Official Languages Act 2003

Re: irish

Oh come now, TirOileain, where's the fun in being reasonable?! Get up on your high horse, ar an Capall Ard, and attack the non-Irish-speaking heathen! Lig amach an gal!

The figure for a billion a year is utterly non-scientific, and may even be incorrect. However, if we spend over 10 billion a year on the health service, what guess would you put on:

* The annual salaries of all the Irish-speaking teachers
* The annual cost of TG4, and all the other government-sponsored Irish-language media
* The cost of translating every government publication
* Putting up signs in both languages, even in those parts of the country where Irish hasn't been spoken for centuries
* The overhead added to the civil service, guards, government, schools, prisons, hospitals, etc, etc, by needing to provide a bilingual service, even those there's not one Irish speaker left on the Island who isn't completely fluent in English
* The numerous gaeltacht grants and subsidies

In addition to the above, the mild-mannered reverend has to take another day off work so he can drive down the N11 to have the NCT check that he has "An" before the "Lar" on his license plates. How many souls will be lost to that folly?

We have tourists who end up in Meath because they didn't know about the bus for "An Lar".

How much would you guess all that costs? A few hundred Million a year anyway, if not a Billion. I have to chuckle when the chatterati whine on about the Dublin Spire costing, oh, 5 million or so - "It should be spent on hospital beds!" - why can't the Irish Language lobby volunteer to forego a subsidy or two, and donate that money to the health service?

As regards being able to say the same about Math, History and Art - the difference here is that Math is the *only* subject on that list that (like Irish) is *compulsory*, and indeed Math is essential to day-to-day living (which Irish is not). An otherwise excellently-qualified candidate for a civil service position would not be barred from the post because they couldn't tell a Titian from a Tissot, but would be if they couldn't tell a Madra from a Mazda.

As for providing an opportunity for Irish to be taught in the education system - no-one is arguing that this be stopped - the only argument here is that it should not be forced on students who don't want to learn it.

Is Mise, le Meas,
James

Re: irish

Well said. Irish language must cost this country hundreds of millions a year at least, money and time which should be spent elsewhere.

Re: irish

@TirOileain: If the Gaeilgeoirs in our education system hadn't spent thirty years killing the language stone dead in the curriculum (yes, I am of the Peig generation...) a lot more people would probably enjoy using it today.

Re: irish

I remember the time (yes fadó, fadó ) when a schoolmate of mine was doing his news report about some NASA project or other as Gaeilge at the front of the class when he paused and looked quizzically at the teacher and asked "Sir - cad é an Gaeilge ar 'solid rocket booster'?". :lol

translations

"cad é an Gaeilge ar 'solid rocket booster'?"

hopefully better than the Gaelige for "Ramps" which I am too embarassed to type out.

Re: translations

My mother - who was taught through Irish in Mountjoy Street School home to an An Óige hostel these days - was gobsmacked when signs appeared in the Phoenix Park pointing to An Zú and veidhlin became an accepted word in the Irish language... :\

As Gaeilge

I've never recovered from the change from the "builte" (?) to bh which like "z" and "v" never existed in the language!

Re: As Gaeilge

My mother never really recovered from the ditching of Celtic script with it's seimhiús and all that lark. The retrofitting of of 'z' and 'v' and so on was just another shock to the system. She's still going strong by the way and still claims to do her mental arithmetic as Gaeilge!

Re: As Gaeilge

still claims to do her mental arithmetic as Gaeilge!

Does she do it in Imperial as well?

gaeilge

The old script was very beautiful. I've been hauling my huge "Dineen's Irish-English Dictionary" around the UK for over 30 years and browse through it when I'm homesick. In USA and UK I meet dozens of Americans of Irish decent who are movingly enthusiastic about an teanga. It is unfortunate schemes like the "fainne" and compulsory Irish in the school system have been so ineffective as it is a musical and very special language. Have you ever noticed that the cadence of people's speech resembles the type of terrain in which they live and this connection with the land through language and communication is a glimpse of the soul itself.

Some of my happiest memories of childhood were summers spent in the gaeltacht regions of Cork and Donegal. My last visit to Donegal was to stay with English friends who had lived there for 10 years. The kids learned gaeilge in school but the adults were indifferent and had'nt bothered. Has the requirement for newcomers to gaeltacht areas to know/speak the language been abolished?

P.S.

......though my love of it and all the gaeltacht summers didn't stop me "failing Irish in the Leaving Cert"and having to emigrate!!! The very urgency and stress placed on it, and it's compulsory status produce the opposite to the desired outcome. I do agree with posters who feel there's something not quite working. Does anyone have creative suggestions about how the language could be effectively integrated without undue cost and revivified?

Re: P.S.

Does anyone have creative suggestions about how the language could be effectively integrated without undue cost and revivified?

Have the Government sponsor some Premier League soccer players to say a few focail from time to time. That'd strike a cord with Irish "supporters" of English football or about 95% of the population. Having Martin O'Neill join in would probably cover the other 5%.

Re: P.S.

there's something not quite working...

Click to expand...

Damn right (see my comment above...)

I re-entered the Irish school system midway through third year and had the option of an exemption from Gaeilge, by dint of my extended absence 'in foreign'. But my dear old Mum pressed me to give it a shot (ah, sure, you never know, love — what if you wanted to become a Guard or join the civil service...?) and with due application and lots of rote memorisation, I got an A on the Ordinary level LC paper three years later.

12 months on, needless to say, all was forgotten... (yes, even the moe-conn-ee-luck)

Seriously, though — as a linguist and language-teacher, and Irish by birth — I'm all for non-coercive measures to revive th'aul' teanga. My eldest two are attending an all-Irish school — OK, it's more to do with the small class sizes and overall 'ethos' than anything else — and I've long since got past the stage of being able to help them with any homework other than French/Spanish/English (and maybe Maths)... I know I should take a course or something, but — hey! Why not Chinese? or Arabic!

But I really think that true supporters of The Cause should
(a) lobby for the removal of the 'compulsory' thing in schools — I seriously believe that it does more harm than good, motivation-wise (I'm frequently amazed at the difference in fluency of 1st-year college students after 6 years, 1-hour-a-week of French, Spanish, whatever and their comparable ability in 'from-the-cradle, all-the-hours-God-sends-us' compulsory Gaeilge...)
(b) find smarter ways to deploy the (hugely generous) financial resources made available to them by the State — i.e. taxpayers. Leaving it to the D(uh!)ESS and the various existing Cumanna/Conraidh/'Cartel-lí' has proven an lesson in abject inefficiency, if not downright counter-productivity. And I don't mean tokenist rubbish like having all govt. stationery/public notices etc. expensively reprinted bilingually. This is the Meeja age. More TnG/RnG would be closer to the mark (this is how Italian eventually got 'standardised', after 150 years of futile post-reunification measures by the Govt...). Tap into An D(h?)iaspora for funding and markets, FFS!

Otherwise I fear it'll be ar do rothar is amach faoi anseo for th'aul' teanga, billions of tax-euro notwithstanding.

Shinnawill, agus gock rudd mar shinn,
(An) Dr. M.

an teanga

That makes sense Dr.M! NornIron approaches resolution so funds are no longer required for guns. As an artist it is difficult to understand why symbol and creativity couldn't (apart from literary fiction and some theatre) ease the way through that one despite many earnest projects. Perhaps the energy of the diaspora could shift to moral and financial support of gaeilge. Against all the odds ireland still has a handful of poets still working as gaeilge. It's a start......