As I walk around I hear French, German, Russian, even Korean, but I barely hear any Irish. When in Dunquin I hear more Irish than I have the entire trip. The Irish have a love-hate relationship with their language. You either think its a large part of our identity or a useless waste of time. No matter how you feel about it, it is dying. Only 2% of Irish speak Irish day-to-day and that number is constantly decreasing. It is not spoken outside of remote pockets on the West coast. Young people show little interest in learning it and it seems doomed.
Ireland’s Irish speakers have been fighting a long battle for equal access to state services. The Language Commissioner Seán Ó Cuirreáin, who has recently stepped down, has laid out the options pretty well, “to look back at Irish as our lost language, or forward with it as a core part of our heritage and sovereignty.” “It is with heavy hearts that the people of the Gaeltacht and the Irish-speaking community in general will approach the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising in two years time if our national language is to be merely a symbolic language that is pushed aside, marginalized and left in the halfpenny place in the life of this nation.”
Irish only seems to be spoken when Americans are around. The only time most people have spoken Irish since school has been around tourists, who are impressed by something most people actually dislike. Or, when you talk about strangers in their presence without them knowing.
In our unbelievable afternoon with Brenda Ní Shuailleabháin and the Bibeanna and men of Ventry I got to really listen to the Irish language. All of the Bibeanna and men of Ventry had stronger Irish than English and preferred Irish to English. In speaking to one of the men of Ventry I asked him about how he feels about Irish being a dying language. He said it’s a shame that kids don’t want to learn it. Just like technology kids want what’s new and forget the old. Not everyone is like this, there are camps and schools to learn Irish here but in other cities there aren’t that many opportunities. Its sad that kids don’t care and that foreigners are more excited about learning Irish then our own kids are. What he said could represent the feeling of most people from his generation of Irish speakers.
Ireland’s Irish speakers have been fighting a long battle for equal access to state services. The Language Commissioner Seán Ó Cuirreáin, who has recently stepped down, has laid out the options pretty well, “to look back at Irish as our lost language, or forward with it as a core part of our heritage and sovereignty.” “It is with heavy hearts that the people of the Gaeltacht and the Irish-speaking community in general will approach the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising in two years time if our national language is to be merely a symbolic language that is pushed aside, marginalized and left in the halfpenny place in the life of this nation.”
Irish only seems to be spoken when Americans are around. The only time most people have spoken Irish since school has been around tourists, who are impressed by something most people actually dislike. Or, when you talk about strangers in their presence without them knowing.
In our unbelievable afternoon with Brenda Ní Shuailleabháin and the Bibeanna and men of Ventry I got to really listen to the Irish language. All of the Bibeanna and men of Ventry had stronger Irish than English and preferred Irish to English. In speaking to one of the men of Ventry I asked him about how he feels about Irish being a dying language. He said it’s a shame that kids don’t want to learn it. Just like technology kids want what’s new and forget the old. Not everyone is like this, there are camps and schools to learn Irish here but in other cities there aren’t that many opportunities. Its sad that kids don’t care and that foreigners are more excited about learning Irish then our own kids are. What he said could represent the feeling of most people from his generation of Irish speakers.