Why do you like other languages? Why do you want to learn another language?

The whole appeal of a different language for me is that one can't understand what a person is saying -- while others can.

Take dialects for example... yes they're slightly different languages, but the differences aren't so great so as to render what we hear unintelligible -- I can understand an American just fine, or an Australian, or a Jamaican. My ear might need a bit of fine tuning, but I can understand the person.

But then there's completely different other languages. No matter how much I concentrate and strain my ear, I won't understand a Japanese person, or a French person, or a Polish person, or an Iraqi person.

This is the whole appeal of languages to me... that is, if you know a certain language, you can understand what a certain group of people are saying -- but more importantly than that, there's a whole group people that just don't understand what you're saying... and I like that!

Take, for instance, one of the new Irish advertisements on television; there's two early-twenties women siting in a café speaking Irish to each other, and they seem to think that nobody else in the café can understand them, so they speak freely to each other on whatever topic tickles their fancy (sex, white supremacy, communism, their latest burglury, etc.). A man sits down beside them... the two women look at each other and say:

Ó... tá sé te!
An-deas

I can't remember exactly what they're saying, but basically they're just saying how attractive they find him. Then he says:

Siúcra, le do thoil

asking them to pass the sugar, and they realise that he understood everything they said. They look at each other slightly puzzled and shocked, and he interjects:

Leanaigí ar aghaidh

Then they all laugh about it.

Anyway... one recent phenomenon that irritates me is people using English words while speaking Irish, as it erodes the "exclusiveness" of the language.

You don't have to be Einstein to decipher "Tá sorry orm", or "Beidh mé ag babysiteáil"... but then ask a Brittish person to decipher:

Tá brón orm.
Beidh mé a tabhairt aire don pháiste.

Not a hope of them figuring that one out!

Maybe I'm alone in my perogative, but I'd have absolutely no interest in the Irish language if everyone could understand me. That's why I'll use words like "cuisneoir" instead of "fridge", and "srónbheannach" instead of "rhinocerros".

Beatha teanga í a fholú!

Ah well maybe Irish is not the language for you. Give it twenty years and everyone will be speaking it. :)

For me it is the access to other cultures that is important.

It is also a question of politeness or rather courtesy.

Some thoughts on that here:
http://aonghus.blogspot.com/2005/12/buochas-sneach.html

For me it's about communication and different systems of thought. You can see the different thoughts of different cultures through their word choice and speech patterns...or at least I like to think you can.

That being said though, I love going places where I can't understand a word that's being said. I like being able to listen to languages without getting hung up on what is actually being said. You notice more the tone and feel of the language that way. Once I learn a language, it loses some of its romance, because then I only hear the meaning and not the tone and cadence. The closest analogy I can think of is that learning a language changes it from music to poetry.

I think the appeal for me is what you say, Fear Na Mbróg, combined also with what Aonghus speaks of. It's probably a combination of many things, all involving communication. I don't learn a language to read its literature, that's for certain. I do it to communicate and learn from others' experiences and cultures.

That commerical sounds like an interesting, humourous promotional approach. I'd love to see it! Although it can certainly be rude at times to speak another language, it's certainly fun knowing others can't understand you. I was at a basketball game the other night with two Japanese friends. We were booing the other team in Japanese, as my friends kept commenting about how good looking all the players were *rolls eyes*. I asked them what if one of the people around us understood Japanese and we all laughed and laughed about it.

I think a language can definitely lose its appeal when you get caught up in studying it, vs. practicing communicating with the language. That's why it's always been important for me to actively use a language if I want to stay interested in it.

(Message edited by Aindréas on December 05, 2005)

Aonghus, the link does not seem to be working …?

there is an appeal to the exclusivity, but then there are times when you would like to make yourself understood to a beginner or non-speaker without having to resort to full-on english. I've been testing this at work. I've been saying common phrases and even requests (and answering questions) in normal conversation with english speakers in Irish. They either understand from context just fine and so don't mention it, or understand from context on a subliminal level such that they don't realize what I said wasn't english (such is how little we actually listen to each other nowadays).

I like the idea of being exclusive at times, and of having one less group able to exclude me. I find participating in a language creates ties to something fundamental that stretches back to the dawn of human civilization.

However, when it comes to Irish, I feel bound to learn it as I claim the heritage. I feel the need and rightness of striking a dual-blow, not only in support of Irish but against english (I intend to speak only Irish to my children, when I have them).

I feel that any crazy yank (like myself) who calls himself 'Irish-American' needs to put his money where his mouth is...learning the language contributes to the culture in a worldwide sense, and says more about your pride of heritage than all the tattoos and t-shirts and neo-paganism you can muster. I believe the term 'plastic paddys' was coined with them in mind...

be a patriot...abair é as Gaeilge...

(Message edited by antaine on December 05, 2005)

Fear_na_mbróg said:

"I can understand an American just fine, or an Australian, or a Jamaican"

Have you heard native Jamaicans speaking to one another? Even though most speak standard English with just an accent, they have an almost incomprehensible patois when communicating among themselves.

Aindreas,

works for me!

Try from http://aonghus.blogspot.com

It's working now. Probably my computer. =P Thanks.

I have a few minutes to spare and I’ve just been asked by somebody else why I, an Englishman, should have ever wanted to learn Irish as I have no Irish blood in my veins. I cannot claim any Irish ancestry. I was born and schooled in England and I still live there. We were only taught English at school and, at first, I didn’t know anybody who could read, write or speak Irish.

So I thought I’d share my answer with those of you here who’d care to read it…

As an English person, I’d been taught that a proper noun begins with a capital letter. That’s about the only grammar lesson that I can remember from those early days but I spent some time in the North of Ireland in the early 70s and I saw the word “hÉireann”. I was fascinated by that lower case “h” immediately in front of the upper case “É”, not to mention the fada. At that stage I didn’t even know that Irish was a separate language and at first I thought that it was a mistake and that the signwriter was a poor craftsman, but I began to see more of this signwriter’s handiwork all over the place so I decided to investigate how such a “mistake” could be so popular. That quickly lead me to realise that, not only is Irish a separate language, but that there’s a whole new and beautiful culture in Ireland of which many English people are unaware.

So that’s basically what aroused my interest in the Irish language. The simple fact that there was a lower case “h” in front of that “É”! That interest has never faded since that fateful sighting all those years ago.

Is maith do scéala a Larry, agus is spéisiúil.
GRMA.
Cuimhneoidh mé ar sin. An tábhacht a bhaineann leis teanga a bheith feiceálach.

"I'd have absolutely no interest in the Irish language if everyone could understand me" - well mar sin, i hope you like talking to yourself?! What's the point learning something if you can't use it? Maybe it'd make you better than others or more learned about the world? Why not go for gold with sean-ghaeilge?

"there’s a whole new and beautiful culture in Ireland of which many English people are unaware."
Yes that's because their ancestors and nobility ALMOST destroyed our culture. Of course i must emphasise it's not modern day english people who are responsible ach a mhalairt atá fíor.

Larry - Honestly, the same thing began my romantic view of the language...well, almost...for me it was "bhFiann" and other úrú (as well as the 'h's and 'n's before vowels and the occasional 't' before an 's') I'd studied French in school, so the fada's never done much for me (so many cooler accents out there), but that capitalization thing...add the ponc and you've got one beautiful looking written language.

I'd even studied a bit of Lithuanian after my curiousity was piqued by the accents on z,s,c and the dot above the e (as well as those neat vowel accents)...

anyway...my $.02 USD...

I'd studied French in school, so the fada's never done much for me (so many cooler accents out there),

à â é è ê ë î ï ô û ù ç ;-)

exactly =)

For me languages and cognates show connections between cultures rather than separation.

Irish, however, was a way for me to discover a hidden language that was part of my family's lost roots, a tongue already on my tongue without me digging it. Tuig é nó ná. Dig it or not.

Don't forget ÿ :

L'Haÿ-les-Roses

For me, it's a little bit of what everybody said: being different, yet the ability to communicate with others you might not otherwise be able to communicate with; gaining a better understanding of history and people. Helping to keep something alive that's on the "endangered species" list.

And in my case, a better understanding of my "roots". I'm only half Irish, but the non-Irish part of my family was my father's side and he was the dominant influence on the family until his death a few years ago. We ate the food, celebrated the holidays, and generally lived the culture of his side of the family. (Not that I'm complaining--the food in particular was great!)

A couple years after he died, I had this sudden realization that I was also half Irish, and yet I knew nothing about the country, its history, its people, its music, its song, its customs, or its language. That, along with mid-life crisis, opened the door to a new appreciation of things Irish.

So here I am.

A special welcome to Larry: You're a brave man, tackling this language!

One thing that learning Irish has taught me is just how little I knew of my own language. Until that day over 30 years ago, I'd been speaking English without any conscious awareness or grammatical terms. We learn to speak from our parents and peers without any need to understand that a "verb" is a doing word and a "noun" is a naming word. We learn "syntax" from listening to how our parents construct a "sentence" and we learn that an "adjective" precedes the "noun" in English.

I had no proper understanding of the technical terms used in the first book of Irish that I ever bought which, if I remember correctly, was a dictionary. I'd been using grammar all my life without any need to know that what I was actually doing was constructing my sentences in a format of subject + verb + object.

I blame my school for that. Or was it that I just wasn't paying proper attention to my teachers?

Whatever the reason, I soon realised that I needed to grasp some of these technical terms so I then had to go out and acquire an English textbook so that I knew what a "pluperfect" was before I could make any serious attempt to study Irish...