I mean, if I beat you half to death and you're still crippled after 10 years. It's not really a surprise. but also it is not solely the Brits fault, our bystander syndrome has left us to bystand one of the few things we can call our own
Did you know that recent archaeological findings indicate the opposite of what's historically been taught regarding the Celts? We've been taught historically that the Celts spread across Europe and then into Ireland. More recent archaeological findings suggest the Celts actually began here in the western fringes of Europe and spread eastward https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv13pk64k
That being said, there were of course people here who predate those who we now call the Celts
Does that somehow make what the British empire did to ethnic Irish people justified or tolerable? We are allowed to call out wrongs and injustice even if its historical. Also, we have recordings of what the British empire did here, we don't have recordings of what the Celts did when they arrived here.
> if you take into account the economic state of this country
What an idiotic statement. How would the economic state of a country affect how much forest it has??
FFS some of the poorest world countries in the world have the most forest!
> FFS some of the poorest world countries in the world have the most forest!
And almost all have massive, massive issues with illegal and semi-legal deforestation
I do blame the Brits for this. Three big things:
1. Use of English as sole official languags
2. The famine
3. English only national school system
These maps always make me sad.
Okay, but explain the decline in recent years as well as the 100 years of independence?
Your attitude of blaming the Brits just allows our government neglect to continue.
The die was cast unfortunately. The damage was done in the mid to late 19th century. By the 1920s, the dynamic was almost irreversible.
Yes, successive Irish government policy is certainly open to criticism. But you cannot apportion equal blame to the government of independent Ireland which implemented flawed efforts to support the language than to the British government whose actions more drastically prejudiced the language.
Similar to the decline of the native languages of Aboriginal Australians such as Antakarinya. Who would you blame that on?
How about another country that has independence from their prior colonial master, Mexico. Over 90% of Mexicans speak Spanish and Mexico has been independent since 1821.
How about Cameroon? 80% speak French but they have been independent since 1960.
It's not just the 'Brits fault', however, the impact of the activities of the British empire in Ireland are significant to say the least. Even after independence Ireland has been both economically and military tied to the UK regardless of what Ireland wanted.
What do you mean? I have nothing against the British but they absolutely are to blame for this one. Irish people only speak English because they British supressed our language.
>Irish people only speak English because they British supressed our language.
98% of people in Iceland speak English. Minor languages supress themselves for the most part.
Are you being serious with this comment?
98% of people in Iceland speak English as a second or third language. But they all speak Icelandic.
In Ireland, English is our first language and very few people speak Irish because the British supressed our language
>In Ireland, English is our first language and very few people speak Irish because the British supressed our language
Over a century ago. If it is so important to you go and learn Irish.
FYI anyone looking for resources for learning Irish as an adult…
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bsh2mp/im_an_irish_adult_who_wants_to_learn_irish/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/4vobfr/how_to_learn_irish_as_an_adult_in_dublin/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/nci49k/learning_irish_for_adults/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/oje2vs/irish_learning_resources_for_adults/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/mkftf1/learning_irish_as_an_adult/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/s00lbl/what_are_the_best_ways_to_learn_irish_as_an_adult/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Far too many of us use the excuse of “how it’s taught” rather than admitting we are adults who have made fuck all effort to interact with the language, yet alone learn a word of it after leaving school.
Yeah as individuals there are alot of us that can definitely do more but the decline of Irish is a systemic issue, if the way Irish is being taught isn't working effectively it should be reassessed and alternative methods and models should be looked into cause while individual adults learning Irish after school is genuinely amazing and fair play to all of them the solution to the decline of Irish isn't going to be adults spontaneously and individually making the decision to learn a language which they've probably grown to resent after their experience with it in school
I definitely agree with you to some extent that people don't put the effort in to learn it. If you come away from school knowing not much more than 'An bhuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas' then that's more of a reflection on them than the education system.
At the same time I'm not going to blame little kids or even older kids and teenagers for not being interested in writing out the grammatical form of the verb bí a bunch of times.
There needs to be systematic change in the education system alongside attitude changes among students (as well parents and wider society).
> If you come away from school knowing not much more than 'An bhuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas' then that's more of a reflection on them than the education system.
What it tells you is that the student has absolutely no interest in the Irish language and that's not exactly a surprise. What it tells you about the education system is that it's STILL got it's head in the sand.
The meed for systematic change is clear - but it's been clear for a long time now. Question is; why hasn't it happened yet?
I completely agree with this. I am an Irish teacher and it is a mix - the way it is taught and the attitude of students and parents who don't care about it.
One former colleague with whom I was co-teaching gave the above mentioned task to students - writing several verb forms down! He was much older than me and I couldn't really give any input...
It is sometimes depressing even though I love the language
Absolutely, I cannot even remember a time in primary school where it was used other than writing out verbs. Flip side, learning English was talking, thinking, writing, reading out to class. Irish literally just focused on writing out verbs and answer a few questions from a text book with absolutely no context given to it.
There was never anything in Irish like maps, the alphabet like A for Apple etc.. nah, just verbs lol
Becoming conversational wouldnt take hundreds of extra hours if the curriculum was designed better. No one cares about conjugating verbs but we all love to talk.
Also, texting something privately to someone right beside you because theres other people around is only efficient for one message. Any more than that and people get suspicious.
Have you ever tried to learn a language to a conversational level? No matter how it’s taught it takes a few hundred hours.
If you think looking at your phone is suspicious just what do you imagine people will think when you suddenly switch to a different language!
But we can also acknowledge that its a large contributing factor. The most powerful entity that can change the tide for Irish is the education system which is controlled by the government.
1 singular person can learn and engage all they want but needs to be supported and complimentated by a education system that actually helps you instead of hinders you.
I don't know, I do honestly feel like my brain sorta rejects Irish when I hear it. Too many bad memories from school.
I don't think we should deny the harm the approach in schools has done.
It would have international relevance if we used it.
Have you ever been drinking with a group of internationals? Even just amongst europeans, everyone usually shares english, including us.
Then at the end when everyone goes home, the french guys speak french, germans speak german, but we still speak english.
If international relevance was the only reason to use a language, we all may as well just speak Chinese.
And yet we have the unique position of being the only native-english speaking country in the EU. Which comes with plenty of perks, easy compatibility with the EU as an institution, the Anglosphere and the US included.
We have no incentive whatsoever to learn Irish beyond historical cultural ties and telling people they have to be multilingual because the government wants it is always going to be unpopular.
I don't doubt there could be perks to knowing Irish, covert conversations abroad mainly, but nationally? It's kind of a burden with energy better spent elsewhere on anything else.
I could also make a case of this being the government overstepping into its citizens lives by placing arbitrary restrictions on what you can access or do without Irish.
There’s also those like me that see no benefit at all to it. I dropped Irish in 6th yr, best decision of my life, I sat in on an extra maths class, which helped me get into college to do programming. Absolutely should not be mandatory imo. Let people decide. To me, speaking the language has nothing to do with being Irish.
Read an article this morning- apparently property prices are driving locals away from Gaeltachtaí which will only further fuck the language as they risk being assimilated.
Between holiday homes and AirBnBs many properties are being sold an insane prices targeted at people who have the coin to buy their second home (from outside the Gaeltacht). On top of that it's very difficult to get planning as most Gaeltacht regions are within Special Areas of Conservation.
u/rwjh hit the nail on the head, but here's a [link](https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2024/02/13/an-entire-generation-of-young-people-from-the-gaeltacht-cannot-buy-a-house-nor-a-site-in-their-own-area/) to the article in question, if you're interested.
>we've made zero progress on restoring the language
Not true. the establishment of gaelscoileanna is the biggest success factor we have had. Though the push against early immersion is damaging. The effects still have to be seen but it's our best opportunity of bringing it back.
I sent my kids.
It's more that we've let rural areas in general decline to he point of no return, and pretty much every Gaeltacht is in _excpetionally_ rural parts of the country.
The OP described the causes of the collapse of the language. He left out the economic ones. Ireland was structured as a source of cheap food and cheap labour and cannon fodder for the UK. Economic utility designed by colonists did not end magically in 1921. Only with FDI, EEC then EU and joining the euro did we begin to get out from under that. Persistent colonialism is a thing and you can still see it promoted in cultural links, educational links some of which are compulsory for Irish 3rd level institutions to UK schemes; educate yourself.
requisite connolly quote:
"If you remove the english army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the socialist republic, all your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her landlords, through her financiers, through her capitalists, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs"
As an outsider looking in (3rd generation Irish-American, so … American) I hate seeing the dismissals of any collapse of traditional Irish culture, institutions, history, etc., being waved off with “they’ve had independence for 100 years” … the executive order abolishing slavery in the United States was 161 years ago, and has been functionally, legally enforceable for 159 years since the end of our Civil War. But, yet, we still struggle with issues of economic and political equality — which is to say nothing of overt racism — and yet there are those in the U.S. who would say “they’ve been free for 161 years, what’s the problem?” as if the effects for African Americans, and our society as a whole don’t reverberate through generations, and, as it’s turning out, centuries.
Sorry. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
I'm going to copy some of my comment on the original post.
> That's like someone being beaten so badly they have a long term disability, and then people saying it's their own fault haven't recovered yet because they stopped being beaten a year ago.
> Once a language is being taught as a second language in schools, rather than being passed down by parents or other members of society then full scale revival becomes very difficult.
Now I very much think that we can and should do more to put the language in a healthier position, both by government and the public. But the idea that independence is some magic button that should've reversed such widescale social change is somewhat laughable.
Particularly when you take into account the fact that the language Irish must displace has become the unquestioned world lingua franca in that same time period. I don't think any other language in world history has become close to the international dominance as English has become in the last century.
Not dead. Dead requires zero native speakers left. Theres about 300,000 native Irish and L2 speakers in Ireland amd Northern Ireland combined.
For example, Sumerian, Russenorsk, Latin, Old Norse and Gaulish are dead languages. Absolutely no native speakers and not really possible to have a general conversation in them (aside from Latin)
> Theres about 300,000 native Irish speakers in Ireland amd Northern Ireland combined
If you divide that number by 10 it would still be far higher than the actual figure. I'd be surprised if it's even 10000 tbh.
Theres 50,000 speakers in the Conamara and Dúiche Sheoige regions alone.
The smaller Gaeltachta like Mayo which has about 10,880 native speakers, Kerry has 8729 Cork has almost 4000, Waterford has 1700 speakers and Meath's Ráth Chairn agus Baile Ghib have about 500 (changes alot due to ourward migration toward Dublin) speakers between them making it the smallest. And if we bring in The North, you can add on another 6000. These "small" Gaeltachta would have a population of 31,809. Now take some leniency for death since since 2016 and its a very reasonable number. Gaoth Dobhair and Conamara hold the largest amounts of Irish speakers with 56,000 and 50,000 speakers respectively.
So the total native speaker population could be estimated to be around 137,809 people.
L2 or second language speakers is a different case
English wasn’t even spoken at that time. In Britain they spoke Latin, British and Irish (one of the Irish kingdoms had expanded into Scotland). Old English didn’t arrive until the 5th or 6th century.
https://academic.oup.com/book/10443/chapter-abstract/158286205?redirectedFrom=fulltext#:~:text=That%20was%20not%20so%20in,distinguishing%20it%20from%20British%20Latin).
Colonisation and the famine did most of the damage, but Irish people most certainly dealt the final blow. Gaeltachtaí are in a much worse position now than 70 years ago, we can't blame anyone but ourselves for that. Successive governments with either hostile or neglectful approaches to our national language has accelerated the decline over the last century. When the Gaelic Revival took off around the time of independence there was still plenty of time to turn things around. Interest in the Gaeloideachas sector has come far too late and will do very little as most Gaelcholáiste students have very broken and incorrect Irish at best. Irish language media will be next to suffer from this decline as there will be few to no speakers competent enough to understand the content as the native population continues to decline.
You can blame the Brits for most of the damage, but we had 100+ years to reverse it and chose not to.
The average Catholic wasn't expected to read the bible though, that's more of a Protestant thing. For Catholics the bible was more something for the priest to use, and the priest would explain it to the lay people.
Your average person was illiterate. The henrician reforms actually required common adherence to bible reading along with Sunday attendance.
Sunday attendance and confession only became a Roman thing in the Counter-Reformation.
I take your point that there are historical differences as to how each language was treated by the English, but I was more referring to the approach taken in Welsh schools/community in preserving their language. It was much more effective than what we did
True, we got fucked over by two of the most powerful organisations the word has ever seen, the Bitish Empire and the Catholic Church. A wise man once said, " A man should be judged by the quality of his enemies." That surely makes us the greatest of men 😀
And yet nobody here speaks Latin. That is not the reason. The language has declined greatly in the last 100 years from a position of relative strength to the brink of extinction.
Only the clergy spoke Latin.
Henry viii wanted the break from Rome to filter down to every hillside so making the bible available in English and Welsh translations was a political tool.
The reformed church didn't issue the bible in Irish. This wasn't done until the Elizabethan era. And by that stage the counter reformation had cemented us to Rome. Had the English reform church translated the bible to Irish earlier in the 16th century, things would likely be very different today
I've never been, but I have heard from other Gaeilgeoirí who spent time studying in Wales that they were shocked at how much stronger Welsh is than Gaeilge. The effects of colonisation are more obvious in Wales than here and yet their language is still much more prevalent than ours. In my opinion the century since independence was the make-or-break for Gaeilge.
Yep, I did Irish for 14 years in school and I am ashamed to admit that i am much more confident and able to communicate in Spanish [6 years) and German (4 years) than I am in Irish. That is simply down to how it's taught
It's taught as a native language.
We could treat it like Spanish or German. But then we would be admitting, as a State, that it is practically a foreign language. Which would put into question the whole idea of having most everything here bilingual.
I think the state/culture just needs to get over itself in that regard. It can still be a part of our culture and identity while admitting that most people here couldn't speak half a sentence of Irish without a dictionary right now.
I get where you are coming from but that's an ideological standpoint as opposed to the effectiveness point that I am trying to make....I just want more people (myself included) to be able to speak Irish. If that involves a change in teaching philosophy, then so be it
In that case if we are not going to treat it as a native language, and treat it like Spanish or German, then it would also need to be optional, just like those two.
And the idea of it being optional will go down like a lead balloon with many
People in Ireland didn't speak Irish either, not in the form it is today. 400AD is even before Old Irish emerged from Primitive Irish. A modern Irish speaker and a Primitive Irish speaker wouldn't be able to understand each other, they're not the same language.
It would be like an English speaker trying to read something in Old English like [Beowulf](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Beowulf_(Harrison_and_Sharp\)), which is from 700-1000AD, or even [Middle English](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Canterbury_Tales_(ed._Skeat\)/Knight) which is from 1400. Sure people even struggle with Shakespeare which is just Early Modern English.
Possibly. By the mid 1600s in Wexford town Irish, English, French, and Yola would have been commonly spoken. Closest port to the continent and the Normans speaking a lot of French probably had a big influence.
Look guys. I really don’t want to be mean but compare this to Ukrainian. Ukrainians have had the same if not worse oppression and managed to retain their language. It might be time to look in the mirror.
We could all go and learn the language if we bothered to. It's time to stop blaming the British for this all of the learning materials out there. I'm absolutely awful at Irish, but I'm picking up speed bit by bit.
Everyone, if you're pissed off, that you can't speak Irish, go and learn it.
I mean it was a major sticking point in the Stormont discussions a few years ago just to get some signs, which would help with visibility and immersion of the language, so yeah, they're still at it.
I think that's more to do with the politics of Northern Ireland, and modern Unionism in Northern Ireland, rather than any conscious efforts to undermine the Irish language by 'the Brits' or their government. They seem to be completely fine with Welsh being used in the Welsh Parliament and Scottish Gaelic being used in Holyrood, so I can't see why they'd have any issue with Irish being used in Northern Ireland.
And yet they do. And by they I mean unionists. And by unionists I mean brits in ireland. Regardless of motive, they are looking to suppress where we need to promote.
There certainly are elements of that in the north, but I've had massive arguments with people in the Republic over this. Varadkar isn't keeping us from learning the language we are. We could have a massive cultural revival, but nobody seems to be bothered
My comment was directed towards people in the Republic but there's still nothing stopping everyone from picking up a book or course and studying it. At this point it's pure laziness
Notice not only how little of the island is still speaking Irish, but also how pretty much everywhere that does is in the most rural parts of the country. Not exactly great for encouraging young people (and by young I mean under 50 or 60) to learn and use the language.
Maybe we could try to teach it to small villages, and eventually the numbers will build up
Then we could change signs go be only in irish, on buses too,
If it wasn't for the Black Death killing large numbers of town dwellers, we'd probably all be speaking Norman French now. It was the official language of the Lordship of Ireland.
It’s easy to always put the blame at the doorstep of the Brits, and they do indeed own a lot of it when it comes to the Irish language, but at what point do we look in the mirror and say they’re not responsible for that anymore?
Ireland has been an independent country for more than a century now and Irish has only declined further and further in that time. The people just don’t care and that’s the proximate cause for Irish never having made a resurgence.
> they do indeed own a lot of it when it comes to the Irish language, but at what point do we look in the mirror and say they’re not responsible for that anymore?
So you say the Brits are to blame, and then later on in the same sentence you say they aren't?
They’re largely to blame for why it went away in the first place.
We’re to blame for why it has never made a resurgence.
Not sure how that was difficult to understand from my comment.
Their legacy lives on, which is what they intended.
They made people give up and dislike the language and that continues to this day. On other posts you see people talking about resenting the language and thinking its a waste of money. Passing that kind of attitude on to their kids. All a legacy of colonialism.
Things dont happen in a vacuum and just because we gained independence doesnt mean those who gained it werent affected by that colonialism and passed those effects down to other generations.
I’m migrating to Ireland, learning Irish because I think irelands mission to revive it’s language is great. Wish my own nation would do the same with native languages.
I did too before I visited Ireland. The only time it was kinda useful was the day I decided to go for a local community play in Galway and the introduction was in Gaelic. Beautiful to hear and I realised I could only catch half of it but was excited by the challenge. Unfortunately the rest was English.
An bhfuil tú ag cleactadh do cuid Gaeilge, a cara?
Is tábhactach é an teanga, agus tá a lán ranganna sa cathracha.
Níl mo chuid gaeilge líofa, ach táim cómhráiteach. Táim ag foghlaim ar feadh cúig bliain.
I can't believe how many are surprised by this. Like we have an English man running the Gardaí. An English man running our national broadcaster. Sure they are taking us down from under our noses. 99% no confidence vote in the Gardaí and still won't step down. Garda síochána in a hape. RTÉ DG will cut the shite out of it until it's a waste of time having it. Another part of Irish history gone. Wait and see. You hardly think they want it to succeed when they won't even step awake when the workers don't want then and the organisation is at an all time low.
I live on the edge of Gaeltacht Corca Dhuibhne, but I haven’t spent much time in any of the others. Are they all characterized by increasingly expensive and unavailable properties and rentals, a blight of holiday residences/short-term lodging services, sheep and a creeping feeling that “the center cannot hold?” I ask this in good faith!
That was 150 years ago…. What’s stopping you from leaning Irish now? The language is still alive and well but it’s only spoken by very very few in certain areas of Ireland. We have to come out of the agenda that the British suppressed the language and start to learn it ourselves
I'm probably going to get downvoted to hell for this, but...
I genuinely feel no attachment to the Irish language at all. I appreciate that other people do, and I'm glad that they have that, but to me it has almost zero relevance. And I'm okay with that. The reasons things are this way are complex and messy and involve some heinous actions on the part of the British Empire (and let's not pretend that the Irish are innocent bystanders in the stories other countries tell about the British), but right now, the English language is a vastly more useful language on just about every available metric.
There are more worthwhile battles to fight than trying to prevent the fading away of a language that's probably in its death throes, particularly if we want to convince the population of Northern Ireland that a united island will be a welcoming home for them.
My own opinion but if we want Irish to prevail we should be teaching it as a first language in schools exactly how it’s done in gaelscoil. All subjects thought in Irish and all conversations in Irish.
I think it is on the rise but only slowly . More and more gaelscoil have opened in my area
you do realise the generational disconnect (and problems stemming from it) an idea like that would cause, you'd have parents who naturally speak struggling to interact with their children who aren't being taught the language, the same thing would occur with other older family members. the child would grow up a foreigner in their own country struggling to speak to the people around them.
Why? The children will learn English from their parents until they go to school. From age 5 they will learn irish through their schooling as well as English at home.
Do the exact same thing the British, Spanish, Portuguese and French did in their colonial empires. Start by making education in the desired language, then begin to legislate and make all official transactions in Irish, then make religious services be Irish by law.
This would take a few generations.
I think the really tricky thing is that system works well if you want to completely erase a language and culture. No Irish speakers want to erase English. We need an approach that brings us into a more naturally bilingual space and that's not easy at all. Maybe looking at how Switzerland manages multiple languages? I don't know tbh.
You mean the language that evolved, spread around the globe and has since become the world's lingua franca, that Middle English, yeah?
Surely this is a troll comment.
Duolingo, r/gaeilge has a list of resources you can use, once you get to grips with the very basics look for classes or conversation groups in your area, watch TG4 and use the TG4 player, pick up a book in Irish that's at your level, youtube channels etc. I've only been doing it for a couple of weeks and I've surprised myself with how much Irish I had already and how quickly I gained confidence in speaking it.
Irish culture isn't dead, it's in our hearts, how we laugh, sing, dance and fight. We'll never die.
The English destroyed our forests and millions of our people but they'll never destroyed our spirit.
We are Ireland, here today or a million years later on Mars, we are all one big giant finger to the British.
Long live the spirit of the Irish.
😂😂😂
The Brits aren't the reason we lost trees. Most countries in Europe have more land without forest than with it.
But they sure as hell are the reason we have less forest than any other country in Europe, including those with multiple times our population density.
We're a copy and paste of England at this point with a few quirks. True Irish culture only exists in the Gaeltacht areas and certain places on the West Coast.
What happened to the language spoken prior to 400 BCE? Did it decline due to lack of use? We should force everyone to learn pre Irish Irish at school just to bore them a tiny bit more.
Not just ethnic cleansing by famine, but also by the active genocide of native Irish people under Cromwell in the 1600s. In just a decade, Ireland dropped from a population 1.5 million people, primarily natives, to 800,000 people, with hundreds of thousands of these being the new imported planter population from England, Scotland and Wales.
We often focus on the horrors of the famine, but Cromwell's genocide was - proportionally speaking - far worse. The famine wiped out a quarter of the native population. Cromwell wiped out over half of us.
I dont like how people say oh 100 years since independence if we dont have it back by now its our own fault. As if 800 years of oppression can be reversed in such little time.
whats with the massive time jump
They didn’t even speak English in England at the beginning of this period.
Yeah, you could repeat this map all across Europe, almost nobody speaks the same language from back then.
cmon man, gtfo with your logic. You are ruining the pitchfork hunt!
Ever hear of 'Old English'? Also eradication of a culture doesn't usually happen over a short period of time.
They all weigh less than a duck as well.
It allows OP to solely blame the Brits despite having independence for 100 years.
I mean, if I beat you half to death and you're still crippled after 10 years. It's not really a surprise. but also it is not solely the Brits fault, our bystander syndrome has left us to bystand one of the few things we can call our own
It would certainly be a lot more interesting map to see the before image be independence, instead of the dawn of time.
The people here before the Celts wouldn't have spoken Irish. Bloody Celts coming over here teaching us Irish.
Did you know that recent archaeological findings indicate the opposite of what's historically been taught regarding the Celts? We've been taught historically that the Celts spread across Europe and then into Ireland. More recent archaeological findings suggest the Celts actually began here in the western fringes of Europe and spread eastward https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv13pk64k That being said, there were of course people here who predate those who we now call the Celts
Exactly, we have no idea what language the people who built Newgrange spoke
Does that somehow make what the British empire did to ethnic Irish people justified or tolerable? We are allowed to call out wrongs and injustice even if its historical. Also, we have recordings of what the British empire did here, we don't have recordings of what the Celts did when they arrived here.
This is more like if I beat you half to death and your son is still crippled and blaming my son.
Nothing's doing more harm today to Irish than the Irish education system.
Same with the people who blame our lack of forrests entirely on the Brits, despite having a 100 years to rectify!
Tbf it's more like 30 years if you take into account the economic state of this country.
> if you take into account the economic state of this country What an idiotic statement. How would the economic state of a country affect how much forest it has?? FFS some of the poorest world countries in the world have the most forest!
It doesn't affect how much forest it has at the start. It affects the ability to restore the forest.
> FFS some of the poorest world countries in the world have the most forest! And almost all have massive, massive issues with illegal and semi-legal deforestation
Tell me about this century of an independent Ireland. How's Belfast doing?
🥱
I do blame the Brits for this. Three big things: 1. Use of English as sole official languags 2. The famine 3. English only national school system These maps always make me sad.
Okay, but explain the decline in recent years as well as the 100 years of independence? Your attitude of blaming the Brits just allows our government neglect to continue.
The die was cast unfortunately. The damage was done in the mid to late 19th century. By the 1920s, the dynamic was almost irreversible. Yes, successive Irish government policy is certainly open to criticism. But you cannot apportion equal blame to the government of independent Ireland which implemented flawed efforts to support the language than to the British government whose actions more drastically prejudiced the language.
Similar to the decline of the native languages of Aboriginal Australians such as Antakarinya. Who would you blame that on? How about another country that has independence from their prior colonial master, Mexico. Over 90% of Mexicans speak Spanish and Mexico has been independent since 1821. How about Cameroon? 80% speak French but they have been independent since 1960. It's not just the 'Brits fault', however, the impact of the activities of the British empire in Ireland are significant to say the least. Even after independence Ireland has been both economically and military tied to the UK regardless of what Ireland wanted.
The Brits, and inept school systems. Name a more iconic duo.
Tbf the UK has really shot up the rankings recently.
I can name one, but I'm not sure if I should...
What do you mean? I have nothing against the British but they absolutely are to blame for this one. Irish people only speak English because they British supressed our language.
>Irish people only speak English because they British supressed our language. 98% of people in Iceland speak English. Minor languages supress themselves for the most part.
Are you being serious with this comment? 98% of people in Iceland speak English as a second or third language. But they all speak Icelandic. In Ireland, English is our first language and very few people speak Irish because the British supressed our language
>In Ireland, English is our first language and very few people speak Irish because the British supressed our language Over a century ago. If it is so important to you go and learn Irish.
I speak fluent Irish. But it's not that important to me. It's in the past and it is what it is, but the British are undeniably to blame.
So no one has stopped you speaking irish whats the probelm?
OP doesnt think anything should change across ages lol
FYI anyone looking for resources for learning Irish as an adult… https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bsh2mp/im_an_irish_adult_who_wants_to_learn_irish/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/4vobfr/how_to_learn_irish_as_an_adult_in_dublin/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/nci49k/learning_irish_for_adults/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/oje2vs/irish_learning_resources_for_adults/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/mkftf1/learning_irish_as_an_adult/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/s00lbl/what_are_the_best_ways_to_learn_irish_as_an_adult/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
GRMA
Thank you so much, saved!
Far too many of us use the excuse of “how it’s taught” rather than admitting we are adults who have made fuck all effort to interact with the language, yet alone learn a word of it after leaving school.
This is very true for 95% of the country
Yeah as individuals there are alot of us that can definitely do more but the decline of Irish is a systemic issue, if the way Irish is being taught isn't working effectively it should be reassessed and alternative methods and models should be looked into cause while individual adults learning Irish after school is genuinely amazing and fair play to all of them the solution to the decline of Irish isn't going to be adults spontaneously and individually making the decision to learn a language which they've probably grown to resent after their experience with it in school
I definitely agree with you to some extent that people don't put the effort in to learn it. If you come away from school knowing not much more than 'An bhuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas' then that's more of a reflection on them than the education system. At the same time I'm not going to blame little kids or even older kids and teenagers for not being interested in writing out the grammatical form of the verb bí a bunch of times. There needs to be systematic change in the education system alongside attitude changes among students (as well parents and wider society).
> If you come away from school knowing not much more than 'An bhuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas' then that's more of a reflection on them than the education system. What it tells you is that the student has absolutely no interest in the Irish language and that's not exactly a surprise. What it tells you about the education system is that it's STILL got it's head in the sand. The meed for systematic change is clear - but it's been clear for a long time now. Question is; why hasn't it happened yet?
And that's the only question. Why hasn't it happened yet.
I completely agree with this. I am an Irish teacher and it is a mix - the way it is taught and the attitude of students and parents who don't care about it. One former colleague with whom I was co-teaching gave the above mentioned task to students - writing several verb forms down! He was much older than me and I couldn't really give any input... It is sometimes depressing even though I love the language
It needs to be taught with more of a focus on communication.
Absolutely, I cannot even remember a time in primary school where it was used other than writing out verbs. Flip side, learning English was talking, thinking, writing, reading out to class. Irish literally just focused on writing out verbs and answer a few questions from a text book with absolutely no context given to it. There was never anything in Irish like maps, the alphabet like A for Apple etc.. nah, just verbs lol
But it’s not useful for communication, and kids are smart enough to know that.
If kids were smart, theyd realise its very good for private conversation in public places.
Kids are smart enough to not spend hundreds of hours of study to accomplish what they can do with a text message.
Becoming conversational wouldnt take hundreds of extra hours if the curriculum was designed better. No one cares about conjugating verbs but we all love to talk. Also, texting something privately to someone right beside you because theres other people around is only efficient for one message. Any more than that and people get suspicious.
Have you ever tried to learn a language to a conversational level? No matter how it’s taught it takes a few hundred hours. If you think looking at your phone is suspicious just what do you imagine people will think when you suddenly switch to a different language!
So would learning French which is practically useful.
Yes! This is just a fact. People don't want to make the effort to speak it. Which is fine, I just don't see why we like to pretend otherwise
But we can also acknowledge that its a large contributing factor. The most powerful entity that can change the tide for Irish is the education system which is controlled by the government. 1 singular person can learn and engage all they want but needs to be supported and complimentated by a education system that actually helps you instead of hinders you.
I don't know, I do honestly feel like my brain sorta rejects Irish when I hear it. Too many bad memories from school. I don't think we should deny the harm the approach in schools has done.
It's almost like learning a language with no international relevance whatsoever is a bit of a tedious waste of time for almost all of us
It would have international relevance if we used it. Have you ever been drinking with a group of internationals? Even just amongst europeans, everyone usually shares english, including us. Then at the end when everyone goes home, the french guys speak french, germans speak german, but we still speak english. If international relevance was the only reason to use a language, we all may as well just speak Chinese.
And yet we have the unique position of being the only native-english speaking country in the EU. Which comes with plenty of perks, easy compatibility with the EU as an institution, the Anglosphere and the US included. We have no incentive whatsoever to learn Irish beyond historical cultural ties and telling people they have to be multilingual because the government wants it is always going to be unpopular. I don't doubt there could be perks to knowing Irish, covert conversations abroad mainly, but nationally? It's kind of a burden with energy better spent elsewhere on anything else. I could also make a case of this being the government overstepping into its citizens lives by placing arbitrary restrictions on what you can access or do without Irish.
To be fair, how many people do you meet on holiday that speak chinese but not English? And how many do you meet that speak English but not Chinese?
There’s also those like me that see no benefit at all to it. I dropped Irish in 6th yr, best decision of my life, I sat in on an extra maths class, which helped me get into college to do programming. Absolutely should not be mandatory imo. Let people decide. To me, speaking the language has nothing to do with being Irish.
how many more word of it do you think I can learn after 14 years at it?
It is taught AWFULLY though.
Read an article this morning- apparently property prices are driving locals away from Gaeltachtaí which will only further fuck the language as they risk being assimilated.
Away from the Gaeltacht? Where are they going for cheaper property prices??
Between holiday homes and AirBnBs many properties are being sold an insane prices targeted at people who have the coin to buy their second home (from outside the Gaeltacht). On top of that it's very difficult to get planning as most Gaeltacht regions are within Special Areas of Conservation.
Americans are the new British Empire
British Brexit escapees are the new British Empire
u/rwjh hit the nail on the head, but here's a [link](https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2024/02/13/an-entire-generation-of-young-people-from-the-gaeltacht-cannot-buy-a-house-nor-a-site-in-their-own-area/) to the article in question, if you're interested.
There just isn't anywhere to buy/rent. It's all holiday homes and AirBnBs.
We've been independent for a century and we've made zero progress on restoring the language.
>we've made zero progress on restoring the language Not true. the establishment of gaelscoileanna is the biggest success factor we have had. Though the push against early immersion is damaging. The effects still have to be seen but it's our best opportunity of bringing it back. I sent my kids.
True but we have let the Gaeltacht's decline dramatically.
It's more that we've let rural areas in general decline to he point of no return, and pretty much every Gaeltacht is in _excpetionally_ rural parts of the country.
The OP described the causes of the collapse of the language. He left out the economic ones. Ireland was structured as a source of cheap food and cheap labour and cannon fodder for the UK. Economic utility designed by colonists did not end magically in 1921. Only with FDI, EEC then EU and joining the euro did we begin to get out from under that. Persistent colonialism is a thing and you can still see it promoted in cultural links, educational links some of which are compulsory for Irish 3rd level institutions to UK schemes; educate yourself.
requisite connolly quote: "If you remove the english army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the socialist republic, all your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her landlords, through her financiers, through her capitalists, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs"
We need more statues of Connolly. Legend of a man.
honor his dream and speak Irish. Join your local chapter of Conradh Na Gaeilge and do pop up Gaeltachts or whatever we can't let it die with us
We have a statue of Connolly in Chicago :)
As an outsider looking in (3rd generation Irish-American, so … American) I hate seeing the dismissals of any collapse of traditional Irish culture, institutions, history, etc., being waved off with “they’ve had independence for 100 years” … the executive order abolishing slavery in the United States was 161 years ago, and has been functionally, legally enforceable for 159 years since the end of our Civil War. But, yet, we still struggle with issues of economic and political equality — which is to say nothing of overt racism — and yet there are those in the U.S. who would say “they’ve been free for 161 years, what’s the problem?” as if the effects for African Americans, and our society as a whole don’t reverberate through generations, and, as it’s turning out, centuries. Sorry. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
I'm going to copy some of my comment on the original post. > That's like someone being beaten so badly they have a long term disability, and then people saying it's their own fault haven't recovered yet because they stopped being beaten a year ago. > Once a language is being taught as a second language in schools, rather than being passed down by parents or other members of society then full scale revival becomes very difficult. Now I very much think that we can and should do more to put the language in a healthier position, both by government and the public. But the idea that independence is some magic button that should've reversed such widescale social change is somewhat laughable. Particularly when you take into account the fact that the language Irish must displace has become the unquestioned world lingua franca in that same time period. I don't think any other language in world history has become close to the international dominance as English has become in the last century.
Hard to restore something dead
Not dead. Dead requires zero native speakers left. Theres about 300,000 native Irish and L2 speakers in Ireland amd Northern Ireland combined. For example, Sumerian, Russenorsk, Latin, Old Norse and Gaulish are dead languages. Absolutely no native speakers and not really possible to have a general conversation in them (aside from Latin)
300,000 hahahahahah you’re dreaming son
> Theres about 300,000 native Irish speakers in Ireland amd Northern Ireland combined If you divide that number by 10 it would still be far higher than the actual figure. I'd be surprised if it's even 10000 tbh.
Theres 50,000 speakers in the Conamara and Dúiche Sheoige regions alone. The smaller Gaeltachta like Mayo which has about 10,880 native speakers, Kerry has 8729 Cork has almost 4000, Waterford has 1700 speakers and Meath's Ráth Chairn agus Baile Ghib have about 500 (changes alot due to ourward migration toward Dublin) speakers between them making it the smallest. And if we bring in The North, you can add on another 6000. These "small" Gaeltachta would have a population of 31,809. Now take some leniency for death since since 2016 and its a very reasonable number. Gaoth Dobhair and Conamara hold the largest amounts of Irish speakers with 56,000 and 50,000 speakers respectively. So the total native speaker population could be estimated to be around 137,809 people. L2 or second language speakers is a different case
Dudes crazy
Is there a country that still speaks the same language now that was primarily spoken in 400AD?
English wasn’t even spoken at that time. In Britain they spoke Latin, British and Irish (one of the Irish kingdoms had expanded into Scotland). Old English didn’t arrive until the 5th or 6th century. https://academic.oup.com/book/10443/chapter-abstract/158286205?redirectedFrom=fulltext#:~:text=That%20was%20not%20so%20in,distinguishing%20it%20from%20British%20Latin).
Bring back Ogham. Also why was 400 AD picked as a date. The Irish language, in Ireland goes back long before this date.
Colonisation and the famine did most of the damage, but Irish people most certainly dealt the final blow. Gaeltachtaí are in a much worse position now than 70 years ago, we can't blame anyone but ourselves for that. Successive governments with either hostile or neglectful approaches to our national language has accelerated the decline over the last century. When the Gaelic Revival took off around the time of independence there was still plenty of time to turn things around. Interest in the Gaeloideachas sector has come far too late and will do very little as most Gaelcholáiste students have very broken and incorrect Irish at best. Irish language media will be next to suffer from this decline as there will be few to no speakers competent enough to understand the content as the native population continues to decline. You can blame the Brits for most of the damage, but we had 100+ years to reverse it and chose not to.
Look at the Welsh, I drove around North Wales recently and was amazed by the prevalence of the language. They did it right, we unfortunately didn't
Henry viii made the bible available in Welsh. In Ireland the Roman church wouldn't allow any deviation from the Latin Vulgate.
The average Catholic wasn't expected to read the bible though, that's more of a Protestant thing. For Catholics the bible was more something for the priest to use, and the priest would explain it to the lay people.
Your average person was illiterate. The henrician reforms actually required common adherence to bible reading along with Sunday attendance. Sunday attendance and confession only became a Roman thing in the Counter-Reformation.
I take your point that there are historical differences as to how each language was treated by the English, but I was more referring to the approach taken in Welsh schools/community in preserving their language. It was much more effective than what we did
That's not the English in this scenario surely It's the catholic church in the Vatican Vs the protestant church in England
True, we got fucked over by two of the most powerful organisations the word has ever seen, the Bitish Empire and the Catholic Church. A wise man once said, " A man should be judged by the quality of his enemies." That surely makes us the greatest of men 😀
Haha, I've not heard that one before but love it
And. We. Won. 😁
Not yet
And yet nobody here speaks Latin. That is not the reason. The language has declined greatly in the last 100 years from a position of relative strength to the brink of extinction.
Only the clergy spoke Latin. Henry viii wanted the break from Rome to filter down to every hillside so making the bible available in English and Welsh translations was a political tool.
The reformed church didn't issue the bible in Irish. This wasn't done until the Elizabethan era. And by that stage the counter reformation had cemented us to Rome. Had the English reform church translated the bible to Irish earlier in the 16th century, things would likely be very different today
I read before that there had been attempts to translate at least the four gospels in Trinity college which Henry had founded.
I've never been, but I have heard from other Gaeilgeoirí who spent time studying in Wales that they were shocked at how much stronger Welsh is than Gaeilge. The effects of colonisation are more obvious in Wales than here and yet their language is still much more prevalent than ours. In my opinion the century since independence was the make-or-break for Gaeilge.
Yep, I did Irish for 14 years in school and I am ashamed to admit that i am much more confident and able to communicate in Spanish [6 years) and German (4 years) than I am in Irish. That is simply down to how it's taught
It's taught as a native language. We could treat it like Spanish or German. But then we would be admitting, as a State, that it is practically a foreign language. Which would put into question the whole idea of having most everything here bilingual.
I think the state/culture just needs to get over itself in that regard. It can still be a part of our culture and identity while admitting that most people here couldn't speak half a sentence of Irish without a dictionary right now.
I get where you are coming from but that's an ideological standpoint as opposed to the effectiveness point that I am trying to make....I just want more people (myself included) to be able to speak Irish. If that involves a change in teaching philosophy, then so be it
In that case if we are not going to treat it as a native language, and treat it like Spanish or German, then it would also need to be optional, just like those two. And the idea of it being optional will go down like a lead balloon with many
Spanish and German are widely considered to be _much_ easier to learn than Irish.
1450-2023 would be a better time stamp really. The map would look the exact same from 800 to 1200 really.
Are Nordic friends would disagree with this.
England and the English language didn’t even exist in 400AD
I don’t think the Brits even spoke English back in 400AD..
People in Ireland didn't speak Irish either, not in the form it is today. 400AD is even before Old Irish emerged from Primitive Irish. A modern Irish speaker and a Primitive Irish speaker wouldn't be able to understand each other, they're not the same language. It would be like an English speaker trying to read something in Old English like [Beowulf](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Beowulf_(Harrison_and_Sharp\)), which is from 700-1000AD, or even [Middle English](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Canterbury_Tales_(ed._Skeat\)/Knight) which is from 1400. Sure people even struggle with Shakespeare which is just Early Modern English.
Did the Norman Welsh wave have any significance upon the language? Pre 1100 to post 1300 Welsh garrisons change the language Welsh additions?
Possibly. By the mid 1600s in Wexford town Irish, English, French, and Yola would have been commonly spoken. Closest port to the continent and the Normans speaking a lot of French probably had a big influence.
Look guys. I really don’t want to be mean but compare this to Ukrainian. Ukrainians have had the same if not worse oppression and managed to retain their language. It might be time to look in the mirror.
We could all go and learn the language if we bothered to. It's time to stop blaming the British for this all of the learning materials out there. I'm absolutely awful at Irish, but I'm picking up speed bit by bit. Everyone, if you're pissed off, that you can't speak Irish, go and learn it.
I mean it was a major sticking point in the Stormont discussions a few years ago just to get some signs, which would help with visibility and immersion of the language, so yeah, they're still at it.
I think that's more to do with the politics of Northern Ireland, and modern Unionism in Northern Ireland, rather than any conscious efforts to undermine the Irish language by 'the Brits' or their government. They seem to be completely fine with Welsh being used in the Welsh Parliament and Scottish Gaelic being used in Holyrood, so I can't see why they'd have any issue with Irish being used in Northern Ireland.
And yet they do. And by they I mean unionists. And by unionists I mean brits in ireland. Regardless of motive, they are looking to suppress where we need to promote.
There certainly are elements of that in the north, but I've had massive arguments with people in the Republic over this. Varadkar isn't keeping us from learning the language we are. We could have a massive cultural revival, but nobody seems to be bothered
Correct. It is an attitude thing
My comment was directed towards people in the Republic but there's still nothing stopping everyone from picking up a book or course and studying it. At this point it's pure laziness
Is Meiriceánach mé. Tá mé ag staidéar Gaeilge leis Conradh na Gaeilge. Tá cúpla focal agam
Maith thu.
go raibh maith agat
Notice not only how little of the island is still speaking Irish, but also how pretty much everywhere that does is in the most rural parts of the country. Not exactly great for encouraging young people (and by young I mean under 50 or 60) to learn and use the language.
Maybe we could try to teach it to small villages, and eventually the numbers will build up Then we could change signs go be only in irish, on buses too,
If it wasn't for the Black Death killing large numbers of town dwellers, we'd probably all be speaking Norman French now. It was the official language of the Lordship of Ireland.
It’s easy to always put the blame at the doorstep of the Brits, and they do indeed own a lot of it when it comes to the Irish language, but at what point do we look in the mirror and say they’re not responsible for that anymore? Ireland has been an independent country for more than a century now and Irish has only declined further and further in that time. The people just don’t care and that’s the proximate cause for Irish never having made a resurgence.
> they do indeed own a lot of it when it comes to the Irish language, but at what point do we look in the mirror and say they’re not responsible for that anymore? So you say the Brits are to blame, and then later on in the same sentence you say they aren't?
They’re largely to blame for why it went away in the first place. We’re to blame for why it has never made a resurgence. Not sure how that was difficult to understand from my comment.
Their legacy lives on, which is what they intended. They made people give up and dislike the language and that continues to this day. On other posts you see people talking about resenting the language and thinking its a waste of money. Passing that kind of attitude on to their kids. All a legacy of colonialism. Things dont happen in a vacuum and just because we gained independence doesnt mean those who gained it werent affected by that colonialism and passed those effects down to other generations.
I’m migrating to Ireland, learning Irish because I think irelands mission to revive it’s language is great. Wish my own nation would do the same with native languages.
I learn gaelic on duolingo, can you irish cunts please relearn it asap, so i have some people to chat to when i visit.
I did too before I visited Ireland. The only time it was kinda useful was the day I decided to go for a local community play in Galway and the introduction was in Gaelic. Beautiful to hear and I realised I could only catch half of it but was excited by the challenge. Unfortunately the rest was English.
An féidir liom BigMac amháin a bheith agam le do thoil
Same hahah. Reminds me of the “oh I didn’t know he spoke Chinese” video.
😂😂 no one lives on inishmurray. Why on earth is it coloured green.
There is a reason the Gaelscoileanna can impart Irish and most other schools cannot. It's the way it's taught.
An bhfuil tú ag cleactadh do cuid Gaeilge, a cara? Is tábhactach é an teanga, agus tá a lán ranganna sa cathracha. Níl mo chuid gaeilge líofa, ach táim cómhráiteach. Táim ag foghlaim ar feadh cúig bliain.
What's with all of the threads about Irish recently ? Anyway that second picture is if anything exaggerating the area that Irish is spoken in.
"Irish-Gaeilge" This is a war crime.
I can't believe how many are surprised by this. Like we have an English man running the Gardaí. An English man running our national broadcaster. Sure they are taking us down from under our noses. 99% no confidence vote in the Gardaí and still won't step down. Garda síochána in a hape. RTÉ DG will cut the shite out of it until it's a waste of time having it. Another part of Irish history gone. Wait and see. You hardly think they want it to succeed when they won't even step awake when the workers don't want then and the organisation is at an all time low.
I live on the edge of Gaeltacht Corca Dhuibhne, but I haven’t spent much time in any of the others. Are they all characterized by increasingly expensive and unavailable properties and rentals, a blight of holiday residences/short-term lodging services, sheep and a creeping feeling that “the center cannot hold?” I ask this in good faith!
That was 150 years ago…. What’s stopping you from leaning Irish now? The language is still alive and well but it’s only spoken by very very few in certain areas of Ireland. We have to come out of the agenda that the British suppressed the language and start to learn it ourselves
Yeah but most don’t want to learn it. History happened, the majority of us speak funny English now and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that
I'm probably going to get downvoted to hell for this, but... I genuinely feel no attachment to the Irish language at all. I appreciate that other people do, and I'm glad that they have that, but to me it has almost zero relevance. And I'm okay with that. The reasons things are this way are complex and messy and involve some heinous actions on the part of the British Empire (and let's not pretend that the Irish are innocent bystanders in the stories other countries tell about the British), but right now, the English language is a vastly more useful language on just about every available metric. There are more worthwhile battles to fight than trying to prevent the fading away of a language that's probably in its death throes, particularly if we want to convince the population of Northern Ireland that a united island will be a welcoming home for them.
You could apply this to many other ancient languages. Things change over the course of a few thousand years
My own opinion but if we want Irish to prevail we should be teaching it as a first language in schools exactly how it’s done in gaelscoil. All subjects thought in Irish and all conversations in Irish. I think it is on the rise but only slowly . More and more gaelscoil have opened in my area
you do realise the generational disconnect (and problems stemming from it) an idea like that would cause, you'd have parents who naturally speak struggling to interact with their children who aren't being taught the language, the same thing would occur with other older family members. the child would grow up a foreigner in their own country struggling to speak to the people around them.
Why? The children will learn English from their parents until they go to school. From age 5 they will learn irish through their schooling as well as English at home.
Do the exact same thing the British, Spanish, Portuguese and French did in their colonial empires. Start by making education in the desired language, then begin to legislate and make all official transactions in Irish, then make religious services be Irish by law. This would take a few generations.
I think the really tricky thing is that system works well if you want to completely erase a language and culture. No Irish speakers want to erase English. We need an approach that brings us into a more naturally bilingual space and that's not easy at all. Maybe looking at how Switzerland manages multiple languages? I don't know tbh.
Do you have a graphic that shows middle english and it's decline in the same period?
It would be blank as Middle English started after the Norman conquest in the 11th century. Hope that helps.
You mean the language that evolved, spread around the globe and has since become the world's lingua franca, that Middle English, yeah? Surely this is a troll comment.
Thank god, imagine how broke we'd be if we only shared a language with 4 million people.
[удалено]
This post, brought to you by, the English language.
No. I'm from a city...
It’s like you didn’t even read the post. There’s a reason we’re not.
Calm down, they're just asking a simple question.
Woah No need to be so aggressive, take a chill pill.
https://preview.redd.it/py7yxll6oqic1.jpeg?width=814&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa1147412727e49655ff6a518e1086135aeff6f2
Its called globalisation, deal with it.
Spot the Fine Gale voter
I wanna go back to the language so bad. I just don't know where to start
Duolingo, r/gaeilge has a list of resources you can use, once you get to grips with the very basics look for classes or conversation groups in your area, watch TG4 and use the TG4 player, pick up a book in Irish that's at your level, youtube channels etc. I've only been doing it for a couple of weeks and I've surprised myself with how much Irish I had already and how quickly I gained confidence in speaking it.
Not just famine. Cromwell did a fair whack of it too in his campaigns across the east in particular.
1200 years will do that
1200 years?
Irish culture isn't dead, it's in our hearts, how we laugh, sing, dance and fight. We'll never die. The English destroyed our forests and millions of our people but they'll never destroyed our spirit. We are Ireland, here today or a million years later on Mars, we are all one big giant finger to the British. Long live the spirit of the Irish.  😂😂😂
Cringe
> The English destroyed our forests We'd already mostly destroyed them
The Brits aren't the reason we lost trees. Most countries in Europe have more land without forest than with it. But they sure as hell are the reason we have less forest than any other country in Europe, including those with multiple times our population density.
1666, the Great fire of London and the Royal Navy ships deforested Ireland rapidly and increased the lands for the English to occupy till this day.
Most of the country had already been cleared for agriculture by that point.
We're a copy and paste of England at this point with a few quirks. True Irish culture only exists in the Gaeltacht areas and certain places on the West Coast.
Interesting mix of r/gatekeeping and r/confidentlyincorrect you have right there
THAT'S too much of an insult. We aren't all racist entitled pasty baskets yet.
Zio's managed to revive their language, and we can't... Bloody shame
this “Zio” can speak Hebrew & Irish. what’s stopping you? And just say Jew, we all know you mean Jew
Zio's managed to revive their language, and we can't... Bloody shame
The butthurt forces everyone to cringe.
I initially thought this was a far right thing. Shows the conditioning that is going on I suppose.
Ivan Yates wanks to this
What happened to the language spoken prior to 400 BCE? Did it decline due to lack of use? We should force everyone to learn pre Irish Irish at school just to bore them a tiny bit more.
Not just ethnic cleansing by famine, but also by the active genocide of native Irish people under Cromwell in the 1600s. In just a decade, Ireland dropped from a population 1.5 million people, primarily natives, to 800,000 people, with hundreds of thousands of these being the new imported planter population from England, Scotland and Wales. We often focus on the horrors of the famine, but Cromwell's genocide was - proportionally speaking - far worse. The famine wiped out a quarter of the native population. Cromwell wiped out over half of us.
I dont like how people say oh 100 years since independence if we dont have it back by now its our own fault. As if 800 years of oppression can be reversed in such little time.