The Daltaí Boards: Follow up article in Irish to "Drastic measures"

Interesting article!
It is not impossible that languages can continue to exist with learners only if sufficient amounts of people learn and use it from child. The prominent example is Latin which has been dominated fluently by educated people after the fall of the Roman Empire during centuries!. In monasteries there has been the so called "kitchen Latin" among servants as a semi-vulgar Latin! But the influence of the local European languages were to be clearly seen in the medieval texts as well as the influence of Latin to the grammar of the European languages!
I can see similarities to Irish. Today the majority of its speakers have begun learning it earlier or later. In medieval age, there have been certainly a few native or semi-native speakers of Latin within the educated class. It is said that Charles V spoke Latin better than Franconian! In Ireland you can clearly see the influence of each other in both Irish and English speech. Pure dialectal Irish without English influence will certainly die out after the older generation is gone. I do not see any chance to keep natively spoken Irish comparable to, let's say, English or French. But there is a realistic chance that neo-natively spoken Irish will be left in the country as result from the Gaelscoil movement. Yes, I myself have met Gaelscoil and ancient Gaelscoil students who spoke in Irish to each other as naturally as French people speak French to each other. Neo-natively spoken Irish is the only realistic future for the Gaeltachts, too. It is to the last "purely native speakers" to pass on as much of their knowledge to the coming generation as possible. Furthermore, the idiomatic, proverbal and colloquial content of natively spoken Irish has to be documentated to pass it on to future neo-native speakers. This could be done in the way as indigenous languages are being documentated today in Australia. For those speakers who dominate it from an early age, can easily adopt ecpressions into their speech. We have still the works of past 'purely native" speakers to be read by future generations.
In the Gaeltacht it will depend on the decision of every inhabitant to keep the areas as those where Irish is spoken far mor widely than in other parts of the country. Non-native speakers, too, can decide to speak mostly Irish within their social life within the Gaeltacht as well as native Irish speakers can decide to mostly speak English! The potential to do so is still existing in most Gaeltacht districts when we look at the ability to speak Irish in contrast to the rest of the county!
Nevertheless, native speakers are essential for the vitality of a language.I would suggest to include the aim of increasing the number of native and semi-native speakers who use it continuously in their life all over the island as well. It's the native and semi-native speakers who can develope their abilities the most easily. Every number of (semi-)native as well as daily Irish speakers above 100.000 in 2030 will be a great success! Why not starting a campaign to raise children monolingually through Irish? There is no doubt that they will pick up English withoud parential intervention when they get older! Those persons will surely contain decided defenders of Irish and will force other people to speak Irish! Several thousands of younger children who nearly have only Irish are sufficient to make a considerable amount of people to use Irish.
Strong limited purposes for using a certain language helps minority languages to survive, too. In Ireland English ought to become a simple "lingua franca" in dealings with English-only speakers for native Irish speakers. A hostility to speak English to other Irish speakers among native speakers and those being fluent from an early age would ensure the survival.
Is gá an aidhm níos mó cainteoirí dúchais a chruthú a ainmniú sa straitéis. Mar is cinnte go gcoinníonn cainteoirí dúchais teangacha beo ar aon chaoi.
Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh.
Alex