A group of Transition Year students at Loreto Letterkenny are pushing Apple to better integrate the Irish language on iPhones and apps.
Many people find that a useful way to learn a new language involves changing your phone’s language to it, to familiarise yourself better with its vocabulary.
However, when members of the YSI class, which focuses on Irish culture and language, were shocked to find out that on their phones, when the language was changed to Irish – barely anything changed.
The only difference students found was to the date display, on Google and on Whatsapp – and that many apps did not feature an option for Irish at all, even when translating text or images.
“Why do other languages for example Spanish or German get priority when it comes to iPhone settings but once again Irish is forgotten about?,” Grace, one of the members of the YSI class said.
“People talk about the language dying but this is one of the reasons why! It’s discriminating towards Irish people.”
Her class took inspiration from that discovery to press Apple via a petition to do better to represent the Irish language.
The girls hope that the next step after launching the petition would be meeting with Apple themselves to emphasise the importance of Irish being properly integrated.
You can sign their petition here.
