Polish is Ireland's Second Language

essjay

essjay

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There you go. 50% more people in Ireland speak Polish on a regular basis than speak Irish. And only 27,000 more people speak Irish than French.

Should Irish still be compulsory? Do we need road signs in Irish to satisfy 1.8% of the population?

I'd say no to both..... The language is a pain in the hole....
 
essjay said:
There you go. 50% more people in Ireland speak Polish on a regular basis than speak Irish. And only 27,000 more people speak Irish than French.

Should Irish still be compulsory? Do we need road signs in Irish to satisfy 1.8% of the population?

I'd say no to both..... The language is a pain in the hole....
Click to expand...

Don't know, being a plastic paddy does not give me much say. It might be a pain in the hole and most kids forget it straight after school, but being a bilingual person myself I would say it should stay.
Wish I could speak it myself but would choose another language as my thrid language first...
 
It's in the constitution and be very careful what you give/trow away and I'm mots Galegor JJH
 
I used to think Irish was only used as a way to get thick cnuts into the Civil service:eek

BF.
 
My kids went to a gael school and are fluent in swiss, irish and english.....they want to talk english because they don't want to be different, they want to be understood.
:beerjug:
 
My personal opinion is that if you were to learn a second language it would be one of value. Spanish or Chinese. Irish is fuck all good to the majority of people once you've done the leaving cert. Why force the language during school years when it's next to useless for the rest of your life? (I feel the same way about religion in schools btw)
 
We say potato.......

You think you guys have problems......We're in Scotland in East Lothian but have a Berwickshire address because we're on the county border.

Berwickshire is in Scotland but named after Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland, England.

You cross the border a few miles north of Berwick on the A1 from Northumberland, England into Berwickshire, scotland and what do you see..........?:nenau

A great big kick arse 'Fuallta Gu Alba' sign in Scot's gaelic welcoming you to Scotland:blast

Berwickshire's second language is also Polish due to it's wartime Polish army connections in Duns and also it's recent migrant agricultural work population.


FP.
 
Poland

I suppose in a generation or when Poland gets on its feet economically, English could be the chosen language after the migrants And or their children return home?
Bf
 
Difficult one. Practicality v culture. At least they've got rid of Latin. And don't let anyone tell you Latin is a great basis for Italian, Spanish etc.
 
More useful to learn Polish then... learning Irish in school seems a complete waste of time me. I been living in Ireland more or less 30 years (originally English with Irish + Welsh grandparents) - the only times I've heard Irish spoken was when some pissed dick head thought it would be clever to speak Irish to the foreigner (me).
My eldest son did Junior cert through Irish due to the promise of more points when he did the Leaving cert... he was pretty good at the language. Come the Leaving cert year the option of continuing to do the syllabus through Irish was dropped so he had start doing all subjects through English - and didn't get the promised extra points. He did OK - despite all that bullshit...
But then I did Latin at school as mentioned above :rolleyes:
 
Agree and disagree... sort of.

:blagblah

I can see where you're coming from Essjay but is anything we learn in school directly relevant to what we end up doing in later life? It's not as if any of us left school set up for life with nothing left to learn.
It definitely wasn't a waste of time for me though.

One of my criticisms about the Irish education system is that it is too specific. I think we need to learn how to learn. Maybe the subjects should be just vehicles for that.
Things are moving so fast these days that by the time some subjects are learned they're likely to be out of date. The french I learned in school 30 years ago now seems pompous and formal and I doubt that there's many teachers able to keep up with current I.T. Of course we could make Polish a compulsory language but would that be relevant in 10 or 20 years either?
Some of the finest scientific minds learning only Greek and Latin in school?

On balance I think we should leave the Irish as a compulsory language (mayb e it's easy for me to say as I didn't do it in school) but I wouldn't be too bother if it wasn't.

F.
 
I can't see what practical use Irish is so I tend to think it's a waste of time learning it, but I remember one time being in a pub in Wales and there was 3 lads in their early 20's speaking Welsh and having a right old conversation. It wasn't done for effect either, it was obviously just the language they were very comfortable in, and I thought it was great that tradition was being preserved. Maybe practicality isn't the be all and end all:-)
 
beatmeier said:
My kids went to a gael school and are fluent in swiss, irish and english.....they want to talk english because they don't want to be different, they want to be understood.
:beerjug:
Click to expand...

Hi - I'm hope this doesn't come across as a smartarse question - it is genuine interest - but what language do you consider 'swiss' to be?
 
to be fair there are 4 languages... the one I speak is what is commonly thought to be german but it isn't quite correct. It is a germanic language but we use tonnes of different vocabulary and we construct the sentences in a simpler;) way. Unfortunately there is almost no written "" Swiss"" but we speak it all day in many dialects.
 
FatFergie said:
On balance I think we should leave the Irish as a compulsory language (mayb e it's easy for me to say as I didn't do it in school) but I wouldn't be too bother if it wasn't.
Click to expand...

I don't think for a second that we should teach Polish as the compulsory language but what about Spanish?

How many students head off after college and end up in South America? With flights cheaper these days, surely more Irish travel to Spain on holidays than to France? 2.5 times more people in the world speak Spanish than French. Then again, 2 times more people speak Mandarin than Spanish.

So much time in school is dedicated to Irish, I think it's criminal. I can't think of a more useless subject in school (besides religion) that get's so many taught hours.

I think school years should be about giving kids a foundation of knowledge. In that foundation, surly a widely used foreign language is more useful than Irish. I was in Norway recently and 5 year old kids could speak English. How useful will that knowledge potentially be for them in 20 years. It will surely open doors for them job wise if they wish to work internationally.

I just had a look and there are 183 days in a primary school year. Multiply that by 8 (infants 1 & 2, class 1 - 6) and that's 1464 days. Assuming 30 minutes a day on average for Irish that add's up to 732 hours of taught Irish. Assume the same for religion and that's a hell of a lot of time wasted.
 
I did live in Ireland for about 12 years and I know a few people at my work learnt Irish at school, but I don't think I heard anyone speaking it instead of English until you get into the Galway/Connemara area.

I realise the Irish want to retain the language as part of their culture and I think the language is necessary if you wish to work in the Civil Service or as a teacher, etc.

However, from a practical point of view, I certainly wouldn't want my children wasting their time learning any language with such limited use. Far more useful to learn the main European languages, or perhaps Chinese or Japanese.

Scottish Gaelic is not mandatory in Scottish schools and preference is given to French or German as a second or third language. Again, you have to be in the Skye, Hebrides areas to hear much Gaelic being spoken.

Grey Beard
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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