Paying lip-service to Irish

[Harold Schiffman]

*Paying lip-service to Irish

*Madam, - I am a student of Trinity College, Dublin who is spending his year
abroad in Russia. I was recently contacted by two Russian students who are
writing their dissertations on Ireland. When we met, it became clear that
what interested them the most was learning Irish. They refuse to have a
concept of Ireland without its native language. How is it that two students
from the far east of Europe consider a basic knowledge of Irish compulsory
for the understanding of our country, yet successive post-Independence
governments have done more to kill the language through bad policy, stilted
thinking and neglect, than a foreign power ever managed in hundreds of
years?

The compulsory teaching of Irish, often cited as the primary killer, has not
done as much ill as poor policy and half-baked ideas. Firstly, the language
is not taught as a living one, the curriculum is dated and grammar, despite
the primacy it enjoys on the curriculum, is badly taught. The result is that
after 14 years, students do not grasp such basic concepts as number and
case. Secondly, the zeal of the independence movement, combined with that
peculiarly Irish laxity, has left us with the prevalent notion: "Irish is a
beautiful language, a part of our heritage, but we don't need to speak it to
keep it alive - that's for others, and sure isn't it an official EU
language?"

This is the nub of the problem. We are an independent state, under no
foreign military pressure, yet we will do anything to keep the language
alive other than actually utter it. Instead, we exploit it. We apply for
grants because our houses happen to lie half-a-mile inside a box on a map;
we send our children to gaelscoileanna, not for linguistic reasons, but
because they are better funded and their students attain more points; we
close our parliamentary sessions 'as Gaeilge' if a hasty exit is needed.
This is how we abuse that element of our culture without which we are
nothing.

Where is the indignation and anger at so many years of short-sightedness and
stupidity? Where is the nerve to actually speak, with our own mouths, the
language we have been 'reviving' since Independence? Does Irish have to die
before anyone cares? It's not too late. In Latvia, the Isle of Man and
Scotland, people realised what was happening and did what was necessary to
safeguard their culture. We can do the same, as soon as we rid our native
tongue of the burdens of tokenism, bureaucracy and muddled thinking. But
first, we need to use the language for the purpose it was intended - and
speak it, without reserve, without shame, without prejudice. - Yours, etc,

Iain Mac Eochagain, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.
11ú Feabhra 2008
www.ireland.com
http://fionnchu.blogspot.com/2008/02/lip-service-from-aer-lingus-t-s-litir.html


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