Skip to main content

Gaeltacht not viable!? Is that really a surprise?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Gaeltacht not viable!? Is that really a surprise?

As a foreigner, I don’t speak Irish and have never learned it in school. I did make an attempt many years ago to learn it and bought a book and a few cassette tapes (it is THAT long ago!), but I don’t think I made it beyond the first lesson.

Why did I want to learn it? Well, if you move to a country where there is a different language than your own, you at least make an attempt and in addition there is this romanticised idea that it will come in handy somewhere.

But then you realise that ONLY English is needed in Ireland and that apart from some politically inspired publications, there is not even a proper newspaper available in Irish, which is a clear indication to me that the language has been given up.

Is it a terrible thing to give up language that is not useful anymore? Not at all! Otherwise we would all talk in Shakespearian English. Languages change and move, disappear and appear and even if there is history of a language, it does not mean that it HAS to be kept alive. On the other hand, there is NOTHING wrong with keeping it alive if there is sufficient interest and if people want to use it.

The “Oireachtas Standing Joint Committee on the Irish Language, the Gaeltacht and the Islands” was now told last Wednesday by Dr Brian Ó Curnáin from the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies that the number of Irish speakers is decreasing, that young people’s competence in the language even in the Gaeltacht is declining and that the Gaeltacht in its current state is not viable.

This has been reported by RTE.ie here.

It can’t really come as a surprise! Money is spent on Gaeltacht and on Irish language initiatives and the forced language teaching in Irish schools is still in place. But all this seems (to a non-involved observer) more like state-prescribed or forced programmes and not at all like genuine enthusiasm for the Irish language.

It seems that the language enthusiasm in Wales (for Welsh) is much bigger than in Ireland (for Gaelic). And considering that Welsh only became official language of Wales in 2011, that is some achievement. I am not sure what exactly was done in Wales to get there, but the system used in Ireland is clearly failing, so now the strategy needs to be changed OR maybe it should be considered to let Irish die?

Education, Irish, Politics, Society,

Tacsaí!? Wie bitte?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Tacsaí!? Wie bitte?

I have been intrigued by this for some while….

If you have ever been abroad in a non-English speaking country, I am sure that you have witnessed business owners and their employees going out their way to serve/greet/help you in English instead of their native language. They do whatever they can, to accommodate you. And if you are a business owner or have ever considered to start a business, you probably have thought about what name you would choose. Most think, it should be a name that is easily recognisable, understandable, pronounceable and that ideally provides some relevant information about what you do to your customers.

And then you see a car with “TACSAI” written on the side! :-O

Taxi drivers can choose if they want to have the big sticker on the front door of their Taxi in English or in Irish. The vast majority chooses English (and possibly considers the points above), but a surprisingly large amount of Taxis in Dublin use the Irish language version “Tacsaí”. And the ones that choose Tacsai seem to go against all logical reasons for choosing a specific business name as a service provider in an industry that particularly serves a very international audience. Unsurprisingly – but somewhat inconsistently – they won’t greet you with “Conas atá tú?” when you enter the taxi, but their brand on the outside is not at all considering to accommodate their international customer base.

Without a doubt you might think of “800 years of occupation” and “forced adoption of English” as reasons why some prefer the Irish language brand, but there are also other countries in this world where English was forced upon the population and you probably won’t be too surprised that Indian taxis are called “Taxi” despite the role of Britain in their history.

Even more puzzling, though, is why the word “Tacsai” even exists! The word “taxa” is originally Latin and means “charging”. That word was used in 1890 in Germany to make “Taxameter”, an automatic meter to record the distance and fare. So does “Tacsai” have the same root? Does it go back to the Latin “taxa”? No, not at all! It is a made up word that tries to copy but be different at the same time.

I’d say the Irish that is used nowadays could easily live with some “foreign” words like “Taxi”. It hasn’t done any harm to all the other languages that just use the word “Taxi”. But there seems to be a flavour of Irish speakers that seem to have to translate EVERYTHING just for the sake of it. After all there is even a word for “Internet”, one of these olden Gaelic communication concepts, you know!? In case you want to know, it is the “Idirghréasán”. Oddly, force-translating modern words makes Irish more outdated than if it just adopted the words!

Irish, Odd, , ,
 
Malcare WordPress Security