Ya the opposite is happening now where people are professing that they are Irish speakers because they have the "kupla fukle". The questions on the census are far to ambiguous with regards to competency in Irish. Its amazing how the status of Irish has changed in the last 100 years though; where once people who spoke it where considered uneducated and lesser, but now its a sign of being "well educated".

Cian

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Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice

It hardly seems like it would be that much effort to stick in 5 boxes on the census
Fluent
Middle (what ever name you want to give it)
Weak (probably a better name for this too)
A little - basically the vast majority of people who went through the school system
None - people who have had almost no exposure to the language

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Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

Most people who went through the school system deserve to be in a 'higher' category than fourth out if five. My experience is that we have a country with loads of people with some or quite a lot of Irish, but many of them NEVER use it. It keeps coming back to confidence and opportunity. Give people the opportunity (on a plate, admittedly) to use Irish in a non-threatening, supportive environment and throw in a bit of craic and you'll see people who claim to gave no Irish thrive.

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well as you say many never use it, i know lots of people that used to use it either in a Gaelscoil or in the area they grew up , but their ability has diminished over the years from lack of use, someone just out of school will have much better Irish than someone who went through the same education but hasnt used it for 20 years.

Broadly speaking I would find the following figures, extrapolated from this report to be fairly accurate with what ive observed,
http://www.mayococo.ie/en/Services/Oifi ... 645,en.pdf

7.8% Fluent or very fluent (357,000)
19.5% Middling (893,000)
14.2% Not so fluent (650,000)
32.5% Only a little (1.48m)
26% None

58 % of the population have little or no Irish. I know many people who can only think of one or two words in Irish. I myself had almost nothing bar a few words and a vague familiarity with some prepositions and irregular verbs on leaving school.

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Bíonn rudaí maithe mall

I would agree -the idea that there are loads of speakers just hidden under a light dusting of English topsoil, willing and waiting to flower, if only the right social and linguistic weather were to come along, doesn't seem very plausible to me.

Just think, how many would know how to say all the following discoursal elements in Irish:

What's the craic?
Come again?
Pardon?
Who knows?
Nobody knows
Odd
Strange alright
Wow!
A pure ejit
Shure, what else?
What the Devil?
Speak of the Devil!
The line's bad
I can't hear you right
There's another thing
Come here to me
I see
I get you
Catch you later
Take her handy

These are the sorts of repair mechanisms, topic changing phrases, expressives etc that happen in real turn-based speech. It's one reason I think people fall back on English as these things seem to be universal but aren't taught or explained so people have to make them up

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