Why I’m raising my daughter as an Irish speaker and how I’ve discovered a community of parents doing the same thing
by Floodzie
Why I’m raising my daughter as an Irish speaker and how I’ve discovered a community of parents doing the same thing
by Floodzie
21 comments
Very lovely
it’s a good thing to do but doesn’t have to be justified by claiming it will somehow make the child “more creative” imo!
The IT squeezing in the “Irish isn’t dying, we swear” articles late this year.
Bilingual kids tend to do well in school, it’s a laudable goal, but the idea that 600,000 speak Irish daily is fanciful at best. The odd “an mhaith” doesn’t count.
Kids in this country hate Irish because it is rammed down their throats from a young age,it really is a useless language ,most people never use it again once they leave school
There’s lots of bilingual kids out there, mostly the children of immigrants. A pity that this article focused only on Irish speakers.
Pretty cool. Hopefully more and more people do the same.
20% of all Civil Service employees will need to be fluent (B2 level and above) in Irish by 2030, so her daughter’s language skills could be an important asset to her.
Edit: Probably should have been more clear that ‘B2 level and above’ refers to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, not a B2 in the leaving cert. A CEFR B2 is described as:
Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in their field of specialisation.
Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.
Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.
As long as you’re raising her as bilingual, cool. But even then why not a language she will find actually useful? French. German. Chinese.
Irish? I didn’t know it was a language.
Things like this are really the only way you’d ever see a language revival. True commitment to give people the language from the beginning.
Irish is a bit pointless, you can’t even use it here because most of us don’t speak more than a few sentences.
No need to make an article about normal life for thousands of kids
It’s the best time to teach them another language, they may get confused between the 2 at first but by 5 years old you have a bilingual child without that much effort.
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tey are like sponges when small and my lil one loves going to a gaelteacht school excuse my spelling shes more fluent than me i have enough irish to ask for cake and tea as well as use the toilet.
Irish is all well and good but I wouldn’t be bothered personally learning it. It’s like the harp or the bodhran, they are nice and all but I’m not bothered with them either. They serve no function to me. It’s nice to see someone keeping up the tradition but I won’t be participating in learning it. I never liked it in school either. Bad memories of it actually. I was never good in school and I was never exempt from Irish. So instead of focusing on useful subjects like Maths, I had to also focus on a language that’s used less frequently and doesn’t actually hold any merit to my development. Learn it on your own time I’d say. It’s nice to be able to speak it but I had enough shit on my plate in school without having to be tripped up by Irish.
I can’t say I’m fond of the language. My only experience of it was struggling with it and hating it in school.
I can appreciate why some people feel very sentimental about it but I just can’t see any real way for it to ever come in to use again.
I applaud you. However I’m too bad at Irish and too run off my feet trying to keep the plates spinning to overcompensate enough to do this. I’d consider myself quite privileged to be able to afford the time and energy to do it.
I wish I could practice it with my neighbours or local businesses…
You can’t preserve your heritage, thats racist for white people to do!!!!