Conference tallis::celt

1418.0. "Irish Resurgence?" by TALLIS::DARCY (Alpha Migration Tools) Mon Sep 26 1994 17:03

> Alt o/n New York Times (National Edition) 16 Mea/n Fo/mhair 1994
> 
>                 Gaelic Now Trips Off Ireland's Silver Tongues
>                            By James F. Clarity
> 
>         The Irish, who did so well mastering the tongue of their colonial
> English rulers, have begun to rediscover their own language, Gaelic --
> or, as it is called here, Irish.  It is a development that has not come
> overnight.
>         "It is fashionable now to speak Irish," said Deirdre Davitt, the
> deputy chief executive of Bord na Gaeilge, the Government agency that is
> fostering the revival.  "It's very far from a dying language."
>         In the 1300's, the Irish were forbidden to speak their own
> language in the presence of their English masters.  Later, parents urged
> their children to learn English to survive in an English-run economy.
>         After Ireland became independent in 1922, the tide started
> turning and by the 1950's Gaelic had become a required subject in
> school.  But most people were bored by studying Gaelic, which they
> considered useless commercially and which they associated with rustic
> poverty.  It remained the first language only in a few, mostly coastal,
> areas.
>         But now the Irish people, who have produced a large number of
> first-rate English-speaking writers and actors, are moving by the tens of
> thousands to rediscover their own tongue.
>         While only 75,000 of the 3.5 million people in this country, and
> a much smaller percentage of the 1.6 million in the British province of
> Northern Ireland, speak Gaelic as their first language, the number who
> are becoming fluent is growing steadily.  More than 100 public schools
> are conducted entirely in Gaelic, including 11 new ones opening this
> fall.  In other public schools in Ireland, students take about two hours
> a week of the language and must pass a test for a high-school diploma.
>         Spoken Irish is becoming trendy among young people.  Traditional
> Irish music groups are gaining new young fans; rock groups -- but not
> including Ireland's most famous, U2 -- have begun to sing the language.
> Middle-aged adults who hated Irish when they were in school are now
> taking night classes to catch up with their children.
>         "When I left school, it was not fashionable to speak it," Ms.
> Davitt said.  "Now, 20 years later, my friends regret they can't."
>         Ms. Davitt, who is fluent in Gaelic, said they new interest in it
> had come from young people of the Irish diaspora who have gone to Europe
> in recent years to study or seek work.
>         "When they went abroad most students learned that to express
> their identity the best way was to speak their own language," she said.
> "Otherwise, we were taken for English.  Physically, we could be English
> -- our skin, our hair.  The English we speak is not different, to
> foreigners."  The result, she said, was a rush to study Irish.
>         Ms. Davitt said that the Government, although drained by economic
> recession and unemployment, spends about $45 million a year to promote
> the use of the language.  And a plan is under way for an Irish-language
> television channel by 1996.  The plan is not without its critics, some of
> whom have written to newspapers and called in to radio talk shows to say
> the money would be better spent on police and roads.
>         Riobard MacGorain, a founder of Gael Linn, a private organization
> that runs language classes for adults, said enrollment was up by about 30
> percent in recent years and that 20,000 people now study the language in
> the summer.  "The Irish language enshrines our idea of ourselves, our
> experience," he said.
>         He noted that in the 19th century, children from Irish-speaking
> homes were made to wear "tally sticks" around their necks in school, a
> notch made in the stick for every time the child spoke in Irish that
> promised a punishment from the teacher at the end of the day.  "Parents
> would encourage it," he said.  "People deserted Irish.  The quicker the
> children learned English, the better."
>         The Gaelic language is of Celtic origin, a member of the
> Indo-European family.  It is a distant relative of English and German,
> closer to Welsh and Scottish, the Breton tongue of Brittany and the
> virtually extinct Manx of the Isle of Man.
>         Gaelic has given English a few good words: "uisce beatha" (water
> of life) produced "whisky"; "bean si" (a female fairy) made "banshee,"
> and "go leor" (lots of) gave "galore."
>         Kim Ni Ruairc, an official of Gael Linn, noted that the Irish
> work "magadh" is pronounced ma-GOO and means "silly" and that her parents
> used to tell her not to be a "Mr. Magoo," not referring to a cartoon
> squinter they had never heard of, but perhaps suggesting its origin.
>         At the Colaiste Raithin (Little Fort College) school in the town
> of Bray, 10 miles south of Dublin, Irish was in the air as the students
> returned from a summer where they admittedly had spoken a lot of
> English.  Teachers greeted them not with "Top o' the mornin'" -- which
> Irish consider an American attempt to be local learned from Barry
> Fitzgerald movies -- but with "Dia dhaoibh ar maidin," (DEE-ah khweev air
> MAH-din) or "God be with you in the morning."
>         Aisling Ni Ogain, a 15-year-old student whose first name means
> "poetic vision," said she found her knowledge of Gaelic useful on
> vacation trips to France and Germany: "You can talk about people and they
> don't understand what you're saying."
>         Another student, Hazel Niceoin, agreed, laughing, and added:
> "It's our own language.  English isn't really our language."
> 
> 

-- 
Craig Cockburn (pronounced "coburn"), Edinburgh, Scotland
Sgri\obh thugam 'sa Ga\idhlig ma 'se do thoil e.

There was a similar article in the Herald Tribune last week. I have
noticed it a lot among young Irish people in Geneva, more and more
of them speak Irish.

It is a great sign. I remember almost 14 years ago in Greece having
the pleasure to spend a weekend with 2 chaps, one from Dublin and
one from the Achill islands, we spent that weekend speaking in Irish.
We got many funny looks in the restaurants and on the bus.

Ren� (soon to be gone)