Irish language

[Snowball9825]

Does anyone in Ireland actually speak native Irish? I was on a flight today to Dublin and Irish was spoken by the flight attendants but it seemed a bit redundant in that no one really took notice. The pilot spoke English and the plane went quiet to hear about flight times etc but it seemed no one understood when the native language was spoken. Happy to be corrected if I’m wrong?

It's compulsory as pp say to learn right until Leaving cert (A level equivalent), basically you cannot get into any 3rd level education without sitting an Irish state exam. All our formal government correspondence, from voting cards to information pamphlets are in both languages. Yet very very few speak it. People opt to send kids to Irish speaking schools (imagine history, physics etc taught through Irish) because you get additional points in your exams and this means you get into university easier, but even those people don't speak it outside school. Legally you are entitled to have a court case heard in Irish but it rarely if ever happens. It is the first official language, our president and Taoiseach have to be fluent. It is also all around us in signage.

It's divisive in that people like me believe it should be optional at exam level and compulsory only in primary. The focus should be primarily on oral as this is the main form it exists in, yet the curriculum is mostly written with complex grammatical rules. It all feels false and forced and no one seems to want it. Even those that are passionately in favour of it don't tend to speak it.

The best thing about it is you can have a gossip in another country, dh and I often use a few words in a taxi or bus when travelling.

There are a number of different Irish speaking areas, mostly in the West. They account for maybe 1 or 2% of the overall population but they are extremely important towns/villages in their region. Irish is the primary language of the state, all signage is in Irish, it's compulsory at school, there's a full radio station & tv station dedicated to Irish programming. About 40% can commuicate in basic Irish. An Irish language film was also Oscar nominated a couple of years ago - An Cailín Ciúin.

I am assuming you are just being goady. Just because a language is taught in british schools does not mean it's easier to learn than a language that isn't. Given the efforts the British went to in their attempts to eradicate the Irish language, you would hardly expect them to teach it in their schools.

Irish is taught in all Irish schools. It is a compulsory subject.

I wasn’t sure if that applied to international schools in Ireland?

Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.

Huge revival in caint as Gaeilge right across Ireland. Many more Gaelscoileanna opening which are often oversubscribed.
Nothing more uplifting than waking along the Falls Rd in Béal Feiriste and listening to Gaeilge being spoken.
Various laws were passed by the British over many generstions with the sole intention of eradicating the language. Thankfully they didn't succeed.

French, Spanish and English are colonial languages and many nations speak them. Irish isn’t.

I’m curious @Snowball9825 you’re questions here quite basic questions (no shade intended) about the Irish language, so I can nearly assume you didn’t grow up or live in Ireland, because you’d have has it as a compulsory subject. Yet you’ve had some classes in Irish? And you’re also saying it’s not very available and you’ve not heard it spoken? I’m confused by this.

I've been learning Welsh for some years, and it is harder to learn than French or Spanish IMO, mostly because of bloody mutations and about 9 billion tenses of bod (to be.) From what I've seen of Irish, it also has mutations so I would expect it to be similarly challenging. (For those who don't know, Celtic languages sometimes change at the start of a word which is particularly challenging as a beginner when you haven't yet learnt the rules and have no idea where to look something up in the dictionary.)

Doesn't mean it's not worth trying, though, and language acquisition is easier for children, so learning it throughout school would be easier than as an adult, plus first language is entirely different from learning it as an additional language.

I listened to a very interesting presentation recently about minority languages, which looked mostly at Welsh and Catalan, and how easy it is (or not) to use in daily life, whether you could use it if you were in hospital or at the law courts or the tax office, etc - there's often bilingual printed material, but being able to actually use it to speak to people may be a different matter, and makes quite a difference to the likely future of a language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeltacht

Areas in green where Irish is predominantly spoken.

I'm in NI, and Irish is compulsory up to the third year of catholic secondary school (grammar school in my case), so age 14. For some reason I decided to do it for GCSE, and somehow I got a B (blagged it) despite being barely able to speak a word of it.

I think you mean is anyone in Ireland a native Irish speaker! I know a few and I don’t even live in the Gaeltacht. My aunt is married to one from Conamara (Connemara). A girl in work is one. And a guy who used to work in our office is another. They used to chat away every so often and we could only make out a word or two despite us studying Irish in school for about 14 years!! And the flight attendants wouldn’t be native Irish speakers! They just learned off a couple of lines, of Irish,which they probably don’t even understand, to confuse the tourists😉.

OP in which country did you go to school and take a couple of Irish language classes?

I think from your post you will be surprised that Irish is a language that millions of people enjoy learning across the world on Duolingo.

And where I live in the UK in-person Irish Gaelic language classes for adults are very popular.

Enya is from the gaeltacht (Gweedore in Donegal, county next to mine).

Here is a beautiful song in Gaelic from her:

I lived in dublin for a few years about 20 years ago. I never heard irish once. There was no engagement at all in my age group (20s) with the language. In fact most of my social circle felt that they were forced to learn it and that was pointless.

I also have lived in Wales. I came across a lot of welsh speakers who were native speakers, who obviously actively used the language.

I don't if things have changed regarding irish. But the last time I visited dublin, I noticed that all the stops on the DART had been changed into irish.

Being an easy or hard language to learn doesn't come in to it though. An Irish person in Ireland learning Irish is linking to their culture and history.

The same is for a Welsh person learning Welsh.

England / Britain basically stole languages from communities around the world. Which is why there are Welsh speakers in Patagonia.

Minority languages can be an asset in lots of situations, e.g. the Navaho code talkers.

All stops on the dart were always in Irish, all roads and signposts, all official government documentation etc all have both Irish and English as standard. All schools in Ireland do Irish as a compulsory subject from Junior infants so from 4-6 years of age depending when you enroll them to 6th year in secondary school so that is 13 or 14 years of Irish language classes depending on whether you do transition year/4th year or not. There are also schools at both primary and secondary level that are Irish speaking schools.

OP you flew into Dublin from where exactly? Just curious as to where you went to school at 8 years old and learned Irish and curious as to what other countries teach our national language.

My mother from Donegal was a native Irish speaker . I visited her brother in a nursing home for Alzheimer’s patients in Donegal . Many of the elderly patients had reverted to the Irish language of their home and youth and it was lovely to see the staff speak Irish with them.

Part of Alzheimer's is that people loose their languages in the opposite order that they learned.

Myself and loads of friends used to spend a few weeks every summer at the Gaeltacht speaking Irish all day every day! The language was taken from us and it’s very important to keep it going as part of the culture.
why would we just stop using it.

There’s more than 40 Irish medium schools in the north of Ireland and more are opening every year. Not sure how many in the republic. There’s been a resurgence and I regularly hear people speaking Irish, in my family (all Gaelgoirs) and in certain geographical areas. There’s Irish only broadcasts on bbc radio Ulster every day. I spent my summers in the Gaeltacht and speak Irish when I go there.

There has been a huge resurgence since you were last here.

Younger people are throwing coupla focail into sentences or speaking exclusively as gaeilge.

Irish college is also a huge part of our teen culture, mostly to facilitate the first shift (french kiss). Ironically called 'Irish college' using English words by most. It's basically a summer camp, 2 or 3 weeks long in a Gaeltacht area (native Irish speaking town). The children stay in a family home hosted by a Bean an Ti (literally translated as woman of the house) and they speak Irish only for the duration. As far as i know it's as popular as ever and most teens go. It's a right of passage at about 14. It's really beneficial to the kids especially for oral language.

But is the whole Gaeltacht Irish college just a means to an end to pass an exam so they can get into uni or the civil service which is impossible to do without Irish being passed at leaving cert

Only partially.
I have kids in secondary school and my first priority is getting them to like/love the language (as I do). Exams are important, but secondary to this for me at least.

As someone who moved to Dublin as an adult I only really encounter Irish in my kids homework, road signs, and official paperwork. I know a few adults who speak it fluently. I know a few words that are in common usuage but thats it. My dh once spent a long time learning some Irish phrases to welcome an Irish speaking VIP. He actually loves languages and was looking forward to learning Irish when we moved and is quite disappointed that its not really spoken much in our part of Ireland.

I think the Irish government doesn't do a great job in ensuring children learn Irish. Children should be immersed in the language at a young age (not just gaelscoil students).

Many people seem to think its a waste of time to preserve Irish and makes little economic sense. I think being bilingual is actually really great and has benefits on its own. (its always easier to learn a third language than a second)

For your entertainment

Many people seem to think its a waste of time to preserve Irish

I don’t think that’s actually the case @booksunderthebed. This is only a small survey but encouraging:

https://udaras.ie/en/news/new-research-shows-strong-position-of-irish-language-in-irelands-identity/

I do think it needs to be taught differently. Part of the problem is the poor standard of Irish that many teachers have, particularly at primary level (outside the Gaelscoileanna).

ETA I’m not from Dublin but would guess that there’s an active Irish language scene there somewhere if you can find it.