Let's be honest: if the Irish language died, we wouldn't really give a damn
Sunday June 19 2005
Whaddya you mean there isn't one? There must be. People marched in the streets to make this happen. There were petitions. Campaigners had us believe that if Irish was not accorded official EU status, then the whole nation was being relegated to the status of a third class, Third World poor relation.
Surely there ought to be dancing at the crossroads of every town and village in Ireland at the joyous news from Brussels. Children should be 'Is there anyone whose life is so empty that consulting the as Gaeilge version of the EU Constitution will seem like a worthwhile use of their time?'
given a day off school - or perhaps extra Irish lessons, the lucky beggars - to celebrate. Commemorative stamps should be issued by An Post. Licence hours should beextended.
None of these things will happen, needless to say, because, however much noise a small handful of our most vocal citizens may have made in recent months about European Union recognition of Irish, nobody really cares.
Oh, we say we do. If there was a list of issues we considered important, the status of the Irish language in Brussels might be one of the boxes we ticked - assuming, that is, we were allowed to tick as many as we liked.
It would be right up there with better nutritional labelling on supermarket food, more cycle ways, iodine tablets for all in case of nuclear emergency, universal peace and an end to world hunger, on the infinite wish list of things which it would be quite nice to have.
But deep down, we don't really give a monkey's about Irish. We only pretend to because it's one of the things that educated and sophisticated Irish people are now supposed to believe, and because, well, believing in the spiritually-enhancing properties of the Irish language has become a habit we're much too intellectually lazy to breakout of.
If we really cared about Irish, then we'd do something about it.
Like speak it.
Instead we opt for empty gestures. Putting a few street names in Gaelic. Taking away the English language road signs in Dingle. Patting TG4 patronisingly on the head with grants. Demanding that property developers set aside a proportion of their estates in the west for Irish-speakers.
Someone else always has to pay the price for maintaining our pious belief in the importance of Irish. Foreign tourists, for example, who are now expected to get lost on the back roads of Kerry just so that we can pretend we're an Irish-speaking nation.
Most obviously, it's children who pay the price. Rather than admit the whole business of learning Irish has become a costly and dishonest farce, we force them to spend thousands of hours learning a language which they will never speak, write or read again.
We know it. They know it. But everyone colludes in the pretence that we are doing something more noble than torturing our own children to make ourselves feel better.
We are literally making someone else pay in this latest case. There are new EU member states still struggling to shrug off the burden of decades of Communist misrule. There are countries so desperately poor they make the Ireland of the Seventies look like an economic triumph. But to hell with them. It's a dog eat dog world out there, and they just got a taste of it as we wangled €3.5m a year out of the European budget to pay for EU documents to be translated into Irish, despite the fact that every single person in this country could read them in English if they were so eagerly interested in European matters to want to read them in the first place. Which, let's face it, nobody is.
Be honest. Is there anyone whose life is so empty that consulting the "as Gaeilge" version of the EU Constitution, or the forthcoming reams of Irish language transcripts of European Parliament debates, will seem like a worthwhile use of their time?
It just looks like another masterful exercise in prising more jobs for the boys for the small band of Irish language junkies who don't seem to have got over the defeat of Brian Boru yet.
If we care this much about Irish, then we should pay for it ourselves. We did very well out of Europe. Now, as we turn from grateful beneficiary with our hands out to reluctant donor with our hands in our pocket, we don't seem to like it. So rather than standing back and letting other countries get the economic leg-up which we enjoyed in our time, we still sponge every last cent we can get out of our neighbours under the specious cover of cultural necessity. They might take our word for it - though the Netherlands, which still pays vastly more per head of population into EU coffers than any other member state, didn't seem fooled and was only persuaded to back the deal at the last moment - but we know we're lying.
Deep down, we know we just pulled a con trick on the rest of Europe.
Enthusiasts of Irish say the language will die if we don't take such measures. Well, so be it. Languages don't die if people care enough about them to save them. A recent report observed that Maori is flourishing in New Zealand simply because well-off white Kiwis are freely choosing to include more Maori words and phrases in everyday conversations. For decades now we've poured millions down the Irish language drain, and, aside from the odd "failte" and "slan", just about the only Irish word in general usage is "craic".
That says it all.
Why can't we simply face the fact that, if Irish does die, it will be because we let it die? No one else is to blame, so why should anyone else be expected to run to the rescue?
- Eilis O'Hanlon
