I think the Irish Language is Dead. In Ireland, we waste so much time as kids in school learning a language we never use! The Irish Language is not useful in this modern world, especially the way it is taught and used in the real world.

It would be so much better if Irish children could be taught something like French that they would actually use, after all, French is the official language of the EU. If you look at the people who come over to Ireland from Poland or the Czech Republic, their English is actually very good. I’m sure they can converse in English better than most Irish people could converse in French. WHY? Because in Ireland from the age of 4 to 12, Irish is drilled into kids, instead of a language they would actually use. It is at this age that children find it easier to learn a language – so why expect them to start learning French at the age of 13 when they start secondary school? It’s too late for them to be actually fluent – start them learning from a young age.

Irish – What a Terrible Language

Let’s look at some of the crap you learn as a child.

I left school with an Irish Vocabulary of about 10 words which included such classics as;

Also, what’s the story with this?
Take for example the phrase “Comhartha ar an mbus” – MBUS … is this some sort of Hanson song. MBus???
What sort of crappy language puts an M before a B ?? But I do jest in a way, I know many languages such as French add a letter in front of words to make them more pronounceable, but I find that this is not explained in schools. Thereby making Irish of no interest to students and without interest there is no longevity. Compare this with French, I loved French because on holidays you could use it. You can’t do that with Irish without going to a few square miles in Ring or Connemara where people speak it.

Irish, a Dead Language

I think they should get rid of the language and get the children of Ireland to speak a European language rather than a dead language. Nobody speaks it – unless you want to get rid of the kids and shove them off to an island for 3 months during the summer.

I wish we had a language we could be proud to use day to day, but we don’t, nobody really uses it! So stop hooking it up to a life support machine and leave it so that the children in Irish schools leave with a language they can really use. I know there are Gaelscoils but really at this stage nobody on the streets or in business is speaking Irish, so despite all the hatred this post has received from those who do want to speak it, I think it is too little too late. The education system failed us and now the Irish Language is Dead for all but a few. It is a shame, but it could have been prevented if the educators took some pride in the language and not had use learning poems which we didn’t even understand what we were saying.