Talk:Irish language/Archive 1

Gaelic

I changed the mention of how the Irish language is not usually called garlic because it can be mixed up with a variant of the language spoken in scootland. The previous wording could have infuriated Irish language speakers by implying that the language could not be called gaelic because of the scottish version, which implicitly suggested the scootish version had 'first call' on the name. Such a claim (and it probably wasn't intentional) would have been like a red rag to a bull in terms of inflaming Irish gaelic speakers. I've toned it down somewhat to give a more accurate explanation why people call the language 'Irish' rather than gaelic in general discourse.

For what it's worth, though it is spelled "garlic" in English whether referring to Scots or Irish gaelic, Scots gaelic is pronounced "gall-ic" (rhyming with "shall") and Irish gaelic is pronounced "gay-lic". At any rate, once mangled into a more British accent. PML.

Not all Scots pronounce it "gall-ic", many pronounce the two in the same way, "gay-lic"

Pronunciation and spelling of RTE

Just a note to say that ch is pronounced like the Greek χ, rather than a hard 'k' - most people would be familiar with the Scottish example loch Jimregan 13:31 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)

Please Note Well - RTÉ is spelt "Radio Telifís Éireann," not "Raidió Teilifís Éireann," in real life. These spellings do indeed go against modern stardardised versions, but I have checked this directly with RTÉ, which itself predates standardisation. Please do not change the version as included in the "Irish words commonly used in English" section. -- Kwekubo

It is Radio Telefís Éireann not Telifís but the word does not seem to occur in the article anyway.

Shelta

Some mentions should be made of Shelta language, the Irish Traveller's cant based on Irish. I just don't know how to fit it in this long article. Rmhermen 04:41 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

• Shelta (also called Gammon, or simply Cant), has an article. Its similarities to Irish are, as far as I understand, in the language's reversal of letters in Irish words - rodas (door) for doras, laicín (girl) for cailín, and so on. --- Kwekubo

Concern for the language among Irish

From the article:

All sides, irrespective of their view on the methodology used by independent Ireland in its efforts to preserve the language, agree that such a loss would be a cultural tragedy of monumental scale.

This might be the politically correct thing to say, but is it actually true? Do people really care enough that they are prepared to do anything about it?--Robert Merkel 00:44 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

From what I can see, yes. Opinions polls have asked people about their attitudes towards Irish. Many admit to hating it because of the way it was taught, but would be horrified if it was lost. Kids in the tens of thousands are sent to all Irish-speaking schools and to the Gaeltacht to learn the language, while almost on principle because of their experience of it, the parents sending the kids don't speak the language even if they actually have a degree of fluency. And most people want the Irish language TV station, TG4 to survive through they don't actually watch it. So people don't want the language to go, but themselves don't want to use it, usually as a reaction to the bullying "by God I'm going to make you speak it" style of teaching they experienced at the hands of the language fanatics. FearÉIREANN 01:48 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, that rings true to me. From what I remember of school though, most people hated Irish for the same reasons that people of my father's generation hated Latin - being forced to learn a "dead language". I didn't mind personally, but I really took exception to being forced to use an Irish-ised version of my name - if my parents wanted me to be called "Séamas" they would have named me that. As for the Gaeltacht summer courses; they were great, and for most people they were just a great way of making new friends - the classes were just a necessary evil. And I think TG4 will probably survive, simply because it has a better selection of films (in English) than the other three channels, and because for teenage guys, the female presenters tend to have more visual appeal :) -- Jim Regan 01:31, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You should hear my name as gaeilge. It is a real tongue-twister. I remember when we finished the Leaving cert, we held a ceremonial burning of Peig on a bridge and swore we'd never speak "that fucking language" again. It took me a decade to get over the school experience of it. Now, with school a distant memory and my hair greying by the day (jeez, that makes me sound old, I'm only in my mid 30s, but in the last six months, they grey has been multiplying. I even went blond to see would it be less noticeable than in my 'normal' brown!) I have now forgiven Irish all the headaches it have me and am back caring about the language again and wishing I could speak it again. (Just a thought. I've been going grey for six months. I've been on wiki for just over six months . . . connection??? :-) ) Slan leat. FearÉIREANN 01:45, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Peig was before my time :) The Séamas thing really got to me, especially at the Gaeltacht. It quickly got exaggerated into "Haaaaymwish" and then, inexplicably, into "Haybob". Which caught on. Grr. I actually joined the Irish Society in college, though mainly because a friend started it, and needed support. The only meeting I attended featured about 4 students, all friends of mine, and about 10 members of staff, including the director of the college, who was trying to get us to take part in a céilidh - the last time I'd been at one was in the Gaeltacht, where we spent most of the time trying to hide, to avoid dancing, apart from the 5 facing 5 thing (not Walls of Limerick... umm... dammit!) - there's a part where the couple at the bottom end go through the other couple's arched arms, and we took the opportunity to kick seven shades of shite out of each other. Ah, the memories. Makes me wish I'd written to the people I met there. Oh well. At least I've learned from it, and figured out how to keep in touch with people - so the Gaeltacht taught me something! (apart from the Irish word for sex) -- Jim Regan 00:55, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Jim, the name of the 5 facing 5 dance was Droichead Átha Luain, the Bridge of Athlone. Classic stuff. I still have some embarassing photos of me accompanied by my haircut executing that dance. Ronan

Translation of greeting

Question: "A Chara" is defined as "A friend" (used as salutation to a letter).

         "Is Mise le Meas" is the ending of a letter but not defined.  What
         mean?
         User: Mikehill55@AOL.Com 26 Sep 2003

Basically "Yours faithfully". "Is mise" means "It's me" or "I am", "le meas" means "with thought", it's implied that the person writing is thinking about the recipient. I hope that was too much information :) -- Jim Regan 00:55, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"Le meas" here means "with respect". Meabhar 21:37, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Actually, "A Chara" does not mean "A friend" but simply "Friend" - the "A" puts it in the vocative case, which is what you use when calling someone.

re Is mise le meas - a humourous anecdote. In the Dublin-West by-election in 1982, the odds on favourite, Eileen Lemass, dramatically failed to win the seat. Part of the reason was a remarkable campaign run by the opposition Fine Gael party's campaign manager, Jim Mitchell. But she also lost hundreds of crucial votes because hundreds of letters had been sent out to social welfare recipients reducing their social welfare entitlements and signed by the writer Is Mise le Meas. Many of those who received the letters thought they read Mrs. Lemass and blamed her personally for the cutbacks which had nothing to do with her, though they were the work of her party of government, just disastrously timed in the run-up to a sudden by-election that the government had to win. So poor Eileen was faced with irate voters all over the gaelic version of 'yours sincerely'! FearÉIREANN 19:21, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Irish as a Slavic language?

Why is ther not a section on where the Irish language came from? The only mention that I saw, was about it being a slavic language.

What??? Where on Earth does it say that Irish is a Slavic language? I'll give you the decendance here: Indo-European family, Celto-Italic branch; Celtic languages; Goidelic family; Irish.

I was making reference to this from the page "In Irish, as in many Slavonic languages such as Russian, all consonants are either palatalised, soft..." which seems to imply that Irish Gaelic is Slavonic (?Different from slavic?). You seem to be knowledgeable about etymology. Could you possibly write a section about this, and correct the error if it is one ?

-catskul

Here's a passage from "The Glories of Ireland", "Irish Language and Letters", by Douglas Hyde (this text is public domain in the US, but it isn't here in Ireland) :

"For centuries the Irish and their language were regarded by the English as something strange and foreign to Europe. It was not recognized that they had any relationship with the Greeks or Romans, the French, the Germans, or the English. The once well-known statesman, Lord Lyndhurst, in the British parliament denounced the Irish as aliens in religion, in blood, and in language. Bopp, in his great Comparative Grammar, refused them recognition as Indo-Europeans, and Pott in 1856 also denied their European connection. It was left for the great Bavarian scholar, John Caspar Zeuss, to prove to the world in his epoch-making "Grammatica Celtica" (published in Latin in 1853) that the Celts were really Indo-Europeans, and that their language was of the highest possible value and interest. From that day to the present it is safe to say that the value set upon the Irish language and literature has been steadily growing amongst the scholars of the world, and that in the domain of philology Old Irish now ranks close to Sanscrit for its truly marvellous and complicated scheme of word-forms and inflections, and its whole verbal system.

"The exact place which the Celtic languages (of which Irish is philologically far the most important) hold in the Indo-European group has often been discussed. It is now generally agreed upon that, although both the Celtic and Teutonic languages may claim a certain kinship with each other as being both of them Indo-European, still the Celtic is much more nearly related to the Greek and the Latin groups, especially to the Latin.

"All the Indo-European languages are more or less related to one another. We Irish must acknowledge a relationship, or rather a very distant connecting tie, with English. But, to trace this home, Irish must be followed back to the very oldest form of its words, and English must be followed back to Anglo-Saxon and when possible to Gothic. The hard mutes (p, t, c) of Celtic (and, for that matter, of Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and Lithuanian) will be represented in Gothic by the corresponding soft mutes (b, d, g), and the soft mutes in Celtic by the corresponding, hard mutes in Gothic. Thus we find the Irish dia (god) in the Anglo-Saxon tiw, the god of war, whose name is perpetuated for all time in Tiwes-däg, now "Tuesday", and we find the Irish déad in the Anglo-Saxon "toth", now "tooth", and so on. But of all the Indo-European languages Old Irish possesses by far the nearest affinity to Latin, and this is shown in a great many ways, not in the vocabulary merely, but in the grammar, which for philologists is of far more importance,-as, for example, the b-future, the passive in-r, the genitive singular and nominative plural of "o stems", etc. Thus the Old Irish for "man", nom. fer, gen. fir, dat. fiur, acc. fer n-, plur. nom. fir, gen. fer n-, is derived from the older forms viros, viri, viro, viron, nom. plur. viri, gen. plur. viron, which everyone who knows Latin can see at a glance correspond very closely to the Latin inflections, vir, viri, viro, virum, nom. plur. viri, etc."

HTH -- Jim Regan 20:51, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Seems obvious to me that this passage doesn't mean Irish is Slavonic - it is just comparing Irish with the Slavonic languages, of which Russian is an example. Although I don't really see why Russian needs to be mentioned as an example.Matve 21:32, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Irish is definitely not of Slavic origin, it is a Celtic language and thus akin to many languages of Europe e.g. the Germanic, the Romanic, the Slavic and the Baltic ones. The reason for mentioning Irish and Russian within one sentence is simple: It is not about their common Slavic origin, NO, it is about the phonological structure of Irish on the one hand and Russian on the other hand. Why? Because Russian is a very good example of a language where each consonant can have a slender (palatalised) form as well as a broad (hard, non-palatalised) one. The point is: It's exactly the same with Irish. That's why it is said "In Irish, AS in many Slavonic (by the way definitely = Slavic) languages..." It does not say "In Irish, as in A SLAVONIC language..." Ever heard the difference between slender and broad sounds? Listen to some Irish or Russian sentences and You'll hear the striking similarity concerning phonology, certainly not common Slavic ancestory! HTH

This lesson in comparative linguistics is truly fascinating. But I think Douglas Hyde might be overstating the position when he claims that "of all the Indo-European languages Old Irish possesses by far the nearest affinity to Latin". It seems plain that Spanish, Italian, French etc. are far closer, even though their grammar has simplified itself over the centuries. TobyJ 19:49, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Connacht Irish as standard

"Connacht Irish is in many respects the most standard kind of Irish" Is that true? I always thought that the standardised form of Irish was most like Munster Irish. Markcollinsx 16:13, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's the thing about standards - you normally get a few to choose from :) -- Jim Regan 20:51, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Modern Irish tends to refer to the decisions and the results of a standardisation from the mid-20th Century, known as "an Chaighdeán Oifigiúil", or "the Official Standard." It is mostly based on Connacht Irish, with a smattering of Munster, and the random murder of dative cases, old spellings and forms, as well as a simplification of verbs. It is associated in the Irish-speaking areas (or should I say former Irish speaking areas, and the minuscule pockets of extant Gaeltachtaí), with "Dublin Irish", something that no native really 'dug.' Also, around the same time the script was changed from a Gaelic script, based on latin letters, to a simple Latin script. Which led to some ill-feeling in the occasional reader, but now most of us accept the script, and much but certainly not all the grammatical changes. Meabhar 21:37, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Gaelic Revival

Does anyone agree that the historical revival of the language shoul be put in the article Gaelic Revival rather than the main article Irish language? and keep the article purely about the languages non-historic characterstics? Djegan 10:37, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Irish the third oldest written language?

Third oldest written language after Latin and Greek???

When Latin and ancient Greek were still spoken nobody was writing in Irish.

Third oldest spoken European language maybe.

Again, from "Irish Language and Letters" (see above):

"Of all these [Celtic] languages Irish is the best preserved, and it is possible to follow its written literature back into the past for some thirteen hundred years; while much of the most interesting matter has come down to us from pagan times. It has left behind it the longest, the most luminous, and the most consecutive literary track of any of the vernacular languages of Europe, except Greek alone."

and

"The oldest alphabet used in Ireland of which remains exist appears to have been the Ogam, which is found in numbers of stone inscriptions dating from about the third century of our era on. About 300 such inscriptions have already been found, most of them in the southwest of Ireland, but some also in Scotland and Wales, and even in Devon and Cornwall. Wherever the Irish Gael planted a colony, he seems to have brought his Ogam writing with him."

See Ogham -- Jim Regan 20:51, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, a few Germanic languages came earlier(there are Runes stretching back into the beginning of the first millenium, but they're not particularly interesting). There are also scattered languages which are now extinct(Various celtic languages, Etruscan, Old Italic languages). If you don't mind, I'll change it to 'The second oldest surviving language with written texts of a reasonable length'.

I wouldn't even stretch it to that; I should have made it clear, but I was just trying to provide evidence for the idea that it's the third oldest written language. -- Jim Regan 03:16, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Another dos centavos on this statement—wouldn't persons literate in the Chinese language or, say, the Hebrew language have something to say in this matter? :) --Ryanaxp 17:55, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Well, not really. None of the Chinese languages are European by any standard, and most certainly not the written form. Hebrew might be considered European in some respect, due to its long usage on the continent, but its origins have nothing to do with Europe whatsoever.

(If the matter at hand were "written languages throughout the entire world" there are a number of candidates (almost all of them extinct or dead) that have written forms by far predating both Etruscan, Greek and even Chinese.) -- Rasmus Hellgren 10:55, Aug 31, 2005 (UTC)

Cupla focal

I have heard that cupla focal ("couple of words") is a term used for ceremonial use of Irish. The speaker salutes or says something in Irish and then goes on with an English speech. Is it so?

No, I wouldn't call that a term as such. It's just that

It's used regularly in English to describe someone who has some Irish, but is not a native speaker. Or for use the occasional use of Irish in conversation. as in "He is a great man for the cupla focal. Filiocht | Blarneyman 09:03, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

But it's also used to refer to the few official words at the beginning of a speech in the Dáil.

Status in the European Union

What is the status of Irish in the EU? Is Irish interpretation or translition provided by the European institutions?

Irish is a Treaty language, which means that high level legislation has to be provided; I think Irish has no other status in the EU, though this is only because no Irish government has insisted upon it. Evertype 17:27, 2004 Jul 4 (UTC)

It also means that one can write to EU institutions in Irish and expect a response in the same language. And Eamon Ó Cuiv, the minister with responsibility for Irish, has seen a request submitted to the EU that Irish be made a full working language. The treaty language concept was more or less created for the case of Irish because the government didn't insist upon it bein made fully official when Ireland joined the EEC. --Kwekubo 23:56, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

=

From Wikki: Languages of the EU :

Although the Irish language had not been one of the official working languages of the European Union prior to 13 June 2005, it is the Republic of Ireland's first official language, and has minority-language status in Northern Ireland. Since the Republic of Ireland's accession to the European Economic Community (now the European Union) in 1973, EU treaties have been published and authenticated in Irish - as an official treaty language - as well as the EU official languages, and one has been able to make written submissions to Union institutions in Irish.

On 13 June 2005, following a unanimous decision by EU foreign ministers, it was announced that Irish will be made the 21st official language of the EU but a derogation stipulates that not all documents have to be translated into Irish as is the case with the other official languages. [8] The decision means that legislation approved by both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers will now be translated into Irish, and interpretation from Irish will be available at European Parliament plenary sessions and some Council meetings. The new arrangements will come into effect on 1 January 2007.

The cost of translation, interpretation, publication and legal services involved in making Irish an official EU language has been estimated at just under €3.5 million a year. The derogation will be reviewed in four years and every five years thereafter.

Consistent Style

It would be nice if all the Irish was italic and the English translations of the examples was in quotes. It's a bit of both at the moment. Some IPA/SAMPA would be good too.

I might even do some of this. :)

Moilleadóir 00:44, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Optimistic estimate of number of speakers?

Hate to say this, but ceapaim go bhfuil nios lu na 40,000 daoine sa tir ag baint usaid as an Gaeilge gach la. The figure for the number of people that use Irish daily needs to be revised downwards (I've seen recent figures of about 15-25,000, tops.) --Ce garcon 06:28, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

According to the CSO there are 1,570,894 [1] irish speaking people in the state, may be this figure is grossly inflated but should it not be inclued as a fact? --Happy ga 14:26, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It would be interesting to see what the criteria are used on the census as it appears just to be a matter of deciding weither or not you wish to tick a box, and could be that simple to define yourself as "Irish speaker". Thus as this type of ability is a attribute rather than a variable, and these things are difficult to measure in absolute terms in a meaningful way (i.e. breath of use, grammer, knowledge, expression,... as venacular are the only meaning full things) and any such figures should be taken as a pinch of salt. To be balanced their seams to be an endless que of people who claim to speak or have knowledge of Irish - in reality on and economic and social level the language is rarely used as a living language, in my experience. Djegan 18:00, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

From an optimistic 40,000 we went down to as low as 10,000, which is exaggerated imo, but now it is claimed that there are as many as 70,000 first language users... Either this is propaganda and based on nothing, or previous counts have been very wrong. Can someone explain this to me? Caesarion 09:50, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I've read that there's 85,000 people in the official Gaeltachts, and not everyone there speaks Irish daily. I also read in the Irish Independant that there's 64,000 people in the Gaeltacht using it daily, up from 63,000 last year. I've included the 64,000 figure. - User:Dalta

Who... if true, this is probably the best news I heard about an endangered language in ages... Caesarion 09:38, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

The most recent figure is seventy or eighty thousand native speakers in the Republic, of which thirty thousand in the Gaeltacht. Besides, lots of Irish-Americans of Gaeltacht birth come home after a career in American working life and revert back to their native language. At least two of them are now Irish-language writers of some fame, Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé and Colm Ó Ceallaigh.

POV or not?

The following sentence was removed as POV, and then restored as "the universal view of academics", which seems very unlikely to me.

In contrast to English as spoken in England, Hiberno-English offers a greater range of expression.

If someone can provide a source of a single linguist making this claim in a peer-reviewed publication, we can put it back in as that academic's view (but certainly not "the universal view"). Otherwise it should not be included. --Angr/_comhrá 04:44, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Seems unlikely to me too, unless in the trivial sense that any dialect can be seen as supplemental to any given speaker's idiolect, and thus more providing extra expressivity. (And it's a fuzzy issue, I sometimes get confused as to where "Scots" stops and where "Scottish English" begins, likewise I'm sure the odd Cork/HEism is sneaking in there too (so).) Alai 07:10, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is perfectly correct. Read Terence Dolan's A Dictionary of Hiberno-English for evidence. The Irish language had many more words for something than is found in modern English. (Many of the variables that used to exist in Old English have dropped out of usage, making modern British English quite restrictive linguistically.) Hiberno-English combines the greater variation in Irish words, suitably anglicised, with modern English expressions, and also with some surviving from Old English. Some Hiberno-Englishisms have now made it into British English (for example, galore, from the Irish go leor) but the nature, complexity and range of alternative expressions available in HE make Ireland the preferred location ahead of England for foreigners to come to learn English. For example, whereas BE has the word idiot HE has idiot and ejjit (with the latter being in effect a 'complete idiot'). Indeed it can be made stronger by calling someone a "right eejit which manages both to call someone and idiot and add a note of distain, contempt, sarcasm and ridicule that the BE word idiot' doesn't come close to mirroring. For example someone who left a car, unlocked, with its keys in it, in an area where there was a crime wave, and had it nicked, could be slated, sarcastically as "he was a right ejjit to do that".

Other examples include adding the suffix een to a word to further stress the word. So a small girl can be called a girleen.

Some HE terms are direct translations from Irish, and directly disobey linguistic structure in BE. For example, I do be here every day, through wrong in BE, is right in HE. It is a direct translation of the Irish phrase Bím anseo gach lá.

Another example is the word bowsie, meaning a 'quarrelsome drunk' or sometimes a 'right bastard'.

Writers famous for their use of HE are Roddy Doyle, Sean O'Casey and James Joyce. FearÉIREANN^(talk) 15:26, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Interesting as this information is, it does not provide an ounce of evidence that Hiberno-English is more expressive than British English. This is one of those claims that just doesn't mean anything in scientific terms. Sorry. Matve 21:32, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Matve. It is a fact well-known to all linguists that no language variety spoken by normal human beings has more (or less) expression than any other. All humans use language to express what they need/want to express, and, where a language is lacking (eg where children are brought up in certain--rare--linguistically impoverished environments), speakers will creatively expand it to meet their needs. Anything you can say in one language can be said in any other, although it is true that where one language has one word another language may need to use several (or many...), and each language locks its speakers in to particular ways of expressing things. Okay, end of rant! Dougg 08:04, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Why fight over H.E. in a page about Irish? Bolak77 21:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Irish-speaking communities in Argentina and Canada?

Can anyone confirm that, as stated in the info box, there is a small community of Irish speakers in Argentina? I've never heard this and suspect someone was confusing Irish with Welsh. I don't doubt there are people in Argentina who can speak Irish, but that's not the same thing as a community of speakers. --Angr/_comhrá 08:45, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

---

I have the same question about Newfoundland. Can anyone tell me which towns had Irish speaking communities?

Irish Hermit 03:35, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

---

The Irish language in Newfoundland was (and is to a lesser degree) primarily spoken in towns along the Irish shore of the Avalon Peninsula, namely Ballyhack, St. Bride's, Trepassey, Ferryland, Patrick's Cove, St. Mary's and Skibereen.

Jcmurphy 03:35, 11 June 2005 (UTC)

---

Indeed, as far as my search can determine there were never any communities of Irish speakers known in either Argentina or Newfoundland (other than perhaps modern-day learners of Irish as a secondary language), and the assertion that there were such communities is probably an erroneous crossover from Welsh. In my editing of this article today I removed these assertions accordingly. --Ryanaxp 17:48, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Argentina was a much more prosperous country in the 19th century than it is today and was after the US England and Canada one of the most popular destinations for Irish emigrants - at least thats what I remember hearing once. Anyway, the following link seems to bear that out. A short story in Joyces Dubliners (Think its called Eveline)is about a girl who has second thoughts about eloping there. It's possible that some usage of the languange has survived I suppose. Surely its as likely as any survival of welsh in Argentina. I'm not knowledgeable enough to tamper with the article but the link is: http://www.ite.ie/nua/argentina.pdf

---

The Irish language was historically spoken in parts of the Irish shore of Newfoundland in the early 20th century, and is still sporken by a small percentage of the population. See Newfoundland Irish for more info. There are no Welsh speakers in all of Newfoundland. --User:Bmpower 17:28, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

Quite interesting; that's a community I was never aware of. Thank you for the clarification. —Ryanaxp 17:36, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Removal of Newfoundland again

On looking into the matter further, it seems Newfoundland does not currently have any Irish-speaking communities. The external link provided at the bottom of Newfoundland Irish simply discusses previous use of Irish in Newfoundland, but does not in any way establish such a community existing within the current century. Accordingly, I once again removed Newfoundland from the list of "spoken in" countries in the article. —Ryanaxp 22:27, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

If you want to get areas wheres its -actually- spoken as a first language, and not as a con for the gaeltacht grants, you'll want to remove most of Ireland from that to. From a gaeltacht, can't speak Irish to save my life, same goes for most of my island... --Kiand 22:29, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mura féidir leat Gaeilge a labhairt chun do bheatha a shábháil, cén fáth a bhfuil an lipéad "ga-2" ar do lch úsáideora? ;-) --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 06:09, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sure, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. There's little doubt a shockingly honest map of truly Irish-speaking areas in Ireland would encompass an area approximately equivalent to a few soccer fields strung together; but at least there's likely to be one or two old codgers left in your "gaeltacht" who can jaw about the price of socks to each other in the language.
On the other hand, I doubt there's been anyone running around who speaks Newfoundland Irish for at least the past five decades, based on what I read in the article at the bottom of the page. —Ryanaxp 22:42, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

I got all curious about this subject, so I went hunting through the Newfoundland census from 2001. Turns out, there were about ten people whose native tongue was Gaelic in Newfoundland four years ago.[2] It seems to me that while there may not be communities of Irish speakers, there must at least be some speakers of the language kicking around -- the people for whom it was their mother tongue, if nothing else. --Carlaxs 22:51, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

It is said that there are over 50,000 Irish speakers in Canada, and living in Toronto I know personally at least 20. (DDoyle)

Said by whom? Does that include learners who just have a cúpla focla? --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 05:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

EU

Since Irish has been made an officail working lang should the eu be listed in the box of offical Langs. --Happy ga 13:04, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Which box? On this page, or on an EU page elsewhere? Evertype 17:29, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

I have added it with the note "as from jan 1 2007". thats the official working date, but isnt it an official lanuage since the middle of june this year? Change if necessary. Ablaze 08:47, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Gaeltachtaí? No...

I've reverted the Irish name for the Gaeltacht back to English. People can go to Gaeltacht to see what the Irish name is. ℬastique▼^talk 00:55, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Correction. In my ignorance, I reverted the plural to singular. Now it's simply Gaeltacht regions. I hate putting accents in English words and will avoid it at all costs. Call me naïve, but I have a resumé to uphold. ℬastique▼^talk 00:57, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is, of course, résumé. Evertype 22:28, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

NO problem. Gaeltachtaí is used in English so is perfectly OK. I inadventently hit the wrong page for reversion. But I could revert my reversion because you had done so ahead of me. Mea Culpa. FearÉIREANN^(talk) 05:10, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think we're okay keeping Gaeltachtaí, though Gaeltachts is also acceptable as a plural. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 05:32, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Anti Nationalist claims

However, from the early 1960s onward the elite increasingly, and wrongly, blamed nationalist ideology, including the Irish language. In the 1970s and 1980s, after fighting broke out in Northern Ireland, the elite sought to distance the Republic of Ireland from the conflict and counter sympathy for the oppressed northern nationalists by launching a fanatical anti-nationalist onslaught. & Many see this as a deliberate attempt by anti-nationalist politicians to wipe out the language.

Any evidence supporting any of this? Parts of the first quote and all the second quote sounds like a gaeilge loving zealot. I also found a few of the sentences in that section quite offensive, like the one where it was implied that jobs should be created only for irish speakers, in gaeltacht area's, purely to keep the language alive. I find that insulting as a tax payer, an irishman, and I dont doubt fluent/native irish speakers would find it deeply offensive that people would suggest they should be given sop jobs purely so they would move to gaeltacht area's. -Bastion 10:38, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Fine Gael have been seen as anti-nationalist at the time but to be honest the reduced prominance of the language at this time was probabily more due to economic and social realities of Ireland been more exposed to the international scene rather than a vast right wing conspiracy. Personally i think some one is playing the poor mouth (to use an Irish derived phrase) with this one. Djegan 17:40, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

The quoted paragraph is possibly one of the worst I've ever read on Wikipedia. If people want to listen political rants then they can go to an Ard Fheis! -Bryan 01/08/05

Bastion wrote:

...sounds like a gaeilge loving zealot...

Hey, don't insult us Gaeilge-loving zealots by associating us with this kinda shlock. Our propaganda's generally of a much higher refinement. —Ryanaxp 20:37, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

What is the intelligence level here if Gaeltachtaí has to be anglicised as "Gaeltachts" for fear of confusing the Béarlóirí? Then again, maybe that's just the pretence and it has more to do with certain minds not being happy until everything Irish is stripped and they can feel less intimidated by our difference. No doubt if they could change Marseille, Toulouse, Lyon and every other non-English language area on earth into English they would try that as well. These are the same mentalities who ask me "What's you proper name?" because my name is in Irish, and Irish alone, on every single official document which I possess. Ah yes; all roads lead to England and English culture.

While I myself am a "Gaeilge-loving zealot" (thanks to Bastion for coining this phrase, which I've found quite apt) and sympathize with the sentiment you expressed, I would also note that this is, of course, the English edition of Wikipedia. Therefore, anglicizing of some foreign words, where they may confuse English-speakers not familiar with the source language, would seem appropriate (although I've no strong opinion one way or the other on this particular word). As you may know, on the Irish language edition of Wikipedia, the plural of the word gaeltacht is properly spelled as gaeltachtaí, of course. —Ryanaxp 19:23, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard the word Gaeltachtaí used in common English speech and have only ever seen it written by scholars trying to be as correct as possible. Gaeltachts is the word in English, Gaelachtaí in Irish, this language is English. - User:Dalta