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@irishcelticredflowercrown

A lot of people love the language. Funny thing is the only people who dislike it are the actual Irish themselves. Because we have a terrible education system, as kids learn it in school for thirteen years but still come out non-fluent. It’s awful really    Oh cool! What’s Frisian might I ask?

That’s exactly what it’s like with Afrikaans! It was like that too with Frisian for a while, but there’s been a rediscovery of the language and there are still many schools that teach their classes in Frisian.

Frisian is a language in the far north of the Netherlands. It’s not a dialect, though Dutch has a lot of dialects, it’s an entirely different language, and the Frisians consider themselves a separate nationality. They have a flag and an anthem, but economically and governmentally they’re dependant on the Netherlands.

Ya I know right! It’s so depressing   Oh wow awesome what country is Afrikaans from? And the current situation with that language sounds so similar to Irish. What people need to do is take measures to re-ignite interest in the language before its too late. The poetry sounds lovely, it could be used as a way to appeal to young people if they were open to it. I know that one of the reasons I became interested in Irish after so many years was after listening to sean-nós singing. There’s a beautiful singer called Sibéal, after I listened to her, I was like how did I not see how beautiful this language is?!

Exactly! Afrikaans is one of the eleven national languages of South Africa. It’s basically a blend of old Dutch, some Portuguese words, some Malaysian words, and some of the African languages, though it has the double-negative of French and heavily simplified grammar. It’s an absolute Frankenstein of a language XD

It’s still taught in schools, but people just learn it well enough to pass the classes then forget about it, since they think it’s basically pointless to learn anyway, almost nobody speaks it anymore.

Add to that the fact that it’s stereotyped as a lower-class language and it’s dying. (We can blame that on the British, every ill in the world can be blamed on the British, they usually deserve it XD)

A little bit. But I’m not fluent unfortunately. I really want to be properly fluent, because its the language of my ancestors and it survived through thick and thin despite oppression by the British empire. I can sing in Irish, but I won’t be able to translate the lyrics right there and then haha.

See!? It’s the Brits’ fault again XD That’s amazing! I’m sure you’ll get it, that’s such an awesome thing to learn!

I’m also looking at a lot of languages at the moment. I studied Latin for a year in college, and I’m trying to learn off prayers in that language. It’s pretty otherworldly to say the least XD. And I’m also trying to see if I can learn Hebrew, though that requires an entirely new alphabet lol.

That’s awesome! I studied Latin too, two years ago!