Gaelic

Patrick Long
Professor Brewer
Gaelic Passage
3/17/08

The Importance of Gaelic

Pg.44 "It really was rapid... Gaelic of all is well-nigh unintelligible.”

This passage is relevant as our author presents Gaelic in a very negative tone. Our author is presumably from Ireland yet during this story, he points to Ireland original language as jargon or “swearing drunkenly.” At this point our author feels that the language that was spoken by his ancestors and the people of the west is nothing more than a drunken man swearing at him with no relevance or systematic thought. This quickly turns as in the very next sentence our author develops Gaelic as a very difficult language to understand and to speak fluently. By doing this the audience is able to see that while the author feels that Gaelic is not so much the fact that it sounds like a drunk blabby it is the fact that Gaelic is very hard to understand and unfortunately if you are not used to this form of language you are going to be very frustrated and unable to understand. This is when our author makes the biggest stance of all. He states “Good Gaelic is difficult but that the best Gaelic is well-nigh unintelligible. Here our author furthers his stance that if you have no encounters and are not used to the language that even with someone who speaks good Gaelic you are going to be lost and with someone who is fluent you are going to have no recollection of anything that is being said.
The question however still remains, is Gaelic any different than any other second or third language that a person is trying to learn and that has very little training in the art of language. For instance many students are forced to take a second language even if they have not intent on ever studying it any further than a first year student. But do they still not have these same instances of struggle. I can remember looking back on much of my Spanish training and thinking that I have no idea what this person is saying yet I had been studying the language for three or four years. I can understand where our author is coming from as our story teller is presented as a man from Ireland with little experience with his native language. So inherently without studying the language our story teller is obviously going to find someone speaking Gaelic to “swear drunkenly.”