On the Oideas Gael message board, someone posted:
why do irish school children have to learn irish in school this language is dead and the time spent learning the language could be spent doing something worthwhile
I was amused by this response:
interesting question. Here’s why:
1 - Because it’s a beautiful language.
2 - Because it’s our language.
3 - Because it ain’t dead yet.
4 - Because I read a Nuala O Faolain article a couple of years ago that that many of Ireland’s leading business people are fluent Irish speakers and that speaking Irish enhances a young person’s cultural self-esteem, so they are therefore more likely to succeed in life.
5 - Because it’s very nourishing food for the growing brain.
6 - Because they’ll have a rich sense of history, which is important for having a rich sense of self.
7 - So they’ll know the origins of local place-names.
8 - So they’ll be able to explain to non-Irish people exactly why we tend to say “I’m after talking to him” instead of “I’ve just talked to him.”
9 - So they’ll be able to understand and perhaps make alot of traditional music.
10- So they’ll know that Garda Siochana means Guards of the peace and not “shockin’ guards”.
11- So they’ll be able to speak to their distant Irish speaking ancestors when they get to heaven.
12- So they’ll be able to make lots of money teaching the language to earnest Americans.
13- So they can dazzle foreigners with the peculiarities of eclipsis, lenition and the genitive case and then make Irish seem even more difficult than it already is, therefore feel very brainy and have self-esteem boosted even furthur.
14- So they’ll be able to understand the cartoons on TG4.
15- So they’ll be trendy as Celtic Irishness is all the rage the world over these days.
16- So they’ll be able to have discussions with intensely serious Nordic intellectuals who speak near fluent Irish as a ninth language.
17- So if they ever become Mormons they’ll be able to carry out the posthumous baptisms of their distant Irish speaking ancestors in their native tongue.
18- If they ever become involved in crime aboad police there will have less chance of understanding them via bugging etc.
19- They’ll be able to read Beo.
20- They’ll learn to respect lesser spoken languages and perhaps also be more sensitive to other cultures than the monoglot speakers of the big “bulldoser languages.”
21- They’ll be able to experience the world more colourfully and variously than monoglots do.
22- Finally, it is a fact that knowing a second language makes learning other languages much easier.
Slán
Donal
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