“Irish isn’t a language”

42 comments
  1. I used to get annoyed at the Gaelic (well it was mostly Americans mansplaining my language to me) but to be honest, there is a reason for it. Gaeilge Dún na nGall agus Canúint Ultach (ulster) pronounce Gaeilge as Gaelic. We lost a lot of speakers from that part of the world to the US and they likely brought hat pronunciation with em.

    Going beyond that, those with canúint na Mumhan like myself call it Gaelaínn.

    Untill we get our own house in order regardless Irish, I don’t think we can get too wound up by tick tok videos….

  2. Why the fuck should people 5000 miles away know that we have a language when their only (very limited) experience is of Irish people speaking English?

    As if random Irish people would know what the national language of Equatorial Guinea is

  3. Have regularly had members of my partner’s family (Italian-Australian) balk when I say my parents can speak Irish. Well educated people including some who have been to Ireland. Doesn’t register that it is not an accent of English.

    I think part of that is the fact Australians refer to the Irish as ‘Anglos’ or ‘Anglo-Celtic’ as against later waves of migration. Now *I’ll* cop being called Anglo because I’m English by birth and culture, even if my folks are Irish. But I think it’s bloody unfair to lump the Irish in with the English under the ‘Anglo’ umbrella.

  4. Why does this sub expect everyone in the world to get everything related to Ireland correct and make out everyone that doesn’t as uneducated barbarians. Ireland is not the center of the universe.

  5. Well considering only about 80 thousand people speak Irish on a daily basis I’m not surprised people don’t know anything about it.

    I’d say there is languages that other country’s speak that I would have no idea about as well.

  6. A lot of Americans know that there is a spoken language in Ireland that’s not English, but I think most of them wouldn’t know it as Irish, they would think of it as Gaelic or Irish Gaelic or they would think that Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic are the same

    but fucking lol the number of people who got mad… like wtf? why are you mad about it?

  7. This is a stupid post. Why would Americans know we have our own language if we don’t even speak it ourselves? You say shame on them, well I say shame on us. It’s like asking an Irish person what language they speak in the Philippines (it’s Tagalog btw) or what language they speak in China, hint: it’s not called Chinese.

  8. Im a Geordie (Newcastle Upon Tyne uk) and we speak English but it’s pretty hard for people to understand us bcoz of our accent

  9. If we still called the language “gaelic”, most likely it’s original name instead of Irish then foreigners would probably be more likely to realise that it’s its own separate language rather than English spoken with an accent

  10. This reminds me of the time my father stood up to his English bosses in London when they tried to stop him speaking Irish to his colleague during break time. Apparently they told him that English was the only approved language in the office and that Irish was not a real language anyway as ‘hardly anyone spoke it.’ My father calmly stood up and reminded them why nobody spoke it and that he should be entitled to speak whatever way he wanted during his own lunch hour. One guy then made some snide remark about how the two Irish lads were probably planning to ‘bomb the place’ and that they were ‘IRA.’ My father worked there for another couple of years but he always remembered the name of the guy who spoke to him like that. The funny thing was this same guy was one of the people who did get killed in an IRA bombing years later and my father said he was involved in fixing the fuses and supplying the ball bearings for this bomb. It was a happy coincidence, but it goes to show: be careful who you are rude to on your way up, because they might well bomb you on your way down.

  11. Did this person go onto Random live streams asking this question? Or did these people tag their stream with an Irish tag? Otherwise seems kinda fucking stupid to be asking these people who probably dont give a fuck about Irish or Ireland or anything to do with it.

  12. Isn’t the language known as Gaelic? Not that those kids would know what that is, but it would be more telling in the responses.

  13. I wouldn’t get angry at this. A lot of Americans haven’t even left their home states. So expecting them to know much about a country thousands of miles away is obscene.

  14. Fishing for karma & outrage.

    American kids don’t know about Gaeilge / Gaelic ? Wow – what morons !!!! /s 🙄

    There’s a reason they were asked if they spoke Irish and not if they spoke Gaeilge / Gaelic .. because whoever was asking them knew they wouldn’t have a fucking clue what Gaeilge / Gaelic was even supposed to be, but that they’d have heard the word ‘Irish’ before – and their only knowledge only extends to accents as far as Irish people and speaking goes.

    Not to mention – we, much to our eternal shame, don’t even speak the language here in any meaningful way (general population, not Gaeilgeoirs of course).

    Enjoy my downvote.

  15. Hard to be offended at this.

    How the fuck would thick yanks know it’s a language when very little of us can speak it.

  16. Chill out everyone. These are teenagers in the USA with no exposure to our language. I’m not mad – I find it pretty funny actually

  17. “Irish is a dead language and no one speaks it” – every Dubliner who’s didn’t pay attention in Irish class

  18. I am an American, and I’ve been learning Irish for 7ish years, just passed my C1 TEG. I’m from Boston and even here you’d be surprised at the number of Irish heritage Americans who don’t even know it exists. “Irish – dOn’T yOu MeAn gAeLic?”

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