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The Daltaí Boards » Archive: 2005- » 2005 (May-June) » Archive through May 08, 2005 » The 'Irish' 'Independant' oxymoran « Previous Next »

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Jax
Unregistered guest
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Posted on Saturday, April 30, 2005 - 01:11 pm:   Edit Post Print Post

The Sato Review has a story on Galway County Council restrictions on non-Gaelige speakers moving into the Gaeltact. It focuses on Spiddal. Been a Sir Anthony O’ Westbrit paper, it declines to ask any locals of their opinions, only blow-ins of unsupporting nature.
The article states that 70% (as per the census) are Irish speakers. This might be a dubious figure, as Spiddal is suburb of Galway, and no part of Galway is 70% Irish speaking.

Anyway, it details how that since 30% are non-native, the conservation policy will stipulate that 70% of incomers and residents are fluent in Irish. Odd policy. Imagine and alien whisks you away, alters your genetics, and when you escape and get onto the Federation star ship, you ask not to be reverted back to been human, only that they do not alter any more of your genetics. Galway Council seems to want to hold the situation static, in the name of conservation, while de facto giving support to the process that created the need for conversation in the first place.

One (unnamed) developer then is quoted drawing similarities to Arab fundamentalist regimes, while not mentioning that apart from scenery the main reason land prices are high there is that it has cache from been culturally distinct. What he really means is that he is a bloodsucker, and has an arrogant disregard for the place.

Next we have Brendan Biggins, the local hardware store owner, who cannot now buy a house to settle in due to not been a native speaker (does the law not require 'fluent', not 'native'?). He “would be all for the language”. He rounds off by saying, “Irish is thriving in places where people want to speak it, but if you tell them they have no choice but to speak it, you end up turning them off”. Really? Fine piece of (Hiberno-) Irish duplicity. ‘We’re all for it’, just don’t ask us to do anything about it. He is forcing people to do business in English with him, but proports to support the community culture.

The law is not proposing forcing anyone to speak Irish, but by insisting on boundaries with the majority culture it hopes to empower the local culture by controlling access to property and dwelling.

Next up is some English frigger, who obviously came to Ireland thinking Irish people were sweet and meek, and who does not like this directive one little bit, stating it is “akin to racism”. (She should know all about it. There’s a good chance her family got in a lots of practice with taunts of ‘Paddy’, ‘N*****r’ and 'P***i’ in England of the 60’s and 70’s). She goes on to add, “this would cause uproar in England”. In other words, if the denizens of the Home Counties were not allowed to price the locals out of their homes in Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, or the Lake District, then there would be poetical action to make sure that les provincials got back into line. Paddy should do the same.

The article finishes with another unnamed quote stating [that] "it is only a matter of time before Galway County Council is hauled before the European courts on this issue”, adding “This is a basic human right –the right to speak one’s language of choice, free from discrimination”. I notice no mention of how their ‘expression of rights’ bowdlerises cainteoirí dúchais out of the picture; another example of ‘exclusive rights/general power’ syndrome, where a law is only as good as how much exclusive access it grants to one section of the community.

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Daisy
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Posted on Saturday, April 30, 2005 - 08:47 pm:   Edit Post Print Post

That's not Hiberno duplicity, Jax, The surest way to set an Irishman against something is to tell him he MUST do it. If the government forbid the language the whole country would soon be liofa.

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Antaine
Member
Username: Antaine

Post Number: 318
Registered: 10-2004


Posted on Saturday, April 30, 2005 - 09:12 pm:   Edit Post Print Post

You know...over here in the US the surest way to get a program to fail is to increase government participation in it. i wonder if the irish government cut all funding for it a host of private foundations with more insight and motivation might take its place to greater effect.

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Rath
Member
Username: Rath

Post Number: 20
Registered: 01-2004


Posted on Saturday, April 30, 2005 - 11:36 pm:   Edit Post Print Post

There is still room - but please just call Ethel Brogan first if you would like to attend - see contact info at this link: http://www.daltai.com/events.htm

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Cailindoll
Member
Username: Cailindoll

Post Number: 66
Registered: 12-2004
Posted on Sunday, May 01, 2005 - 06:34 am:   Edit Post Print Post

Daltaí weekends are a perfect example of a place where there is no government funding or deontas program and people are often on waiting lists to get in to the weekends. If you've never had the opportunity to attend one, you should consider it! There are usually at least 80 people at the Esopus events, and between 80-100 at many of them, right, Rath? There's no pressure for anyone to attend these weekends, just a gang of people having a great time as Gaeilge. Ethel-Abu!
: )

Colleen

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Jax
Unregistered guest
Posted From:
Posted on Monday, May 02, 2005 - 11:19 am:   Edit Post Print Post

Antaine agus cairde eile,
ya gov involvement means strictures, not appropriate rules. If there was a stipulation that a sun dial had to be set up and a shot fired into the air , every hour, on the hour in order to facilitate Irish (as irrational as it sounds) then that is what would be done. The parallels between a machine and the civil service are compelling in my view...

It is easier to make up rules that are held in every instance than to get down to actualy doing something. Irish is not the only case. Health, managment, policing...one could go one. Interfere with the people of the gaeltact is much easier that improving Irish in their own districts.

There is no doubt the inclusion of govenment is a hinderance, as most of its managment is politically installed, and have no leadership experience. Budget, planning, implentation...are foreign words to public 'servants' in Ireland. In fact, I would say it is the private sector that is serving the public sector.

It is as if they are all beggars, but to deflect this fact, complex rituals of hiring, goverment departments etc are invented. The reality is that privante enterprise creates wealth, and a lot of it is stolen by the greedy and incompetent public sector who are too useless to manage on their own. Apply any facets of this model to language and community, and the results are not pretty.

Private comapnies can create a desire (thru advertising) or meet/service existing ones, or even unearth by taking chances, new markets not previously seen. Companies set up to service gaeilgeoirí with no goverment involvement would be inestimatly better. Real money would be spent, and real results achieved. Besides, if enough galltacht gaeilgeoirí were united economically their power with natives would represent a larger voting bloc than the split up Gaeltachtaí do now. The pity for the cainteoírí duchais si that thye do not have a whole district to themsleves. If one Jacky Healy Ray could extract so much for Kerry with one seat, 2 or 3 in a united population could decide governments in certain minority goverment situations.

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Antaine
Member
Username: Antaine

Post Number: 319
Registered: 10-2004


Posted on Monday, May 02, 2005 - 02:32 pm:   Edit Post Print Post

neither private companies nor the government are the solution.

groups such as daltaí, a kind of "grassroots" movement is what I was getting at.

companies won't care because there's not enough money to be had in it. the government is too unwieldy and mismanaged. Half a dozen "Daltaís" the the gaeltacht (or even just one) could do far more good than both private enterprise and government combined...

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Jax
Unregistered guest
Posted From:
Posted on Monday, May 02, 2005 - 07:23 pm:   Edit Post Print Post

Antaine,
I realise from re-reading my answer that it was sort of like the PD's going '"privatisation!" here, "privatisation" there!' as a pancea for all ills.

I was kinda getting at what would be summed up as 'grassroots' too, only that in our contemporary life, it if it were big enough might have commericial implications as such peoples would need services tailored to them. Grassroots seems to be the way, as in an age with no discernable leadership, temporal or spiritual, prepared to push required changes, national or international, the ground level will have to provide for its own needs, whatever needs they may be.

The last bit was saying that if since 1922, large tracts of Connacht or Munster were gaelic only, then votes and therefore monies would have been invested in those areas, due to natural polical clout. Of course, the demographics were not as such for such a manifestation to occur.

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Antaine
Member
Username: Antaine

Post Number: 322
Registered: 10-2004


Posted on Monday, May 02, 2005 - 10:00 pm:   Edit Post Print Post

Right. Gaeilge does not have the population numbers to be attractive either politically or for profit. Grassroots, non-profit organizations who are not looking for money and whose only desire is the spread of the language are its only hope.

I see gaeilge as a vital part of the European (and therefore American) patrimony. I really believe that if not for the actions of the Irish in preserving history and technology the Dark Ages would have lasted much longer than they did.

Ireland's act of re-spreading Christianity to the newly formed barbarian kingdoms that dismantled the Western Empire helped in that each of those kingdoms would have fallen one by one to the Islamic onslaught that conquered Spain and pushed into France had they not been united under the banner of Christianity (they were disunited in everything else) and had Greco-Roman military theory preserved. If that happened, the democratic legacy of Greece and Rome would have been overwritten with an oppressive theocracy, altering the course of history and civilization forever.

Greece began, and Rome continued a notion of 'citizen' that was unique in the world. The modern Western states have built upon that. All the progress we have made in the rights of the individual, citizenship, government accountability etc would have never come to be had it not been for a literate Ireland...the world has Gaeilge to thank for that, and seems willing to stand by and watch it die...

It is a language with great potential, and viability, but is simply being mismanaged into oblivion.



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