im irish, but i dont know the word for 'neva' or 'becoz'.....soz bbz
lol sorry, neva=never and becoz=because
Quote:
Originally Posted by Miss Pixie
Why? If you don't mind me asking I'm just nosy
be cause i dont want it easy to read cos it just for me plus my best friend is irish (she not lived there for a while and is bit out of touch to be able to translate it)and i have family in northern ireland
I WISH I'D NEVA SEEN THE SUNSHINE, I WISH I'D NEVA SEEN THE SUNSHINE, BECOZ IF I'D NEVA SEEN THE SUNSHINE, MAYBE THEN I WOULDN'T MIND THE RAIN.
I love going to see my family theres nothing like it im moving there when i finish uni but soz cant help
Don't walk behine me I might got you lost!
Don't walk in front of me I may not follow you!
Don't walk beside me the path is to small!
All we can do is walk our own paths,remember your not alone because we are all walking our own paths together!
Out of interest, how common is it to find fluent Gaelic-Irish speakers in Ireland?
I mean, in Wales, my boyfriend tells me it's fairly rare to speak fluent Welsh, apart from some smaller towns in north Wales, and the old folks who decide they hate the English so speak Welsh :P
You Welsh folk learn it, apparently, but only up to GCSE - similarly to French/German/Spanish.
I think in Ireland (especially the Republic, not sure about Northern) they do learn Irish up to a point. Might be similar to what happens in Wales, I'm not sure. In Scotland Gaelic is all but dead, with only those on the remote Islands and some parts of the Highlands still speaking it. There has been attempts to bring it back, but they've not had much widespread respect.
Yeah in schools in the south i think its taught from primary age (correct me if im wrong) In the north though, you can choose to send your kids to an all irish speaking primary, but in secondary schools you learn it up until GCSE then can keep it on for A levels and go to Irish speaking summer schools in the south, I think it is pretty much the same with Welsh and Scottish Gaelic in that its only really spoken in rural areas.
Theres a fair few people I know who are fluent Welsh speakers (even though I'm not) from South Wales. This doesnt include ignorant nurses who spoke in Welsh to talk about me but not to me. We dont have many Welsh speaking schools in my town though.
fluent irish speakers are very rare down here in the republic. however there are irish speaking places in the west of ireland. i'd say less than a fifth of the population can speak irish fluently. you have to learn it in both primary & secondary school. however, the sylabus is a joke, and the teachers are crap so no one learns anything really.
i've spent fourteen years learning irish, and i can't even begin to translate that..
That'd only work up to a point. Irish is far removed from a language like English as far as sentence structure goes and all that jazz and with words have a ridiculous amount of different meaning.
Also, everything that Lydia said.
I've been doing Irish for 13 years and it's constitutionally my first language but I'm quite bad at it.
Sadly it is taught badly (abysmally when I was young), so despite learning it from 5-18 most people are far from fluent. Gaeltacht (Irish speaking) areas and schools do exist, mainly in the west, but they are subsidised by large grants from the State - without those grants these areas would be smaller and the language would more in the home than out on the street.
It was pretty well stamped out under British rule, so reinvigorating it was always going to be difficult, not least because trade with the UK and the rest of the world are extremely important, but I think that the way it was forced upon children in a rather joyless and shoddy fashion did not help matters at all. It is a really beautiful language aurally, especially when it comes to poetry and stories, and I think that if it has been taught properly and with emphasis on it's special qualities things might have been different.
That said, with the more recent confidence of Ireland, interest and pride in Irish has begun to shift slightly in the right direction.
Brilliantly said. Its a shame its dying out, because like you said, it IS a beautiful language, and the way its taught (or rather, forced on small children) isn't getting us any closer to a revival. If teachers stopped treating it like most other classes (ie. a chore) and started actually getting kids interested in learning their first language, it'd be wonderful.
Unfortunately I have great difficulty learning languages, so as much as I want to learn Irish, I just can't get my head around it... ho hum.
My friend helped traslated it and my Irish teacher checked it.
"Is mian liom nach bhfaca mé solas na gréine riamh
Is mian liom nach bhfaca mé solas na gréine riamh
Mar mura mbeadh solas na gréine feicthe agam
B'fheidir bheadh cuma liom faoin mbáisteach"
Ew. That doesn't sound like a nice essay to write.
I have my Irish oral on Monday.
It's kinda sad though, that we've been doing Irish 14 years and yet it's so hard to find anyone who can really speak the language.
