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<h1>Our first language now languishes somewhere between salsa dancing and Ultimate Frisbee</h1>
<h2> If you happen not to be a biddable school kid, odds are Seachtain na Gaeilge bypassed you entirely </h2>
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<img title="Members of the Irish language and Gaeltacht community protesting outside Government Buidlings last year following the announcement that Joe McHugh TD was the new Minister of State for the Gaeltacht. Photo: Gareth Chaney Collins" alt="Members of the Irish language and Gaeltacht community protesting outside Government Buidlings last year following the announcement that Joe McHugh TD was the new Minister of State for the Gaeltacht. Photo: Gareth Chaney Collins" class="" src="http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2145378.1426785814%21/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_620_330/image.jpg" height="330" width="620"> <p>Members
of the Irish language and Gaeltacht community protesting outside
Government Buidlings last year following the announcement that Joe
McHugh TD was the new Minister of State for the Gaeltacht. Photo: Gareth
Chaney Collins</p>
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<p class="">Eoin Butler</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/our-first-language-now-languishes-somewhere-between-salsa-dancing-and-ultimate-frisbee-1.2145379#"><span content="2015-03-19T17:00">Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 17:00</span></a></p>
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<p><strong>First published:</strong> <span content="2015-03-19T17:00">Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 17:00</span></p>
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Tá Seachtain na Gaeilge orainn. Or rather, bhi sé. Our two-week
national celebration of the Irish language actually ended on Tuesday.
But if you happen not to be either a biddable school kid, or an adult
whose public-sector job requires paying occasional lip service to the
language, odds are the event bypassed you entirely.</p>
<p class="">
As a Gaeilgeoir, I derive no particular pleasure from admitting this.
But as minority pursuits go, our first language now languishes somewhere
between salsa dancing and Ultimate Frisbee, in terms of its popularity
amongst the general populace.</p>
<p class="">
And, of late, its role in our public affairs has bordered on farcical.
Last week in the Dáil, Enda Kenny was criticised on both sides of the
house for insisting upon answering awkward questions about American
drone strikes in the Middle East entirely in Irish, despite the fact
that that the TD posing the questions didn’t understand what he was
saying.</p>
<p class="">
Mick Wallace is far from our only public representative lacking a cúpla
focal. Astonishingly, neither government minister currently charged
with responsibility for Gaeltacht affairs, Minister for Arts, Heritage
and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys, nor Joe McHugh, Minister of State
for Gaeltacht Affairs and Natural Resources, is conversant in the
language, insofar as the public is aware.</p>
<h4 class="">
Clumsy translation</h4>
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Moreover, a clumsy Irish translation of the forthcoming same-sex
marriage referendum text might have had the unintended effect of banning
heterosexual marriage in Ireland, had the mistake not been spotted by a
member of the public. (The Irish text would have superseded the English
version in law, despite the fact that the vast majority of our
lawmakers are not fluent in Irish.)</p>
<p class="">
Not that journalists are in any position to crow. The Seachtain na
Gaeilge 2015 media pack, designed to help us perpetuate the illusion
that Irish plays a meaningful role in the mainstream discourse of our
nation, included an interesting PDF document titled “Irish phrases for
radio”.</p>
<p class="">
Virtually every broadcaster in the land should have spent at least a dozen years learning Irish in school.</p>
<p class="">
Yet some helpful phrases deemed worthy of inclusion were Hello (“Dia
dhaoibh”), Goodbye (“Slan”) and Thank you (“Go raibh maith agat.”)</p>
<p class="">
All this would be amusing if our government did not continue to spend
about €1bn per annum promoting the Irish language through education, the
media and public services. Irish has been compulsory in our schools
since independence. Government policy has even sought to re-establish it
as the lingua franca of the State. Yet at the last census, only 1.8 per
cent of the population claimed to speak it on a daily basis, down from
15 per cent when that policy was instituted.</p>
<p class="">
In Dáil debates last week, opposition TDs still insisted the Government
should be doing more. Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan suggested every
child in the State should be required to go through three years of
immersive education in Irish to increase the number of speakers
nationwide. Socialist TD Ruth Coppinger called for “a major investment
of funds” in order to ensure the language’s survival.</p>
<h4 class="">
Genuinely cherished</h4>
<p>
Yet, speak to any an activist and they’ll usually tell you two things.
First, that the Irish language is genuinely cherished by thousands of
people, at home and abroad, and that the ranks of it’s admirers are
growing every year. Second, that abolishing compulsory Irish in our
school would doom the language to extinction. Now it seems to me that
these statements cannot both simultaneously be true.</p>
<p class="">
Those of us living outside of An Gaeltacht, who love the language, will
continue to do so even if our children are not obliged to study it in
school or university. (If they want to, they’ll study it voluntarily.)
Love is not fostered through coercion. And those who argue loudest to
the contrary usually have an undeclared financial, as well as
ideological, vested interest in maintaining the status quo.</p>
<p class="">
Inside the Gaeltacht, meanwhile, Irish language policy has tended to
operate much like the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inspectors
roll into a town delivering speeches and handing out lollipops to
children. They assume the natives will continue to do their bidding even
after they have departed, as if the local inhabitants somehow aren’t
subject to the same historical forces that shape the rest of our lives.</p>
<p class="">
That is not a realistic strategy. Traditional Irish music and Gaelic
games, in recent years, have not only survived, but thrived worldwide,
with minimal State subvention.</p>
<p class="">
Sure, neither had to contend with an adversary as pernicious or
ubiquitous as the English language. But virtually all our politicians
advocate pursuing our present failed policy indefinitely. Isn’t the
definition of insanity doing the same thing, over and over, and
expecting different results? <em>Patrick Freyne is on leave</em></p>
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