Hello and Welcome! I hope you like the place. --mav
No problem on Four Seasons. By the way, there's a bit of help on Wikipedia markup at Wikipedia:How to edit a page, and on formatting style at the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, but don't worry if you can't take it all in - there'll always be somebody else there to fix things up. The main thing is to add and improve good content (which you're doing) and have fun (which I hope you're doing!) --Camembert
I like your examples in forced perspective. Please contribute more such fine work! --Uncle Ed
I dont think its wrong per se to blank Vandal pages... -豎眩
Yeah, but you'll admit - its hard to tell sometimes :) -豎眩
羊蜴 (Goat/Sheep/Ram+Lizard) -- :) -豎眩
I owe you an apology for being so sharp with you earlier. I'm not normally quite so bad. You just caught me very exhausted and annoyed over someone who screwed up a page I had spent a couple of days working on. I think instead of taking my anger out on that person I took it out on you.
The whole 'conversation' probably made me sound like an Irish language fanatic, and I'm not. Far from it. But I do think you are seriously misunderstanding the Irish constitution and the relevant status it gives to Irish and English. It explicitly says Irish is the 'National Language' and treats it as the language of Ireland. The superiority it gives to the language is such that the Irish language version of the constitution overrules the englsh language version, in the event of a clash. Irish language laws overrule english language laws, in the event of a clash. It is quite unambiguous in stating and implying that the official language of Ireland is Irish. The early leaders of the state like de Valera or Presidents Hyde and Ó Ceallaigh spoke it almost exclusively. Its superiority is shown even in the President's inauguration oath. Even though either language can be used in that case, no president, no matter how poor their Irish was, would dare to use the english version of the oath.
However English is in reality the spoken language of the vast majority of Irish people. The constitution's author, Eamon de Valera, could not ignore english, so he gave it a grudging recognition. But whereas the earlier 1922 constitution gave Irish and english co-equal status as two official languages, the 1937 constitution nailed its colours to the mast by describing the former as the 'national language' and the first official language, while English was demoted to being a second official language, ie, not merely was it made clear in the language it is in the second division, overruled in the event of a clash, it wasn't even the second language but a second language, as if other languages could in time be added to the second division with it. (The third most spoken language in Ireland, BTW, is chinese!)
So a page on official languages has to recognise that Irish is the 'national language, the premier language given priority. (Irish language speakers even get special tax breaks denied to the rest of us english-speakers!) English is the second language, in fact according to the constitution a second language, with a lesser official status, and it would be a seriously misleading factual error to suggest that they have equal status when they unambiguously don't.
Again, apologies for being sharp with you. It was just bad timing.. JtdIrL 09:59 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not a lawyer but as far as I know, luckily the 'clash' between Irish and english in law has not materialised. I say luckily because while people often presume that the constitution for example was drafted in one language and translated into another, de Valera bizarrely ordered two rival versions, the english one done by a lawyer called John Hearne, the Irish by a non lawyer Irish language expert. At various points they differ - for example, one requires a president to have reached 35 years of age, the other to have 'competed' 35 years. In the event, the less specifically worded, less legally sounding Irish version would take priority, which lawyers (most of whom would be less knowledgeable in Irish) have spent over 60 years dreading.
I don't know about statute law, but again the Irish version takes priority in the event of a difference. But the 'superiority' of Irish is shown in such areas as:
- Irish receives greater weight than any other subject in calculating exam results. (Entry to Irish universities is won by getting a certain number of points. Each mark for each course has a numerical points value with most subjects equally weighted. Irish however gets special 'extra' marks.)
- Civil servants are required to pass a special exam in Irish. In the civil service, no Irish means no job.
- People living in Irish speaking areas (called the 'Gaeltacht') get special tax exemptions and tax breaks that people living in english-speaking areas (the 'Galltacht') are excluded from. (There is currently a row over claims that peope in the Gaeltacht are getting massive tax breaks, housing grants, etc even though in reality they themselves have stopped speaking the language.)
- Businesses opening on Gaeltacht areas get special tax breaks and grants.
- The Irish language television station, TG4, is subsided by vast sums each year, something which many elements of the Irish media have criticised.
- Students used to be legally required to study Irish. Officially this has been abolished, but still students are in effect required to study the language because otherwise without the weighted points, they simply would find it next to impossible to get entry into their preferred university course.
- Irish political leaders are in effect 'required' to have a knowledge of Irish. Speeches by leaders at Árd Fheiseanna (Irish for party conferences) are in reality required to deliver part of their speech as gaeilge (through Irish), even if they don't in reality speak a word of it, having simply learned off the Irish section of the speech phonetically. Being accused of being unable to speak the 'national language' is potential political death. Erskine Childers, the oxbridge-educated president of Ireland, had to struggle to deliver his declaration of office as gaeilge, which sounded comic, given his British upper class accent. JtdIrL 00:56 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)
People are objecting to our using un-Engerlish for a sig... not that I care what they think, but Ive agreed to compromise with a bilingual sig... 豎眩SV I dont endorse making this policy though. just passing it on..