Why should Irish be revived?

[dubhthach]

St Pats teaches French. Most young teachers have french from leaving cert.

Your average Leaving Cert student probably has between 500 and 1,000 hours of French language contact. I wouldn't be surprised if it's closer to 500. To have fluency in a language you tend to need 5,000 hours of language contact. If they are going to have widespread teaching of French in primary schools they will have to hire teachers from France.

[Cruimh]

An interesting Cruiskeen Lawn from 1943

This column was provoked by an editorial suggesting that the half a million then spent annually on Irish would be better used for slum clearance. Behind the jokes, it’s a serious statement of his attitude to a language with which he had a complex but protective relationship. The irony is that this was the same year in which he stopped writing columns in Irish, to the newspaper’s regret

[RepublicOfLuas]

Should we forget about endangered species too? tut tut!

[dubhthach]

MYLES NA gCOPALEEN

LAST WEEK we had a rather stern address [in an Irish Times editorial] regarding the inadmissibility of the Irish language and although it is almost a gaffe for anybody qualified to speak on this subject to express opinions on it in the public prints, I feel I must speak out; otherwise there is the danger that the lying rumour will be spread by my enemies that I am silent because once again money has changed hands. (It cannot be too often repeated that I am not for sale. I was bought in 1921 and the transaction was conclusive).

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[Riadach]

It took me a while to get what he meant by this, but hilarious none the less:

'Faith now, could we be honest enough (for one moment) to admit to ourselves (in our heart of hearts) that there is another sort of Irish, and forced down people’s throats, too, and that we spend enough on it every year to re-build all Dublin.'