I popped in to Irishjobs.ie (the job hunt begins) and spotted their press release of 25 October on the launch of their site which is bilingual. The press release presents results from a recent Irish language survey on IrishJobs.ie and interestingly has shown some quite positive attitudes to the Irish language among jobseekers. I contacted Irishjobs.ie to get more details and received an answer quite promptly.
The respondents
The majority of respondents to the survey (55%) were in the 21-25 & 26-30 age brackets (31-35 12%, 36-40 9%) as you’d probably expect considering it’s a recruitment site. Of those 88% learned Irish in school, 68% for more than 10 years.
Use of Irish
A surprising amount of people use Irish – 40% claim to use it socially among other places such as at home (36%), at work (28%) or online (29%). Unfortunately 39% claim they don’t use the language at all. And 47% of people claim to be able to converse quite comfortably in Irish.
Positive Attitude
The most encouraging results came from the following questions; when asked their opinion on the statement “The Irish language gives me a unique cultural identity” 66% of people agreed while only 22% disagreed.
On the issue of whether or not Irish should be mandatory in schools 59% of respondents agreed that it should be mandatory while only 26% disagreed.
Quite interesting results overall and quite encouraging IMO.
Unfortunately only 321 people responded to the survey (10% answered through Irish) which is a tiny number.
Btw, check out the Survival Guide to Office Speak especially the David Brent quotes.
“If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.”
“Mura n’éiríonn leat an chéad uair, faigh réidh leis an bhfianaise go ndearna tú aon iarracht.”
p.s. Thanks to a certain Sales & Marketting Exec at Irishjobs.ie for her swift and friendly responses to my questions.
p.p.s Well done to Irishjobs.ie & CNnaG for their work on the site.
Interesting and positive results. I’d like to see Welshjobs.com (which is owned by the same company) do a similar survey in Wales.
Welsh of course is in a much stronger position than Irish (in terms of numbers of speakers & their commitment to using the language) but what’s the general attitude to the language like in Wales? How about among the younger generation, how do they view the language?
Btw, thank for the link again Rhys!
I get the impression that Welsh is in a better position, but still not a great one. I think there are many parallels. There are Welsh medium schools all over the country and Welsh is compulsory as a subject untill age 16 in English medium schools.
Attitudes towards the language very considerably. Some parents think it’s outragous their kids waste their time learnung ‘a dead language’ while (some) the kids might love it. This will obviously depend on the teacher and how the school views the language.
In South East Wales, the area most Anglicised (lingustically), the demand for Welsh medium education far outsrips supply while pupil numbers drop in Englsih medium schools. Here it’s the parents who want their children to be fluent in Welsh, something they were denied. The sad thing here is that a lot of the kids dislike the language, associating it with school and don’t speak it with their peers even though they are fluent. This has a lot to do with the lack of opprtunites to use the language outside schools. Attitudes chnage when these kids get older. What I find is people who were sent to Welsh medium schools as kids but don’t use the language for whatever reason, still choose to send their children to Welsh medium schools – this puzzles me.
Hi Rhys
The attitude sounds very much like what we find in Ireland, there’s a whole wide range of opinion but I think here attitudes are improving a bit, especially now that we are becoming much more multucultural more people are beginning to appreciate our own culture a bit more. That’s my feeling anyway.
Is there any political aspect to the Welsh language? I mean is it tied in with Welsh Nationalist parties etc ?
I read an article a few months back (August?) in the Economist about the popularity of the Welsh language, especially in the job market; however, I believe it’s not available online.