Does anyone speak gaelic anymore

The perception that English will bring wealth in the urban environment. But here is another story, from Germany. A flip-side. No to the former and yes to the latter. I bursted out in laughter. The Bavarians had no, still have their own local culture and regional dialect as holy language. Oh, by the way, the successful Bavarians are mostly Catholic.

They could have let their language pass for Danish, but still, they persisted. Danish has two. English has none. And just look at Catalan and Spanish. Why should a Catalonian discard his language for Spanish?

Should I recall what happened in Flanders? Perhaps you should Google that. Flanders used to be a poor farming plot in Belgium, dispicable to the French elite riding the gravy train of the French empire. These people were all Catholics.

Brothers in faith, but not in language. And today? Flanders is the industrial and economic powerhouse of Belgium. Times certainly changed! While I might pick holes in some of your arguents, I thnk the contrasts between Ireland and Iceland would be well worth exploring further.

Iceland is more isolated, colder, and is largely barren, with few resources beyond fish and geothermal energy. Yet the people appear to be well-off and confident, just look at how they dealt with the banks! And Ireland … poor? Ach ni Eireannach mise, ciod e an fios ata agamsa?

Rest assured: history has a way of repeating itself; no situation is too unique. Now you have some people to help you guys. Mostly because one of my great-great-great-great…-grandfathers used to be a Scotsman then he became a South African. I doubt whether he spoke Scots-Gaelic but his ancestors might. But still, it is one language on my bucketlist. After German, Latin, Hebrew and French. I used this little dictionary by Robert C. Irish seems to be: Preverbal particle, Verb, Subject, Direct object or predicate adjective, Indirect object, Location descriptor, Manner descriptor, Time descriptor.

If yes, the answer is no. I was attempting to write Irish Gaeilge but I actully know Scots Gaelic Ga:idhlig far better so the syntax might be a bit off. The Irish I used before which may not be entirely correct!! Essentially all the modern Celtic languages are VSO, but with the possibility of fronting an element for emphasis. Reblogged this on morganw. From when England first invaded Ireland hundreds of years ago, the Irish language was banned and penalties for speaking it included death so do not blame the Irish for not being interested in their own language they live next door to the most evil coloniser on earth The other reasons you give are also valid but not the whole story.

Or is that just another myth?? Irish was only banned for use among Anglo-Norman lords and even this was never enforced and faded away. The ordinary Irish were never banned from using Irish, even if it was discouraged.

If anybody had balls like Collins , then it would have been a 32 County free state back in the 20 s. Learn some history the egit. Gaelig was banned in Ireland. It was prohibited until and only english was taught by order of the British government. The Great Hunger hit a high number of Irish speakers who died from the famine or genocide or emigration.

Thankfully it is truly coming back as millions of Irish people are studying it at this time. Duolingo has millions of Irish and other nationalities learning it today. It was banned. We were crushed by the English. There was no famine… there was a potato blight and Ireland exported more than what could feed the population while the native people starved under the british. It was a genocide and a murder machine to our language. The coloniser writes his own version of history.

Cuireadh cosc uirthi. You must be an absolute fool. The Irish had their tongues cut by the brit scum for speaking our native language. At least we have one. The natives were all slaughtered and butchered. Butchers just like the brits and speaking english. Check the irish language next time if u can ever find or heard of a library. Irish native language is over years old, fool.

Wake up. Interesting article. My take away from this which was many years ago was that the Irish were almost ashamed of their heritage, labeling it as provincial or lacking sophistication. Immediately, I recognized encountering the exact same feelings in my own Ukraine when it concerned Ukrainian language.

Now, I should add that Ukraine gained its independence in , 70 years after Ireland gained its own. So for the first few months nothing quite made sense to me. Eventually Russian language was phased out of schools and became a foreign language that you can learn by choice, but was no longer mandatory as of around the year — so at this point, as my generation grew up, we were all basically fluent in Ukrainian.

Did everyone just switch to speaking it? Not at all. The reason being, is that Ukrainian had never fully died as a language, but continued to be spoken in the countryside, which, along with Russian propaganda from earlier decades, cultivated the opinion that speaking Ukrainian meant being an uneducated peasant from rural areas, while people in the cities were expected to speak Russian not to mention millions of Russians moving into our cities to live and this complex of inferiority survived and continues to survive until now.

In my personal case, I admit to using both languages, depending on how the mood may strike me. The most disgusting legacy of this linguistic oppression is that I see people coming into the city from rural regions and trying to speak Russian to seem less provincial — I just want to scream at them, why are you doing this, have you no pride? I wonder if this was also the case in Ireland. I recommend forming social groups online where people get to speak Irish and get together to use the language, to at least maintain it.

I also understand that added difficulty for the Irish, in that English is actually a very useful language to know, as its the global lingua franca, while Russian is basically useless unless you want to speak to the Russians or central asians. In any case, I wish for you to keep your language alive, as proof that your national identity has been preserved. Thank you Stan. There were immediately new elections, and the new government was recognized by every country in the world.

As for the Irish language, I sincerely wish for the Irish people to revive their beautiful language. When Israel was created, almost nobody spoke Hebrew anymore. It would have been far easier to make German or Yiddish the language of Israel, and Israel would have been part of the great German-speaking civilization.

But they made the choice of their historical identity, made an effort, learned it from scratch, and now they have their own language, preserving the culture that their ancestors created. So it is possible, and I wish the same success to the Irish. I hope the Irish language does survive. At least the internet is providing a good outlet for discussion, which is very important, as the best way to help a threatened minority language such as Irish to survive is to actively talk about it.

Of course it would be far better to talk about it in Irish but sadly that cannot be done these days. When it no longer becomes possible for people to talk about their language actually in their own language then you realise just how difficult the task of reviving that language actually is. I would be interested in someone exploring the parallels between Czech and Irish. By 19th century Czech was reduced to the language of uneducated peasants while German was dominating everything.

Then small group of people literally brought it back from near death. What was different in that case? How had Irish missed its mark? I find this quite fascinating question. That would be a very interesting comparison to make. How for instance did the language revival fit in with the politics of the time? One might expect that it would be more difficult to maintain a small language in the middle of Europe with so many stronger languages on all sides.

In high and late Middle Ages, the Duchy and later the Kingdom of Bohemia was significant regional power. Prague was the seat of the king and the largest city in the HRE by quite a margin even in it was still twice the population of Vienna! During this time, there always was significant German-speaking minority present and German language was an important one. But Czech was on the same level and it was language of administration and spoken by kings and nobility alike.

Eventually, wave of Reformation swept through the land the Hussite wars and as a result, most of the population became protestant — including the native nobility. After the Battle of the White Hill, the protestant army was defeated and the land fell under the reign of Habsburgs.

By the end of 18th century, the use of Czech declined greatly, as even educated Czechs chose to speak primarly German, many of them actually never learning it in the first place. It has became primarly language of uneducated peasants and farmers in the rural areas of the country. It was not used in administration, there was little higher education, no literature. It was on the way out, even if the number of speakers still may have counted in millions.

But the late part of 18th century also brought significant changes as the ideas of Enlightenment found their way into the decision making of the ruling class: other religion than catholic was allowed, serfdom was abolished, monasteries shutdown — and also German was made the sole official language.

Another influence was then newly emerging concept of nation and nation-state, whose important attribute was a shared language. All these things gave rise to the revival movement, carried mainly by the educated patriots.

It started as concerted effort to put the Czech language back into widespread uses, but eventually this evolved into full political movement and struggle for political representation. This political movement eventually culminated in forming independent state with fellow Slovaks in the wake of the WWI in No language should ever die off because of apathy or for any other reason for that matter. If everyone thought like this, then we would all abandon our native tongues and just speak English!

How can anyone let go of his tongue? How can you love a car or a tool, however useful it is, more than your parents or your child? Or, perhaps, such a close proximity to England and the English language is just overwhelming. Whatever the cause, the day your language dies will be a very, very dark day, and not just for you.

The British attitude to languages used to be that English should be spoken at the expense of all others. The same attitude seemed to exist during the Russian Empire, and the spread of Russian to those would-be post-Soviet states that might not otherwise have used Russian as an official language. This was beautifully put together and extremely enlightening.

It truly made me want to learn even more about my Irish heritage and even look into learning the language and teaching it to my children and my husband who also has deep Irish roots.

I may just speak to my husband about us learning it and teaching our children. Thank you for sharing this information. I feel I just learned so much about a part of myself. Reblogged this on Irish history, folklore and all that.

I would love to learn the language. I am now 54 living in Southern England so the opportunity is next to zero. The question is are they being utilised to the full extent possible?

Irish taught in schools places too much emphasis on grammar and not enough on spoken Irish. I loved Irish in school and spent 3 weeks each summer in the Gaeltacht, where I achieved fluency.

I have a great pride in the cleverness and complexity of the Irish language and I wish that it was the first language here but I have since gone on to learn French, German and Spanish and my Irish has dwindled over the years, through lack of opportunity to use it. It would take huge national investment will and effort to create a movement sufficiently large as to cause people to begin resuscitating the Irish language and begin using it as an everyday language again. I would love for it to happen.

There should be emphasis on conversation, which appears to be so prevalent in schools in Georgia proper, Azerbaijan proper, Armenia proper, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, those parts of Ukraine under the control of the Kiev-based government that Georgian, Azeri, Armenian, Kazakh, Tajik, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Ukrainian are, respectively, are alive and very much kicking.

That is even with the heavy use of Russian in a lot of those countries. Ireland has a lot to learn from other countries on language preservation. I went, from London, on holiday to north Wales for a week last Summer. I was astonished by how much Welsh I heard by people of all ages. I heard more Welsh during my first day in Caernarfon than I have heard Irish in twenty odd years visiting the west of Ireland. How can thios possibly be? If compulsory Irish goes than the Irish language will surely follow.

There are so many errors in the first few paragraphs. I also noticed the errors, they nearly put me off reading the whole article. To get work one had to be able to speak English and so the rise of English at the detriment of Irish. If only it were a simple issue. However, many people still speak Irish, and strive to learn it and not just those in the Gaeltachts. The reasons no doubt are complicated, but the experiences of Kazakhstan and Kygryzstan show that local languages Kazakh and Kyrgyz, respectively can co-exist with other languages in those countries even with Russian a common official one, and a language of business in neighbouring Uzbekistan.

Why has nobody made mention of how wonderfully well the Irish speak and write English and of the immense contribution they have made to that language? Why can also use the correct knife and fork and we have excellent table manners. Not as good as the English though.

But we try are best. There is no doubt that Irish people have contributed to English, with no shortage of English words of Irish origin. I stopped reading when I saw the incomplete map of Ireland. There are plenty of people in the 6 counties that speak Irish where Irish is also taught as a school subject. Any analysis of the subject without including the north where the language was first written down is farcical.

The North was excluded not by personal choice but because there is a lack of data. The language has only a tiny presence there and makes even the South seem like an area with a strong presence.

Few schools teach it in the North and even fewer use it outside the school. To talk about the Irish language and not mention the area where it is weakest and has no Gaeltacht is a completely reasonable approach. You are blinded by your bias and are confusing what you wish a strong Irish presence in the North with the reality the language is barely alive there. I suspect you have never even heard of these places. Ten out of how many? What percentage of students in Northern Ireland are in gaelscoileanna?

This arrogance from Gaeilgoirs is really holding the language back. The idea that only the people who have the right opinions are allowed speak is really off-putting. Indeed, just as Russian is more widely spoken in Belarus e. History it all B S Steve Dunne. I believe you. And no, I do not have much knowledge about the conflict. Not sure you answered my question though. Were the Irish threatened with having their tongues cut?

Language is merely one facet of culture. We Irish have our own unique native sports, native dancing, native customs, not to mention our unique style of Hiberno English — how we speak English is heavily influence by the Irish language.

Even the structure of many of our sentences come straight from Irish. Bilingualism is not only possible, as shown by millions of people around the world, but it also increases competence in both languages, ability to context-switch, and memory in old age among other things.

An unbelievably negative article, the writer seems to have no knowledge of the very many thousands of people who speak Irish in cities and towns outside the Gaeltacht, the very strong Irish movement i the north is totally ignored. The only thing that is fading away is the authors knowledge of the world around him. A few thousand speakers is nothing to boast about, especially as a proportion of the country.

What percentage of the population speak Irish on a daily basis in Northern Ireland? I would not call it strong in any sense. I managed to become fluent in Irish at high school.

Afterwards I lost much of my vocabularly due to lack of practise; however, I now listen to football commentaries in Irish and am translating a book of short stories from Irish to English.

A very beautiful poetic soulful language. For a very long period we were a part of the commonwealth where Polish language dominated. Lithuanian language was a language of farmers and poverty, just alike Irish. And when Russian people came. We could be assimilated as well. I guess, it depends on the way you see it.

Lithuanians value their language well, there are a few people who would love to do anything but associated with Lithuania, let it be and love to speak in it. Throughout ages we managed to keep it to as close as possible to the Old Lithuanian. I believe, we just love to brag about our language and culture. Some foreigners can say awful things, even Lithuanians themselves, but every culture has its bads and goods.

I really do hope that Irish will flourish one day. No, people in Ireland call it Gaelic. My best friend, my cousins, parents who were from there….

I am also distantly related to I have visited on several occasions over the past two decades my 2nd cousins along the road out to Ballyconrey. About 5 years ago, by virtue of my Grandparent heritage, I obtained dual nationality with the Republic and so can now travel freely and accept honoraria from universities throughout the EU.

Only to have it vomited back up in a form more beautiful than ever could have been imagined. As late as the s, children were sometimes punished for speaking Gaelic at school. Raised alongside Atlantic surf and storms, he became a sailor. Among the principles he instilled in the family was the importance of education. But he did not pass on his cradle tongue. My family story illustrates what linguistics experts call intergenerational breakdown.

Research suggests that one of the biggest factors to blame for killing off minority languages is a thriving economy. Today, only my father has a little Gaelic. That puts me in the same boat as most Scots. The census showed only 1. In a population of five million-plus, this amounts to 87, Of these, only 32, were able to understand, speak, read and write it. Which is why the Scottish government is investing millions in trying to save it — through broadcasting, cultural and education projects.

This ranges from Gaelic groups for pre-schoolers to ensuring the police and ambulance services have Gaelic language policies in place. But is it even possible to resuscitate a dying language — and does it really matter anyway? Over the past four decades, successive governments of different political stripes have all supported the language. But critics say the policy is artificial and nostalgic and the cash should go to teaching modern world languages such as Spanish.

In Germany, 60, Sorbs are fighting to retain government funding for the two separate languages they want to keep alive. Spoken in Scotland for more than 1, years, in Medieval times it was the primary language for swathes of Scotland. But over the centuries usage shrank back to the Hebrides and the Highlands. In , at the Battle of Culloden, British government troops defeated Jacobite forces. Afterwards, state suppression of clan culture and traditions included banning Gaelic.

It was further weakened over the following century by the Highland clearances, when landowners evicted crofters from land rented for generations so that sheep farming could be introduced for higher profits. Then in the s a pioneering business model emerged on the Isle of Skye. Last week the Scottish National Party unveiled plans to give the language equal status with English. Every Scottish child would have the right to learn it at school and defendants in court would be given the right to have their cases heard in Gaelic.

Last night Lord Bragg, who is presenting the radio programme Roots of English , said of the attempts to protect and re-establish the language: "I am one of these people who believe every effort should be made. Hebrew is a very good example of a language that was brought back to life.

I am all for going as far as you can. Gaelic, which was last dominant north of the border almost 1, years ago, has joined a growing list of endangered languages across Europe drawn up by the EU-funded European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages.

It is not yet in the league of Cornish - just speakers - or Tsakonian, a language with roots in ancient Sparta, now spoken by about shepherds in central Greece. But it is on a par with Sorbian, a Slavic language spoken in eastern Germany which is also under increasing threat.

Nationalists point to the revival of Welsh as an inspiration, but opponents of more spending say money has little to do with it.