Over on his own site, Bangor Dub has blogged about the Irish Language. And just a few minutes ago, I note that Mick Fealty has published a sensible blog on the same subject. Both are I think in some way inspired by the weekend conference where Progressive Unionist Party members were signing up to classes in the East Belfast Mission.
I am just not sure about all this. The older I get……the less I like things. ANY thing.
I knew very little about the Irish language prior to going to a Christian Brothers Grammar School at 11 years old. Up to then I associated it with the Primary 3 teacher who played the fiddle at feiseanna and a priest who always said the Our Father in Irish. But more likely I associated it with the artsy middle gaed men at an Ard Scoil……the run down building across the road from school. And I suppose some of them had the faint whiff of 1940-1950s cordite about them.
Really nothing between 1963 and 1968 (O level grade 3 since you ask) endeared me to the Irish Language. Indeed I spent a fretful summer wondering if I might be compelled to take Irish at “A” level as the third choice would be among four Grade 3s. I need not have fretted.
So take Ballaghaderreen in County Roscommon in the second half of the nineteenth century. Apparently on a market day…..Douglas Hyde, part of the local landlord/Church of Ireland set…….heard a young lad speaking English on market day. And Hyde (who had gone native……..and was an insufferable bore) chided the young lad “why arent you speaking Irish”……..to which the young lad replied “shure isnt it Irish Im speaking”.
This is the standard anecdote which Gaelic language students are told on the first day after they sign up to classes. The lesson is…….SUPPOSED to be that by the mid-nineteenth century the English language had encroached so far into rural and western Ireland that even Irish people accepted it as the “Irish” language. The lesson I take is quite different………Aristocratic Gentry 0 Irish Peasant Boy 1. Yes Im kinda on the side of the young lad.
There is a certain confusion. When speaking of languages ….we refer in English………to English and Irish. Which are of course the same words we use for Irish and English nationality. Yet when we refer to languages in Irish…..we speak of Béarla and Gaelige……..which are quite distinct from the nationalities of Sassenach and Éireannach. Thats a nuance that is lost in translation so to speak.
Irish/Gaelic…..is deemed to be the First National Language of Ireland. I hold it to be the First National Hypocrisy. There has been little meaningful progress at establishing this as a reality. And it is likely to be made even more difficult by the number of people from Poland, Czech Republic, Nigeria etc settling in Ireland.
Of course the Irish language was a key motivating factor in the Irish Republican movement. But really it has not made much advance beyond the political, academic and cultural classes in Dublin and the native speakers in Gaeltachts in Donegal, Kerry, Galway-Mayo and smaller areas in Waterford, Meath and Cork. And of course the North of Ireland where a legacy of the Troubles has been an interest in the language……many learned it in prison or Long Kesh. Certainly in the 1970s and 1980s, it was a marker of Republicanism.
For myself I hold that the reality is that there are TWO Irish languages and it is elitist and simply wrong to place one above the other. Certainly in the 1970s, the Irish language became associated with (militant) Irish nationalism/republicanism. By any definition……Nationalism seeks to emphasise the difference or unique nature of a “nationality”……..geography, history, culture, folklore…….language.
The association with IRA types was a turn-off …for me in the 1970s. Possibly less so in the 1980s….when (arguably) the worst of the Troubles was over and we started a family. We could not get our first child into a (English speaking) nursery and we were slightly wary of the implication of choosing an Irish-language nursery. But a 3 year old chld NEEDS a nursery………and #1 son thrived there.
Those of us who are parents know the proud feeling of occasionally taking a half-day off just to pick a child up from school. And I vividly recall standing alonside another guy who was going to pick up his daughter. Exchanged a few words before I apologised for my limited “Irish”. He laughed it off good naturedly……..”Tá Jailic agam”……………he had learned his Irish in Long Kesh.
OK …..let us reflect on this. My son was at an Irish language nursery/kindergarten. He was indeed thriving there. But I should not have been in any way surprised that other families would have……let us say……militantly republican credentials.
So………I recall 8th December 1987……..and a meeting where we were interviewed by a panel to decide on whether to allow our son into an Irish language primary school. Our son answered the questions they put to him, even telling the panel in too great detail a rather long list of the presents he was expecting from Dáidí na Nollaig.
Yet there was something uncomfortable about it. We were under scrutiny. As I recall we were told that the Dept of Education paid full costs but we were “expected” to make a contribution of around £100 per annum. More so …….we would be expected to raise funds by rattling collection tins in the city centre. Now both Mrs FitzjamesHorse and myself were in the kind of employment where we might encounter people who would find this unpalatable…….given the perceived associations of the Irish language.
It was also put to us that parental contribution and fundraising was voluntary and once our son was enrolled, he could not be dismissed for any action/inaction on our part……….BUT……….it might mean that siblings were not accepted. Hmmm.
The kindest interpretation was that sending a child to be taught thru the medium of Irish……..at least in 1987/88 required a degree of commitment which we could not give. Yet it seemed wrong to take our child away from a medium in which he was thriving. On the drive home it was Mrs FJH……..probably more committed that I was ……..who pointed out something which I had not even noticed. The interviewing panel (other parents) were all MEN. That made her uncomfortable. So ended our experiment in “Irish” language education.
Yet somehow the experience of the nursery school and the growing legacy of the Troubles………..we were all radicalised into being more overtly Irish…..stimulated me into attended classes on an occasional basis for the best part of fifteen years. I can seemingly only reach a certain level. Fluency is about understanding the nuance of a word……….and if I was trying to really make myself understood in a nuanced debate…….well Irish is of little use. On the other hand I do have the confidence to order a meal in Irish.
Of course there was always the 1990s difficulty of visiting an Cultúrlann in Belfast and seeing clusters of Sinn Féin members sitting around having a wee cup of tea. Yet a think this was actually the high point of Sinn Féin involvement. The seeds planted by “artsy” people in the 1960s and grown by republicans in the 1960s,1970s, 1980s, 1990s has been harvested by a broader base………..the language has returned to its home in Academia or Culture ……sanitised perhaps and (arguably) producing a new elite ……different from the Sinn Féin elite.
A few years ago Mrs FJH and I were passing thru County Roscommon and stopped in Ballaghaderreen. I wanted to stop off at Frenchpark….the old parish church there is a small museum in honour of Douglas Hyde. But the roadsign in Ballaghaderreen was confusing so I asked a passer-by for directions. Alas he could not understand me….he was from Eastern Europe. So I went into a shop for two ice creams and directions. And the young lady was very helpful. She was from Ukraine.
I hope the Douglas Hyde and the “Boy in Ballaghaderreen Market” see the funny side.
Yet I cannot bring myself to offer more than two cheers (rather than the regulation three cheers) at the news that PUP members are signing up to Irish language classes in East Belfast. The Gaelic language…………and bitching about it………….is fundamental to being Irish………..and rather than strengthening Irish identity, this actually weakens it.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Interesting post, though I disagree with the general point being made, if I’m understanding you correctly. You believe that the English language is as Irish as the Irish language? My answer to that is yes and no.
Confused by the last paragraph. Are you saying that the Irish language weakens Irish identity? Or that bitching about it does so?
I believe that there are TWO Irish languages……English/Béarla and Irish/Gaeilge and while we should genuinely enhance and preserve the language, it is counter-productive to make “Irish” more Irish than English.
The language has been used politically…..to good effect. It was one of the motivating factors in early 20th century republicanism/nationalism.
But it has not developed outside an elite group in and around Dublin………….and native speakers. The gap has never been bridged.
In my (early day) it was a minority interest.
And again the Troubles gave it an impetus. But that republican “ownership” has now been replaced by an academic/cultural ownership.
Expanding it to PUP types might be rewarding for language but may not be politically rewarding to nationalism.
There does seem to be a campaign to take the Irishness out of “Irish”.
We have already lost sovreignty and there are inherent dangers in “shared history”.
Will this make Ireland a nation once again?
Or a province once again.?
But, arguably and historically, the Irish language is more “Irish” than the English language since it is the indigenous language of this island and has been for millennia.
Up to the 1840s Irish remained the majority language of the island of Ireland. It is only in the last 150 years that English has become the majority tongue.
What is 150 years compared to 4000 years?
Furthermore an Ireland that is separated from Britain by nothing more than a passport is worthless. As well that not a single shot was fired or a single life sacrificed if all we can manage is a West Britain to call our own.
Irish nationalism without the “Irish” is meaningless. Nationalism in Ireland failed because it allowed Anglophone Irish nationalism to become the ideological norm with nothing more than lip-service paid to any indigenous form. The result? A glorified Home Rule state. An English Ireland.
To me an Irish Ireland is a distinct and separate tradition. And an inspirational one.
Sorry for the passion but one rarely gets the chance to articulate such thoughts. Which is why I suppose I started blogging 😉
Technically the word Béarla means language if we go back to old/middle Irish period– the name for English was “Sacs-Béarla” literaly “Saxon language”, this is the term used in the Irish constituent for example. As for spilt between Gaeilge and Éirennach, well technically the term Éireannach only really comes into play from the 17th century, before then people generally would associated with the the word Gael, which of course has a much wider meaning as it would also include people form Scotland and Man.
Paul…this is all correct but in everyday speech, the “Irish” language allows us to see a difference.
“Gaelic” speakers seem hostile to English because it is called “English” but of course “English” is spoken in USA, New Zealand etc.
There would be far less hostility if it was called “Anglophone” or “Transatlantic” or “American”.
Likewise hostility to “Irish” lies in the name. Call in “Gaelic” and people think its wonderfully cultural. Call it “Irish” and people think its “political”
In my experience it’s actually the reverse, whenever I hear people use the word Gaelic it implies a political angle. If you look at any records from 14th century onwards it’s was always describe as Irish (Irische for example or even Erse) in the English language. Here is an example from a book published in London in 1634:
http://books.google.ie/books?id=FATgId2ii8wC&lpg=PA1&ots=xRPrFtXOwA&dq=irish%20language&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false
The use of term Gaelic instead seems to date more from the 18th century onwards . Particulary in a scottish context where the term Erse was by then regarded as derogatory. Though in a “Scots” context before the 15th century the language was known as “Scottis” and what we now term “Scots” was called Inglis.
As for the name of English, I’ve never heard anyone seem hostile to the language based on it’s actual name. If you are hostile to a language doesn’t matter what it’s called ye still end up been hostile.
-Paul
We speak Hiberno-English, due to a systematic drowning of the Irish language by the English. yet if this had not had happened we still may be dancing at the crossroads as DeValera wanted us.
Either way I do feel that my 12 years battling with a language I managed to score a “D” grade in my leaving cert was wasted learning, I can hardly string a sentence together and ended up having to repeat my final exams.
This recent book “The Revival of Irish – Failed Project of a Political Elite” just made me angrier after all these years.
That money could have been well spent on improving other areas of our country.
Here is my blog review of the new book if you like
I think theres a certain logic in that.
Whether theres animosity at a Dublin-based political elite, or animosity towards Gaeltacht dwellers who …we are told…..get too much financial help…hatred towards Christian Brothers or Sisters of Mercy …..or simply bad results………I am guilty on all charges.
Try as I may I cant get past a certain point in trying to learn.
Like many people I have a love-hate relationship with the language.