I read the following article and thought it would make an interesting discussion http://anghaeltacht.net/ctg/altveritas.htm

I had been brought up thinking Irish declined mainly due to British rule and the famine (tipping point where English becomes the majority language). But that doesn't account for why Irish was lost so quickly, and then never reintroduced following independence. It appears the inconvenient truth is the apathy of the general Irish public towards Irish, he vast majority favour it and dont want it to die but the vast majority dont want to relearn it, English is still the language and yes the government have made mistakes but the reason it hasnt become the language of Ireland again is the peoples apathy.

In addition to what has been discussed in the article I provided a link too we must also discuss why the people are apathetic. It has been suggested to me that the Irish never saw Irish as central to the culture, and that todays apathy is deep rooted and has always been there, hence why we gave it up so quickly. We do know that Irish was celebrated by bards and the old Gaelic kings, but the ordinary people never got a say, so all we know is the people in high powers story. It has been suggested that the ordinary people were distant from that section of society and didnt have access to literature so therefore Irish was less attached to culture for them. It has also been put forward that with the death of the old Gaelic system, and with English already making inroads into Ireland that the people felt let down by the Gaelic system, and adopted the English system as it was along with the rulers language, the language of the economy, education etc. perhaps the people didnt feel any connection or loss with the language. And that that connection has never been there en masse and that the mindset today is just a continuation of that; the high kings (ie politicians) putting emphasis on Irish while the population remains indifferent.

The above argument certainly explains how we lost Irish so quickly, and how the people today generally feel indifferent towards it. Perhaps Irish was just a tool of communication and never a big part of the cultural identity. was the gaelic revival of the late 1800's and the official state revival policy up until the 1960 just a way of building a stronger Irish identity in the face of nationhood?

I began learning Irish a few years ago for mainly cultural reasons, but if it never was a big part of irish identity were my feelings misguided? My family lost Irish with my great grandparents, although they lived into the 1970s they never gave it to my grandparents generation, and it wasn a big deal to them, was this the case all over Ireland?

My reasons for learning Irish were mainly cultural, but if my ancestors never saw it as a big part of their culture why should I? Personally I think there are many reasons to learn Irish, i just wanted to explore the general apathy.


ps a great quote from an Aran Islander interviewed in 1926 by Coimisiún na Gaeltachta "It is only them with plenty English who are bothered about Irish" - that sums it up for me!

Apathy is a big part of it, but there is something more than that going on. There are people out there who, for various reasons, HATE the Irish language.

Up until recent years, if two people from the Gaeltacht bumped into each other in Galway City, they would be embarrassed to speak Irish to each. Not apathetic, but actually ashamed to be overheard by Galltacht people. That much has changed, at least.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

I think Irish was viewed as the language of the peasants/less educated much more recently than we may like to admit. At the same time, it was something that most people wanted to see stay alive - amongst the stone walls and thatched cottages. It would be like having a cute museum for tourists, but it wouldn't actually impact on most people's lives. Ironically, in recent times, Gaelscoileanna have been accused of elitism and giving unfair advantage. You can't win!

I think that Ireland and Irish people have lost so much in the last two or three years - the economy is a mess; many consider that Germany and France are calling the shots in Europe and so therefore for Ireland. We are losing our national identity more and more with each budget announcement that is made in Germany before Dáil Éireann. We have one thing that actually belongs to us - not Europe or elsewhere - our culture;: our music, Irish dancing, GAA and our language. If we do not want to just become an amalgam of everywhere else, we need to hold on to these and enable them to flourish.

I am hoping that a desire to hold on to something that belongs to ourselves will encourage more people to engage with the Irish language. That is not to exclude other languages/music/sport etc; it is merely not to lose our own.

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It's as if being bilingual made you less educated than being monolingual.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

Yeah, but people probably weren't thinking in those terms.

I imagine it's a bit like the various dialects of the Deep South here in the U.S. Rightly or wrongly, those accents have become associated in peoples' minds with hillbillies, rednecks, etc. Consequently, rather than being proud of their dialect (and many of the Southern dialects are beautiful and expressive), people work like crazy to lose them. Appalachian State University in North Carolina used to have a special program for people who wanted to get rid of a southern accent.

I used to notice, when I lived there, that people would consciously "tone down" the accent when a "Yankee" (northerner) or "foreigner" (anyone who was from some place in the U.S. other than the Eastern Seaboard) was present (unless they really didn't like the person, in which case they'd go so broad that no one but a local would understand them!).

Redwolf

Obviously, I am not suggesting for a second that it was a correct attitude for anyone to EVER take, but I believe it is how many people thought about Irish speakers. I am working hard to give my children the benefits of bilingualism as, of course I agree, it can only be a good thing. I envy young children's ability to pick up a language so much more effectively - and effortlessly - than I can.

TG4's babe factory helped greatly to improve the image of Gaelgeoirí also!

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Because of History and Technology (i.e the internet) English has pretty much won the battle to be the lingua franca fo the world. Virtually everone throughout the EU speaks English and communications between EU citizens of various states takes place in English. Even Mandarin is out of the running as huge numbers of Chinese are now learning English whereas not many non-Chinese are learing Mandarin. There are more speakers of correct English in India then in Britain and the US combined. Not speaking the world's dominant language is a distict handicap. Is the effort to make all Irish bi-lingual, in the long-run, doomed or can it possibly be accomplished? Apathy is one major difficulty. Would fostering ethnic pride be an incentive? Our long history of culture, accomplishment and overcoming struggle against impossible odds should be instructive . Also worth noting, of all the nationalities throughout the world everybody loves the Irish; probably more so then we do ourselves.

Tá brón orm, a Shaoirse. Didn't mean to roll my eyes at you, rather the attitude you were describing.

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

I think the key is that people were made to feel ashamed of Irish for much of the 19th century, and even punished in school for using it (just like Native Americans here in the US, and all but a few of their languages are now dead or dying), and English became clearly the prestige language, needed for decent jobs and to be seen as someone intelligent. It's hard to overcome that sort of systemic discouragement, and the initial attempts in Ireland were very misguided.

People have forgotten, but after the Free State was created all of the schools were converted essentially overnight to Irish speaking schools, which was a futile effort, since there weren't enough teachers or materials to accomplish the task. The effort was then abandoned, and replaced by trying to teach some Irish each day, and we all know how poorly that was done for decades. The result was that many people gave up hope for a revival, whatever the government said in theory. It's a shame, because at the time nearly 10% of the population was still using the language at home (though that was slanted towards the elderly), and probably a huge number more had parents or grandparents who still could speak Irish (even if they declined to do so). A more creative effort at revival might have succeeded, but Ireland was very poor, with lots of other worries, and it would have been hard to throw the right amount of materials and staff at the effort.

I don't see Irish ever replacing English again, for the reasons kenailan outlined, but I think there's a decent chance of a strong revival as a second national language if they ever start concentrating on teaching young children, all of whom should be in Gaelscoileanna from pre-school through year 3 or so, as far as I'm concerned (as soon as there are enough teachers for that). Children would pick up the language easily in the early years, and it would not take the same kind of resources to keep them fluent as they go through school (maybe one or two classes a day through the medium of Irish). After a couple of generations, the whole population would be fluent.

One discouraging thought from a TV show I saw recently: Navajo is one of the Native American languages which has held on the best, and has several hundred thousand speakers, but there are apparently very recent problems in passing it on. According to the show I saw, whereas nearly all adults on the reservation (which is huge, and runs its own schools) can speak Navajo, the pervasiveness of English is so strong that nearly half of the youngest children are not able to speak Navajo fluently, and the numbers are getting worse. I hope they will be able to halt that trend.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

A chairde,

Young children absorb languages like a sponge.
If they are exposed to a second language early enough, most have no problems learning it.

My kids are bi-lingual German / English, but they have also learned quite a bit of Irish, Spanish & French.
Learning another language is like opening a door to another life.

Everyone is capable of learning their mother-tongue which they speak at home, plus perhaps English at school, as it is used so much around the world, but even a third language like French/German can be learned by a young child, so long as they speak/hear a given language with a particular person or in a certain context.

Le meas,
gearóid