http://gaelart.net/lfbpage.html

Beidh suim ag roinnt agaibh sa leabhar seo, agus san réamhrá.

"Rather than simply invoking the house gods of Faith and Fatherland, the placing of Irish within a global rights dis-course shifted the ground of argument and wrong footed the doughty warriors of pluralism (which came to mean everything except Irish)."

I'm always suspecious of the pluralist agenda, with all its talk of 'multiculturalism' as I have seen since I was a kid the changes in some people in the last 20 years. There are people who would have got the priest in, if someone was having a curry!, for an exorcism, but now go on regular foreign holidays.

Some persons are quite different now than they were only in the 80s...meaning money, opertunity and social mobility have pushed more change than 'embracing' other cultures may ever do, and quietly, without stepping on the customs or beliefs of others.

Strange that Irish is never mentioned as part of the multicultural pot pourri. Anyone for Polish cooking?

We see it here in the US as well. "Multiculturalism" means anything non-european (and by "non-european" I include the traditional "American" picture that comes from European traditions).

It's come to mean bilingual signage in stores rather than an insistence on assimiltation, dropping traditionally taught european authors (typically all those who are not british) from school curricula, etc...

The US is a far different situation than Ireland though, Antaine. I'm all for newcomers having to learn English, from a pragmatic view. And from that same pragmatic view, I'm hard pressed to require that those of us already here to learn Native American languages.

Double standard? Sure.

It might be a good idea to require the learning of Spanish in the US. I would be all for it. IMO Spanish is a much more beautiful language than English. In fact, if I had to live in the American continent (and I do) I would much rather have Spanish as my native language--alas, it is not. Brazilian Portuguese in a very close second.

http://www.iol.ie/~rjtechne/polit/uqpc.htm

A Quaker point of view

As an "outsider" (neither English nor Spanish as my native language), my personal opinion is that English is the more beautiful of the two, but that it can't match French or Italian. It's slightly more beautiful than Russian and slightly less so than German, to take the most widely known languages in Europe.

What I dislike a bit is the tendency to ignore every other culture than one's own and think that one's native language is superior. Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, I would not say English speakers are worse than others in this. In general, the larger you're native language is, the more likely you are to dismiss other languages. With English being the fourth largest language in the world and the most widely known of them all, it's easy to understand how such a view can be more common than for a speakers of Frisian, but that has nothing to do with speakers of English being more inclined to monolingualism, far from it.

A Jonas, cén teanga is áille dar leatsa. . . ?

Jonas, I've had many a recent discussion with American friends about how "English is just the better language" ... I mean, it's just more expressive isn't it? Other languages don't have the capacity to discuss what English does with the same precision, so other people's mindsets are limited, unlike English speakers, right ...?

Man, it makes me want to smash something. You hear that Americans are xenophobic and most would deny, but it's bizarrely true in situations where you would never expect it. I'm quite disturbed at the deeply engrained racism when I hear comments like the ones above ... it's surprising to me, and sadly I generally have no idea how to respond.

It's interesting to hear your perspectives about beautiful languages since your not a native speaker of any of those. I'm glad you think English sounds nicer than German. I can't really gauge well with English as my L1, but German is really much nicer than English to me. It has a really unique, beautiful sound. I've gotten comments along the lines " ... gawd that's an ugly language ..." when people found out I had taken German.

"Other languages don't have the capacity to discuss what English does with the same precision"

The sad thing is that books like Bill Bryson 'Mother Tongue' and such written (by apparent acedemics) tend to have such jaunticed views. It's Rehab logic. Then again the only difference between the Rehab and a university board is the scratch cards.

I would have thought that English was quite a vague language, but I guess different languages vary, but testing and reporting what ant one tongue can report with clarity and what not is the question.

Speaking as a software engineer, I consider english an appalling language for writing software requirements - far too vague!

There is a damn good reason that Latin is used by the Church for its requirements documents!

My point was that in every society where you find a concept of "multiculturalism", it seems to be a reactionary thing representitive of the extreme end of the pendulum's swing from "imperialism"

As for the english vs spanish in the US debate there are several points - first, mexican gov't public positions (most detailed by speeches of Pres. Fox) on cultural (if not political) reconquista of regions of the US can be outright dangerous, and anything that facilitates that agenda needs to be put under a microscope, whether it's water stations in the desert, refusal to build a wall - or bilingual signage. The more we insist on learning spanish the more validity such positions are given.

Also, spanish has hurt other languages in the US education system. Americans are accused of being fanatically monolingual, when in reality most would say that learning a second language is a very good idea...just so long as it isn't any other language than spanish. I've worked with school systems through the university as I was pursuing my degree in education and had administrators tell me how proud they were that every child learns a second language - only spanish...all other "less useful" languages like French, German and Russian had been purged from the course offerings so kids wouldn't be taking "useless" languages and "wasting their time".

My own high school used to offer French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Greek and Latin. Now only Spanish and some Italian are available.

I wonder who judges "usefulness" of languages in USA and on what criteria? Spanish is certainly almost useless in Europe, as all Spaniards speak some degree of French or English.

From the point of future career Mandarin or Arabic or Russian looks to me VERY useful. And what use of Spanish? To understand what "Chiquita" brand stands for? I just seem not to get it!

It seems the U.S. school systems follow a Henry-Ford like mentality when it comes to languages: You can study any foreign language in school.... as long as it's Spanish.

I live in the U.S. and happen to consider Spanish one of, if not the most beautiful language. Every chance I get at work I try to learn and speak some Spanish with my Spanish speaking colleagues. When my son started taking Spanish a few years ago in grammar (primary) school, I was delighted. But that delight has turned to dismay considering the fact that he and his classmates, now in their third year of taking Spanish, can only count to 100 and have learned a handful or so of nouns in Spanish!

I suppose it's one thing to monopolize the language scene and another to barely teach the kids anything. Maybe it's time to bring back the other foreign languages, n'est pas?

even when i was in high school, i was one of only two kids in my french class who were there voluntarily. all the rest were there to simply fulfill the foreign language requirement and had been locked out of the spanish and italian sections which were full. By that time, German, Russian, Greek and Latin had already been done away with, and there were eleven tracks of spanish, nine of Italian and only one of French being taught. My senior year was the last year that French was offered at all.

The other languages need advocacy groups to talk up their usefulness. Want a guaranteed job in the intelligence community for the next two generations? Take Farsi, Urdu or Arabic. Know Chinese or Korean? What opportunities you won't be able to find with them! Want to work in private business rather than for the gov't? French will serve you unbelievably well... etc...

Antaine, tá ceist agam anois. Why there is such WILD demand for Italian? This is a kind of language that I would certainly call one of least-useful. Bar parts of Somalia there is no other country in the world which uses Italian apart from Italy proper. I understand at least Spanish - Latin America speaks it. But Italian? For God's sake!

In the meantime waiting for Antaine to get a chance to answer, it looks like there are over a million people that speak Italian here in the U.S.A. Take a look at this link:

http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/language/table5.txt

It would probably take me a dozen or so lifetimes to talk with all of them.

Róman, get this...Italian is "sorta close to" spanish, and so the guidance counsellors were pushing it as a second choice for the kids who couldn't get into one of the sections of spanish. The school that eliminated "useless" languages eliminated Italian as well.

if "usefulness" be the only criteria for whether or not a language is worth learning, then we may as well have Daltaí pack it in.

In addition what languages are worth learning then? According to some counts, Arabic has about half as many speakers as spanish
http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html
I suppose there's no point in anyone learning Arabic when they have the option to learn spanish instead. After all, what fresh perspectives could Arabic possibly have to offer that are not already well covered in spanish?

Perhaps just one language should be selected for the world, held up as the only one worth learning. I hear that chinese has a couple speakers here and there...

sigh...but i'm preaching to the choir, i suppose...

A Aindréas, I've heard those same comments about English being so superior and so much richer - but I've heard the same claims for a number of languages. Quite a few native Swedish speaker hear in the South of Finland like to claim that Finnish is soo much more expressive than other languages, espcially Swedish. And since they are Swedish speakers themselves, they can reall tell...

Well, it's true that they are native speakers but they aren't competent speakers. Working at a university and reading the texts handed in, my colleagues and I sometimes feel like crying. The language used is a strange mix with a Swedish base, Finnish syntax and some English words when they don't know the Swedish one. In other words, native speakers aren't always competent speakers, especially not if they live in an area where their own language is the minority. Those of us who are born and brought up in an area where Swedish dominates perhaps don't have higher morals or nicer cars ( ;-) ) but we can at least speak the language. Point being, people who speak more than one language and think themselves fluent in both are much more likely to claim that the one language they indeed are fluent in is so much more expressive, just as Aindréas explains.

A Fhir na mbróg, dar liom i gcónaí gur áille an teanga atá ag an gcailín atá grá agam dí ;-) Fé láthair, is í Sualainnis an teanga sin í. Seachas é sin, caithfidh mé a rá gur maith liom Iodáilis agus Fraincis. Is leadránach é sin a rá, mar deirtear an beirt acu i gcónaí ach... Ní hiad sin na teangacha is fearr liom, dar ndóigh, ach is dóigh liom gurb ana-álainn iad. Cad a deireann sibhse?

May I make a small detour from the topic and discss the question of how useful it is to learn language X or language Y is, as it was mentioned? As a PhD student in business studies with an interest in languages, I'm often surprised at the way people approach this question. I'm not talking about the worthy souls here at Daltaí, most of us are interested in Irish for other reasons than just usefullness. No, I'm thinking of those who explicitly say that they want to learn a useful language - quite often with the explicit or implicit wish that it should be beneficial when they get out of university and try to find jobs.

From people who say this, I often hear that they want to focus on English - or perhaps German, French or Spanish. At first, it might seemt to make sense. All four of them are major European languages. You can speak English almost anywhere in Europe and North America, as well as in many other places. Germany and France are important trade partners. "Alright," I feel like shouting "did you miss the introductionary lecture on competitive advantage?" So you finish school speaking English and either German, French or Spanish. Wow, that's really something. Next time you apply for a job, you're only competing against every other university graduate in Finland (and many other countries). As long as everybody studies those languages, you're not one inch closer to having any use for it on the market.

Róman and Antaine discussed whether Italian or Spanish is more useful. I would argue for Italian being more useful. True, there are about five times as many Spanish speakers in the world - but for every Finnish business graduate who speaks Italian you'll find at least twenty who speaks Spanish... So the student who has done Italian has got the competitive advantage, he knows a fairly big European language that very few non-native speakers knows (especially when compared to English, German, French and Spanish).

Take the case of Russian. It's the largest language in Europe, still very few in Western Europe speaks it. I have discussed this with some of Finland's top business managers and they all agree - no other skill is as attractive for the largest Finnish companies as fluent Russian. Not accounting, not finance, not marketing - speak Russian and you're employed.

Looking at it from this perspective, the three most useful languages to learn in Europe today could be Chinese (it's gaining in populatiry but still a shortage of people with fluent Chinese), Polish and Romanian. Polish and Romanian? Yup, Polish is one of the largest EU languages and how many non-Poles speak it? Romanian is smaller, but the same thing goes for it as well. One of the larger European languages, rapidly growing economy and almost no non-native speakers to employ for all the companies investing there.

So the question of how useful a language is should not just focus on the number of speakers, not even if you're only interested in learning the language for 'useful' purposes. :-)

(Message edited by jonas on October 25, 2006)

Jonas, that's so interesting. It's never been put like that to me, but I'm sure you're very right. I've been reading up on interpreting as a career and someone pointed out to me that the most advantageous language combinations is a English + widely spoken language + non-widely spoken one, like German and Russian, or Polish were two brought up. Thanks for sharing that information. It's really fascinating to me!

Joining this discussion late.

Multiculturalism can be really fun and interesting, its great to learn about other people and their ways of living. That being said I think that when people immigrate to a country they should most obviously learn the language of said country. They should also preserve their native language, seeing that the kids learn both the native language and English to fluency.

I shouldn't talk about Spanish. I have nothing against it as a language, it can be beautiful. I just had to study it for a long time because it seemed most useful and there weren't any other languages available that I cared enough to put forth extra effort to study. I feel so very glad that I've finished that.

Native American languages are really neat, it might be fun to learn one.

Beir bua agus beannacht

If you want to learn a spoken Native American language, I'd recommend Mohawk. It's only spoken by about 3000 people and often what we'd say in an entire sentence they use one word to say - there's a good book on that called "Let's Speak Mohawk".

From what I hear about the amount of grammatical inflextion, coupled with poor to nonexistant learnign materials, I guess it might be an uphill struggle

The above mentioned text is quite good, it comes with tapes too.

It may be hard but from what I've read, Irish isn't exactly a walk in the park either, but learning it's half the fun.

Obviously you can't expect to master an endangered language, because as you say there won't be much material. But I just think there's something great knowing abit of a really rare language.

A chairde,

When i was saying that "Spanish is more useful than Italian" I did not really mean it. I was simply mocking US education system and applying their own logic. On Italian being "close" to Spanish - what a rubbish. The langauges are close for linguists, but they are different langauges after all, and some basic education in Italian will not equip anyone to converse in Spanish without re-education. Yes, the process might be swift, but still - it is a waste of time to study Italian in order to re-tune to Spanish later.

In my opinion usefulness of langauges is very relative thing. Depends for whom and when. For someone living in Albania Italian is the language number one to study as majority of Albanians have relatives in Italy and may try to emigrate themselves.

The consideration that Spanish has 500 mln speakers and Arabic - 250 mln is not to the point. If one is working for oil company - knowledge of Arabic is a much more important asset than knowing Spanish. If we look strategically at the world - speaking language of Latin America (Portuguese/Spanish) is not a such competitive advantage as it may seem. There are neither adverse states there (that language may become valuable for intelligence - like Urdu, Farsi, Pashto, Arabic, KOREAN as it seems now, or even Russian one day?) nor huge economic interests - except for copper mines in Chile.

Me personally I am also very wary of the idea that children should start studying Mandarin to advance their career. It is true China lacks managerial talent and Chinese co are ready to pay wonderful salaries for a talent, but studies have shown that Western managers fail to adjust to local culture and are not readily accepted. Anyway there is huge Chinese diaspora abroad - all of whom have a degree of fluency we can only dream about, so trying to compete with them is almost hopless.

"I wonder who judges "usefulness" of languages in USA and on what criteria? Spanish is certainly almost useless in Europe, as all Spaniards speak some degree of French or English."

The next time a US school administrator tells you that Spanish is the most useful foreign language, call him on his b.s. - Spanish only in the past couple years became the most widely spoken language besides English here in the US.

Before Spanish, do you know what was the 2nd most prevalent language?

American Sign Language.

If the "usefulness" of a language has to do solely with the number of speakers and nothing else, as seems to be implied, then they should have been teaching ASL for all those years. Clearly, there's a political agenda at work here as well.

In any event, the competitive advantage argument above is the most realistic take on this that I've yet seen. Bravo.

Róman, I knew you were kidding, although I had composed a whole, unposted reply before realizing that and penning the one I did post.

quote:

Native American languages are really neat

Céard a chiallaíonn an abairt sin, led thoil? Oh, I know: Sure and they're ever so lovely!

(Message edited by dennis on October 26, 2006)

If you're asking if that means the same thing then I suppose so. :)

Beir bua agus beannacht

I dont think that's what he was getting at...

I tried to translate his Irish, coming out with something like what would the sentense mean if it were lenthened, or something like that. Of course I'm trying to be on the positive and not make accusations of himself poking unnecessary fun at me. If this is the case, it is tollerable if it is all in kindnessand silliness but if it is beyond that then we shall cross that bridge when we get there.

Beir bua agus beannacht

Céard a chiallaíonn an abairt sin, led thoil?
What-is-it which means the phrase that, with-your will?
i.e. "What does that phrase mean, please?"

I wouldn't be mad at him for it, Ríona. "Necessary" fun it may not have been, but I nearly choked on my tea reading it... :-)

Oíche mhaith agat, a chara.

Abigail

"it is tollerable if it is all in kindnessand silliness but if it is beyond that then we shall cross that bridge when we get there. "

Ya, he's a real rimmer, that Dennis!





[PS, people say that in Ireland]

Said or not,

please do not resort to personal invectives in discussions.

Caoimhín

Sorry about the misunderstanding -its not invective, only a joke referring to the typo it made on the other thread, where I typed m for b

A Riona, a chara,

I also attempted to translate Dennis' question, which Abigail has successfully done - go raibh maith agat Abigail. I kind of got close to the correct translation but always enjoy the struggle of translating the Irish on this forum, since it's the best way to improve my Irish.

I think Dennis was just looking for clarification on your statement. As you and I are "artsy" types, we both tend to use words whose meanings may be vague to some. I find that with the word "neat." To you and me, it means "great," or "cool" or "nice." To others, it might mean "tidy." So, I see absolutely no malice in Dennis' question - just a kind-hearted reference to "lovely," that's all.

I have noticed that we beginners are using more and more Irish, and I think a lot of that has to do with Dennis', Aonghus', and others' efforts to support and kindly correct our Irish. Sorry not to mention all those who have helped us beginners, but I do try and thank each and every one of you when you do help - go raibh maith agaibh arís!

Tá an-dúil agam i dteangach dúchasacha na tíre seo. Féach, mar shampla, an suíomh a rinne mé i gKaruk agus Gaeilge tamall ó shin:

http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaeilge/donncha/karuk/

(It's a short tale in Karuk which I translated into Irish.)

Tá mé sáite in Shoshoni anois díreach. (Shoshoni has both lenition and eclipsis as phonological processes!)

"Neat" and "lovely" are just so damned vague. The native tongues of North America are a hugely mixed bag, as different from one another in phonolgy as Georgian (compare the Salish languages of the Pacific Northwest!) and Italian, and probably even more so in their grammar. Some are relatively easy for English-speakers to learn, and some (like Navajo) are damned near impossible.

quote:

Ya, he's a real rimmer, that Dennis!

Bhain sin gáire asam. No offence intended, none taken!

"Some are relatively easy for English-speakers to learn, and some (like Navajo) are damned near impossible."

A good friend of mine is a Hopi (from the desert southwest, for those who are unfamiliar), and he's a native speaker of their language - which so far as I can tell is one of the impossible ones Dennis refers to. To begin with, there are basically no tenses, and his explanation of how past/present/future are conveyed is as perplexing as any other feature of the language. It's fascinating but utterly baffling.

(Message edited by domhnall_Ó_h_aireachtaigh on October 28, 2006)

quote:

Hopi - which so far as I can tell is one of the impossible ones

Ní hea! Tá Hopi réasúnta éasca. Mar shampla:

Nu' Hopilavayit tutuqayi. = Tá mé ag foghlaim Hopi.

nu' (I) Hopi (Hopi) lavayi (language) -t (obj. marker) tutuqayi (learn)

Níl sé sin deacair ar chor ar bith.

A Dhonncha,

I am under impression all languages of the world might be "réasúnta éasca" for you. Ná fuil an ceart agam? ;)

Speaking of Hopi, if anyone wants to hear a story and songs in Hopi, there is a wonderful video clip at:

http://wordsandplace.arizona.edu/sekaquaptewa.html

Tá an scéalaí seo, Helen Sekaquaptewa, go hiontach. Tá súil agam go dtaitneoidh an scannán libh! Bhain mé an-aoibhneas as.

A Dhennis a chara,

I wasn't meaning to assume anything unkind of you. When I first translated your message I figured out pretty much what you meant and so my first response was in that vein. Then someone wrote and insinuated that my interpretation was not what you meant so that made me concerned, leading to my second response. I suppose in the end it was a misunderstanding. I think you're very smart and clever and very important here to us all because of your knowledge and insight. I like you very much and I wasn't trying to accuse you. I, along with all, would miss you very much if you were to go from us. In future I'll try not to use such vague words as "neat" to describe things, ever so lovely does convey that concept more effectively, :). I know that there is a huge variety of Native American languages, an example is the fact that two very different Native language families exist here in the northwest, Salish and Sahapton. I just meant that I like the sound of the languages that I've heard.

Beir bua agus beannacht

"Speaking of Hopi, if anyone wants to hear a story and songs in Hopi, there is a wonderful video clip at:

http://wordsandplace.arizona.edu/sekaquaptewa.html

As it happens, Dennis ... the speaker in that clip is my friend's grandmother!

My friend is on the couch to the left, and his cousin on the floor below him. What a small world.