I'm most interested in hearing from people currently living in Ireland, but all comments welcome. I'm wondering whether in your estimation Gaeilge is a stage 4, 5, or 6 case on Fishman's scale (although if you think it falls somewhere else, do not feel limited to those three).

please preface your comments by briefly stating where you are, and if in Ireland city or at least county would be appreciated. comments from outside ireland are valuable too.

In studying this language over the years, two of the things that fascinate me are 1) what is the realistic situation regarding the langauge and its future? and 2) why does asking that question get such drastically different responses?

I'd like to put together a worldwide map of where "pockets of perception" (for lack of a better term) may exist. I think that the perception of the languages future is a critical part of convincing people it's worth learning and using.

I will endeavor to post this in a few places to increase the pool of participants, so I ask that if you see this in multiple places please only answer it once so as not to skew the results.

the scale can be found here, and please don't forget to provide your location to the most specific degree you feel comfortable: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/RIL_Intro.html

in an effort to keep this thread alive, please let's not descend into political discussions of how we feel it got to this point, just what number you feel it's at and what about its present situation leads you to that number. I'm asking for opinions here so there are no wrong answers.

thanks in advance
-A

Do you know why the Hopis have come to despise anthropologists? Déan do mhachnamh air.

My very uninformed opinion based only on a limited knowledge of the scale in question, just obtained from the link above.

I live in Oregon in the USA and I'm stuck between 4 and 5. The categories are vague in my opinion. 5 talks about some community use which fits, of course there should always be more of that. 4 talks about education in school and theoretically kids are taught Irish at school, though not terribly effectively in most cases. Also one can be educated through Irish if they get their name on the waiting lists for such schools early enough. If I had to choose a definite number though I'd say 5 because that is more alarming than 4 and it might insight more concern about the safety of the language, thus getting people moving.

You always are doing the grandest projects, its fun to hear all the things you're up to.

Beir bua agus beannacht

A Antaine,

Maybe if this is back up at the top here then you'd get more people to say what they think of it.