. So we can point to the erasure of small languages and the rise of dominant ones in Europe to the rise of capitalism (aided by the rise of print).
(you can read all about this in a book called "Imagined Communities" by Benedict Anderson)
Once these new print-languages had developed, European nations (rather than kingdoms) were developped based on language. These new nations (previously there was just a whole mix of different populations and cultures living under various royalties) had solid limits - the limits of the national language. Therefore, everyone within the nation had to speak the national language. Nationalism inevitably arose in these situations, since everything that was not the national-language had to be "other", and was therefore not legitimate. So this is where we get back to the question of Irish. I'm not totally clear on the history of the United Kingdom and Ireland, but my understanding is that Irish represents perfectly what I was talking about above as a vernacular language that is being erased by English. Because Irish didn't have a print (according to someone's post, I can't remember who), it has suffered a loss with the rise of english as the primary language learned and the language of print.
So why would people speak English instead of Irish? Well, primarily, it's because of capitalism. However, the situation of the Irish language is complicated by this problem of nationalism. There are a few issues that arise that may be relevant to this discussion:
1) On the one hand, maintaining cultural identity is important for a variety or reasons, and I fully support attempts to not lose cultural differences in favour of monolithic dominant cultures. Yet, I also think it's important to recognize that cultures are never fixed, and are always changing, so they need to be maintained but not at the expense of remaining fixed or rigid. In this situation, we can see the push to maintain Irish as possibly an anti-capitalist resistance, and a refusal to assimilate completely into a dominant culture.
2) On the other hand, the push to make Irish a national language (is this being done?) through the formalization of Irish and turning it into a print-language, figures into the risky terrain of nationalism and capitalism. Irish is of no use to capitalism if it is not a print-language. Making Irish a print/national language can be understood as part of a capitalist project. So rather than being about resisting assimilation into dominant monolithic culture, it becomes about making a new market with fixed limits based on the nation.
So to conclude, I think this is a pretty complicated issue that involves more than just thinking about identity and heritage. I think language can be used to push for nationalism and growing capitalism in a way that is dangerous of repeating the same problems of racism that we've seen all over Europe and other parts of the world. Again, my lack of knowledge of the political history of recent conflict between the UK and Northern Ireland, or the history of Ireland for that matter, doesn't allow me to say much in particular about those cases, but I think the issues I point to are relevant. When a "native" language is pushed at a national level, to be learned in schools, and published in books and newspapers, there is a certain amout of resistant that is going on, but at the same time, there is a risk of becoming dominant and repressive, and being used to serve racism and nationalism. This doesn't mean that "native" languages shouldn't be kept up, but that those involved need to look critically at how this is happening and what implications it might have.
Sorry that this post was so long, I just find the topic incredibly interesting and is very relevant to the work I do. I hope it isn't hard to follow and contributes to the discussion :D
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/me nods along
;)
Thats the basis of your next paper I hope :D
But on a serious note I largely agree with you. Although:
On the other hand, the push to make Irish a national language (is this being done?)
It already is one. It has been accepted by the EU (which means it must be lol. although Cornish has not to many peoples dismay in cornwall)
Currently it appears more to be a case of the political 'elite' forcing the language on children at school when they have little option but to learn it.
As for the history of Irish (and Northern Ireland) and English conflict you should really read up on it, I think that would interest you alot. My nation was absoloutely foul to them. Actually we were absoloutely foul to most of the people in the world. God it makes me proud sometimes (that was sarcasm btw)
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All is forgiven Idoru. :P
Well that is certainly food for thought. I have to say though I'm totaly against most of these modern methods of preserving the language. In the past they encouraged Irish language play wrights but now exactly what you said has started to happen. Any official letter has to be printed in first Irish then English. To get any job in the government you have to have Irish. The quality of Irish television is diabolical because they'll show anything in Irish to get those grants.
/me ponders...
Oh and yes I'd sayyou'd find the history quite interesting Thyme.
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I blame Canada and their pandering to Quebec for showing the world what (not) to do. If the British had finished what they had started in North America, all them Frenchies clamoring for language rights would have been someone elses problem :surrender: If only everyone spoke English the world would probably be less interesting.
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Doh, forgot about this thread X-/
Anyway, when we say "Irish is being forced on children" I mean that in all sense of the word - Not a single child I have ever known has wanted to learn Irish, and not a single child can get by without out it.
'Irish', a dead language that nobody speaks any more, is considered one of the 'core subjects' (along with English and Maths). That means that it recieves FAR more classtime than the likes of history, science, geography, etc.
It also means that if you fail Irish, you automatically fail your leaving cert, regardless of whether you get an A in every other subject. (I think in some counties you have to fail 2/3 core subjects or something like that).
Not only that, but like Para said; to have any government job (including cop, teacher, social worker, politician, special forces (not the regular army however) etc.) you need to speak Irish at least passably.
Every road sign, government form, airport sign and generally any other official signs (like in colleges or police stations, etc.) are in both English and Irish (which makes it harder to read, btw).
And the most annoying thing is: Irish doesn't count as a foreign language in most colleges. Which means, in order to meet the foreign language requirement, you'd have to speak English, Irish, AND German/French/Spanish/Japanese/etc. well. (As far as I know, Trinity is the only college that counts Irish)
Now this would be fine if it was like the English/Spanish or English/French duality in America or Canada (respectively), where around 50% of the population does speak each language. In Ireland, it's around 98%/2% English/Irish that speak it as a first language (last I heard. I'm sure it's far less now.).
Maybe Latin is a bad analogy for Irish. Let's take 'Klingon' instead. It's as relevant as Irish is in today's world. In fact, I'd say more people speak fluent Klingon than fluent Irish.
What would you think if every citizen in your country had to devote around 10-20% of their school-time learning Klingon? The only difference is there's WAY more chatrooms and forums and college-groups and clubs throughout the world devoted to Klingon than there is to Gaeilge.
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Um, I'm sorry but have you ever heard of the Gealtacht? Everyone speaks Irish here/there(Its a bit scattered.) There are some people in remote parts of Cork where only Irish is spoken and people has very little English. It may be a dead language in Dublin but not everywhere else in the country.
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Um, I'm sorry but have you ever heard of the Gealtacht? Everyone speaks Irish here/there(Its a bit scattered.) There are some people in remote parts of Cork where only Irish is spoken and people has very little English. It may be a dead language in Dublin but not everywhere else in the country.
That's what I mean. Not only do a very small amount of people actually live in the gaeltacht (compared to the 6 billion people in the world, it's less than a thousandth of a percent), but the majority of people in the Gaeltacht speak perfect English.
That's not a reason to force it on everyone. The Gaeltacht areas aren't even that culturally interesting, as far as tourism goes. If you want castles and stonework, come up to Dublin. If you want to suffer a language barrier while enjoying some fields, go to the Gaeltacht.
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The Gealtacht areas aren't culturally interesting? Are you serious? Go to Dublin instead you say? Thats like saying if you want to see Native American culture go to LA. Having spent a large amount of time in both places I can tell you honestly that Dublin is a city fast losing its culture. You have the Hugh Lane Gallery... Trinity I suppose. Asides from that...
So Gealtact people can speak English... Lets throw away the Irish Language then is the name of confomatism!
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The Gealtacht areas aren't culturally interesting? Are you serious? Go to Dublin instead you say? Thats like saying if you want to see Native American culture go to LA. Having spent a large amount of time in both places I can tell you honestly that Dublin is a city fast losing its culture. You have the Hugh Lane Gallery... Trinity I suppose. Asides from that...
So Gealtact people can speak English... Lets throw away the Irish Language then is the name of confomatism!
I never said 'throw away' the Irish language. I said 'stop forcing people to learn' the Irish language. In fact, I think actually making it into a choice will actually help motivate more people to learn it, rather than it being like a chore. I mean, Irish is a part of our culture (be it a small part of today's culture), so if you had the choice to learn it, you probably would, just to be patriotic. But we don't have that choice. It's like forcing someone to throw you a surprise birthday party - it sucks all the joy out of it.
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I can tell you that when I was younger I was almost anti-patriotic. I hated the Irish culture. I suppose it was my way of rebeling. Had I not learned Irish through I would be very regretfull. The only way to preserve it is to force it. Letting it be a choice would be letting it die.
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Klingon is a choice. That's the fastest growing language there is.
Besides, that just proves my point - if not a single Irish person would speak it if it wasn't forced on them (i.e. it would die), then why is it so necessary that it be learned?
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And the would regret it and we'd lose a big part of our cultural identity. Se my point?
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And the would regret it and we'd lose a big part of our cultural identity. Se my point?
Regret it? If they regret it so much, why wouldn't they learn it. Even old dogs can learn new tricks.
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Not true. Not true at all. Peoples minds absorb much more when they are young particularly language. Its fact. So then as the people that were thought it in scholl die off noone is capable of teaching it. Hence it becomes a dead language.
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Not true. Not true at all. Peoples minds absorb much more when they are young particularly language. Its fact. So then as the people that were thought it in scholl die off noone is capable of teaching it. Hence it becomes a dead language.
What isn't true?
Yeah, young people can learn language better, but that doesn't mean old people can't learn a language. If you have the time and the intelligence, it doesn't matter what age you are. You might not learn it when you're a teen, but if you realy want to there's nothing that could stop you learning it. (besides some sort of disability...)