Welsh scheint wesentlich gesünder zu sein als unsere Muttersprache. Warum ist das? Wie können wir die tägliche Nutzung der Iren als Gesellschaft verbessern?

Well.. there wasn’t an intentional famine (genocide) that could have been prevented with the help of England directed at the people of Wales.

We should start teaching it like a living language, not a stodgy academic subject. If we were really serious we’d spend 20 years gradually  shifting towards Irish as the spoken language in all schools. 

I meant a Welsh fella on a train before and we got talking about this. He reckoned Welsh was almost dying out 20-30 years ago but they made a big push and rethought how they taught it and it’s had a resurgence since. We should take note in Ireland.

tbf I’d rather have independence over a language any day of the week

The histories aren’t the same, Welsh didn’t suffer the same fate as Irish did before and after the famine. That, however, doesn’t change the fact that Wales has done a remarkable job of making the language popular again in the past 20 years. I honestly can’t see any change happening in Ireland, and I think it will get worse. We’re too reliant on our English speaking ability to attract multinationals for our job force, and we’ve become very Americanized culturally over the past 20 or 30 years that I just can’t anything ever improving.

I love the language and would love it to become our primary language again, so much or a culture is tied to its language, and we’ve lost a lot of it. But unfortunately, I’m pessimistic

The schools are better (just kind, fun places where you start in pre-school and you learn how to express yourself and be the kind of person you want to be in your community without worrying too much about national history or cultural identity), but there are also a decent number of jobs in those places where you need to speak Welsh for work. 

Imagine if there were a steady supply jobs in the Gaeltachtaí that would allow you to earn a decent living and have cheaper housing costs, and all you had to do was learn Irish and move in. That’s kinda what Welsh has. 

I’ll put aside all the usual arguments about its usefulness etc.

I’ve been reading buntus cainte and motherfocloir recently enough and admittedly it’s not really going in very much, but I haven’t spoken Irish (what little I have) to anyone.

Sometimes I think one of two things would happen if I did, the reaction would be confusion, or the reaction would be someone who does know Irish telling me it was terrible etc.

I don’t think I’m alone in that, park the fact people struggle to learn it etc for a moment, I do think there’s a number of people who don’t try it because we feel other Irish people can be quite judgy. Maybe it’s my own insecurity speaking.

I learnt more Irish in the Gaeltacht in y weeks over two summer than the 12 years of schooling remember at one point dreaming in Irish.

I hated the subject saw it as pointless and no reason to learn it. Honestly believe that’s because it’s taught as a second language, strict rules on tense and grammar. In reality if we want people to speak the language it has to be started full immersion at a young age.

I wish I could speak more now. Myself and my wife live abroad now and wish we could pass it to our kids, so are speaking what we can around him, he’s has a couple of bilingual friends that speak English and either gerrman/french/Italian/Indonesian, kids soak language up that young ages, those that can speak it should be speaking it at home to keep the language alive.

Welsh never came as close to dying out as Irish has. That helps. I also don’t believe we’ll ever improve daily usage, but if we do, it’ll be through changes to the education system. You’d need to pare it with an increase in public interest for the language though, so people would use it outside school too. I can’t really see it ever happening.

The Welsh took the soup, as it were. Irish was punished to stamp out catholics. Welsh converted, were less of a target.

I’ve spoken to a few hundred Irish people this summer and 95% of them will look at you funny if you try to speak in Irish, not talking about a proper conversation just a few words.

I live in Catalunya and worry about the future of Catalan but at least it’s still spoken and all public schools teach through Catalan, I won’t be teaching my kids Irish because they won’t be able to use it anyway when they visit Ireland. Unless massive changes are made it’s going to die out. People have the romantic idea that they will learn it one day but very very few would put the time, money and effort into becoming fluent. There should be heavily subsidised classes for adults and subsidies for content in Irish. TBH I don’t think the government give a damn and most of the population too.

Welsh is at it’s lowest point ever in terms of the proportion speaking it. It just never declined to the extent Irish did. There’s always been a reasonably healthy fluent population.

We kept our religion. They kept their language

I think the main difference that I have noticed; I’ve only heard Irish in educational or formal settings and people seem to relax into English, while in North Wales I’ve seen schoolchildren chatting and playing in Welsh, young men working on a car outside a house and talking in Welsh, little old ladies in shops gossiping and buying stuff all in Welsh. Right enough l, though I have lived in Ireland, I have never visited a Gaeltacht area and things might be similar there.

Oddly enough the place I heard most Irish being spoken as a living language was when I was being brought up in Glasgow during the 1960s, to the extent that in the 1980s when I went to adult language classes I found I knew words that I didn’t know I knew (if you know what I mean).