Poll: Should civil servants get bonus points for speaking Irish?

The Government says the bonus points system hasn’t worked, but Irish groups says it is yet another blow to the language. What do you think?

http://www.thejournal.ie/poll-civil-ser ... 1-Oct2013/

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I'm not Irish, but I do think incentivizing the ability to speak the language can only be a good thing.

In Canada, federal employees who speak both English and French are paid slightly higher than those who speak only English (or, theoretically, those who speak only French, even though in reality, unilingual Francophones don't get hired for anything save perhaps local post offices in French-speaking towns).

Does the policy "work"? Well, that depends on what you think its goal is. The difference in pay by itself really isn't enough to justify the time and effort it takes to become fluent in a language. However, if it fits into a larger scheme of extra benefits, both personal and professional, than it's definitely worth something.

At the very least, speaking fluent Irish is a relatively rare skill, so applicants and employees who possess that skill should be rewarded.

I agree.

Yup!

I sigh sadly every time I see a job listing that says "bilingual preferred" and realize that the second preferred language is Spanish!

Seriously, though, there's a valid, legal, reason why someone who speaks both Spanish and English is particularly valuable in California, and a person who speaks both fluently should be able to command a higher salary. Seems to me it should work the same way with Irish in Ireland.

Redwolf

Redwolf, there are people in California who speak better Spanish than English - but it is not the case that anyone in Ireland cannot understand enough English to access government services in English. The reason there are official services in Irish - and some public servants hired due to their Irish - is largely or even wholly political.

And yet, as Conor Keane, native speaker of Irish from Carna in the Connemara, said at
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/column- ... rnment-isn’t-helping-201915-Aug2011/
a lot of official forms in Irish are harder for native speakers to read than the English equivalents, because they use many made-up terms, and so these official services in the language are not necessarily helpful.

He advocates a form of helping the language that does not entail translating passport forms just for the sake of it. Many of those with strongest language skills are employed on projects that involve Standardised Irish - like translating government laws and European directives into Irish, although no one ever asks to read the translations - when they could be better deployed in schools and elsewhere.

I would scrap Irish as an official language and offer government forms in English only - the language of the country is English, not Irish - and recognise Irish as a minority language, and give government support to it on that basis. I think the language "movement" as it is is almost wholly focused on children - summer camps for teenagers in the Gaeltacht and all that - when adult, interested learners can find it hard to find the help they need.

I was interested to see that in Belfast there is an Irish-language community centre, where you can drop in at almost any time of day and speak Irish. They have classes there, but you can also have a pint there and try to speak Irish. Some thought needs to be given to official support to things like that in each county, where the strongest speakers are redeployed, not from translating Gobbledegook into Gobbledegaeilge (as Conor Keane calls it), but into providing locations and opportunities for learners to practise Irish.

The reason it's useful to be able to speak Spanish in California, Patrick, or anywhere else in the U.S., is that, because the U.S. has no official language, Spanish speakers (or speakers of other languages) must, BY LAW, have access to facilities and documents in their language of choice. Trust me...it that weren't the case, we wouldn't have many monoglot Spanish speakers in California or in any other state.

Heck, my insurance documents are available in about 20 languages, including Hmong and Hindi (though, sadly, not in any native American language).

In Ireland, Irish speakers also have the right, BY LAW, to accommodation in Irish. It doesn't matter that they understand and speak English...perhaps even better than Irish. It's a legal right, and thus civil servants who can accommodate that right should receive appropriate compensation.

Redwolf

Again, I'm not Irish, but I think it's a pretty harsh and cold attitude one needs to advocate dooming the native tongue of a country to folkloric status with the stroke of a pen. Even if many native speakers don't understand technical Irish, the same is true for many native English speakers with technical English. And it's certainly not by removing the only reason one would need to learn technical Irish (by making it impossible to conduct anything in Irish but the simplest transactions) that people are going to learn that level of Irish, be they native speakers or second-language speakers.

English is the first language of most Irish citizens, but that doesn't change the fact that it is (1) a colonial language that was forced onto the country and (2) that the Irish people do have a native language (whether or not they care to learn it) and that history will condemn them for choosing to let it die, either out of pure laziness or through using a miserable economic theory to justify their indifference (or both).

Getting point for speaking to whom? Themselves? For front line staff dealing with the public? For backroomers replying to emails?

Having the civil service speaking Irish would be like expecting a fish to live on dry land. It's in the very DNA of the beast to be Anglo and West Brit for that is what it was designed for -a British style of administration in a colonial land.

It might be hard for people outside of Ireland to understand this, but there really is no desire amongst Irish people for the revival of Irish. It's a wholly concept tucked away at the back of most of their minds. The State itself has had a policy of being by turns neglectful or downright antagonistic towards the language. Remember, Irish life, social structure, its laws, civil service and much of its outlook was cast during the colonial period. Everything got a fresh lick of green paint in 1922, but nothing much more than the cosmetic was touched. Even providing all services thru Irish in the Gaeltacht regions would have helped and that would be too much of an allowance on their part.

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Being another colonized society, we have the same sort of people in Québec. We literally call them « des colonisés » in the everyday vernacular. These are French-speakers who idolize British and American society, are fundamentally convinced of the innate inferiority of the Québec people, and who are either resentful or downright hostile to anyone who defends any idea to the contrary.