Re: Ms. Gunn

From: Abrigon Gusiq [mailto:abrigon@YAHOO.COM]

> Sounds like she is one of my cousins, who are so into
> nationalism, that they have gone over the top. Visited
> Northern Ireland some years ago, and I hope the US never
> ever gets that bad..
She's not a nationalist, she's just an over zealous Gaeilgeoir.
That kind of Gaeilgeoir is the kind of person who puts people
off the language and does more harm than good.

> Me, raised Catholic, my grandather married a german/scot/english
> protestant. So there is hope for Ireland one day.
Well, the Republic is quite a bit different from the North. Aside
from the fact that a lot of Irish people still define themselves
by the fact that they're not English, the Republic is somewhat
more mature as a nation in that it doesn't define itself by it's
internal power struggles like the North does. Because the South
has been relatively peaceful since the foundation of the Free
State, it's had a chance to find it's feet as a country.

Most Irish people look at the North with a sense of annoyance -
you wouldn't believe the number of people who'd like to detach
it from the rest of the island and set it adrift out in the
middle of the Atlantic. The English feel much the same way in
general.

> This all does bring up a topic, when a language becomes so entrenched
> that it will not change. But change is a natural thing. So the rise of
> an alternate lingo that is used by people in their homes, but the
> official one is used out in the open. For to not use the official can
> bring about Death.
Gaelic is dying in Ireland because there's no fostering of a love of
the language. That's the plain and simple truth. No Unified Gaelic
would help to rectify it's decline. The only thing that could possibly
help the language is do what was done in Israel and Wales. That, and
stopping shoving the language down the throats of children. Most
people learn languages because they're either useful or fun. To most
schoolchildren, Irish is neither.

There is a composite Gaelic used - it's called Irish. It's a composite
of the three divergent dialects in the country: Munster, Connacht and
Ulster Gaelic. It doesn't really sound like any of the others and
doesn't have their character by any stretch, but it works well enough.
For somebody like me who's from Sligo and has heard what can only be
described as a bastard mix of Ulster and Connacht Irish since he was
a kid, living here in Cork and hearing the dialect down here - to me
it seems totally alien.

If Gaelic dies, it won't be because of a lack of unification efforts,
it'll be because nobody cares anymore.

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