All aboard for the Gaeilgeoir grenadiers…
Nollaig 13, 2013
Well, that certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons. You may remember — but you can be forgiven if you don’t, it is a busy time of the year, after all — that the dreaded topic of the Irish language was mentioned in iSpy earlier this week, following a row over the number of civil servants who can speak it.
I pointed out that if you want to learn and use Irish with like-minded people, then good luck to you — after all, learning another language can never be a bad thing. I also, as it happens, pointed out that TG4 is undoubtedly the finest, most innovative channel on this island and, against all my predictions at the time, has gone on to be a massive success. In fact, TG4 is one of those occasions when it’s nice to be proved wrong and the Little Broadcaster That Could has done more to make the language more relevant than any number of educational drives ever could. But I also believe that it is not the Government’s business to be hiring and training more civil servants to speak the language.
This isn’t merely an economic argument, although that is compelling in itself.
No, the real objection stems from simple common sense — if you can find a civil servant who can conduct business in Irish, then good for you. If you can’t, simply use English.
Irish is not, and never will be, anything more than a hobby in a country where English is the spoken language. Not being accommodated in your quest to speak Irish is an inconvenience, not a blatant act of discrimination. Not that you would think it from the furious emails which came in demanding I be hoisted above the roof of the Indo and made to publicly recite chapters 1-5 of Peig. The common thread to all those complaints was a sense of hysterical grievance and hilariously disproportionate anger that is now the modus operandi of any rights lobby whose feelings are hurt.
So let’s get a sense of perspective and stop debasing the meaning of the word ‘discrimination’. Irish speakers are not persecuted in this country, no matter how loudly they may claim otherwise and, as I said, the worst thing they face is mild inconvenience which, let’s face it, is hardly some act of ethnic or cultural cleansing.
The levels of paranoid absurdity reached new levels of hyperbole when someone complained bitterly about “an English language journalist” belittling their mother tongue, while another bleated that: “We have the right to be here. You can’t take that way from us.”
Jesus, who was saying that Irish speakers don’t have the right to be here? Obviously, nobody was, but these florid, self-righteous claims of persecution are par for the course when people are complaining — be they gay advocates, Travellers’ rights groups or Muslims or… well, the list of people ready and waiting, poison pen (or worse) at the ready to start demanding someone’s head seems to grow by the day.
We’ve become addicted to grievance and the Irish language lobby is well versed in the art of claiming discrimination. But as much as my interest in the language itself is minimal, and I don’t have any animosity towards it, I was surprised and quite gratified by the number of respondents who actually placed themselves in their own stereotype.
I was, I’ve been told repeatedly over the last few days, a “disgrace to Ireland”, which was one of those febrile rhetorical flourishes that these people like to use, while another angrily condemned me for not caring enough about Northern Ireland, while more than one email contained 800 years’ worth of injustices to the Irish language.
One after the other, these people were quicker to force themselves into a narrow, lazy definition of what it means to be ‘ truly’ Irish than I ever could have been. Yet in amongst all the furious responses from people who really, really want to see themselves as a persecuted minority were the missives of support. These tended to come from people who simply see no sense in wasting millions to keep a language on life support.
None of them were calling for the Balkanisation of the Gaeltacht, nobody is suggesting that Irish speakers should be made wear a sign identifying themselves (a shamrock, instead of a Star of David, perhaps) and nobody is denying anyone the right to learn the language. But it is absurd to expect the Government to foot the bill.
As one angry woman wrote: “Irish is a language in a precarious position. But she’s not dead yet. What she needs is a government that upholds its promises to protect and promote it.” No, that’s not what we need.
In fact, if Irish dies out, then so be it. Call it survival of the fittest, but it is not the job of the State to ensure the survival of anything — that is the job of the people who are interested in it. But I do hold my hands up to one factual error.
I mistakenly said that Seán Ó Cuirreáin was head of an Irish language organisation, Teanga. In fact, he held the post of commissioner for the language.
If only somebody had been around to translate into English for me. Now, where do I got to complain?
www.independent.ie
Foilsithe ar Gaelport.com 13 Nollaig 2013
Irish Independent – Ian O’Doherty
