I am of Irish Decent! Although i was born and raised in America, i do posess a Celtic pride in my heritage. My people on my mother's side came here in 1751 from Cookstown, Northern Ireland. they were four brothrs and their families and all settled in New Jersey. The People on my father's side came from the County Cork area.
The situation with the surviving Celtic tongues is not at all hopeless. As far as making them cumpulsory in primary school and optional in secondary school is not going to fix the problem. When they started to prevent the language from declining the government enacted several laws that affronted the Irish people and they refused to use Irish even if they knew it. Which caused an even more declination of Irish.
My proposal to reviving the Language is to change every last sign in Ireland to Irish, all newspapers and periodicals should be printed in Irish, ALL Radio and Telivision show should be broadcast in the Irish language and Irish should be taught in ALL schools, not just special schools with waiting lists. OR SIMPLY THEY SHOULD GIVE UP THERE INDEPENDANCE AND MERGE WITH ENGLAND AND BECOME ENGLISH AND FORGET ABOUT THE CELTIC HERITAGE AND CULTURE AND LANGUAGE ALLTOGETHER AND BECOME THOUROUGHLY ENGLISH IF THEY WISH TO REFUSE TO SPEAK IRISH AND PREFER TO SPEAK ENGLISH!!!
In other words, give up, the english have been trying to anglisize the irish for hundreds of years but, your ancestors resisted, maybe they were stronger in their celtic pride than today's generation, they seem to take it as an insult to their heritage of england trying to anglisize them and make them english when in fact they were Irish, outlawing Irish language, culture and dress and history....my own country fought the English and won their independance, or we would probably be speaking British English today, but, that is a far stretch considering the variety of cultures and tongues and the way they spoke english that settled here that caused the development of the American English. But, then again, the question is would the same people have moved here if the english to this day still owned America? Maybe in the latter scenario we would in fact still be speaking Bitish English...but, i think, due to the American Revolution, we were able to develop and flourish....our own culture and our own style of English......think about it.
Back to the Irish,....If i were an Irishman in Ireland, due to what the English were doing for centuries, i would refuse to speak ENGLISH, not IRISH, i would consider my refusal to speak English as a statement to the effect that you English unsuccessfully tried to defeat us for centuries and cause my language and culture to go into extinction....YOU FAILED!!!
I still speak Irish and dress Irish and live and breath Irish.....YOU FAILED!!!
The English considered the Irish as beasts and subhuman, deserving of no respect, I can imagine the English chuckling to themselves and saying, "it took centuries, but, we finally did it, we wiped the Irish out, maybe not phiscally, but, spiritually and Nationally and cuturally...in all intents and purposes, they are now at last ENGLISH, they speak our language and dress like us and live as we do.....we have finally civilized them........"...........Remember, the English did the same thing to the American Indian, they succeeded in wiping out whole tribes and languages despite the fact that Sequoia of the Chrokee successfully converted his people into "civilized" people who lived in houses and farmed and basically lived as the english......but, the english still would rather wipe them out and posess their land than mingle with them......from what i've seen in history, it seems the English are habitual offenders of Peoples and their cultures and languages......in other words, they have a long history of doing to other cultures what they did to the Irish and American Indians.
The English seem to be like a biker gang knocking on my front door and telling me they need a place to sleep and being civil i invite them in and after a few days they are acting like it is their house and not mine and i decide to stand my ground and say something and they just hit me in the face and say that i either become like them or they will kill me and my whole family.......so what do i do?......i would kill them to protect my family and way of life in my own household.
The Irish should do the same thing, except for the killing part, they should state that this is IRELAND not ENGLAND we speak IRISH here not ENGLISH,.....hence the name IRELAND, get it???
Irish is just as usefull a language as any other language in the world. It is a beautiful and rich language and when you think about it, the grammer and sentence structures make sense...like a cold being on you not having a cold....think about it a cold is "on" your body and in your body, you are not holding it in your hands as the word to "have" would denote. Plus it is one of the most Ancient languges of Europe that is still ALIVE today......IF YOUR IRISH, SPEAK IRISH! don't let the bastards win!!!
Where is your Irish PRIDE!?
Well, I've said my piece......probably won't do any good.
The situation with the surviving Celtic tongues is not at all hopeless. As far as making them cumpulsory in primary school and optional in secondary school is not going to fix the problem. When they started to prevent the language from declining the government enacted several laws that affronted the Irish people and they refused to use Irish even if they knew it. Which caused an even more declination of Irish.
My proposal to reviving the Language is to change every last sign in Ireland to Irish, all newspapers and periodicals should be printed in Irish, ALL Radio and Telivision show should be broadcast in the Irish language and Irish should be taught in ALL schools, not just special schools with waiting lists. OR SIMPLY THEY SHOULD GIVE UP THERE INDEPENDANCE AND MERGE WITH ENGLAND AND BECOME ENGLISH AND FORGET ABOUT THE CELTIC HERITAGE AND CULTURE AND LANGUAGE ALLTOGETHER AND BECOME THOUROUGHLY ENGLISH IF THEY WISH TO REFUSE TO SPEAK IRISH AND PREFER TO SPEAK ENGLISH!!!
In other words, give up, the english have been trying to anglisize the irish for hundreds of years but, your ancestors resisted, maybe they were stronger in their celtic pride than today's generation, they seem to take it as an insult to their heritage of england trying to anglisize them and make them english when in fact they were Irish, outlawing Irish language, culture and dress and history....my own country fought the English and won their independance, or we would probably be speaking British English today, but, that is a far stretch considering the variety of cultures and tongues and the way they spoke english that settled here that caused the development of the American English. But, then again, the question is would the same people have moved here if the english to this day still owned America? Maybe in the latter scenario we would in fact still be speaking Bitish English...but, i think, due to the American Revolution, we were able to develop and flourish....our own culture and our own style of English......think about it.
Back to the Irish,....If i were an Irishman in Ireland, due to what the English were doing for centuries, i would refuse to speak ENGLISH, not IRISH, i would consider my refusal to speak English as a statement to the effect that you English unsuccessfully tried to defeat us for centuries and cause my language and culture to go into extinction....YOU FAILED!!!
I still speak Irish and dress Irish and live and breath Irish.....YOU FAILED!!!
The English considered the Irish as beasts and subhuman, deserving of no respect, I can imagine the English chuckling to themselves and saying, "it took centuries, but, we finally did it, we wiped the Irish out, maybe not phiscally, but, spiritually and Nationally and cuturally...in all intents and purposes, they are now at last ENGLISH, they speak our language and dress like us and live as we do.....we have finally civilized them........"...........Remember, the English did the same thing to the American Indian, they succeeded in wiping out whole tribes and languages despite the fact that Sequoia of the Chrokee successfully converted his people into "civilized" people who lived in houses and farmed and basically lived as the english......but, the english still would rather wipe them out and posess their land than mingle with them......from what i've seen in history, it seems the English are habitual offenders of Peoples and their cultures and languages......in other words, they have a long history of doing to other cultures what they did to the Irish and American Indians.
The English seem to be like a biker gang knocking on my front door and telling me they need a place to sleep and being civil i invite them in and after a few days they are acting like it is their house and not mine and i decide to stand my ground and say something and they just hit me in the face and say that i either become like them or they will kill me and my whole family.......so what do i do?......i would kill them to protect my family and way of life in my own household.
The Irish should do the same thing, except for the killing part, they should state that this is IRELAND not ENGLAND we speak IRISH here not ENGLISH,.....hence the name IRELAND, get it???
Irish is just as usefull a language as any other language in the world. It is a beautiful and rich language and when you think about it, the grammer and sentence structures make sense...like a cold being on you not having a cold....think about it a cold is "on" your body and in your body, you are not holding it in your hands as the word to "have" would denote. Plus it is one of the most Ancient languges of Europe that is still ALIVE today......IF YOUR IRISH, SPEAK IRISH! don't let the bastards win!!!
Where is your Irish PRIDE!?
Well, I've said my piece......probably won't do any good.