roc_abilly
Member
My opinion would be that it should be studied like Latin or Greek, or other dead languages in general.
The point is that spoken or written as it should be, it expresses a particularly Irish mindset, that is different to the Anglo Saxon mindset.
For there is an "otherness" in the language, in its grammar, in the expression of the relation of things. How people and everything in the world relate to each other, and to spirit.
Irish spoken as it should be is melody, in the manner of chord or a melodic line, you have metrics and versification, the old formulaic phrases.
There is a philosophical outlook implicit in the Irish language, an economic and social outlook too.
Language is after all your tool of thought. In Irish, it is the idioms, the grammar, the old phrases, the almost extinct and to our Anglo Saxon minds most difficult Tuiseal Gairmeach, Tuiseal Tabharthach and Tuiseal Ginideach, and all the declensions, that express the complex, subtle, nuances of the Gaelic mind as opposed to the English mind. You see the world through different lenses.
Yes, the Irish language is dead and few speak it. I don't personally think it should be revived, as it is worse just using Irish words within an increasing grammatically English structure, i.e. the recent way the language is becoming anglicised to make it "easier" for people to speak it. Including all these profusion of new words, pre-defining things for people bthrough an always expanding "vocabulary", like wikipedia or Jambo's metapedia - whereas old Irish had a very complex morphology with very few words. It was all about the relations between the few words that were used, expressed through a complex grammar. You had the tools to draw and colour in your own world, as you saw it.
So I think the Irish language is all we have left of Irish culture. So therefore I think anyone concerned to remain "Irish" therefore should put at least some effort into understanding the currents and elements found within the language that made us the people we are.
Think of the implication that there are some people out there who actually think it was our white skin that made us the people we are! What kind of education does someone need to understand that is not the case at all? What is the antidote to such base stupidity? Well the kind of course of study I am suggesting here would be one important element I think.
The point is that spoken or written as it should be, it expresses a particularly Irish mindset, that is different to the Anglo Saxon mindset.
For there is an "otherness" in the language, in its grammar, in the expression of the relation of things. How people and everything in the world relate to each other, and to spirit.
Irish spoken as it should be is melody, in the manner of chord or a melodic line, you have metrics and versification, the old formulaic phrases.
There is a philosophical outlook implicit in the Irish language, an economic and social outlook too.
Language is after all your tool of thought. In Irish, it is the idioms, the grammar, the old phrases, the almost extinct and to our Anglo Saxon minds most difficult Tuiseal Gairmeach, Tuiseal Tabharthach and Tuiseal Ginideach, and all the declensions, that express the complex, subtle, nuances of the Gaelic mind as opposed to the English mind. You see the world through different lenses.
Yes, the Irish language is dead and few speak it. I don't personally think it should be revived, as it is worse just using Irish words within an increasing grammatically English structure, i.e. the recent way the language is becoming anglicised to make it "easier" for people to speak it. Including all these profusion of new words, pre-defining things for people bthrough an always expanding "vocabulary", like wikipedia or Jambo's metapedia - whereas old Irish had a very complex morphology with very few words. It was all about the relations between the few words that were used, expressed through a complex grammar. You had the tools to draw and colour in your own world, as you saw it.
So I think the Irish language is all we have left of Irish culture. So therefore I think anyone concerned to remain "Irish" therefore should put at least some effort into understanding the currents and elements found within the language that made us the people we are.
Think of the implication that there are some people out there who actually think it was our white skin that made us the people we are! What kind of education does someone need to understand that is not the case at all? What is the antidote to such base stupidity? Well the kind of course of study I am suggesting here would be one important element I think.