Funny - When Irish People Can't Speak Irish

  • Thread starter Thread starter silentwitness
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Along a similar line, I know a Dutch man who claims he can’t speak Dutch, despite he and his brothers sitting around on his porch and speaking Dutch among themselves.

I heard him and them speaking Dutch, yet when I took a Dutch nursery catalog over to him and asked him how its Dutch title was pronounced, he said he didn’t know because he doesn’t speak Dutch.

I’m still wondering why.
 
I remember being in college with an Irish girl that spoke some Irish and said that her sister was fluent. They had the exact same education, so why in the world was her sister fluent, but she was not?
 
adamhovey1988 said:
why in the world was her sister fluent, but she was not?
Click to expand...
Perhaps they were initially English-speakers, and then both learned Gaelic as a second language, and perhaps one of the sisters was better at language acquisition than the other. Or perhaps the one sister just cared more that the other sister and worked harder at it.

(It’s funny – this is the second thread today in which I’ve posted something about language acquisition. Coincidences make my life interesting 😃 )

D
 
I like creative art helping us to think in different ways. The concept was really well done.

So funny when the Dublin barman thinks Paddy knows how to speak Chinese. 🙂
Nice ending also, thanks for sharing.
 
Last edited:
I am an adult native English speaker who can speak one Romance language pretty well and can communicate in and understand two or three others reasonably well enough, and I actually tried to learn Gaelic several years ago by enrolling in an online course provided by Trinity College. I found it incredibly difficult, for I think principally, that it was difficult to frame any reference in sound or grammatical structure to what I had experience of. The influence of the Romans and the Germanic tribes is so obviously missing in Gaelic. I also found it confusing that there are major variations of the language usage within the island of Ireland itself, so that compounded the problem when trying to understand regional difference and similarities. I expected it sound more similar to Welsh, but was surprised to learn that of the Celtic languages spoken in the British Isles (Welsh, Cornish, Manx and Scottish,) it is generally most similar to Scottish. I gave up in the end I am afraid.
 
I don’t really have any historical or family connection to Gaelic, so I’ve never tried. What contact I have had with the language informed me that it would really be a job of work, given how the spelling system seems to have little connection with how the words are actually pronounced. I’m a big fan of “one sound for every letter, and one letter for every sound,” which is why, for example, I much prefer Spanish over French 😃

D
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top