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Do many children outside the Gaeltacht learn the Irish language prior to being taught it in school?
I ask because I’ve often thought that the best way to preserve Irish or any other traditional language would be to incentivize parents to teach it to their children at a young age. We know that after a certain age—I think it’s around 7 years old but I could be wrong—language acquisition becomes much more difficult. You’ll never speak a language you learn after this age as naturally as you would have if you had learned it earlier. From what I hear, many Irish students end up resenting Irish because it’s so difficult to learn by the time they reach school age.
If I were responsible for preserving Irish, I would provide free homeschooling materials to parents with young children. Every year, if a child can pass a state-administered proficiency test, appropriate for his age, to prove that his parents have indeed been teaching him the language, the parents can claim a credit or deduction on their taxes. Or some other reward.
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