An tAos óg agus an Ghaeilge
May 13, 2013
Donncha Ó hÉallaithe moved from Dublin to Conamara 40 years ago. ‘It was Irish that lured me away from Dublin,’ he says in the current edition of beo.ie. But he continues: ‘But Irish has been greatly eroded since then …. Many young people are refusing to use Irish as their everyday language … They speak a strange mixture of English and Irish.’
And at the end of his article he asks: ‘What is the good of trying to save a language that has become so corrupted in the mouths of the last native speakers?’
It is obvious that the Irish of today’s speakers is not as rich as the Irish of the previous generation. But that can be said of any language. Ask a young English speaker what ‘replenishment’ means. Ask him what a wireless is. Everyday English vocabulary is now very limited. It is said that you can survive with 600 words in English. And I think you need only about one hundred words if you use the ‘f -’ word.
But why do young people give up Irish? Many don’t see it as a real language. We don’t even have a daily newspaper in Irish. You can get a job in the Civil Service, or a job as a teacher or as a guard with no Irish or with Irish that is not worth a damn.
Can Irish not be made realistic? Can the Dublin government not make bilingual labels and notices in shops compulsory, for instance? This is done in other countries. But on the other hand, we must remain hopeful.
Many children outside of the Gaeltacht are learning Irish. They use the language and they enjoy it. Education through Irish is going from strength to strength throughout the country except in the City of Culture and in Inis Eoghain, apparently. Numbers are low in the three Irish medium primary schools in Derry and the Gaelscoil in Buncrana is in danger. People around here should be asking themselves questions.
www.derryjournal.com
