Hello everyone, my name is Dillon D. I have been interested in languages for quite a few years now, and have discovered that the study of foreign languages is my God-given gift because I am incredibly talented at learning new languages (although Irish is currently kicking my butt).

My languages:

English (native)
Spanish (quite proficient)
Russian (basics)
Irish (basics)

I've also taken about half a semester of French and have dabbled in German. I'm hoping one day to learn Arabic and perhaps Hebrew.

My future:

I am currently a high school senior, I'm planning on attending the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder, where I will major in psychology and minor in linguistics. I plan on eventually earning my doctorate in both fields.


I am also highly interested in the military, although I'm deciding that military service may not be the most profitable course for my life.

I recently started a blog, LinguaSi, to talk about psych and linguistics. If you're bored, check it out at:

http://www.linguasiblog.blogspot.com

Welcome to the forum. I'm sure there's one or two people here who can help you out with your Irish-butt-kicking problem.
Seems to be a popular choice around here.

Fáilte romhat, a Dhillon! Conas atánn tú ag foghlaim Gaelainne? Trí fhéinstaidéar?

Edit: A Dhillon (nó, más fearr leat, a Dhíolúin), I wrote this before I saw in the other thread that níl ionat ach tosaitheoir (you're only a beginner), so let's keep it simple, shall we? Conas atánn tú, a chara?

Welcome to the Omniglot forum!
Good luck getting into UCB!

Which I've never fully understood. The orthography really turns me off of the Goidelic languages. Welsh is better, but neither can honestly be claimed to have more than a million competent speakers - so what is it that drives peoples' interest in them?

And I've never fully understood people who decide which languages to learn based on the number of people who speak them. If I find a language interesting, I could care if it has a million living speakers, a hundred, or none at all. And if I don't take a shine to it, it doesn't matter to me if it has more than a billion.

Bengali has more native speakers than any European language save English or Spanish. Do you find it at all hard to understand why more people aren't interested in it?

As the example of Bengali you provided shows, total number of speakers isn't everything. But it is pretty difficult for a language to be influential without a decent base.
Some languages I'm interested in learning; some I'm merely interested in learing about. Don't you find it the same?
Because it's not at all useful outside of the Bengal region. But then neither are the Celtic languages outside of their fairly small sprachraum (and only marginally so there). French is useful the world over.

"Useful" for what? I can't read An béal bocht in French, there are--as far as I know--no sean-nós singers who perform in French, and a knowledge of French is unlikely to do much to endear me to the locals when I get around to visiting Cork.

This is what I find the numbers people always circle back to: a ridiculously narrow definition of "utility". If you live in Labrador with your aged Maliseet-speaking grandmother, how does the fact that Arabic has roughly 350,000 times the number of speakers make it a more "useful" language for you?

It's a generalization that obviously doesn't account for individual circumstances. Mi'kmaq might be more useful than Russian to a few people, but most people are far more likely to use Russian in their lifetimes.

At the risk of getting into a long and pointless circular argument, I'll cut to the chase: Why are people so interested in the Celtic languages?

Possible reasons include:
1) Linguistically
Any of the features that make them interesting, initial consonant mutations, that sort of thing. Old Irish is infamously complex for those that like to say they understand complicated languages.
2) Historically
A long history, plenty of literature and mythology as well as contemporary literature and media. Huge oral traditions, and it ties in with the GAA, Irish dancing, traditional music and singing.
3) Heritage
I've met a lot of Americans who are very into their Irish heritage. Most of them like to mispronounce a cúpla focal, a few are bound to be linguists who actually learn the language well.

The same argument can be made for most languages, and also as a serious question, why wouldn't they be interested in learning Celtic languages? People are interested in minority languages, Celtic ones combine enough living natives (as well as a huge number of fluent learners in Ireland anyway) to make it a very worthwhile and fulfilling language to learn.

I do often find it amusing however, that there are thousands of Irish students who study Irish for 14 years or so, and leave school unable to have even a basic conversation. It really illustrates the saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink".