Statement of Grant Purpose

Davis Sandefur, Ireland, Irish Language

Opinions on Irish-Language Learning from Irish Youth

There are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages in the world, and approximately every two
weeks the last speaker of one of these languages dies, silencing it. This means that by the end
of the twenty first century, approximately half the worlds languages will no longer be
spoken. The situation is grim for most of these minority languages, whose speakers are
adopting the prestige language of their area. The speakers of minority languages usually
adopt the more commonly spoken language because it is deemed more prestigious or because
their native language is associated with poverty. Minority language speaking parents do not
usually promote the minority language in the household. Naturally wanting the best for their
children, they abandon their heritage language in favor of the one seen as more prestigious
and advantageous for the younger generation. Over time, the number of speakers of the
original language slowly drops, until eventually a language becomes extinct.

Sadly, the Irish language falls into this category of minority languages. Despite government
intervention, the future of the language is still perilous, and nobody is quite sure if it will
survive as an everyday language. The government has issued several policies to teach it and
promote the revival of the language, including making it mandatory in school, and has
recently updated their policies. It is unclear if these new measures will be effective, but it is
quite clear that previous ones have failed and native speakers of Irish continue to switch to
English.

I believe that youth are underrepresented in the deliberation of the policies, and their voice
needs to be heard; for, if the language is to survive, the youth must be the ones who speak it.
While my anecdotal experiences seem to suggest that the opinion is positive, if only the
teaching methods were better, after a few days of searching, the Irish Studies librarian at the
University of Notre Dame, my alma mater, was unable to come up with any literature on the
topic, making it impossible to know for sure.

Because this is a terrible oversight, the research I propose to conduct is both valid and
important. I will investigate the opinions the youth of the country hold towards the Irish
language and towards the Irish language. Furthermore, with the introduction of Irish to
Duolingo, a free online language education platform that has millions of users learning
several languages by making language learning a game, I would discuss teaching methods
with the students and gather opinions on what methods might be most useful in allowing
them to reach a conversational level in the language. These suggestions, along with the
general opinions towards the language, will be critical in determining a way to educate
students to a competent level, where they are able to fully use the language.

To gather data, I will talk with first year college students, and gather their opinions on the
current programs in place to teach Irish in school, focusing on how interesting and how
effective they are, and possibly how to create a good bi-lingual education system. A
comparison of how the current Irish education compares to education in other foreign
languages, looking at the types of materials (digital versus print, interactivity) and how the
students fair in acquiring each language will be undertaken and data will analyzed.

I will not only talk to students from the English speaking schools, but also from the
gaelscoileanna, the Irish-medium schools, and contrast the two opinions on the language that
the two groups have. I will also discuss with people, both native Irish speakers and native
English speakers, on their current view of the survival of the language and what steps could
possibly be taken to promote the language and hear it used on the streets again, where
English is spoken now. This research will fill a huge void on the opinions of youth with
regards to Irish language usage and education, compared to English usage and other language
education.

While I will start with first year university students, there is a pressing need to get the
opinions of those still in the secondary school system, as they are the ones most likely to be
affected by the any new policy and are still actively learning Irish in the classroom. I
understand the ethical challenge associated with working with minors, and will undertake the
necessary training. After the training, I will create permission forms, getting permission from
both the students and their parents to administer the surveys and work with the data.


I will contact Foras na Gaeilge, the Irish governments official body for the promotion of the
language, and see what information they can provide about the current policies that are in
place, and how these might have affected the opinions of the students. I hope to work with
John Walsh, a researcher at the National University of Ireland, Galway, whose main research
is focused on language ideology, Irish language policy, and general language legislation. At
the end of the program, I will make my thesis available to other researches, allowing them to
examine the opinions of the youth, both inside and outside the Gaeltacht.

This research is important because it gives a view of people who are normally
underrepresented when trying to promote languages: the youth of the country, who are the
ones that need to start using the language. It will determine the motivations driving the desire
to learn and use a language that may not be practical in an ever more globalized world or
explain student dissent toward existing policies. This research applies to more than just the
Irish language.

With a few differences accounting for different cultures, it could be extrapolated to minority
languages in the United States, there are over 70 in the United States alone such as the
Cherokee language, all variants of the Apache language, and the Navajo language, which are
listed as vulnerable by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO). All of these languages are facing more pressure from English, with
little to no government intervention to sustain these minority languages. With these resources,
we can create a bilingual population, thus allowing them to have the advantages of English,
yet still preserving their language. By saving these languages, we save an irreplaceable part
of the culture of a people, something that sets them apart from all other cultures of the world.
We save their stories, their traditional songs, and a link to the past and those who have
spoken the language before them.