Last week, we had a guest speaker from the Department of Labor come talk to my Interpersonal Communications course in college. While he was there to talk about language barriers and different attempts to overcome them, his main presentation was about the "English-Spanish" issues facing the United States.

He was part of a government funded project to create a new incentive program to increase fluency in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Hindi, and Japanese. While he didn't go into too great of depth for it, he explained that the idea is for the government to create proficiency exams in these languages. It is a pass or fail thing, and from the way he described it only people with an advanced proficiency or near native fluency will be able to pass these exams because they are designed to be hard and not for those who "think" they know the language. It would be 100% government regulated and controlled. You would have to go to them, their website, or however they decide to do it...register and take the exam on their terms. He said that the Spanish exams he helped work on where very difficult and he is a native Spanish speaker! He said that one must know correct grammar, as well as, contemporary usage. There is a reading and writing portion, a listening comprehension portion, and a speaking portion with a native speaker. The exams are designed to be about four hours long. Although he said it only took him two.

The reason for this is that those who can pass the exams will receive tax free proficiency pay added to one's check. Not much, but enough to show that the government is acknowledging the hard work you have put into being a multilingual asset to the country. I think he said the last he heard was an extra 25.00 dollars a month for each language you pass the exam in...if you can pass all the exams, that's an extra 175.00 dollars tax free a month! Companies who have X amount of employees who have passed the exams in any language will also receive federal benefits, so it put pressure on the companies to put pressure on us ;-)

The problem is that you have to re-qualify for the pay each year...and the tests will be different every year. So you will have to keep at it to get the rewards. He wasn't sure if it will be happening sometime soon or not. He said that, once all the languages had finished their exams, they had to be submitted to the government for federal review and approval where it might be shot down, and then voted on where it might be shot down, and then implemented if approved...and as we all know, governments are slow when it comes to these things!

However, I thought it was an interesting idea, and wondered if something along these lines has ever been tried or at least discussed for Irish? Extra money makes people do things they never thought they would, and I thought something like this might help create a positive incentive for people to try to be proficient in Irish...If only we can talk the US into adding Irish to that list :0)

Is fior duit. Money talks so if people get paid more for doing something, then they'll be more likely to put forth the extra effort to do it.

Beir bua agus beannacht

Anything tried along those lines for Gaeilge? No!

There is the Maynooth profiency test, but no money is involved

"Anything tried along those lines for Gaeilge? No!"

I thought some sort of stipend was to be had in gaeltacht areas for passing periodic checks where the gov't would send someone to speak with the youngest person in the household, to see that it was being passed on...

He was part of a government funded project to create a new incentive program to increase fluency in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Hindi, and Japanese.

What about Arabic, Afrikaans, Albanian, Bete, Bosnian, Burmese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Gaelic, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Macedonian, Malaysian, Maltese, Nepali, Persian, Polish, Portugese, Punjabi, Romanian, Slovenian, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh, Zulu, and Zay, just to name a "few?"

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages for a complete list of languages.

I think that this kind of government intervention is at best foolish and at worst will create animosity among those peoples whose languages are not included. I have a better idea; why doesn't the government instead spend our taxpayer dollars on improving the ability to speak English for those who need it? I'm not looking forward to the day when road signs, government brochures, etc. are in forty or more languages.

In truth, I don't know much about it and as time goes by that very long day is slowly fading in my memories ;0)

But I think the reason why they chose the languages they did, and this is just my opinion, is because these are the languages that the United States might see as being essential for doing business with???

Every major economy in the world uses one of these languages, so I would assume, don't quote me here, that the government is trying to create a multilingual nation to communicate with the economic "power houses?"

If that was their intent, I can see some logic to it...but they left out Portuguese. Brazil may not be the biggest player in the world, but it is one of the biggest players in the western hemisphere, and sadly one it is one that the United States doesn't really play with more than we absolutely have to...;-(

While I personally don't agree with their methods, I do like to see the government trying something new. A friend of mine is a trasnlator for the military and he told me that they have a very similar program for the translators. They get paid for proving their proficiency in their languages. So it almost sounds like the government might already be doing this, and wants to do this in the civilian sector also?

The US military does this on a smaller scale. If you are in a language coded position, translator mar shampla, you earn a language bonus for maintaining certain levels of proficiency. For some langauges, Arabic (wonder why) you don't even need to be in a language coded position. All you have to do is qualify in the language each year.

Frankly, I agree with the above comment. Anything the government attempts to regulate or control is doomed from the start. It's a nice idea but not likely to succeed.

A Dho Chinniuint (your fate?)
It does make sense that the government would encourage and fund such a rigorous testing program for business purposes, after all it will be easier to conduct effective business when people can communicate with each other, obviously.

Beir bua agus beannacht

A Riona,

I was going for something along those lines when I chose the nic, but then I probably messed that up also. I really am just a beginner.

I like the fact that the government is trying to do something to promote multilingualism. I like the fact that they wish to use a monetary incentive to increase multilingualism. But I have to agree with one comment made above, that such a venture would create some hurt feelings among different groups not included, however, I think it is impossible to do this for all languages. So I think that when they concentrate on the top languages that they feel the United States will encounter as a country in economical terms, they are setting a realistic goal.

Also, maybe I gave off the wrong impression when I described the what he said they were wanting to do, I do not think this was ever intended to be a forced thing. I didn't get the feeling from the presentation that this is going to be a program where they say choose a language and stick with it. I felt he was telling us that it is just a program out there, or might be out there in the future, that we can take advantage of if we choose to be multilingual in the United States.

And the reason I brought it up here was because I saw something like this being an interesting idea to try with Irish because I felt that something like this might help give an incentive to learn Irish. And I was curious if there were programs like this already, or if programs like this have ever been tried?

Especially after the Celtic Tiger era, I think the power of business and economic growth has been proven to help motivate and shape the mindset of the Irish people, so I thought this might be an interesting incentive to motivate the people to learn, re-learn, or even use Irish in a setting outide of the schools.

Sorry, I forgot to add this to my above post.

I mentioned that a major issue facing the United States in terms of languages and the conflicts they raise is that the United States has a very "Why Should I" mentality. (His words not mine)

He said that with the rise of different economic powers across the globe, especially China and India, the United States is finding that we are at a disadvantage because we do not have the linguistic resources to keep up.

Native speakers already in the country are not coming forth to work, or can't work for various reasons. And it takes a lot of time and money for the government to train it's people to obtain a basic level of fluency in any of the major languages mentioned above.

So this program is out there to get people to want to learn on their own...

A Dho Chinniuint a chara,

I do think that this would be a very good idea for extending and improving Irish usage in Ireland. I don't know why the government is not doing it, probably because they always have "more important" things to do with the money that the great economy is generating. What the government fails to realize is that what they are doing now just isn't cutting it so to speak. It seems that now, when there is more money in Ireland than ever before, would be the time to take action and send some of it in directions that will actually help the language.

Beir bua agus beannacht.

the other thing to remember, Ríona, is that the gov't are concerned with being reelected. voters in ireland want to see the language revived, just as long as it doesn't cost too much, or require them to actually study or use it themselves.

I have always followed the practice of not telling one what to do with their money and I think it has kept me from one black eye or two ;0)

And although I would like to see the Irish government take a little more active interest in the language, right now I think they, as well as, a lot of the Irish people here would agree that they need that money for a lot of other Irish interests at the moment.

However, I think this sort of incentive could work wonders in the business sector. While it wouldn't be very much, a little pay incentive for those capable of proving to have a proficiency in Irish could be a wonderful factor for employers to have to choose from when selecting new employees.

But as always, this is just a thought and nothing more.