Freudian slip.

There are examples like David McWilliams noted in his book and noted again in his speech on Saturday of young and trendy pubs and clubs with Irish names like ‘Rí-Rá’ and ‘Anseo’ in Dublin, and he correctly concludes in my view, that it would not have happened in the ’80′s.

We, Gael-Taca, are the only ones working on marketing the Irish language. I believe we also have named businesses in Irish- I have to find out. There was a whole page article about us in the Property Section of The Sunday Times actually last year.

Vodafone said today that they would have predictive text in Irish within a few month. Promotion of Ireland has to be holistically done. At once the business sector is being worked on beidh an teanga ceart go leor.

Ian Malcom, a former advisor to David Trimble, has a column in the Irish paper ‘Lá’. Eoghan Harris speaks Irish and David McGimbsey speaks a bit. I read a good article from a book recently about people from Unionist backgrounds learing Irish.

Pádraig O Cuanacháin, the main person of Gael-Taca, actually met David Irvine before and told him that he is a republican but that politics and the Irish language are totally different and shouldn’t be mixed. There aren’t many people on the island that Pádraig hasn’t talked to.

I was just looking for a quote there from the book ‘Ireland 1912-1985 Politics and Society’ by J.J Lee for this quote:

“Policy for about two decades has clearly been to let the language die by stealth.” p 672 1993

and say that SF worked this vacum well between 1970 to 1990′s when I came across this- actually the pages 658-674 are really essential to anyone interested in the Irish language, or at least to anyone who wants to be more aware of where we are now in relation to it and how we got here.

“The failure, however, did not lie in the schools. It was the blatant failure of the state itself to devise arrangements for the subsequent use of the language that largely discredited compulsory Irish. The children were given no incentive to master Irish as a living language, only as a dead one. The charade of Irish language tests for public employment, when everybody knew the language would hardly be used again, the whole fetid system of favouritism associated with language knowledge, as distinct from language use, inevitably left its mark, stamping the most idealistic and most important task undertaken by the new state as yet one more sleazy political racket. Genuine language lovers who ‘loathed the way that politicans, the pedagogues, the urbanised peasants had sucked the life and beauty from it’ were brushed aside. The characteristic combination of hypocrisy and incompetence precluded any possibility of increasing the number of Irish speakers, as distinct from increasing the nominal command of the language among a broadly benovolent but apathetic and sceptical public. As a French observer has commented, the state ‘fulfils the letter of the project, the better to betray the spirit…it prefers to use Irish as a sort of symbol of nationality, more of less relegated to a ritualistic and ceremonial role.’
p 671

I’m not joking about a time that David got beaten up. I know what some of those b*stards are like. I came up against some of them in Gaoth Dobhair in Donegal a few times.

In retrospect you can laugh at these things although they are not funny at the time. Indeed those b*stards in Gaoth Dobhair are still there according to some of the papers.

I didn’t make a speech. I tried to point out that it was the FG policy still to change the compulsory nature of Irish and that Olwyn Enright mentioned the policy in a letter last week in the Irish Times, whatever mixed signals Enda Kenny, may, have given out at their conference. There wasn’t enough time as the Q&A sessions were fairly short.

I am a committee member of Gael-Taca in Dublin.
http://www.gaeltacabac.com

We focus on promoting Irish in the business sector. Over the last three years we have been working with over 150 property developers offering them Irish names for new developments. We do a lot of other stuff as well e.g. help setting up gaelscoileanna, signage in shops,pubs and we have a radio programme in Cork that is rebroadcast on a few stations. We also sponsor a few sports teams down in Cork.

We are best known for being a Cork organisation and we have a couple of full-time workers there. We have a relatively new Dublin branch though and we work on a national basis.

“I did have pestering David for his on my to-do list this week…”

It was very good and funny. He should have more reasons that most to be turned of the Irish language considering what happened to him on an infamous night in Béal an Daingean in Galway in the late ’80′s…

“Dunno about your view of the telly tho. My husband watches the TG4 weather cos the girls are really cute. Sex will sell anything! And I watch the Scannal programme cos its really really good. Full credit to Sarah Ryder the producer.It’s the only time since I left school I’ve watched a programme in Irish….”

‘Ardán’ (kind of like the Late Late Show in Irish) on Saturday night is very good, even though it is usually only of for an hour. ‘Comhrá’, ‘Teenage Cics’ ’7 Lá’, ‘An Tuath Nua’ and the Nuacht are very good as well

“I still think making people learn a language is a mistake and I just do NOT get how I haven’t heard one bit of praise for the fact that Kenny, Dukes etc ARE irish speakers.”

Alan Dukes hasn’t been mentioned because he hasn’t joined in on this debate, I think. Irish speakers recognise that Enda Kenny speaks Irish, but we are going on the policy not the person.

I acually was looking forward to Enda Kenny becoming the next Taoiseach because he speaks Irish, and well I hate the current govt. on everything except the Irish language and the North. I don’t love them on the North, but lets say that John Bruton turned me off FG and the North.

“Like what do you really want? An Taoiseach who can’t put two words together but plamasses you guys by not rocking the boat or politicians who actually CAN speak the language. Some pretty obvious party politics in the “movement” there..So much for a living language…”

I know a lot of Irish speaking activists, and I don’t know any of them that vote for FF, although one or two may vote for an individual candidates. Actually probably more would vote for FF in the West of the country. In Dublin, more would proportionally vote for SF and the GP than the general public I think.

I’d say about half of the students would drop it.

“And yet, you can hardly claim that making it compulsory has been successful.”

It has been successful in the sense that most people that have gone through the educational system in Ireland have a good knowledge of it, but don’t think that they they have the opportunity to speak it much.

“If making it compulsory has failed, why not try something different.”

The syllabus has failed in my view, not the compulsory nature.

“Is Eamon O’Cuiv’s brilliance as a minister due to his even more militant approach to the language?”

I disagree with him on a lot but the Official Languages Act is a great achievement, outside of Dingle/An Daingean.

“And the actual fluence of Kenny/Noonan/Dukes who can contribute and DO contribute to many Irish language programmes is just ignored because they dared to suggest change?”

They rarely contribute to Irish language programmes. In fact Noonan and Dukes have not even said in the Irish language media that they are in favour of the new policy. I haven’t heard them anyway.

“Isn’t whatever resurgence there has been in recent years due to the fact that cool clued in people in Dublin put their children in Gaelscoilleanna because of the lower teacher pupil ratios? And then because those schools were populated by interested middle class pupils they got great results and thus attracted even cooler middle class get ahead people? Didn’t David talk about this in his book?”

It has more to do with the “HICo quest for authenticity” from my reading of the chapter. Many people just read the article in the Irish Times, instead of the edited article in the Irish Times.

“Again I want to stress I am not Irish language bashing, I am just frustrated with the obvious terror of the movement from changing anything.”

That is a total generalisation. We are the people that are driving the change, and I spoke about the huge number of issues that were discussed, and that are being worked upon, over the weekend.

“Finally, would you accept that TG4 and the Scannal series on telly have actually done more for the Irish language than all the compulsory teaching since the foundation of the state has done?”

Perhaps, but most people wouldn’t watch them, despite their subtitles, if they didn’t have a decent knowledge of the language.