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Post by Moe on May 10, 2008 10:37:04 GMT -5
Is the language safe from extinction, is it taught in schools, used daily?
I know about the Gaeltacht regions (areas of the counties of Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, and also parts of counties Cork, Meath and Waterford), but I heard a lot of English even in Gaeltacht regions.
Languages are very special things, basic to one's culture. So is Gaelic in Ireland "endangered"?
Does anyone know the percentage of people in Ireland who speak it?
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Post by cheekymonkey on May 11, 2008 0:51:38 GMT -5
I think I heard a while ago somewhere that about 10% of the population can speak it. But I don't know how acurate that is. Or if all the people who 'can' speak it actually do on a regular basis.
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Post by Moe on May 11, 2008 9:05:48 GMT -5
I think I heard a while ago somewhere that about 10% of the population can speak it. But I don't know how acurate that is. Or if all the people who 'can' speak it actually do on a regular basis. That's a good point, CM: a person may know a language, but may not speak it on a regular basis. It's like my French - I know the langauge, can read and speak it (though not too fluently I must admit) but I would never call myself a "francophone."
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Post by skyscape on May 12, 2008 8:38:15 GMT -5
Irish (Gaelic) is doing better than expected. The westerns Gaeltachts will always be under pressure because they are rural areas and because of the impact of English on social and economic life.
Irish is becoming increasingly popular in the cities and it's now considered 'cool' to know how to speak Irish with plenty of homegrown celebrities keen to tell how much they have.
The total population of the island of Ireland is estimated at over 6m and at least 4.5m of Irish people are taught Irish as a compulsory school subject with over 50% of the population belived to be competent in Irish. There are about 50,000 native speakers of Irish, one of whom is our very own Enya.
The 2001 census in Northern Ireland showed that 167,487 (10.4%) people had Irish.
Irish is the official language of Ireland.
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Post by Treecat on May 12, 2008 9:02:14 GMT -5
I was surprised to read, first in Moya's biography, that in the past speaking Irish was regarded as a hick thing to do. I thought that if it was your native language, you should be proud to speak it. Apparently that wasn't the case back then.
I got a second dose of this attitude in The Rebels of Ireland, where one of the characters in an early 20th century chapter mentions that parents didn't want their kids growing up speaking Irish, because they couldn't get ahead in a English-speaking country.
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Post by Moe on May 12, 2008 12:29:39 GMT -5
Sky, from what you say, I think Gaelic is doing better than I had feared. We had a lot of Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia (especially on Cape Breton Island) a generation ago, but there the language does seem to be dying out, which is really quite sad.
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Post by skyscape on May 12, 2008 13:53:41 GMT -5
Irish is always going to be a minority language but it is now well protected under the Official Languages Act 2003 in ROI and in NI under the EU Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
Enya needs to put Gaelic back on the albums though ;D
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2008 17:09:31 GMT -5
A very well known singer could not attend the Trinity College in Dublin because he doesn't speak the national language;his name is Paul Hewson,a.k.a. Bono from U2.
Ahrod B.
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Post by skyscape on May 15, 2008 14:07:48 GMT -5
There is an American-born (Boston) comedian called Des Bishop who has learned Irish in 12months and now does stand-up comedy 'as Gaeilge'. His sketches are hilarious and he's learned the language in a surprisingly short time making it now 'cool' for many young people to be confident about speaking it.
It's widely accepted that he's done more for the image of the language than years of Language Planning by academics and linguisticians!
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Post by Moe on May 15, 2008 15:02:46 GMT -5
How much do you think Enya has done for the Gaelic language, Sky? Have her Gaelic songs had any impact as far as you can see?
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Post by skyscape on May 16, 2008 9:56:52 GMT -5
How much do you think Enya has done for the Gaelic language, Sky? Have her Gaelic songs had any impact as far as you can see? It's hard to say. I would say that she has piqued some interest abroad but I was disappointed that she didn't use Irish on her last album and at home here she's seen as a less exuberant Gaeilgeoir than Mรกire. Enya uses Gaelic in a very personal way. She doesn't seem to be interested in campaigning for its survival which is fine, but I love to hear her sing in Gaelic.
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Post by RichardF on Apr 12, 2020 1:50:59 GMT -5
Hasn't been a post here for a while(2008). The latest figures I've seen (2019) say that there are around 75,000 native Gaelic speakers in the ROI, ie people who learn it as a first language, naturally at home.Amounting to around 2% of the population. It's spoken to varying degrees as a second language. My understanding there is a move away from terming it Gaelic to Irish, not quite sure why. It is now a required language in the ROI sylabus, so everyone learns it at school. Good in someways, bad in that most Irish teachers are not Native speakers and also the best way to discourage a child from something is to teach it at school.
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Post by ใค๐โณโฒ๐ง ๐
๐๐โ๐๐๐๐ on Mar 7, 2023 3:58:46 GMT -5
When my sister went (around the end of February) she heard some people in Dublin who had conversations in Irish. Before she went we practised thank you in Irish a lot GRMA ๐๐ฎ๐ช Also hello, bye for now. I also suggested watching Enya's 'thanks a million' in Irish (WMA 2006) Some Northern Irish friends she made also had more of the Ulster dialect. The staff at various places in Dublin and Kildare also approved of her thank yous in Irish ๐ Road signs still have the Irish version beneath, of course. Even at the BAFTAs on the red carpet there were notable interviews in Gaeilge. I think these days there seem to be more Irish people wanting to either learn if they don't fully know, or more publicly converse in the language. It is 'still alive'! Visiting Ireland, or as a fan of Enya, it can be fun to speak some ๐
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Post by RichardF on Mar 8, 2023 1:43:11 GMT -5
When my sister went (around the end of February) she heard some people in Dublin who had conversations in Irish. Before she went we practised thank you in Irish a lot GRMA ๐๐ฎ๐ช Also hello, bye for now. I also suggested watching Enya's 'thanks a million' in Irish (WMA 2006) Some Northern Irish friends she made also had more of the Ulster dialect. The staff at various places in Dublin and Kildare also approved of her thank yous in Irish ๐ Road signs still have the Irish version beneath, of course. Even at the BAFTAs on the red carpet there were notable interviews in Gaeilge. I think these days there seem to be more Irish people wanting to either learn if they don't fully know, or more publicly converse in the language. It is 'still alive'! Visiting Ireland, or as a fan of Enya, it can be fun to speak some ๐ I think there is a statutory element of an gaelige in the Irish school curriculum, however not huge. The big problem they have for teaching is not enough native speakers remaining to teach it properly. I can always tell when Maire's been up in Donegal fro a while, her English goes very Ulster.
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Post by ใค๐โณโฒ๐ง ๐
๐๐โ๐๐๐๐ on Mar 16, 2023 15:50:05 GMT -5
Gaeilge seems rather celebrated in this display! Nice early Celts photo of Enya too
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