The Highlander wrote:
> On 6 Jan 2007 03:48:38 -0800, "mothed out" <mothed-out@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
>
>> Ciaran wrote:
>>> Click on the "ga" link on the EU homepage: "Bealach isteach don Aontas
>>> Eorpach":
>>>
>>> http://europa.eu/
>>>
>>> or,
>>>
>>> http://europa.eu/index_ga.htm
>>>
>>> and,
>>>
>>> http://ec.europa.eu/news/culture/061227_1_en.htm
>>>
>>> and,
>>>
>>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6212033.stm
>>>
>>> Irish language to get EU status
>>> Irish and EU flags
>>> The EU recognises the Irish language's resurgence
>>> The Irish language (Gaeilge) is set to get official status in the EU
on
>>> 1 January, bringing the total to 23.
>>
>> This guardian article is quite an interesting take on what happens if
>> you try to travel across ireland speaking ONLY the first official
>> language.
>>
>> Apparently in some areas you'd do better speaking ANY other language
>> and just resorting to hand signals -
>>
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1983434,00.html
>
> That's rather sad. However, like the author, I did meet a newly
> arrived Irish family not too long ago where the parents knew some
> basic phrases but the children chattered happily with each other in
> Irish, presumably graduates or former members of the Gaelscoileanna -
> the all-Irish schools.
>
> I'm glad that both the Scots and Irish Gaelic proponents have
> recognized that as always, our children will be the future for our
> native languages.
>
> Irish and Scots-Gaelic are not merely indigenous languages; they are
> also the reminder that centuries of official attempts to wipe out the
> last of Irish and Highland culture have failed, although by the skin
> of our teeth.
>
> In particular, I am encouraged at reading that English people moving
> into the Highlands are in many cases sending their children to
> Gaelic-language schools.
>
> For too long we have been pressured to believe that being a monoglot
> English speaker is somehow a badge of Britishness - a badge of British
> arrogance would be a more accurate description.
>
> Why did we ever believe the lie that speaking English was a mark of
> culture, progress and modernity?
>
> Living in British Columbia, I see around me the exact same battle
> going on among native Canadians, where at last, children are being
> taught their tribal languages in school.
>
> Sadly, native Canadians have been told for so long that they are
> primitive worthless savages that rather like us, they began to think
> that it was true. Many teenage students have little or no interest in
> their culture, regarding it, sadly, as do some Hebridean children, as
> a rural peasant embarrassment compared to the bright, ****ny world of
> Merkan Kulchur as heard via the phony mid-Altantic accents of BBC pop
> show hosts.
>
> Today, the closest tribe to me has three elderly native speakers left
> and a huge effort is being made, just as was made with Mr. Ned
> Maddrell, the last native Manx spealer who died in 1974, to record as
> much as possible of their language as spoken by people for whom it is
> their first and only language.
>
> The English myth that it is impossible to learn a second language; a
> lie underlined every day by the millions who speak fluent English and
> also their native language, is finally dying. Underlined too by the
> thousands of British officers in India who were obliged to learn the
> local area native language or remain unpromoted above their current
> rank; a realization on someone's part that occasionally one will meet
> people who really don't speak English.
>
> I remember being asked to translate French to English in Montreal for
> the benefit of a band of monoglot English tourists who clearly saw me
> as a threat to their comfortable belief that anyone who could speak a
> language other than English represented a reproof to their comfortable
> monoglot world, where people are either "us" or "Wogs".
>
> I am a Scottish Wog; a White Nigger of Great Britain; and more than
> happy to be one; bone thrust proudly through my nose and all.
>
> I have been asked if I don't think it's a bit odd to be able to speak
> more than one language and have replied that in my opinion, not to be
> able to speak a second language is like wearing a large sign
> proclaiming, "I am mentally crippled!"
>
> Worse, it also says, "I am a backward remnant of the now-deceased
> British Empire".
>
> The most outrageous example I have ever seen of this mindset was a TV
> interview featuring an English salesman who had been sent to Cuba
> (this was in the early 1960s) to persuade the Cubans to buy British
> buses rather than secondrate buses from inferior countries like
> Canada, Germany or Italy.
>
> (The Americans had already severed ties with Cuba (1959) and are still
> not speaking to the Cubans, despite leasing Gunatanamo Bay from them -
> one wonders how they handle housekeeping details - rude, little notes
> passed back and forth in the sender's native language, one presumes.
> Anyway, the monstrous American buses would have had difficulty fitting
> the narrow Cuban tracks/road outside Havana.)
>
> Our intrepid salesman had failed to convince the Cubans of the merits
> of British Leyland and was, not unnaturally, somewhat annoyed by his
> failure.
>
> The interviewer asked him what he thought had caused his mission to
> fail and the salesman said in an aggrieved tone, "Would you believe
> that not one of them could speak a word of English!"
>
> Cries of "Good Heavens!" and "How appalling!" echoed back and forth
> and self-congratulation abounded on one's good luck not to have been
> born a Wog, but a Proper Englishman; Thank God and Mrs. Thatcher!
>
> When asked if he could speak Spanish, the saleman snorted angrily and
> said, "Of course not! I speak English, the international language,
> like any normal person would!" leaving the TV host agreeing that, yes,
> it was an absolute disgrace how foreigners insisted on speaking
> beastly Woggish instead of a proper, civilized language.
>
> Again, there were congratulations all round and the interview ended
> with cries of "Well, hard cheese, old chap!" and other international
> signals that the audience was listening to a bunch of Anglo-centric
> linguistic morons.
>
> I could feel my eyes crossing with disbelief that I had just sat
> through this incredible nonsense and that, presumably, the audience
> accepted it all as gospel handed down by the Creator Himself!
>
> If the Messiah does arrive back on Earth, there are going to be a lot
> of annoyed BBC interviewers trying to get Him to show the TV audience
> a few clips of his latest miracles and discovering that the Man of the
> Moment speaks nothing but Aramaic and that not even the Archbishop of
> Canterbury has the faintest idea what the sorry old bugger is trying
> to say, apart from "Oy Veh - Goyim! - Oh no, Gentiles!"
>
> I rest my case.
>
> The Highlander
>
> Faodaidh nach ionann na beachdan anns
> an post seo agus beachdan a' Ghàidheil.
> The views expressed in this post are
> not necessarily those of The Highlander.
Seems to me that the same is happening in Eire as has already been so
successful in Cymru. The young people brought up in schools taught in
Gaeilge/Cymraeg/Gaidhlig/Brezhoneg use the language as their own and
much more fluently than most of the adults. Just take a walk on the
streets of Caernarfon at night and listen to them. The same is starting
in Alba, just take the ferry from Lewis to Ullapool at the start of the
summer holidays and just listen. I have heard the same can be said of
the children from the Diwan schools in Breizh who like the Irish
Gaeilge-only schools achieve a higher academic performance than those
from schools taught in French/English. I have read studies that the same
is true for Amerindian kids.
The extracts that I like from the Guardian article that the poster
before you misrepresented in his summary of it are:
I might have been tempted to give up the journey entirely had it not
been for something that happened during the radio phone-in. I was
rapidly approaching a point of despair when some children came on the
line. I found they spoke clear and fluent Irish in a new and modern
urban dialect. They told me how they spoke the language all the time, as
did all their friends. They loved it, and they were outraged that I
could suggest it was dead. These were the children of the new
Gaelscoileanna - the all-Irish schools that are springing up throughout
the country in increasing numbers every year. While old schools are
being closed down or struggling to find pupils, the Gaelscoileanna are
having to turn people away. The phenomenon is as popular among the
affluent middle cl***** as it is in working-class estates, largely due
to the excellence of the education: Irish-speaking secondary schools
often score higher in state exams than the most elite fee-paying
schools. The students come away unburdened with the sense of inferiority
that every previous generation had been instilled with since the days in
which the British first labelled Irish as backward.
These children were reared on Irish versions of SpongeBob SquarePants
and Scooby-Doo on TG4 . They had invented Irish words for X-Box and
hip-hop, for Jackass and blog. They were fluent in Irish text-speak and
had moulded the ancient pronunciations and syntax in accordance with the
latest styles of Buffy-speak and Londonstani slang. I realised it was
they I should have turned to for help on the streets. The children
filled me with renewed confidence as I left Dublin and took to the road,
boosted further by my first experience in a petrol station where a
Polish attendant had no problem deciphering the complicated mechanical
query I had about my borrowed vintage Jaguar. For him, every day
involved a struggle to understand a foreign language, and whether I was
speaking Irish or English made little difference. In fact, everyone I
met over the course of the next 1,000 miles driving around the country
were more approachable and considerate than those first few Dubliners.
Not that I am claiming they all had fluent Irish - far from it - but
they were willing to engage with me, to string together the few stray
words of school Irish that arose from the darkest recesses of their
minds, or else to try to decipher my miming and mad gesticulation.
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