Thought some of you might enjoy this blog post I wrote for Bitesize, and perhaps it can open a discussion: Why did YOU decide to learn Irish?

http://www.bitesizeirishgaelic.com/blog ... ic+Blog%29

Already answered on a thread on this forum...
I decided to learn Irish because it's the most beautiful language on earth

btw you wrote:


a language isn't "practical" or "useful" in the absolute. If you don't go to a Spanish-speaking country, if you don't need to read stuff in Spanish, Spanish isn't useful. Same thing with Arabic and with all languages.
Irish and Breton are more useful to me than Spanish or Arabic or Chinese... I use them all the time :-)
Breton is spoken by about 200 000 people and Mandarin Chinese by about 1 000 000, but in my area, many people speak Breton and nobody speaks Chinese

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

An-mhaith, Redwolf. Thaitin do scéal pearsanta liom.


I think Redwolf was making the same point, that in her neck of the woods she would come across Latin Americans and Arabs more often than Gaeilgeoirí.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

Yep...Spanish is extremely useful in California, and it's a huge perk to be bilingual (English/Spanish) if you're looking for work (I'm not, and I keep thinking I should be learning Spanish, but with everything else I do, I just don't have time to study another language!). Re Arabic: the part of San Francisco in which my daughter lives has a large Arabic-speaking population, and it can also be useful for business (as can Mandarin Chinese). Vietnamese can also be handy, especially in the Silicon Valley. The San Francisco Bay Area attracts people from all over the world, and does business all over the world, so being able to put "Spanish" or "Arabic" on your resume can be very handy.

When people say "practical," in terms of language here, they're generally thinking either in terms of something you could use to get a job (or a promotion), something that's useful militarily (the U.S. Army's Defense Language Institute is just south of us in Monterey), or something that might make overseas travel easier (folks would understand studying French or Italian in anticipation of a holiday in either of those countries, for example, but because they think of Irish as "dead," if they think of it at all, they don't see the point).

My father-in-law, bless him, never did understand the time I put into learning Irish. He spoke seven languages fluently, and had a working knowledge of several others, but they were all languages he'd needed or found useful, working as he did in the international community.

Redwolf

P.S. Edited to add that I actually did get a job interview last year quite simply because the managing editor was curious about the Irish experience on my resume, but that's as far as it went...they were actually planning to hire from within the whole time!

To those who say "Irish is a dead language", I usually say "Don't say that in front of an Irish person if you are planning on living much longer."

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Unfortunately, it's usually Irish people that say it's a dead language.

I like to tell those people that Russian is dead language (any Russians that I've met spoke to me in English).

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

You know, it's funny...I've actually had people come back from Ireland and say "of course it's a dead language...we didn't see a word of Irish anywhere!" To which I always reply "you mean you didn't see a single highway sign or use a single public toilet?"

Redwolf

Only the brain-dead ones.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

One could answer: a language that's spoken daily by thousands of (living ) people can't be a dead language otherwise explain me what a dead language is

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

This reminds me of a video of David mitchell (from peep show), his definition of a useful language seems to be by numbers alone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvlQXPNwrqo