In other words, English is in practice the first language of virtually every Irish person, the vast majority of media, and all business in the country.
Imagine telling a bunch of Jews that Hebrew was a load of nonsense and they're better off learning German, French or Spanish. I would agree though that the level of spoken Irish amongst the general population of Ireland is poor.
For them it's not about more opportunities it's about preserving something meaningful. Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephardi_Jews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish
The expulsion of the Jews is a specially sad part of our history, some families still keep the keys of their old houses after 5 centuries. A few years ago a law was passed so their descendants could claim Spanish nationality without the usual requirements applied to people from other nationalities.
A similar situation is with Quran and classical Arabic, even though it's not an everyday spoken language in (most of) Arabic world.
AFAICT Irish does not enjoy a similar status. If you want to hear a more or less alive Gaelic language in everyday use, visit rural Wales.
>Thanks, TIL!
And yet, you had the confidence to assert the above...interesting..
You mean Israelis right? Many jews outside Israel don't know Hebrew.
Sure, Israel is the country where Hebrew was restored as an everyday spoken language, but Israelis are not the only Jews for whom Hebrew is important.
It can be very much about telling you who you're supposed to be rather than the other way around.
Israel and Hebrew is actually a good example. Modern Hebrew was created pretty much solely for nation-building purposes (and with great success).
Jewish people are also pretty unique in having maintained a strong identity throughout the millennia without speaking a common language.
I wonder how many national identities would survive without one. I'd posit not that many.
It's very frustrating because we do foreign languages so badly but instead of making an effort to improve our foreign language skills they're trying to push a largely dead language for purely symbolic reasons.
And I guess you mean to say germany has gone farthest in christianisation, with the least of old german or old norse cultural remains? I guess that might be true.
I'd put the entire east into the protestant bucket too. Berlin might be a special case because it was traditionally "draft dodgers" in the western part and "exemplary GDR citizens" in the eastern part, but especially in the more remote parts religions has survived the GDR (and was even somewhat tolerated later on by the regime - even thought the supression and surveillance of the church never stopped until the end).
https://www.politico.eu/article/english-will-not-be-an-offic...
Surprisingly with the UK out of the EU; English is perhaps best placed to fill this role, as it is now a "neutral" language, with only the Irish and Maltese contingents who, broadly speaking, don't wield the same influence as France and Germany.
It's not clear yet if it will be used in official documents after Brexit agreements will be signed, but UK was the only country who chose English as an official language.
There's an hard requirement in EU to translate every official document in every language spoken in the EU, if English is not an official language, that requirement will cease to exist and slowly there will be no official document in English anymore because it's also a very costly operation.
Unless Ireland or Malta apply for English as primary language.
It's also a political stand, Macron is pushing to use French more and more in the EU institutions.
It doesn't mean that it won't be taught in schools or that it will fade as the most spoken language in EU, it still is by a large margin, but that it will move away from UK English and will become more similar to the English 75% of the > 1 billion English speakers in the World speak as a second language.
Native English speakers not understanding or not being understood by non-native speakers it's already a thing, the gap could widen in the future.
The official languages of the EU are set by Council Regulation No 1, which declares English to be an official language. Brexit did not change that regulation in any way; it would take a unanimous vote of the Council of the European Union to amend it, and it is very unlikely that Ireland would vote to remove as an official language the first language of the vast majority of its citizens.
Then Finland went ahead and ruined it by registering both Finish and Swedish as their official languages (they have a Swedish minority there) :)
Of course the Swedes would like to blame things on Finland if they can ;)
(and the US cultural influence is the main reason for this, the UK doesn't really matter much in that regard since around the 19th century).
First of all, I'm European.
Use of English as a second language, it might surprise you, dropped in the past 10 years, it was spoken by 52% of the population in 2012, now it dropped to 44%.
Not native speakers, English is the fourth language in Europe for number of native speakers, after German, French and Italian (if we don't count Russian, largely first with 120 million native speakers)
Secondly, things can change rapidly.
20 years ago the most studied second language in Italian schools was French.
Thirdly, in Europe countries have spoken to each other for centuries, when I go to Spain I speak Spanish, when I go to France or Belgium I speak French, I can also speak some German.
Of course not perfectly, but we still understand each other better than through English, because of similarities in the languages.
So yes, second language counts, but only when other options are worse (I speak English with Sweds or Dutch - I've been studying Swedish on my own but my progress with the language have been very slow)
In many schools we study more than 1 foreign language.
I studied French in primary and middle school then English and German in high school.
They were regular public schools, far from the best.
It's quite common elsewhere.
My cousins live in Belgium, their kids study French, Flemish and of course Italian in school.
Many Italian researchers, for example, move to Germany and they learn German because it's better to know it when you live there, English is used to bootstrap the social life and at work.
CERN is in Switzerland and even though I believe everyone there speaks English, in Geneva the official language is French, it helps a lot outside of work to learn it, more than English. Move a few Kms and they speak German, go South and they speak Italian and you will still be in small Switzerland.
Where many people are naturally bi or trilingual.
Adding English as a third/fourth it's very easy for them.
Eventually everybody will learn some English, undoubtedly, but it's gonna be foreigners' English, that it's different from proper English and sometimes it's pure nonsense for native speakers and viceversa.
Though the places I visited: Sweden, Rome, Greece, Netherlands, France, Spain, Vienna, Ukraine, Berlin all have above average levels.
Do you see the Brexit changing this?
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_Europe
https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6Ikp...
It has already changed, before Brexit was even a thing.
From 2013
China is now the lead exporter of cultural goods, followed by the United States. In 2013 the total value of China's cultural exports was US$60.1 billion; more than double that of the United States at US$27.9 billion.
Malta also has English as an official language, though again, it's an even smaller country. On the other hand, in neither Ireland or Malta is English the "first" official language.