I am a speaker of Irish, and would love to see it more in use in everyday Ireland.

For the “rammed down our throats in school” argument, I feel that this Ireland-wide argument is some kind of excuse that everyone likes to lean on. I don’t hear it about French. I don’t hear it about English poetry. Neither for accountancy, history, geography, maths, etc, etc, etc.

People should stop using an excuse, and do something to learn and use the language in their daily lives. You’re no longer in school, get over it.

But there’s a catch. As Paddy said, he has not emotional or spiritual connection with the language. In other words feels no personaly connection with it. Nothing to do with him. In that case, why should someone want to learn/use the language? You have no reason to want to do something in which you have no interest.

I’m busy writing pornographic stories in an old-fashioned Ulster Irish. As soon as I get them published with explicit illustrations, I think people like you will change your mind.

“We are the most numerous ethnic group, hence we should be granted more rights, like, for instance, the right to use our mother tongue in offices”

Allegedly he is trying to spearhead a campaign to have Polish considered the 3rd official language of Ireland.

Which, if it transpired, would leave me in a bizarrely ironic situation where I would know more Polish than Irish.

I understand the points you make MacKozer and acknowledge it must seem bizarre for people like yourself. Panu and Keith generally touch on points which go to the core of why Irish is not widely spoken.

I think there is only 2 or 3 people in my extended family, which has about 50 members, who speak Irish. None of 4 brothers, one sister, mother, father or I speak Irish. I have absolutely no emotional or spiritual connection the language - the only memory I have when I think of my Irish education were the assholes who tried to ram it down my throat in school. I was anti-authoriatarian from a young age so there approach didn’t help. But I think the key issue boiled down to nobody in family really giving a fuck whether I learned it or not.

Very few people from my primary and secondary school had parents rich enough to send their kids off for the summer to learn Polish in a summer school. I and many others like me, and I would suggest we don’t regret it a bit, worked at shitty jobs like turning turf in the bog or washing boats, etc. all throughout our summer breaks. I’m not trying to give a class analysis of the difficulties that face Irish society in terms of ensuring each and every child has the best possible oportunity to fully appreciate their native language, but my experience from the midlands of Ireland is that an elect few were able to grow enjoying the language. The rest of learned to detest it’s every sinew and bone -even though we knew little or nothing of it to hate, but those who represented the language in our daily lives were just sheer elitist, domineering bags of horse dung.

Jaysus, just look at the venom I’ve spouted out here. I evidently need counselling to resolve my issues with the Irish language and those who tried to teach me.

There’s hope for it yet, but I seriously doubt it’ll ever have the prestige it once had.