I found this article on Wikipedia, and while I know that one must take this website with a grain a salt...I couldn't help but find this interesting.

Taken from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_revival

Joshua Fishman's model for reviving threatened (or dead) languages, or for making them sustainable, consists of an eight-stage process. Efforts should be concentrated on the earlier stages of restoration until they have been consolidated before proceeding to the later stages. The eight stages are as follows:

1) Acquisition of the language by adults, who in effect act as language apprentices (recommended where most of the remaining speakers of the language are elderly and socially isolated from other speakers of the language).

2) Create a socially integrated population of active speakers (or users) of the language (at this stage it is usually best to concentrate mainly on the spoken language rather than the written language).

3) In localities where there are a reasonable number of people habitually using the language, encourage the informal use of the language among people of all age groups and within families and bolster its daily use through the establishment of local neighbourhood institutions in which the language is encouraged, protected and (in certain contexts at least) used exclusively.

4) In areas where oral competence in the language has been achieved in all age groups encourage literacy in the language but in a way that does not depend upon assistance from (or goodwill of) the state education system.

5) Where the state permits it, and where numbers warrant, encourage the use of the language in lieu of compulsory state education.

6) Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in the workplace (lower worksphere).

7) Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated encourage the use of the language in local government services and mass media.

8) Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated encourage use of the language in higher education, government etc.

This model of language revival is intended to direct efforts to where they are most effective and to avoid wasting energy trying to achieve the later stages of recovery when the earlier stages have not been achieved. For instance it is probably wasteful of effort to campaign for the use of the language on television or in government services if hardly any families are in the habit of using the language.


I was interested where Irish stands with this particular model? Is anything like this being used by Ireland as a guide for their efforts?

What I found interesting is that steps 6-8 require a foundation in the 5 previous steps similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.

Ah yes! Seanchara liom é Maslow ;)

Cá seasann an ghaeilge?! Déarfainn gur chóir don Rialtas an méid seo a léamh " avoid wasting energy trying to achieve the later stages of recovery when the earlier stages have not been achieved. For instance it is probably wasteful of effort to campaign for the use of the language on television or in government services if hardly any families are in the habit of using the language. "

Dá mba rud é gur córas oideachais practicúil/éifeachtach a bhí againn, déanfadh sé sin i bhfad níos mó ná Deontaisí do mhuintir na gaeltachtaí / Maoiniú a thabhairt do 10 billiún Eagraíocht Gaeilge / Stádas Oifigiúil na teanga a ardú.

Ah well, ní raibh an Ghaeilge cosúil leis na leanaí eile riamh.

I kind of like Leslie White's theory of social evolution and manipulations. There are basically three interconnected aspects that govern society, technology, socio-economics, and ideology.

Now there are an infinite number of factors that go under these main categories. For instance socio-economics doesn't just mean a people's sex, race, education, and income. It refers to all societal behaviors, governmental regulations, and economic distributions......and the list goes on and on.

The ideological aspect of society is the most difficult and probably the most dangerous of the three to control and even really change. In fact, I can't think of a single example in history were a direct attempt to control the ideology of a people has ever been successful.

One could argue that to play on the historical and cultural value of Irish is a direct attack a person's ideology. By trying to convince people that speaking Irish makes them "more" Irish, we are actually saying that to not speak Irish makes them "less" Irish. This type of tactic never does any good. All it does is bring rejection, anger, and shame to people when it is not true to begin with.

And to try and legislate ideology...I would hate to be the fool that thinks that is going to work.

White believed, and I agree, that the easiest and most effective why to introduce change into a society is through the technological aspects. This includes things like the television, movies, computers, internet, phones, media...just about everything that is not an internal or external social factor.

But the problem with this tactic becomes what good is a candy bar wrapper in Irish if the child can't understand it? And why bother making the wrapper if there is no market for it to begin with? These are the problems we see with the technological solution. In order to have a technology, we need a people to use it.

So I believe that the answers are going to be in second socio-economics aspect. With the driving factor of our society being money, I believe this is were we find the answer to some of our problems. While we cannot legislate direct control over people and the Irish language, we can legislate influence that ultimately controls people and Irish. By legislating new policy that favors people and families with Irish, but doesn't punish people and families without, we allow people the freedom of choice while slowing putting pressure on them that speaking Irish is in their best interests.

I believe that with regulated tax cuts, insurance breaks, educational tuition breaks, employment incentives, and real estate deals that seriously favor Irish speaking people and families, it is possible to quickly create an Irish speaking society by using the very economic factors that drive them today. And in so doing, shape their ideology to one that prefers the "ideal" Irish speaking person and family, while continuing the successful introduction of technologies that encourage the usage of the Irish language.

I don't know just a thought.

Now I am not blind, I know that this is happening in Ireland, but I am talking on a much larger scale. Not in isolated test pockets where it doesn't seem to really be helping anything. I am talking about this happening all over Ireland. These types of changes play on the big city dweller just as they play on the small village fisherman

(Message edited by do_chinniúint on April 19, 2008)

An fhadhb leis sin ná nach bhfuil an Rialtas chun togra chomh mór leis sin a dhéanamh.

In my opinion the one single factor that has caused the revival of Irish to be in such a dismal state is the total lack of the ability to comprehend the truth of the above quotation,"A people without a language,etc." Nothing,but nothing,seems to be able to hammer the truth of this self evident truth home. I often wonder what those people,forever trumpeting their Irishness at home, think when they go to the continent on holiday and see people from other nations freely speaking in their home tongue. Whether on the Costa del Sol or the Greek islands you will hear every language under the sun,almost;walk down the street to the nearest newsagent and you will be hard put to find an English language newspaper amongst all the European publications. Or being organised by a stewart to take a sight seeing tour: "Germans over here, French in that queue there...and English in the white bus". If you don't speak French or German there is no use protesting that you are Irish;if you wish to avail of the tour guide's services you will take the white bus,you will meekly accept the English label and get on board.(Not that there is anything wrong with being English;if I were English I'd be as proud of it as I am of being Irish). I myself had to swallow humble pie some years ago when during the course of a casual discourse on the many languages to be heard on the island of Crete, a Greek lady remarked to me "You forgot your language,didn't you". What could I say? That I could speak it? I thought the best thing was to let the moment pass.

I don't believe we can blame the goverenment for the failure to revive the language. After all,we have a democracy; if we are'nt happy with the government we can change it.

The difficult thing is - with pretty much everyone here - we (those attempting a revival either on a large scale or simply in our own lives) are doing so out of romanticism, sentimentalism, personal interest, or some similar intangible reward for our labors.

But we are odd.

It will take more than heart-tugging, impassioned speeches (in english) and intangible rewards to make the average guy ("Joe Sixpack," as we call him in the US) to get off his duff and expend the time, energy, effort and money required to become proficient in a language.

The Irish didn't start speaking english because the british gov't asked "pretty please" - they were left no viable alternative for their own economic (and sometimes physical) safety and that of their children.

Why should we think that any intangible ideal - even one as agreeably important as national identity - could ever substitute for the baser motivations of the common man?

Even with second languages it's the same. In the US, Spanish is the most popular second language for people to study, with some schools even striking other languages from the schedule of offered courses. Why? Because Spanish sounds nicer than Italian? Because it carries a nobler connotation than French? Because it was so much more formative to Western civilization and culture than Latin or Greek?

No, fear is used to make people believe that if they don't learn it they will drown in a sea of monoglot Spanish speakers that is surely coming to inundate their neighborhoods. A preposterous idea, to be sure; but nonetheless, Spanish is considered the king of the foreign languages, a title formerly held by French. A walk through any of our three-storey chain bookstores will reveal approximately sixteen linear feet of bookshelves devoted to "foreign language," and twice that in another section labeled, "Spanish."

Why? The perception of economic necessity and/or threat of exclusion.

quote:

A walk through any of our three-storey chain bookstores will reveal approximately sixteen linear feet of bookshelves devoted to "foreign language," and twice that in another section labeled, "Spanish."

Why?

This might be overly simplistic, but I think that the reason there are more Spanish books on the shelves than other languages is because there are a lot more Spanish speaking people in the United States than all the other different-language peoples put together.

According to the 2000 Census, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States

the number of Spanish speaking persons in the United States was 10.71% of the total population. The total number of English speaking persons was 82.1%, which means that 7.19% of the population spoke a language other than Spanish or English. So, the Spanish speaking people outnumber all the other, non-English language speaking people in the U.S.A. which may lend credence to the reason why, in any given American, three-storied bookseller there are so many more Spanish language books than all the other languages combined.

But unless one lives in certain areas of the southwest, no one "needs" Spanish, in precisely the same way that no one "needs" Irish to get by in Ireland. I live smack dab in the middle of the highest populated, most culturally diverse megalopolis in the country (Just south of NYC, between NYC and Philly), and I don't need Spanish despite relatively high concentrations of Spanish speaking natives. I've dealth with the public in both retail and education and can count the number of times speaking spanish would have been useful to me on one hand and have fingers left over to tie my shoes.

Spanish dominance isn't propagated by the idea that, "gee, there are more native Spanish speakers here than native French speakers..." it is very much the scare tactics. From the Mexican-American War onward, there have been more Spanish speakers in the US than any other non-english langauge, yet the spanish dominance has only been in the last 30 or so years.

My point was, people choose it out of perceived necessity, not out of high-minded ideals. The work that it takes to learn another language means that that factor is the same just about anywhere you go. Ireland isn't going to start speaking more Irish in a meaningful way until the Irish people MUST to get by in at least one important sphere of life.

Hmm. I walked into a local fast food joint today, a taquería, and transacted my order in Spanish, which was not necessary, but on the other hand felt perfectly natural and did not elicit the slightly sign of surprise (and I am not a regular there), admiration or special gratitude. Just like using English. It's easy to use Spanish in a natural way in many parts of the U.S. (and Seattle is not heavily Hispanic). Using Irish in Ireland, on the other hand, can feel like a miracle or an act piety.

Nó, níos measa, ráiteas chúng polaitíochta!