Cá Bhfuil Na Gaeilg eoirí?[*]

[pne]

[*] English translation: Where are all the Gaelic speakers?

Gaelic is the first official language of Ireland, with 25% of the population claiming to speak it. But can that true? To put it to the test, Manchán Magan set off round the country with one self-imposed handicap - to never utter a word of English.

There is something absurd and rather tragic about setting out on a journey around a country, knowing that if you speak the language of that country you will not be understood. It is even more absurd when the country is your native one and you are speaking its native language.

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Along the way, he encountered not just incomprehension but downright hostility—but also children who spoke the language and said that all their friends did.

An interesting and slightly sad tale, which this entry in linguaphiles made me aware of.

Comments

[tungol.livejournal.com]

The article mentions kids watching SpongeBob SquarePants in Gaelic. When I visited Ireland for a week with my family in 2004, we saw an episode or two of that, and what struck me was how the intonational patterns sounded very English-like. It was an odd effect: it sounded like it ought to be English but with nonsense words.

[pne.livejournal.com]

True -- that was the effect I sometimes got when listening to the clips on the reporter's website, as well.

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of how quite a few Esperanto native speakers have pretty thick accents and sound as if they were speaking a certain national language as far as the sounds and the intonation are concerned.
Is it possible that those Gaelic speakers learnt Gaelic from English speakers?

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that those Gaelic speakers learnt Gaelic from English speakers?
I imagine it's quite possible, though I don't really know. I also imagine it's possible that the co-existence of English and Gaelic for a long time, with a lot of bilingual speakers, could have had an effect on the intonation patterns of the language. (Although I've also heard that intonation patterns tend to be retained longest, so that would suggest that it's more likely that the intonational patterns come from English speakers moving towards Irish rather than from Irish speakers moving towards English.)

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"Although I've also heard that intonation patterns tend to be retained longest"

A friend of mine who speaks both German and Farsi natively, once told me that his intonation was more German-like than monolingual Farsi speakers' and how he admired some other bilingual Farsi speakers who had a really good intonation. Due to this piece of anecdotal evidence, I would have expected intonation patterns to change pretty quickly when they come into contact with other intonation patterns.