[lg policy] Ireland: Our first language now languishes somewhere between salsa dancing and Ultimate Frisbee

Fri Mar 20 15:48:42 UTC 2015

 Our first language now languishes somewhere between salsa dancing and
Ultimate Frisbee If you happen not to be a biddable school kid, odds are
Seachtain na Gaeilge bypassed you entirely
[image: 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]

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

Eoin Butler

Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 17:00
<http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/our-first-language-now-languishes-somewhere-between-salsa-dancing-and-ultimate-frisbee-1.2145379#>

*First published:* Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 17:00
   <http://www.irishtimes.com/cmlink/the-irish-times-culture-1.1319213>

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.

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.

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.

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.
 Clumsy translation

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.)

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”.

Virtually every broadcaster in the land should have spent at least a dozen
years learning Irish in school.

Yet some helpful phrases deemed worthy of inclusion were Hello (“Dia
dhaoibh”), Goodbye (“Slan”) and Thank you (“Go raibh maith agat.”)

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.

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.
 Genuinely cherished

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.

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.

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.

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.

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? *Patrick Freyne is on leave*
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/our-first-language-now-languishes-somewhere-between-salsa-dancing-and-ultimate-frisbee-1.2145379

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