The names thread is already at 85 posts. Can we continue here?

Abigail raised an issue: she appreciates her Irish and her English and doesn't insist it is the only English/Irish although it is not CNN/BBC English etc, and they are all equal from a "linguistic" point of view.

This is quite a lot to talk about. Let me be honest and admit there are 2 core points of view here, and neither can prevail over the other. As neither is likely to extinguish the other, in practical terms we accept that Irish learning is divided into 4 groups, owing to the 2 core different points of view. And this is unlikely to change.

What are these 2 core points of view?

1) That all dialects are equal from a "linguistic" point of view. This is modern linguistic theory in university. But we should say straightaway that the views of linguistics professors on this reflect their *political* points of view, and are not derived from their academic expertise - and so we are entitled to disagree if we wish.
2) The other view is that a quality version of a language is evolved in society as a cultural or social construction: and in the context of that society or culture, other dialects are substandard.

Can you see the 2 political points of view? And can you accept that there are 2 points of view? and that neither should completely crush the other?

Now: linguistic theory is based on this: that language is merely for communication. If communication is achieved, then the goal is achieved - and there can therefore be no discussion of superior/inferior forms of language. If I say "give me a chocolate", and you give me a chocolate, communication is achieved. If I say "gis a choccie", and you give me a chocolate, communication is achieved. So from the point of view of "modern linguistics", neither is superior.

But - But - But - in the context of the Ireland and its language situation, communication is achieved if the sentence is said in English. All Irish people can speak English. So: according to modern linguistic theory, there is no need to learn Irish. From a linguistic point of view, there is no need to prefer to talk in Irish. If communication is achieved in English, the goal is accomplished, and that is all there is to it.

Irish learners are learning Irish for cultural reasons mainly, or heritage reasons, or in the case of Róman and others, maybe just interest in a language quite different in many ways (although not his heritage). This is not the same as a basic need to be able to put across the meaning "give me a chocolate" otherwise I'll starve.

This brings us to society and culture (and shows modern linguistics the exit door). In any society, there is a stratification in economic and educational opportunities, and so a sense of what is good and bad language develops. Few of the people so proud of Connemara Irish would like to use in formal situations forms of English seen as substandard. If Irish were the dominant language in Ireland, the social strata with greater economic and educational opportunities would have laid down a clear sense of what was good Irish, and other forms would be regarded as substandard. The fact that all form whatsoever of Irish are regarded as equal by Gaeltacht natives and many learners alike is a function of the fact that Irish is not the dominant language, and so "control" of the Irish language by the dominant social strata is not used to create social and cultural differences.

In fact, when significant numbers of Irish speakers were left, before the war, the educated ones would not have accepted, eg a Connemara-style almost complete lack of case distinctions, as good Irish. When the language had real communities living exclusively through it, then social stratification based on eg education affected perceptions of the Irish language. Now that relations with the government and elite even in the GAeltacht are conduced in English (almost exclusively), there is no longer any controlling social stratum to lay down "good Irish". Irish quite literally doesn't matter to society and culture in that way: if any kind of Irish whatsoever is spoken, even kinds that the last vestiges of the educated Irish-speaking middle classes would have seen as quite uneducated and ungrammatical in the 1930s, we are expected to be grateful.

Aontaím leat.
Daithí

Dúirt Róman:
Can you say anything on the topic. Or the sole purpose of your anonymous apearance is to flame?

Yes, this much:
For everything that you and your cohorts have cited to try to prove the inferiority of Connemara Irish, there is documented evidence of their existence in Munster: Seán Ua Súilleabháin (Stair na Gaeilge)
P.506 The confusing of d and g sounds.
P. 492 The weakening of the genitive case.
The substitution of dative for nominative.
P. 536 The influence of English, and the borrowing of
English words.

The whole topic of "inferior" dialects must be approached from two fronts.

1: The perspective of the native
2: The perspective of the learner

I myself speak a watered-down version of English, but I couldn't care less because I'm a native speaker and I can understand all other dialects, even if I don't use their "extended features". I could even pull off speaking "Oxford English" if I wanted to -- and I do tend to speak like a posh git when I'm involved with the government or gardaí. However, if I were to learn English as a non-native language of mine, I wouldn't touch my dialect with a barge pole.

The situation is similar for learners of Irish when it comes to Conemara Irish. Just as Dublin English doesn't use "shall", and thus doesn't distinguish between "shall" and "will", Conemara Irish has similar ways of doing things. A native speaker of Conemara Irish may not be fazed by this at all; their hearing of "cheapas" instead of "cheap mé" may be quite similar to my own hearing of "ain't".

What arouses complete and utter disgust in me for Conemara Irish though is the TV shows I've seen in which the actors speak the dialect. Suffice to say, an English speaker would have a grasp of what's going on.

You know, we could drop cases entirely and make irish into an agglutinating language with ergativity, instead of nom vs acc.

Its the wave of the future

Interesting. The fall of the case system in Irish is seen as a 'bad' simplification and language decay, much the same as the fusion in English (ain't, could've...)

Too bad we can't learn the first human language and accept it as the only standard for all people on Earth!

Daithí

quote:

Too bad we can't learn the first human language and accept it as the only standard for all people on Earth!

There was probably mutiple "first human languages", with different colonies in different parts of the world and so forth. . .

It definitely does make me wonder though, if someone actually sat down and thought up the grammar rules of Irish. I mean, really, they seem quite elaborate to a learner, it'd seem very strange if it all happened naturally without intellectual design or intervention!

Well it's not that elaborate. The Old Irish grammar was much more so. Stil, I'm sure it did happen naturally. The deeds of nature are often far more admirable than those of humans.

Maidir leis an gcéad teanga, b'fhéidir nach raibh ach aon cheann amháin díobh ann freisin. Ceapann scoláirí áirithe mar sin ar a laghad...

Daithí

quote:

The Old Irish grammar was much more so.

When the grammar of Old Irish was first published many people thought it must have been Hebrew - so obscure and complicated were the rules that nobody could have believed it was a natural language.

There is nothing to suggest anyone had a planning function in the development of Irish -it is clear it is very much indo-european.

However, we do know its status internally as a literary language and the apparent respect for learning in Ireland did slow down any inherent tendencies (like case dropping) it did have/has.

Syntax must occur in human speech -and here is my thinking. Speech is linear -this word...then this word...then this word...and so on. Human oral sounds are very limited (few hundred) so if we had only one concept =one sound we would be very limited in expression. We could only point out things, not talk about them.

Symbols are by their nature like tags -rather 1-dimensional, but if used with reference to time and position the amount of information becomes decoupled from the number of hisses and clicks used in their production. Switching one morpheme with another within constraints is what we call grammar in our intellectual tradition, and changes the meaning.

Over time we have collective historical experiences, be they great religious ones playing over centuries, decades or days, so we end up with idiom (Jesus Christ!, 'do the Bart man!' or one a small level a private running joke among friends).

I hope this makes sense

quote:

The whole topic of "inferior" dialects must be approached from two fronts.

1: The perspective of the native
2: The perspective of the learner

Yes, but I don't think the learner, with his/her limited knowledge relative to the native, has any right to opine on dialects. I personally would not do it. I speak fluent Spanish, the correct variety according to the Real Academia, but I wouldn't think of criticizing a Puerto Rican native who might not speak that way, because I know that I can never be as good a speaker of Spanish as someone from Puerto Rico who was born with the language.

quote:

I personally would not do it.

So do everyone favour - and do not.

(Message edited by Róman on July 17, 2007)

So if I'm understanding your post correctly, Peadar:
1) No dialect is intrinsically superior/inferior according to modern linguistics, because they all serve to accomplish the same goal: communication.
2) No dialect is culturally superior/inferior to another today, because the language is too marginalized for that kind of social pressure to exist.

I agree with all of that completely. So if someone feels that their dialect (or any particular dialect) is "best", how is this anything but subjective and entirely personal? Maybe there's an aesthetic basis for it, maybe they're drawn to conservative dialects with lots of historical forms, or maybe they simply like it better because they're more comfortable with it. In any case there doesn't seem to be much ground for claiming that another dialect is full of "mistakes" or is "inferior" or even "substandard" - only that you don't like it as well yourself for whatever reasons.

I'm a bit baffled by this whole debate to be honest. Does this subject even come up in real life in Ireland? Most of the Irish speakers I know personally are here at Notre Dame, and I realize they're probably not a representative sample - but honestly, it doesn't seem to figure in conversations here.

Abigail,
are tags like pins on maps 0 dimensional (zero dimensional)? What is the maths term for this?

Yep. A square is two-dimensional, a line segment is one-dimensional, and if you collapse the line segment you get a point, which is zero-dimensional.

I'd love to create a grammar imaging technology -and prove to those 'muinteoirz' they are speaking more English than Irish

Is this your CV: http://www.nd.edu/~amitche3/webCV.html

You seem like a sharp cookie, as they say in Merika

Oops - looks like somebody forgot she even had a website! Aside from the CV, none of that's been updated in at least two years (probably more like three).

But yeah, that's mine - and thanks. :-)

Fuaimníonn grammar imaging technology an-cool (mar a déarfadh na mic léinnz, tuigeann tú.) Ach éist, cé hiad na "muinteoirz" seo atá i gceist agat? Ní foireann Notre Dame, an ea?

Níl ach 'na muinteoirí' ag obair i scoilleanna na Éireann

quote:

So do everyone favour - and do not.

And you do likewise where Connemara Irish is concerned, a Rómain.