I’m a big supporter of Gaelscoileanna; there is no better way of learning the language than to be completely immersed in it. So I was pleased to see that there are four new Irish-medium Primary schools who opened their doors for the first time this month in the Republic; in Lurgan, Edenderry, Greystones & Rush; and one new school in the North, in Dungannon Co. Tyrone.
This brings the number of Irish medium schools outside the Gaeltachtaí to 171* primary schools and 44 secondary schools.

*Interesting to note that almost 50% of the primary schools in the country, including new and long established schools, are in “temporary” accommodation, but that’s an issue for another day.

Samsung launches first Irish phone

The first ever mobile phone with Irish language menus will be available in Ireland in the summer. Samsung Electronics said today the Tocco phone has more than 44,000 words translated into the Irish language. Three translators, all with degrees in Irish, worked on the project, Samsung said. Country manager of Samsung Gary Twohig said the move was “a direct reflection of the increased popularity in Irish”. “While we won’t necessarily be launching this feature with every new phone, we will be adding it as a premium feature for key launches,” he said. It will be available in Ireland on July 1st.

Dermot Reidy
Vodafone.com

It’s not often I’d pay any attention to the ads in gmail but this one just caught my attention. It’s Get the focal, an Irish-English-Irish translator for your mobile phone created by a company called Maithú. It has 10k words and is bound to come in handy when you’re stuck for the odd word.

You can get the application by texting Focal to 53503 (Irish & UK mobiles), visiting m.getthefocal.com on your mobile or just download them to your PC via the following links: English-Irish, Irish-English [both *.jar files].

EDIT: I failed to do my duty before posting about this application, apologies for that dear reader. This application isn’t free as I found out after I posted about it; you need to pay €5 for a 1 year licence for each of the jar files. I bought a licence for the English-Irish dictionary and have tested it; and while it’s handy to have I certainly don’t think it’s worth €5!

So here’s an alternative:
Opera mini for cheap web browsing and an online English-Irish dictionary.

Towns such as Dungloe and Burtonport in Donegal, Dingle, Belmullet in Co.Mayo and parts of Galway city would lose their Gaeltacht status if the linguisitic criteria was implemented.

I’m sure many people will object to this, especially in the affected towns, however I suspect their objections will be based on that fact that they will lose out financially. I see two positives here:

1. Money being spent supporting “Irish speaking” communities which aren’t actually speaking the language could be diverted to communities which ARE speaking the language or to other language support schemes

2. It might wake some people up in these “Gaeltacht” areas, maybe they’ll put a bit more effort into pushing the language as a community language.

As much as I hate seeing Gaeltacht areas decline I find it hard to agree with money being pumped into “Gaeltacht” communities who don’t actually use the language.
There are 51,000 people living in “‘official’ Gaeltacht areas but in which Irish has stopped existing as the community language”, why should they gain the benefits of Gaeltacht status if they are not willing to put effort into developing the language as their community language?

Of course I understand that the issue is not black and white and the recent(-ish) influx of immigrants is bound add a degree of difficulty promoting Irish as a community language in any community in Ireland but I have my doubts that communities are even trying in these areas. Prove me wrong and I’ll happily chance my stance on the matter.

Anyway this post isn’t about him. One of the issues they very very briefly mentioned was whether or not someone is more Irish if they speak the language. I was very disappointed that they didn’t actually explore this point because it should be stated clearly that Irish people who speak Polish as their first language, mar shampla, are just as Irish as someone from Corca Duibhne who speak an Ghaeilge as their first language. It’s not that they insinuated otherwise on S & O’S it’s just that they didn’t discuss the issue at all after briefly mentioning it.

Also, it got me to wondering. I have never heard (or read) an Irish speaker tell someone they are less Irish because they don’t speak the language. So where does this come from? Is it simply English speaker’s perception or are they assuming this is what an Irish speaker thinks? None of this was covered properly on the program today. I wouldn’t be gone on Seoige & O’Shea to be honest.

Kings, starring Colm Meaney and Donal O’Kelly, features cast members speaking both in English and Irish and is set to hit the big screen next year.

Although other ventures have included parts spoken in Irish, this is the first full -length movie to be bilingual and to be produced and fully financed from within the island of Ireland.

Interesting. This is the first i’ve heard of it.