How to save Irish - Village Magazine

70 February 2016

CULTURE

atin, a dead language, is taught in

thousands of schools. A Latin online

news bulletin gives the world’s news

and carries ads. A radio station broad-

casts the news weekly in Latin. Latin

enthusiasts organise social gatherings.

But despite all this, Latin remains a dead lan

guage. Is Irish on the way to becoming that?

Most of us don’t want to speak Irish, but we

like to have Irish in our lives. We cherish it, the

surveys show, as a precious part of our national

heritage. We are glad there are Gaelscoileanna,

a Radio na Gaeltachta and a TG4; that the des-

tinations of buses are shown in Irish as well as

English, and to hear that there is a news-and-

comment magazine in Irish on the internet.

We would not like everything in Ireland to be

in English only.

However, it is one thing for a minority lan-

guage under pressure by a dominant language

to give pleasure to those who speak and write

it and to comfort others by its presence in their

lives. It is quite another for that language to live

into the future as many of us hope it will. To do

that it must at least be the spoken language of

a sizeable self-renewing community as Latin,

for example, is not. With the former Gaeltacht

districts now completing Ireland’s shift from

Irish to English, the Irish language has no such

community.

This fact constitutes an emergency for lovers

of the Irish language; an emergency that needs

to be countered by dramatic new action – not

by the State which has lost interest in Irish but

by the lovers of the language themselves.

The most valuable achievement of the Irish

language movement is that there are now sev-

eral thousand men and women throughout

Ireland who speak and write Irish well; that is,

as correctly, and with as wide a vocabulary, as

the average educated user of any other

European language. Collectively, these people

in their speech and writing are a national treas-

ure because they embody the Irish language

alive today. Indeed, because of their wide diver-

sity of circumstance and occupation, they

embody it more fully than any Gaeltacht ever

did.

The initiative that is called for is to convert

this national human treasure, which embodies

the Irish language as it is today, into a living

‘language bank’ that yields high interest—is

self-renewing— through adding new people to

its number each year.

For a start, it would be a matter of establish-

ing - insofar as now possible and with the

personnel now available—the kind of commu-

nity that is necessary for ensuring the

continuance of Irish as a living language. The

personnel available for that are those several

thousand men and women who speak and write

Irish well.

Identify a thousand of them and obtain their

consent to be jointly responsible - together with

others whom they would admit to their number

through an annual examination - for the survival

of Irish as a spoken and written language. Have

them agree on a collective name for the lan-

guage community they would form; undertake

to hold general and regional conventions; and

choose a discreet badge that they would wear

on their clothing to identify themselves to each

other and to people generally.

That badge would become a mark of positive

distinction. The annual entrance examination

for new members, which would become a big

national occasion, would provide a prestigious

goal for Gaelcholáistí and for the university

courses in Irish. Apart from the holding of its

conventions, this body of Irish-language per-

petuators would carry out its remit simply by

living, speaking and writing, and growing annu-

ally towards an initial complement of, say, 8000

members.

The present Irish-language activities and

occasions would continue undisturbed.

Because the members of the language commu-

nity would not be living next door to each other,

they would not be a self-renewing community

of the ideal kind. But it would be the best that

can be done under present circumstances.

The annual entry exam would give the sec

ondary Gaelscoileanna and the university

courses in Irish a concrete and prestigious goal

to aim at. In time the initial goal of 8000 mem-

bers might well need to be extended.

It must be clear that unless this scheme or

something like it is implemented, the spoken

and written Irish language will enter in the

coming years a period of gradual, ragged, igno-

minious, death, with very minority-interest

programmes on radio and television recalling

the real thing.

Dr Desmond Fennell’s last book was 'Third

Stroke Did It: The Staggered End of European

Civilisation'.

www.desmondfennell.com

How to save Irish

We should urgently select 1000

language-lovers to champion it

Apart from the holding

of its conventions,

these Irish-language

perpetuators would

simply live, speak and

write, and grow towards,

say, 8000 members

by Desmond Fennell