SirOrmondeWinter

Yes it's unfortunate that gaelic has become associated with Catholicism and (sometimes militant) Irish Nationalism but it's not necessarily so, Edward Carson himself was keen player of Gaelic games (indeed we're coming up to the 100th anniversary of the signing of Ulster's solemn league and covennant)

Iolo

It is too close for us to be able to talk to ourselves in its language without being loudly interrupted by foreigners with big noses, feet and ears. Ireland and Scotland are further away from these spies.

Iolo

Going back to the original question, my parents didn't teach me our language (I had to learn it myself later) because they saw no future for our Country under the current political arrangements and supposed I'd have to make my living abroad. Might not similar thinking have affected post-Famine Ireland?

larkin

In addition to the famine, how far would Oscar Wilde have gotten if he had only spoke Gaelic?

Louise C

In 'Goodbye to Catholic Ireland' Mary Kenny writes:

'From the 1870s onwards, the Catholic Church was increasingly interested in overseas missions; you would not evangelize Africa using a minority Celtic tongue: English and French were a lot more valuable. Ordinary Irish Catholics were increasingly attracted to the British civil service overseas, in which they did remarkably well - better than they did in Ireland itself - and Irish was of scant use for such job promotion. There may also have been a psychological barrier. Irish had begun to falter at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but was dealt a massive blow by the Great Famine of 1845-8; many of those who died, or emigrated, were Irish speakers, and after that the language may have become associated with a famine-stricken past for some Irish Catholics just when they were most anxious to embrace a more prosperous future. When Dominican nuns in Galway offered to teach schoolchildren Irish in 1896, they found that 'most of the day pupils are unwilling to learn it.'A 'bright little girl' when asked why she did not care to learn Irish, said 'It is a vulgar language, the language of the poor Cladach people, and there is nothing refined or nice about it.'

annelouise17

I guess thats why it's used so much in their Music?

RewardMe

Well, how rude! Next time I go on holiday I'm gonna take my big ears some where else.

Just kidding. Wales has a lot of history and landmarks that the average tourist would want to visit. Like.... errr. A hill. Also we can't forget... errr that other hill.

Tommy Atkins

wow lots of ignorance over this issue, the catholic church was the biggest factor in the decline of Gaelic in Ireland after the catastrophe of the famine, they controlled the schools such as they were.

I'm a Welsh speaker.. funny how the worlds best preserved Celtic country lies at the heart of the detestable Union. No thanks to Welsh Victorian industrialists I might add. not the London British Government, it never had a regional language destruction policy. It's absolutely true Welsh children were canned for speaking Welsh in class but the orders came from the likes of Bute and Welsh Methodist ministers, not the evil English..

Oscar Wilde was an Anglican btw.

Iolo

Tourism is lower than prostitution in my view. Just kidding (am I?).

Iolo

It is relevant, though, that Cymraeg was totally unofficial (except in religion) from the time of the Annexation on. The ignorant condemnation of our whole culture by the Nineteenth Century Blue Books didn't help a People so desperately uncertain about themselves either.