Scots Wikipaedia

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

However, I would not choose to spend my time learning gaelic. I would have had it been taught in schools like in ireland.

According to Kevin Meyers in today's Irish Independent 23% of Irish school leavers are functionally illiterate. The forced feeding (and that's what it is) of the Irish language is considered to be a major factor in this failure of the educational system. Far better, it would seem to me, if those five weekly hours of Irish were replaced with teaching basic reading, writing, and math skills.

Students attending all-Irish schools are further disenfranchised by the fact that many of their text books are in English, whilst the lectures are delivered in Irish. That school leavers from Gaelic schools receive a lesser education is proved by the fact that they are given a 10% "bonus" on their leaving certificate scores for taking the examination in the Irish language in order to assist them in qualifing for placement in Irish universities.

[thanmuwa]

According to Kevin Meyers in today's Irish Independent 23% of Irish school leavers are functionally illiterate. The forced feeding (and that's what it is) of the Irish language is considered to be a major factor in this failure of the educational system. Far better, it would seem to me, if those five weekly hours of Irish were replaced with teaching basic reading, writing, and math skills.

Kevin myers is hardly a neutral observer. He is a highly partisan commentator with a major political axe to grind who is not above at the very least misquoting if not downright fabricating statistics to support his cause (He hates the Irish language amongst many other things).
I have direct personal experience of both the UK and Irish education systems and the Irish secondary-level one (in it's present form, I only left tertiary level education 6 years ago) is superior.

I agree that Irish is taught terribly (there aren't words to describe how awful the teaching of Irish is in general... for a start, imagine learning grammar by rote for 6 years with no conversational lessons at all!), but the other core subjects are taught to a level equal or above, for example, the equivalent in Northern Ireland. (Northern Ireland is acknowledged as being top across the board in the UK for education, based on school results.) This is based directly on how my Irish second-level education compared with Northern Irish students in the same degree programme in Queen's, Belfast. In Maths for example they were still coming across new concepts that I had already done in school until at least halfway through our first year.

Students attending all-Irish schools are further disenfranchised by the fact that many of their text books are in English, whilst the lectures are delivered in Irish. That school leavers from Gaelic schools receive a lesser education is proved by the fact that they are given a 10% "bonus" on their leaving certificate scores for taking the examination in the Irish language in order to assist them in qualifing for placement in Irish universities.

I love the way you deliberately put two unlinked items in a sentence in such a way as to imply a link that doesn't exist. You may not have been a politician (I don't know) but you certainly picked up a few tips on politician speak! The Gaelscoileanna (Irish speaking schools) are a much more recent invention than the bonus points for doing exams in Irish, the bonus points weren't invented to get educationally sub-par Irish speakers into Uni as you imply. The bonus was a failed way to encourage Irish, the Gaelscoileanna (which started up about 50 years afterwards, they are a recent phenomenon) are what is looking like a successful attempt to encourage Irish. Which is incidentally what kevin myers has a problem with.
Your implication that Irish speakers need additional help to get to University is just plain false. Getting results of the level to allow you you to go to Uni means that you got little or no bonus for doing your exams in Irish (they are awarded on a sliding scale - top results (i.e. Uni level) = no bonus).

There is another major advantage to the Gaelscoileanna apart from the obvious preservation of a language that was the first modern European language to be written down, and the language of the people who almost alone were responsible for preserving Western European Christianity during the Dark Ages.
Students who grow up actually speaking Irish tend to have a major advantage in that they can read, write and think in two distinct languages. Being a duoglot is a strong stepping stone to becoming a polyglot. You go into a shop in Dublin and the fictional Dublin guy behind the counter will speak one language - English. You go into a shop in the Connemara Gaeltacht and there is a good chance you will get by in French, German or Spanish. To put it another way, the Irish people I know with fluent Irish (and English obviously) to a man/woman have at least two other fluent languages, and a smattering of several more. Surely polyglottism is to be encouraged rather than looked on with suspicion?

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Kevin myers is hardly a neutral observer. He is a highly partisan commentator with a major political axe to grind who is not above at the very least misquoting if not downright fabricating statistics to support his cause (He hates the Irish language amongst many other things).
I have direct personal experience of both the UK and Irish education systems and the Irish secondary-level one (in it's present form, I only left tertiary level education 6 years ago) is superior.

For get about Kevin Meyers-- that's not the subject at hand, no matter how much you may wish to disparage him. Take off the rose coloured glasses and look at the hard facts: Only about 12% of the Irish population can be considered as "literate" in the Irish language despite having spent at least an hour a day, for twelve years, "learining" the language in school. Sure he may have a few words of social Irish, but the average 30-something couldn't fill out a DSS form, or pass the written portion of the Road Test in Irish, if called on to do so. Worse, almost a quarter of those leaving school today can't fill out those forms in English without assistance. If, as you say, the secondary education system where you live isn't as good as the Irish system, all I can say is God help you. Your schools must be turning out a generation of dolts.

But here's the whole point of it.

Like it or not, for political, cultural, or economic reasons we are English speakers, and it does no one any good to have schools turning out students who are unable to function in the real, work-a-day world, in English, especially when that bit of their education is given short shrift because of some lofty-- although possibly misguided-- "nationalist" ideal. Whether we are talking about Scots, Lallans, or Irish, the bottom line is this: it doesn't matter how good--or bad-- they are in that language. If they can't read, write, and comprehend English, they are going to be doomed, if not condemned, to the lowest end of the social scale.

[The Thing]

According to Kevin Meyers in today's Irish Independent 23% of Irish school leavers are functionally illiterate. The forced feeding (and that's what it is) of the Irish language is considered to be a major factor in this failure of the educational system. Far better, it would seem to me, if those five weekly hours of Irish were replaced with teaching basic reading, writing, and math skills.

Students attending all-Irish schools are further disenfranchised by the fact that many of their text books are in English, whilst the lectures are delivered in Irish. That school leavers from Gaelic schools receive a lesser education is proved by the fact that they are given a 10% "bonus" on their leaving certificate scores for taking the examination in the Irish language in order to assist them in qualifing for placement in Irish universities.

Well since Ireland has the second highest amount of 3rd level graduates in Europe, I don't think our education system is doing too bad, as for the teaching of Irish, would you have us stop the teaching of English as it is also the national language of this country. Trying to preserve the culture and language of a people should be highly encourgaed by the national government. Take the Irish Whiskey industry for example from being the world's premier Whiskey to almost dying off, this was a massive part of Irish culture and the Irish Government almost managed to kill it off. I hope the language doesn't go the same way.

[Heming]

Like it or not, English is the first/second language of the developed world.

This is not true. Poor, distorted English is the common second language of the developed world. English is the first language of many countries, but many other languages are larger, and many as large. Think of Mandarine Chinese, or for that matter Spanish.

English is the preferred language for international trade in the western world, and as a result many people learn some English. But why is it that a Norwegian can understand a Finn speaking English, but struggles to understand a Londoner or someone from Miami or Sydney? Because the English of the international community isn't English. It's corrupted, adulterated English, washed, wrung and hung out to dry.

English is doing irrevocable damage to other languages because of it's role as the international trade language. This is natural, and expected, but still damage. A bit like the weather wearing down mountains.

End of rant.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

The inescapable fact is that the numbers mentioned by Meyers (and my, my, but doesn't he get up your nose?) have been reported in other Irish papers (The Irish Times, for instance) and accurately reflect the findings of the Irish government.

I have not implied that Irish speakers are necessarily poor at English. I have, however, stated the opposite to be true. In point of fact kids attending Irish language schools generally don't do well in English because it is assumed that they will learn all they need by watching television... English is poorly taught in the "gaelscoileanna".

As far as your "gun and drug smuggling" comments go, I am sure that you have probably offended any number of teachers on this forum, and leave it to you to decide if you should make amends for what I can only assume to be a lapse of judgment in your attempt to show some sort of superior standard of education in the UK.

I do agree that speaking more that one language probably does enrich one's use of English-- although I find that I sometime lapse into German construction if I am in a hurry writing.

[slohairt]

I’ll address the side argument going on here, and then back to the original topic.

IRISH

The validity of whether or not to teach Irish is a pointless debate. It is the first national language of the country, and to suggest it be dropped in favour of other practical studies and better proficiency of English is a remnant of the thinking that helped put Irish into its present situation. Obviously the language has not been taught properly, but it has also suffered from these major problems:

Lack of money to devote to proper bilingualism: Ireland was an impoverished country for a long time and there simply wasn’t enough money to spend on language restoration. To compound this, the Gaeltachtaí were/are economically depressed regions with a very high rate of emigration, both to lands beyond and to the English-speaking regions of Ireland. I think now, perhaps, one will see things change for the better.

Social Stigma: There was/is a widespread belief that Irish was an inferior language to English. This belief not only pervaded the lower classes, but was firmly believed by most of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Interestingly, in the past this wasn’t always the case. The invading Normans were assimilated rather quickly and adopted the Irish language. Though not really documented, I’m sure many Anglo-Irish landowners actually had a working knowledge of Irish, though probably not by choice but by necessity. In fact, Elizabeth I had an ‘Englishe-Iryshe-Latin Primer’ prepared for her by Christopher Nugent! (You can see an image from this phrase book in The Irish Language by Máirtín Ó Murchú.)

Illiteracy: Though Irish was the majority language of the country (even well into the 19th Century), the British authorities installed an educational system which completely ignored this. Many Irish speakers were illiterate, so when the time finally came to officially teach Irish, there were precious few who could read and write it well. This is especially saddening as Irish is Europe’s third oldest literary language after Greek and Latin.

Irish also has the disadvantage of being up against English, the business language of the world which many non-English speakers wish to learn. Are there any advantages to learning Irish? Sure. It is the first official language of Ireland and is the ancestral language of the large Irish diaspora. It would also assist in the learning of other Celtic languages, especially Scottish Gaelic and Manx. No language is useless to learn.

SCOTS

Scots (or Lallans, the Doric, Buchan Claik, or whatever else you want to call it), has the additional disadvantage of being considered a ‘half-language’. People claim it is a peasant ‘patois’ or merely a dialect, but the only thing which truly defines a language is recognition. Now that the Scottish Parliament and the UK government have recognized Scots as a regional language, that old argument is really finished.

Some will say, “I live in Scotland, and I never hear people using those words,” but they are missing the point entirely. What organizations like Scots-Online.org or even Scots Wikipaedia are trying to do is establish a written standard for Scots, something which has occurred in the history of most languages. Scots was on its way to becoming standardized until the Act of Union in 1707. From then on, many ‘forward’ thinkers adopted English in their efforts to become what they termed “North Britons.” Obviously they didn’t succeed, but they have left the language in a difficult position.

There is also some difficulty in determining the number of speakers because many people regularly switch from English to Scottish English to Scots in the course of their day-to-day conversations. Even the Scots they do use may not include a very large vocabulary and is often erroneously regarded as slang. Only with a structured written standard, complete with dictionaries and other educational literature, can the language be properly taught.

Yes, Scots is, for the most part, is mutually intelligible to English-speakers, but many languages within a related group can make this claim. To call Scots English is to call Scottish Gaelic Irish.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

I think that most agree that the way Irish is taught in school is a near abject failure.

The government spends more money on teaching Irish, on maintaining commissions to make sure that new housing developments use only Irish names, etc., than they do on just about any other cultural activity. In fact, more money is spent teaching Irish than is spent on teaching all other European languages, combined.

One of the major problems that faces Irish teachers is that Irish lacks a standard of pronunciation. For wholly political reasons no one has had the balls to sit down and come up with a standard pronunciation for even the simplest words. When I was doing my 'fresher in Irish at Gael Linn our two instructors nearly came to blows over the difference in Donegal Irish and Kerry Irish of the pronunciation of "fuinneoig" (window).

As far as the problem of illiteracy is concerned, this is still a problem in Ireland, and has little or nothing to do with the Irish language, either then or now. The causes are deeply rooted in both politics and religion (as well as other socio-economic issues) and are really well beyond the scope of discussion on what is, after all, a kilt forum.

[highlander_Daz]

As Ive said before "Scots" is a representation of how some people speak in some parts of Scotland, there is miscnception after misconception about this type of "language" issue, if you went most places in Scotland and attempted to speak like the article suggests most people would be very puzzled, there is NO "scots language" no matter what Alex Salmond or anyone else wants to believe, its ENGLISH with slang and regional variations thrown in. As Ive said before there are so many misconceptions . I recently read one of the "Outlander" series of novels, and the Highland folk were all saying "dinne" "canne" wouldnae" , which is a shame as the books are excelent, this is akin to watching an episode of "Dallas" but all the characters having thick new york accents, very puzzling. Ive alwasy found when people type in phonetics "scots" slightly silly, it isnt representitive of how Scots speak, only a minority.
Imagine a forum that discussed Native ameican dress and culture, and I joined and typed in the style of Jay Silverheels.: "How, Kemo sabe, Me Scottish man um want to discuss pipe of peace" etc it would be rightly slated as a ridiculous stereotype. just my thoughts

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

As Ive said before "Scots" is a representation of how some people speak in some parts of Scotland, there is miscnception after misconception about this type of "language" issue, if you went most places in Scotland and attempted to speak like the article suggests most people would be very puzzled, there is NO "scots language" no matter what Alex Salmond or anyone else wants to believe, its ENGLISH with slang and regional variations thrown in. As Ive said before there are so many misconceptions . I recently read one of the "Outlander" series of novels, and the Highland folk were all saying "dinne" "canne" wouldnae" , which is a shame as the books are excelent, this is akin to watching an episode of "Dallas" but all the characters having thick new york accents, very puzzling. Ive alwasy found when people type in phonetics "scots" slightly silly, it isnt representitive of how Scots speak, only a minority.
Imagine a forum that discussed Native ameican dress and culture, and I joined and typed in the style of Jay Silverheels.: "How, Kemo sabe, Me Scottish man um want to discuss pipe of peace" etc it would be rightly slated as a ridiculous stereotype. just my thoughts

I'd have to agree. Writing "dialect" always slows down the narrative and takes away from the overall effect of the novel. Anything that "gets in the way of the reader" should be avoided, if at all possible.