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DoChara's Ireland Blog
Random Writings about Ireland and the Irish
Wednesday
June 29 2005
Buying Irish
Irish language enthusiasts have had cause to celebrate in the last while. There is the business with all the signposts in many of the busiest tourist destinations going monolingual, and the rise and rise of the Gaelscoileanna, [say: gale-skull-enna], schools which teach entirely through the Irish language.
But all is not well with the language and these things are not evidence of an increasingly vibrant language on the up and up but are bucking a trend. Irish (which is never called Gaelic by the way, that's the language a few people in Scotland speak) is a compulsory subject in all schools here, taught from the age of 5 until school leaving, at 16-18 years old.
Yet in the 2002 census only just over 40% of people were recorded as being able to speak Irish, with the percentage peaking during school years and falling away rapidly after that. But only a quarter of that number used it on a daily basis, less than 10% overall, again highest at school-going age.
Even in the Gaeltacht areas, where Irish is supposedly the first language, a whopping 40% did NOT use it on a daily basis. The question about usage did not ask how much you used Irish, just if you used it daily. So if you were in the habit of using a word or two here and there, you would be ok answering yes. I believe you can take it that the number of people for whom it is an important means of communication is very small indeed.
So if pretty much everyone had tuition in it for 10 years at least, but hardly anyone uses it, what went wrong? Imagine Irish as a product you are selling to students and come at it from a marketing perspective. This is how I think it would be seen:
- It has classic but dull packaging, which has not been changed much in years (textbooks)
- It comes with really complicated instructions, sometimes written in a language you don't speak, that you must understand before you can use it (grammar)
- There a loads of people who own it but few who ever bother to use it (not in daily use, mostly)
- You are forced to buy it, even if it doesn't interest you, before you are allowed to choose any other product (compulsory vs elective)
- Some people are very enthusiastic about it, but they are rarely glamorous, rich or cool (lack of role models)
- You hate it, cannot make it work but are forced to keep trying (compulsion again}
- You know that once you leave the store you will never need it and will probably never use it, unless you go into the business of selling it (ie teaching) (not in daily use)
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