Why did the Irish allow their own language to go pretty much extinct?

Go read "Translations" by Brian Friel.

Yes... they "allowed" it to go extinct. 🙄

Purely practical. The effect of their endless whining and complaining and bitterness was muted when they did it in Gaelic.

[quote] And Ireland is even psychically separated from the Great Britain

Maybe they saw it coming, then.

Everybody thinks their own language is 'wonderful', but being 'psychically separated' can be a formidable obstacle.

It's taught in public school, and there are a lot of young people working to promote it.

Isn’t it a really harsh and unpleasant sounding language?

There are many more harsh sounding languages

English spoken by Australians is far worse. It's hard to listen to.

South African accents sound like birds, picking out your eyes.

German accents sound perpetually disappointed and bitter.

R11 And your point is?

R12 There are worse sounds that could leave people's mouths than Gaelic.

Thanks for sharing. I've never heard it spoken and it was a surprise.

Oh and about your question. They were harrassed and occupied by the British for too long. It's similar to immigrant children not learning to speak their parents mother language, except it occurred within their own boundaries. It likely started out as a way to survive and gradually became dominant.

Hey OP. Póg mo thóin tú aineolach Mheiriceá.

Even Conor McGregor can't speak it well.

Are you ok, R16? Are you having a stroke? Can we call someone for you?

You can’t be that stupid, OP. And as someone said above, it’s now required in public schools.

Meh - a lot of my nieces and nephews are going to Gaelic language schools now. It’s an attempt to maintain the language. But really not practical. The English language - and the prioritization of education - is what has allowed Ireland to prosper. Sure, it’s nice to maintain the heritage - but I just think it’s impractical.

There are intonations and words in Gaelic that strike a chord with me. It “feels” like an expression of the culture when spoken. An odd feeling.

R16 Much to my credit, I know what you typed without looking it up. I don't know Irish Gaelic, but I know some Scottish Gaelic (especially the naughty words) and there are some similarities.

Language and culture are inextricably intertwined. A language in danger of extinction should be preserved in use, or at the very least in art.

Think of the hundreds of languages indigenous to the Americas that were pushed into oblivion by European invasion and cultural genocide.

There are also movements to keep some barely existent languages alive on reservations through education and art.

Jews brought Hebrew back from a liturgical language. It can be done.

Irish Gaelic has a long tradition of beautiful, often mournful music that has seen a resurgence.

I saw this harpist/singer, Hannah Flowers, perform this past fall. It was really a wonderful experience and made me think of the value in preservation and revitalization.

The Irish are too lazy to speak their own language. The British said "Speak ours!" and the Irish were like "Ok!"

OP - please list other native languages that are thriving after occupation/colonization. You make a lot of assumptions that are almost all entirely wrong.

Fuck that. Bring back Latin.

R18 It means "Kiss my ass, you ignorant American" in Gaelic.

It's because their country was founded by an American twit they are vaguely ashamed of, Eamon De Valera

Everyone there already moved here.

They like to be in America.

Everything’s free in America.

Language is easy in America.

The English did flee from America.

[quote] OP - please list other native languages that are thriving after occupation/colonization. You make a lot of assumptions that are almost all entirely wrong.

I think you're wrong, Missy! Just look at the history of places like Finland, Czechia, Estonia, Croatia...and their tongues. Actually, just look at the history of pretty much every mainland European nation that was without its own country before the 20th century. 19th century saw the rapid growth of national revival movements in those lands - before that happened it was mostly the lower classes that kept those languages alive but during that period the local bourgeoisie finally began to use their native languages too: in schools, politics, literature and theater. That of course saw a big de-germanization of those places.

Apparently there was also a Gaelic revival in Ireland around that same time but it obviously wasn't successful enough to replace English as their first language...And that's so sad it almost makes me want to cry.

[quote]R18 It means "Kiss my ass, you ignorant American" in Gaelic.

Well excuuuuuuse me!

Next time I think you’re in danger I’ll let you stroke out. Sheesh.

Every Irish American uses the Gaelic “kiss my ass”. It’s like the modern Cead Mile Failte. For a more crude and offensive generation.

The Catholic Church was very hostile towards the Irish language in the nineteenth century and that had a lot to do with its death. There were various reasons for that but here's one of the more interesting ones:

[quote] One very clear illustration of this is the reaction of the Catholic Church and clergy to the various Protestant missionary organisations that conducted evangelical campaigns in Irish-speaking areas between the 1820s and the 1850s. As well as preaching, these societies encouraged devotional reading in Irish and circulated large numbers of Bibles and religious tracts in Irish. The response of the Catholic Church seems to have involved a distrust of printing in Irish, if not of the language itself. According to David Greene, the evangelical campaign succeeded in provoking a reaction against the reading of the Irish bible, or indeed any material in Irish at all, which was to do much harm to the already weakened status of the language. At a local level this seems to have translated in some cases into hostility, and the Celtic scholar John O’Donovan wrote in 1850: "I know that the Catholic clergy, who are the real anti-Irish party at present, are moving heaven and earth to put out the Irish language". Even if the reaction to vernacular Protestant evangelisation was not uniformly anti-Irish, it is remarkable that there was no sustained campaign of preaching and publication in Irish in response. Very few popular Catholic tracts were published in Irish, and as Wolf points out, the missionary orders that were mobilised to counter the Protestant crusade, mostly new European orders, did not consider the language issue, at the beginning of their campaigns at least. Remarkably, Archbishop McHale of Tuam, usually regarded as a champion of the use of Irish, sent Rosminian priests, who were Italian and English and therefore without Irish, into Irish-speaking north Connemara in the 1850s to counter the evangelising of the Irish Church Missions there.

OP, choke on a fucking potato. Why do you think we might have had priorities a little more pressing than language preservation?

Having fucked a lot of Irish guys, I can tell you they give up hole very easily. Even spread their cheeks for you.

R33 No need for that kind of language!

But you know, the more I think about this whole language shift thing in Éire the more fucked up the whole thing seems to me. I know they had lots of practical reasons for doing it but it still doesn't make much sense and it's definitely a very unique case. I also live in lands that were ruled by foreign powers for almost a millennium and I honestly can't imagine my ancestors switching to German. That would seem just totally wrong (and people who did that were very frowned upon).

Ireland has to be the only European nation that gave up their language without a fight. Even Malta (another former Britsh island colony) managed to preserve that kooky Semitic language they speak.

"A state system of primary education was introduced in 1831 and one of its main aims was the teaching of English. Children were strongly discouraged from speaking Irish.

The "tally stick", or "bata scoir" in Irish, was introduced into classrooms. Children attending school had to wear a stick on a piece of string around their necks. Each time they used Irish, a notch was cut into the stick. At the end of the day, they would be punished according to how many notches they had on their stick."

R35 if by "Without a fight" you mean "Native speakers being murdered en masse repeatedly for several hundred years."

Ar dtús tháinig na Lochlannaigh, ansin na Normannaigh, ansin cinedhíothú Cromwells agus cóisiliú ina dhiaidh sin agus toirmeasc teanga. Ansin an gorta / cinedhíothú a mharaigh aon trian den daonra agus a dheoraigh an tríú cuid eile.

Ní raibh sé ag troid gan troid. go cinnte.

cén fáth nár léigh na daoine seo? Cinedhíothú Cultúrtha. Díreach mar atá leis na Meiriceánaigh Dhúchasacha Thuaidh, leis na Aboriginals agus na hAfraice Theas.

I heard it quite a bit while visiting the southwest. Cork, etc.

What I personally don’t like about Gaelic, and that goes for English too, and Dutch, is the horrible, horrible pronunciation of the letter R.

I’m so used to it in English but whenever I hear it in other languages that I don’t understand, it just sticks out. It makes the entire language sound retarded.

Fanann formhór na n-eachtrannach aineolach faoi na rudaí a tharla. Tá do chuid oideachais lag.

I totally thought the woman in OP's video was speaking Dutch at first.

The Dutch maintained their own language, but literally everyone in the country speaks English fluently. So what’s really the point of maintaining it?

I hope I would learn to speak at least one Celtic language if I lived in the British Isles. But I find them very intimidating. I knew that Charles tried to learn Welsh (I don't know how good his Welsh is), but it really impressed me that Diana apparently learned it.

The Catalans in Spain worked very hard to revive and preserve their language after it was almost made extinct by Generalissimo Franco. The Irish just didn’t care as much for Gaelic.

R46 The same goes for the Basque language, the only language isolate in Europe and one of the most ancient languages still around. It was heavily oppressed by the Francoist Spain but then it underwent a renaissance of some sort in the 1960s.

I guess Ireland being isolated on an island wasn't an advantage when it came to preserving their language at all because all those revival movements on Continental Europe greatly influenced one another (for instance, the Czech National Revival acted as a model of some sort for many other Slavic nations). But poor Gaeilge people had no one but the fish in the ocean surrounding them to turn to.

Irish is not "pretty much extinct" nowadays. What is OP's IQ? Why do we lazily accept the sloppy and trolling rhetoric in DL thread openers?

I'm laughing my ass off at the yanks here desperately trying to figure out the reason when they could just look it up.

I'll give you a hint.

A third of the population died. A third emigrated. The last third weren't allowed to speak it at school.

Figure it out.

R48 around 73,803 speak it daily and over 20,000 as their main language. In a country with such a tiny population that's far from extinction. It's also a compulsory subject at school from the age of 4 to 17.

Slightly off topic but it always amuses me how most Irish Americans who constantly post about being proud to be Irish are deplorable anti immigrant cunts. I have a lot of Irish and Irish American relatives (Irish dad) who wouldn't be seen dead posting shamrocks and leprechauns etc, and are very progressive politically.

It's always the nazi Trumpsters who brag about being Irish I'm the US.

Actually when you think about the extent to which the British & the Catholic church tried to decimate their language & culture, it's amazing it's still hanging in their as well as it is. I wonder if that's true in Northern Ireland

R50 That means that about 2% of the population (which isn't that large to begin with) use the language in their daily lives and of course the number is steadily dropping.

If Irish speakers were animals the IUCN would definitely tag them with the "critically endangered" status. So forgive me for being so concerned about the future of the language, little Miss R48.

R38 r39 What Hobbit language you speaketh?

R52 Exactly. It's amazing really, how thriving the language still is considering the many efforts to wipe it out entirely. We've fought very hard at government level to promote it.

Around 104,943 people in NI speak it. That's only around 6%

R53 only around 3% speak it instead of English. But around 40% of the population are still able to speak it fairly fluently Many people can switch to conversational Irish if they want to. It's also not a homogeneous language. With vastly different dialects varying by county.

R54 Labhraím Gaeilge. Teanga mo aithreacha.

Blame the church.

R53 - OP - go ahead and dig in your heels but Irish is not "pretty much extinct". Irish has been a written language since the 4th century and middle irish of the middle ages had a large written literature. Irish is an official language of the Irish Republic and an official language of the EU and it's taught in obligatory education. It may be little spoken and yes it needed to be protected and then taught academically to survive. But it survives today. It is not "pretty much extinct". Do you wish to dig in your chacha heels any deeper, stupid cow?

There is a bit of a revival happening at the moment. All my youngest cousins only speak Irish at home and only learn English at kindergarten.

OP maybe you should worry about Marathi - apparently an entire generation of Mumbai youth are growing up with English as their mother tongue and English as the primary spoken language in their McMansions. Oh - oh - oh Marathi is going EXTINCT!!!!

R59 All that data is nice to hear dear but what good is the "official language" status if so few people actually use it in their everyday lives? It's obvious that it's gonna become a technically dead language in a few generations, the way Latin is. There are still people who know Latin (and let's not forget there's one country where it's an official language) but of course it's used only on special occasions.

I have no idea what he's saying but the Irish guy in this thread is making me horny. I just hope he's the real deal and that he's not using Google translate to come up with that Irish stuff.

I'm testament to the fact the Irish, Italian and other admixtures are in my DNA. Even a tiny bit of North African too. As to languages English was my first, but I've since gained some proficiency in Spanish, Italian and studying Latin now. And I can clearly see he other impacts on languages - Spanish was influenced by Arabic, while Italian hews more closely to Vulgar Latin.

OP also complains that Africans enslaved in America lazily lost their languages and cultures.

Idiot.

R63 Cad atá tú ag caitheamh?

Emmet Cahill makes it sound pretty.

Some of you need to check your keyboard batteries. I think they’ve worn down.

Well it's sounds slightly better than Welsh at least. But both sound as if you are choking on a bunch of dicks and have COPD at the same time. I listened to Duffy sing in Welsh and it was painful.

R59 On what planet does Welsh sound ugly?! It sounds purty as hell to me.

[quote]I know they had lots of practical reasons for doing it but it still doesn't make much sense

Then no answer anyone gives will satisfy you. You're determined to be confused about it.

A lot of Native American tribes allowed their languages to go extinct.

R71 I guess you missed the point of my original question, honey: other European nations would have probably benefited from adopting the language of their invaders too but they didn't do it, unlike the Irish. So what made the Irish do it while the others didn't?

Some poster above said the reasons were: "A third of the population died. A third emigrated. The last third weren't allowed to speak it at school." Well, other nations experienced mass migration and language bans in school and public life too but they didn't have the deadly potato famine, the isolated island location and the crazy influence of the Catholic church so I guess it was those three things that made the Irish case so different from the others and played crucial role in the language shift.

Trolly troll trolling.

Irish Gaelic is making a comeback as is Welsh. Neither is extinct.

Do they have a television station that broadcasts current shows in the language? I think that could help. In Wales, they have Channel S4C which keeps Welsh alive. I watch both of S4C's early evening soaps, "Pobol y Cym" (People of the Valley) and "Rownd a Rownd" (Round and Round). "Pobol" has been on for 45 years now. Also, kids can learn by watching, since all the station's children's shows and cartoons are broadcast in Welsh. And over the last couple of seasons, they had a pretty big hit with the mystery drama "Un Bore Mercher" (One Wednesday Morning), and it was exported in English as "Keeping Faith"). Other recent dramas have made an impact as well. Seems like "Welsh noir" is becoming a thing.

Off topic here, but can I just say that I have always considered Eamon de Valera to be one of the most fantastic names in history. On a par with Napoleon Bonaparte.

In fact, I think I'll start a thread on the subject, to get other people's personal favorite names.

r77 I follow quite a few young Irish vloggers, from the Try Channel Dublin crowd, and many of them do speak Irish. John Sharpson does TV and radio shows and YouTube videos in Irish, which he speaks fluently. He also teaches in schools in Irish.

In my corner of Donegal, all the road signs, government offices, town names are in Gaelic and there is an explicit effort to maintain it. Lots of summer schools for teaching Gaelic language too. Largely because it was so isolated for so long, many continued to speak it into the late 20th century. It was a novelty growing up in the 70s and 80s. Now it’s the law.

Appalachia mountain people are descended from the Gaelic speaking people! So we can thank the Irish for our Hillbillies!!!

No joke. Hillbillies are literally Irish peasants lost in the woods for the past 300 years!

Cornish is an extinct that was revived.

*extinct language*

Aren't Scots also of Irish origins? I think I read once that their ancestors migrated from Ireland centuries ago.

My grandmother and her brothers las name McBreen (Mac Braoin), emigrated from Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century. They spoke Gaelic amongst themselved, but wouldn't teach their kids or grandkids. Wish they had!

Datalounge is the only place in the 21st century where you still see Irish hate. I love this place but it is truly bizarre.

The Irish are all drunks!!! I should know... I'm Irish... and drunk.

[quote]But around 40% of the population are still able to speak it fairly fluently Many people can switch to conversational Irish if they want to.

Really? I would have thought that well under 10% of the population could hold a sustained conversation in the language. For most today it's a matter of taking it at an English medium school to pass the tests.

Here's a fun video where some chick was stopping young people in the street to see how good their Gaeilge is. The top rated comment on youtube pretty much sums the situation up:

[quote] Result: Irish people speak irish as a foreign language

Pity she didn't ask those dudes to take out their cocks so we can survey for the Irish Curse.

History and stats.

A neighbor born in Ireland 80-years-ago says the Gaelic she learned is taught different today.

R92 they have standardised it while in the past one would learn the local version

R91 I can't stand that guy's videos because he looks creepy as fuck. Pity, because they seem to be very informative otherwise but that face is the stuff nightmares are made of.

My favorite language-related channel on YT is called "I Love Languages!", which features recordings of dozens of different languages, even some highly exotic ones. For instance, here's their clip of Archi language, spoken today by less than 1000 people in Dagestan.

I guess when you put things in perspective the Irish language doesn't really seem to be that endangered, especially when you compare it to languages like Archi. The Caucasus region actually has dozens of languages that are quickly dying out, because almost every hill had their own language there in the past.

I know I wondered completely off the topic, but here's a fun fact about Archi that will blow your mind:

[quote] It is an ergative–absolutive language with four noun classes and has a remarkable morphological system with huge paradigms and irregularities on all levels.Mathematically, there are 1,502,839 possible forms that can be derived from a single verb root.

That's because today's language is much more oriented toward urban speakers trying to revive it then the speech of native speakers from the countryside.

The English would cut out the tongue of anyone speaking Gaelic.

Holy shit- Ireland’s population is only 4.8 million, Northern Ireland 1.82 million.

33 million Americans claim Irish descent.

5 times as many of us as actual micks. Maybe we should learn it?

How do you say "gay" in Gaelic?

Aerach or piteog

OP: Just curious, WHY do you pose the question?

As Americans of German descent, in 2016, we spent 6 days in Western Ireland on a private tour. Our hosts were adamant in speaking the Irish language and showing us centuries-old post boxes, which were now painted green as opposed to English red. There was, centuries later, an intense hatred of Oliver Cromwell. As we were driven around we learned that there was a resurgence in teaching the Irish language, as well as teaching a form of a more-brutal, more-ancient, and arm-involved “soccer,” which resembled American football. We learned that many things Irish were erased by the English. But most people we met didn’t know the old Irish language. The hatred of “the English” was palatable.

Then we spent 10 days in Wales and were immersed in the Welsh language, as it’s been taught to school kids since the 1980’s, I think. Many people in Northern Wales knowingly spoke Welsh, whereas in Ireland the Irish language was rare. The strangest thing was how the Welsh language sounded and looked like it was out of Lord of the Rings. Come to find out that Tolkien was influenced by the Welsh language. But that’s a different topic.

I hope a UK person will weigh in on your post.

R77 yes we do have an Irish language channel, radio station and news.

"Some poster above said the reasons were: "A third of the population died. A third emigrated. The last third weren't allowed to speak it at school." Well, other nations experienced mass migration and language bans in school and public life too but they didn't have the deadly potato famine, the isolated island location and the crazy influence of the Catholic church"

Not to bright eh r73? The reason for the death, migration and church power grab was the "Famine". The reason for the "Famine" was the English. It wasn't a famine. It was a calculated genocide, enginered to wipe out the Irish people, culture and language. And it almost succeeded. The population and language have yet to recover. We didn't "Allow" anything. It was ripped away from us.

"other nations experienced mass migration and language bans in school and public life too"

Yeah and a fuckton of them lost their native languages as a result. Think almost every Native American nation, Native Canadians, The Australian Aboriginals, The Danisi, The San People, Countless South American tribes, and the Sami people, The Romanis. The list goes on.

None of them wanted to get wiped out. You dumb fuck.

It sounds okay when sung. Avicii’s Wake Me Up:

R103 don't forget Yiddish! I mean... Much like OP I just can't IMAGINE why the Jews would just ALLOW their language to go extinct. So weird right? They just randomly stopped speaking it after the 40s. *Scratches head.*

R103 You can't really compare the situation in Ireland with those examples from other continents you listed, that's why I specifically restricted to drawing comparisons between the Irish and other European nations above, because they were pretty much part of the same historical currents.

The only people of those you mentioned who do live in Europe are the Romani and they still very much communicate in their own language in their homes (and I know this from personal experience).

R82 Fun fact about Cornish. The last Monolingual speaker was Dorothy Pentreath, who died in the 1700s. Her last words were “Mynywynnay kewsel Sowsnek” (“I don't want to speak English!)

R106 why can't I compare them? The same fucking thing happened to them.

The Saami are European.

I don't know why anyone would argue with such an obvious troll though.

When my grandparents and their siblings emigrated from Sligo to New York at the turn of the 20th century, they were fluent in Gaelic, as it was then called, and English. Once here, they were far more concerned with assimilating as Americans than passing on their Irish language skills to their children. And my parents had the same negative attitudes about 'the old country' and its culture. I imagine their story was not that different from many of the Irish immigrants of that era.

OP The Irish did not allow the language to die off. It's thriving in the Gaeltacht areas and many youngsters speak it pretty well, but it is not a working language.

It also happens to be a difficult language, unlike the Romance languages, where the exception to the rule is rare. In Irish it's the reverse.

Beautiful language, especially when spoken by native speakers.

Sorry, I didn't see the Sami mentioned above. There are many different Sami languages around of course but if we take the most widespread one (the Northern Sami) we see that more than 50% of the local Sami population is fluent in it and the number of speakers is actually rising. Those are much higher numbers than the percentage of Irish speakers in Ireland is.

Wow, that's how my ancestors sounded? Sounds like me drunk and stoned!

The Irish language is propped up as a political symbol. It's never going to become widespread as it's so difficult to learn if a kid doesn't grow up in an Irish speaking household, Save for the most precocious or intellectual anyway.

Since what is now the Republic of Ireland (then the Free State) became independent in 1922, it has tried various schemes to revive Irish, with limited success. You need to pass a test in the language to get various government jobs, including teacher, but that has led to a growth in language schools which just teach to the test. It also seems relatively poorly taught in schools ( it's compulsory, taught very traditionally with grammar drills, the kids hate it because it is totally alien to their everyday lives). Most of my friends who went to school in the ROI have little good to say about it.

BUT I think there might be some indication that the situation is improving, it's nice to see the language being integrated with new technologies and social media. I work in Dublin and am taking a free class at my place of work - there's a lot of money around to promote the Irish language and long may that continue.

[quote] Not to bright eh R73?

How do you say irony in Gaelic?

Anyone who says Welsh sounds bad is daft.

Interesting R107. Sowsnek also sounds similar to Sassanach, the Scots word for the English.

How did the English fail to assimilate Ireland? They had hundreds of years to do it and they failed. Why? Weren't they ruthless enough?

Too close to home for many here like r33 and r65.

R117 Really?

[Quote] No joke. Hillbillies are literally Irish peasants lost in the woods for the past 300 years!

Scots and Irish actually. Also, not lost but pushed into the interior by the earlier english settlers on the east coast.

∆ Protestant ones. They get their name from "King Billy" ( William of Orange )

I'm taking my "momma's heart surgery" theory back because apparently he's an old acquaintance of the police and has amassed quite a mugshot collection already.

But I definitely wouldn't kick him out of my bed, that's for sure. He's kind of cute.

R124 Now I've heard of "Black Irish" but...

There's plenty of black Irish around. Does anyone remember the fabulous Samantha Mumba, one hit wonder from the early 2000s? She also appeared in that terrible remake of The Time Machine with Guy Pearce. It's a shame she didn't have a bigger career because I'd take her over that whore Beyonce anytime.

A few years ago during a stay in Ireland, I was riding a local bus in Dun Laoghaire, outside Dublin. There were two teenage boys have an animated conversation about football - one was white, the other black, and though they were speaking English, they both spoke with the same Dublin accent. I found it very heartening to know that people of all races have found a welcome home in Ireland.

To be clear, the term Black Irish does not mean black as in negroid, but rather Irish mixed with (usually) Spanish creating a most lovely combination of black hair and (usually) blue eyes.

R89 That's Clare. She's one of the regulars on the Try Channel, plus she makes her own YouTube videos, the latest one of which is about her surgery for a deviated septum. She's got a great personality, but she sometimes talks so fast that I can't understand what she's saying.

R128 Not any more.

^ There are Irish gangs in Tallaght, too. Trust me.

I’m surprised at some of the violence I’ve read and heard about - in small little Irish towns. Apparently lots of it drugs related. It really is a changed country. Yet still no backlash against immigration - I think most are still shocked that people want to immigrate TO Ireland and not away.

And another thing! Why did Poland allow Germany to invade them in 1939? I blame Poland for that!

Maybe I'm just culturally insensitive, but to me, it seems morally wrong to waste the very finite amount of time schoolkids have by making them spend hours & hours per week mastering a language whose few speakers all know English better *anyway*. As opposed to, say, learning Mandarin or French.

The whole purpose of a language is to facilitate communication. Using a language NEITHER participant really knows well in preference to one they DO is silly, and misses the POINT of using a particular language.

Learning any language is good for development, I disagree with you.

I think what the Irish need most to thrive is cultural confidence - I’m an American of Irish descent with many black friends, and holy shit there are so many similarities in the cultures, from self effacing minstrelsy joking to rageful pride to being oversexualized to a feeling of emasculation and defeat.

The Irish need a Celtic Liberation movement. Green Pride.

A little Irish music to calm y’all - -

I don't disagree that learning a new language is a good thing, my argument is that the same amount of effort put into studying a language like Mandarin or French will have tangible benefits for the learner, instead of mostly being intellectual masturbation.

French: regional job market within a half-day drive+ferry doubled.

Mandarin: number of people you can communicate with doubled

Celtic: you can sort of make sense of folk songs at a wedding

Putting it into perspective, imagine if someone argue that students in Cairo should spend 5 hours/week for years becoming fluent in ancient Egyptian, and should speak it in preference to Arabic because, well, it's their native culture. They'd be *laughed* at.

Even native American tribes have largely thrown in the towel & now focus on translating their oral & written lore into English & settling for their kids learning a smattering of their tribal language as a combined language+history lesson. Literally *nobody* thinks Navajo or Cherokee will *ever* be daily "working" languages again, even among tribe members. I think there are now more people who are fluent in Klingon than Navajo, and Cherokee is a close call.

The English really screwed up with Ireland.

[quote] Putting it into perspective, imagine if someone argue that students in Cairo should spend 5 hours/week for years becoming fluent in ancient Egyptian, and should speak it in preference to Arabic because, well, it's their native culture. They'd be *laughed* at.

That's a nonsensical comparison, because most Egyptians are Arabs and ancient Egyptian doesn't have anthing to do with their native culture. It's the Coptic language which is the direct descendant of ancient Egyptian and there have actually been several attempts of reviving it in the last 200 years among the Copts, to some pretty unimpressive results unfortunately. So it remains an almost dead language, used only in liturgy (sort of like Latin).

R119 The English failed to assimilate The Scottish and The Welsh and they are till part of The UK! For the time being.........

R128 Not Spanish. That is a corny myth. The original inhabitants of Ireland(the Beaker folk) were dark and stocky. The invading Celts were lighter hair wise and eye wise.

R141

Yes, you're right, it is one of the explanations.

I wanted to thank those of you who were patient with some of us not-so-bright members. I'm not Irish-American. I was, of course, aware of the famine, and the mass immigration. And while I knew that the English oppressed the Irish, I didn't realize that the Church tried to suppress the Irish language in schools. The Church has really been a pox on Ireland.

OP, ask any culture that survived a genocide by the british if they could salvage anything meaningful...

Stiofan O'Fearail, the featured singer of Seo Linn and of the big Irish School video above, could teach me Irish any time. His "day job" is as a teacher of Irish in a school in Galway, and he started doing all these Irish covers of popular songs as a way to motivate his students. He's one handsome guy, and not the typical Irish face either. I'm of Irish descent, and don't know a word of it, but I feel proud and somewhat proprietary when I hear it spoken and sung. Those are my people and their literary culture is rich. There's a reason why Ireland has produced so many poets and novelists, in both English and in Irish - a love of language itself, imagery and storytelling, humor and pathos.

Buachaill ana-dheas at fad👹

The real question is how Gaeilge survived at all. But it has survived and there is more a more positive general attitude to the language than there has been in generations.

Nochtann grá gnaoi - beauty is in the eye of the beholder

A chunk of this podcast is in English, just trying to sign your name as Gaeilge could start a national uproar in 1906

Just finished watching Anna Karenina (1948) starring Kieron Moore and Vivien Leigh. Had no idea Mr Moore was Ciarán Ó hAnnracháin from an Irish speaking family from County Cork.

Damn fine looking "black" Irishman he was in his day .

Kieron Moore was indeed very handsome — well into the 1970s, when he retired from acting!