Re: Gaelic thing

Joe:
> > I take it she lives in Ireland.  She must have not notice the fact
> > that kids are forced to learn it in schools, surely....
Keith:
> It doesn't help. Take it from me - I've been through the Irish
> education system and the last thing it instills is a love of the
> language.
I've wondered about that. It always amazed me how people could study
(whether voluntarily or involuntarily) a language throughout their
education and emerge at the other end not being able to speak it. Even
if it's a subject you have no interest in and is forced upon you, one
would think there'd at least be a minimum level each year a student had
to attain in order to proceed to the next level, just as with math,
English, etc. I've heard stories, though, about Irish classes in schools
where there was one Irish class containing both beginners and native
speakers, and so on, so maybe it's all just horrendously disorganised
and mismanaged. I don't know.

> > Scots Gaelic, OTOH, is dying out.
> So too, sadly, is Irish.
Yes -- I've heard several Irish scholars say that, despite the inflated
numbers that appear on Irish censuses, the actual number of
native/fluent Irish speakers who use the language as their everyday
medium of communication is somewhere in the range of 30,000 - 60,000.
The same, or less, as the number of Scottish Gaelic speakers in
Scotland.

Thomas