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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
62 March/April 2022
Soul
P
ÁDRAIG PEARSE, the Irish revolutionary
leader of , declared “Tír gan teanga,
tír gan anam,” which translates as “A
country without its lanuae is a country
without a soul”. Certainly, by Ireland was
a country that had lost its sense of self.
Althouh acts of rebellion ultimately resulted
in an independent state for rouhly two-thirds
of the island, much of what was hoped would
be restored fell by the wayside.
The reasons for Ireland’s predicaments are,
of course, historical. The sins of colonialism
reach into contemporary Ireland still. What
Ireland has become is an imitator of trends,
as opposed to a nation certain of itself and
its defining characteristics. What Pearse
described as the country’s soul remains lost.
This sense of loss predominates in us as a
people since residing in Ireland’s language
Gaeilge (Irish) lies much of our heritage. It’s a
language most of us don’t know. The language
is at the periphery of a nation dislocated from
itself.
Irish as
ecology
By Liam Tiernach Ó Beagáin and Laoise Ní Fhearchair
The language: from politics to culture to society marketed as environmentalism
is promised for us, the humans. Neoliberalism
is winning the ideological battle. The Irish view
of life is weakening. But it can be resuscitated
by the gems held in our language.
Our culture is often mocked and belittled.
The language is often demeaned. Viewing
one language as superior to others is utterly
rejected, indeed disdained, by contemporary
linguistic theory but how often do we hear
of contemptuous alienation from the simple
pieties of the Leaving Certificate novel, ‘Peig’.
Modern life is full of this. The relentlessly
driven ‘power-couple’ Vogue Williams and
Spencer Matthews (we shall refer to them
as “WM”) recently described Gaeilge as “an
ugly language”. Ryanair, Ireland’s low-fares
airline openly mocked the language when Irish
speakers asked for an Irish-language option on
its website, while 3 Mobile asks people with
“dicult” Irish names to translate them into
English.
Attitudes like these are not new. For example,
the great Catholic emancipator and royalist
Daniel O’Connell viewed Gaeilge as inferior to
English.
We discuss here how our currently unused
language can help move us toward a
psychologically healthier, more culturally rich
and caring society, and in doing so end the
alienation of a nation.
1. Contemporary Ireland:
Neoliberalism, humans and
superhumans
Today Ireland is haunted by colonialism, while
a rampant capitalism perpetuates deference
to outside ideologies that conflict with who
we are as a people. Neoliberal ideology
encourages the false neo-Darwinian belief that
it’s sink or swim. One must outdo the other to
‘get ahead’. But always inherent in the Irish
attitude to life is zeal for strength in unity: that
we are all in this together and that we look out
for one another. This is what we want, but it’s
not what we have. On the one hand, massive
tax-free profits are guaranteed for multi-billion
dollar corporations that we will describe as the
superhumans. While, on the other hand, little
CULTURE
March/April 2022 63
Some of these mind-sets towards Irish culture
can be summarised in the following aphorism:
what was: inferior, what’s now: superior.
But it’s an absolute myth.
What we currently have is an unsustainable
greed machine built on a post-colonial
porridge of wae-ideology. Certainly, whatever
of O’Connell, contemporary views such as
WM are driven by the language of a specific
individualism that, for example, Friedrich
Nietzsche so despised (‘On the pathos of
truth’, 1872) – one that Jean-Paul Sartre warned
would lead us to an inauthentic life (‘Being and
Nothingness’, 1943).
In buying into the view of life that the
superhumans oer, the individual, believing
themselves to be free, hands over responsibility
for their lives to them. From a deontological
perspective, the individual is but a means to
an end, who is unknowingly used in acts of
repulsion towards Kant’s ethical demands and
thus becomes the amadán or fool.
If a language not only represents societal
concepts but also shapes them, in what the
great linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–
1835) described as a nation’s “character
of language”, then perhaps the language
common in Ireland today (whatever its tongue
might be) describes where our values lie.
Elite decisions appear to result in ever-
greater choices for everyone. However, choices
trend to what seem to be consumer-driven
demands, since these choices
are agreeable with elite interests.
Vacuous freedoms of choice in
consumer purchases are illusions.
Actual choices in other areas bear
this point out, since there are little
or no choices. Healthcare and
housing are not easily available
unlike, say, noodles.
Humans demand togetherness.
For example we want aordable
healthcare and housing and we
want the superhumans to pay their
fair share. However, this is not in
the interest of the superhumans
who are so neatly entwined with
government. For example, over half
of Ireland’s TDs are millionaires
tied to property and financial
instruments (Philip Ryan and
Wayne O’Connor, ‘Revealed: Half of
Ireland’s TDs are Millionaires’, The
Irish Independent, 13 May 2018).
The cosiness between elites
and TDs has been encouraged
by successive Irish governments
through tax-exemptions that allow
the superhumans to buy up large
swathes of housing, eectively
barring the humans. What has
resulted is another governmental
crisis and is one that is best
swept under the rug since such stories are
not becoming in a media concerned with elite
interests (the classic by Herman and Chomsky,
‘Manufacturing Consent’, 1988, explains why).
Real freedom is saved for persons seen to be
of merit. Despite what their very own mythos
would have us mere mortals believe, these
superhuman entities are not signs of humanity
overcoming itself, but more than likely, if
allowed to continue they are signs of humanity
ending itself.
Let us focus on tax for a second. It is
estimated that multinational corporations
have avoided €1 trillion in taxes through what
is known as the Double Irish tax loophole (Paul
Mark, ‘Ireland is the world’s biggest corporate
“tax haven”, say academics’, Irish Times, 13
June 2018).
Apple has been an egregious beneficiary
of the Double Irish. While Ireland was still
struggling under huge debts imposed after the
financial crash, the government fought against
the EU by refusing to draw down taxes from
Apple. The European Competition Committee
(ECC) found Apple had been given roughly €13
billion in illegal state aid through a sweetheart
deal that spanned many years and ruled
that they must return the money. The Irish
government appealed on their behalf and won.
What greater sign do we need of a country that
is dislocated from itself?
Ireland is one of the worst performers in
European assessments of the environment
including carbon emissions and waste
production. The Irish countryside is under
pressure as small farmers are pushed to the
edge of reason, rivers and ecological systems
have been severely damaged by poor water
management, while fisheries are near collapse
and we are the least wooded country in Europe.
Biodiversity is in precipitous decline and there
is little popular or local heed.
And yet ecological thinking is at the heart of
Gaeilge.
The Celts in Ireland were animists, honouring
the spirit of nature.The Druids revered trees.
Ireland is an international byword for beauty.
Pre-consumerist
Animists in works of beuty
64 March/April 2022
The greenest country in the world, aesthetically.
To say hello in Irish we say ‘Cad émar atá tú?’
meaning, ‘What is because you are?’ Concern
for others and nature is at the heart of the
language. Even De Valera’s vision was rustic
and bucolic in contrast to industrial England.
Community and spirituality were central.
These are but a few observations. We have
not discussed the ruination of other public
services, the commodification of universities,
and the general move to Anglo-American
market fetishisation.
Across Ireland the arts, culture and
language are beleaguered, while Irish
language communities live with the very real
threat of extinction under new planning laws
that are unacceptable everywhere else in the
state. Politicians talk of existential crises in
economics, culture, housing, health, energy,
and climate, but they pull in directions
contrary to their alleged concerns. Capitalism
is to blame for this madness.
To rid ourselves of this way of life we must
reject its language, whatever tongue it uses,
and reengage with who we actually are.
2. Why languages matter
We are not suggesting Gaeilge is exceptional,
only that it has within it Ireland’s long and
rich history. Within this history there lies a
particular culture and within that an attitude to
life, humanity and our role in the world. Under
Imperial rule we forgot much of our culture,
since “the colonial imperative is to destroy all
memory of what went before” (Palmer, et al,
‘Enter Mac Morris’, Dublin Review of Books,
July 2019). And as Michael Cronin eruditely
suggests, the task of destroying all memory
and erasing a culture requires getting rid of its
language (An Ghaeilge agus an Éiceolaíocht,
Foilseacháin Ábhair Spioradálta, 2019).
Language is the key component for a nation.
As our first President, Douglas Hyde believed,
by losing Gaeilge we lost “the world’s
recognition of us as a separate nationality”. So
although the Irish have no desire to be English,
as with many colonised nations, we take up
many of their customs. As Hyde observed,
we imitate the Imperial metropole that forces
the project of colonialism onto us. Today, we
follow their sports, watch their soap operas,
listen to their music, copy their fashion, and
even follow their royalty. A renewed interest in
our own ways through our own language can
change this. Not in the enclosed nationalistic
way that de Valera’s protectionist policies
dictated, but in a way that is modern, secular,
and democratic. The language reinvigorates a
set of values truer to ourselves.
So far, we have argued we are alienated
from ourselves. We are dislocated from our
culture, ecology, geography, economics, and
democracy. This is not surprising considering
the power we have lost as a nation.
For example, in losing Gaeilge we have
lost our ability to place ourselves in our own
country. We do not know the meaning of the
place names around us. We are traumatically
lost in a psyche living paradoxically. How can
something be so familiar yet so unknowable?
Since most place names were translated into
English phonetically there is no meaning
associated with Irish place names in their
English form: they don’t denote anything
meaningful in English. For example, we can’t
tell you what the term Dublin means, since it
has no meaning. A speaker of Gaeilge will know
that the word Dublin is a bastardisation of the
Irish words dubh linn. Dubh is the Irish word
for black, and linn is pool in English. If Dubh–
linn ought to be called anything in English it’s
Blackpool.
Phonetic translations of meaningful Irish
words prevail across the country. And this
has had the consequence of confounding the
problems we have with Gaeilge. Confusion
reigns.
Again, Cronin expertly examines the malaise:
“For many, who have been born and
grown up in Anglophone Ireland,
the language can have a certain
familiarity about it but, at the
same time, remain disconcertingly
strange. Disconcerting because
of the assumption that it should
come naturally, not require hours of
ceaseless study and practice. This
sensation of being unsettled, of being
in an uncertain space (the endless
soul-searching about Irish identity)
can, of course, lead to resentful guilt
or outright rejection”.
But that rejection is misplaced, since within
indigenous cultures around the world there is
“a great multitude of stories, some of which
may be invaluable in the reinvention of self and
society in the transition to new ways of living
and being” (Stibbe 2016: 193). Therefore, if
we wish to reimagine our world and our place
within it, Gaeilge must play a key role.
3. What can Gaeilge do?
James Connolly (1868–1916) led the Irish
Citizens Army as part of the Irish rebellion
against British imperial forces in 1916. Connolly
was a republican socialist and knew the
important role Ireland’s indigenous language
had to play if Ireland was to be a successful
post-colonial society that valued all individuals
as ends in themselves, as opposed to mere
cogs in an imperialist-capitalist machine that
bled its colonies dry.
Douglas Hyde too, although not a socialist
like Connolly, understood the importance of
the Irish language. A person of Anglo-Irish
descent and the first president of Ireland
(1938–45), he spoke on the importance of
decolonising Ireland (‘The necessity for de-
Anglicising Ireland’, Irish National Literary
Society, 25 November 1892).
Hyde understood that Gaeilge was the
essential component in saving Irish ways of life
in the arts, mythology, music, philosophy, and
law. For example, many of Ireland’s ancient
laws foreshadowed the advances gained by
suragettes in twentieth century England. In
essence, Ireland’s culture lay in the heart of
its native spoken word. Connolly’s vision for
an all-inclusive socialist Ireland with its own
language, however, was not to be. By the
spring of 1916 the leaders of the new Ireland
were dead, executed by British forces for their
proclamation of an Irish republic.
What Connolly and Hyde understood about
our native language holds true today. By
extension, it follows that native languages
around the world may give us opportunities to
reintroduce ourselves to nature, and to stop
the dislocation that Erich Fromm described as
March/April 2022 65
giving to us our great sense of alienation (‘The
art of living’, 1956).
Ireland has within its grasp the opportunity
to show the rest of the world the way forward.
If we reintroduce Gaeilge as part of a multi-
lingual society we are giving speakers of other
languages an introduction to the history of
Ireland.
4. Ways forward
The way forward can either be economics-
led policies that satisfy superhuman needs,
or it can be people-led with the interests
of community at its heart. Successive Irish
governments have failed. Therefore, we
favour the humans taking control with funding
taken out of government hands. But before
discussing the humans let us look at the
superhumans and government policy.
Government policies have been laughable
at best. Gaeilgeoirs (Irish speakers) and the
Gaeltachts (Ocial Irish language areas), see
their latest variation on a theme, the Ocial
Language Bill, as largely irrelevant. The idea
of Lá na Gaeilge (Irish day) where everyone is
encouraged to use their cúpla focal (few words)
adds insult to injury. They are nothing more
than mere platitudes towards a language that
many wish would just go away (Lorna Siggins,
‘Don’t speak Irish, company that accepts
Gaeltacht grant tells sta’, The Times, 17 April
2021). The language bill points towards civic
positions aimed at serving the Gaeltachts.
But if the Gaeltachts aren’t there, then there
will be no job roles in public service.. If the
government were serious about the language
then they would put all available funds into
making Gaeilge a living language.
But the opposite is happening. English is
eroding the Gaeltachts. This trend does not
appear to cause alarm for those in charge, and
leaves many asking why do Gaeltacht bodies
exist if they cannot do their one job? It seems
that under government policy Gaeltachts are
sacrifice zones comparable to how Naomi
Klein described indigenous people and their
cultures in the US (‘This Changes Everything:
Capitalism versus the Climate’, 2014). Their
lobbying power is too weak. Accordingly, with
no voice, native Irish speakers in Irish speaking
communities in Ireland are aorded little or no
protection.
Under the guise of aiming to revive the
Gaeltachts, government have proposed and
are trying to enforce planning laws that no
other part of the country would tolerate.
They aim to build housing and introduce new
members to the communities who don’t have a
word of Irish between them.
The grim reaper of Gaeilge is at the door and
it is not the British but we who are doing it.
But even if Gaeilge were to somehow
miraculously survive under these stresses
it is not impervious to the agenda of the
individualism. As the decline of the Gaeltachts
continue there is a move away from “cultural
and community agency” that scholar Conchúr
ÓCiollagáin describes as “staged Irish” which
is “decoupled from the Gaeltacht collective...
The preference in current approaches [is] for
the symbolic and institutional use of Irish.
There is no expectation that policies would
have any application in actual communities”.
(‘Neo-liberal treatment of Irish language is
folly’, Irish Times, 17 August 2020). If this is
allowed to continue, then the language itself
will get dislocated from the culture. Irish is
being decoupled from the cultural roots of the
Gaelic group and from communal and cultural
agency among the Gaels.
The culture that we want Gaeilge to reintroduce
us to will not survive the neo-liberalising of the
language. A Gaeilge that is but a shadow of itself
will circumvent the culture that we want it to bring
us back to. It will be a language of neoliberalism,
and an ultimate betrayal of the gems held within
its grasp. Gaeilge will essentially be a secondary
language filled in with pre-existing concepts
from a consumer-driven society as opposed to
being a language that would withdraw us from
an economy that can no longer sustain itself. The
chance of a rejuvenated and reinvented Ireland,
showing other post-colonial and colonial
societies what is possible would be lost.
A nation is typically described as a group
of people formed on the basis of a common
language which is specific to them and which
ties them to a landmass through a shared
history.
At the moment, under this definition the
Irish nation numbers about 96,000 people.
These are native Irish speakers who actively
speak and live through Gaeilge. They are the
saviours of the nation and must be aorded not
just every protection, but the wherewithal to
rejuvenate the rest of us.
If Gaeilge is to rid us of our dislocation from
our own national treasures, then we ought to
build on what we currently have. What we have
are small areas where Gaeilge is spoken: the
Gaeltachts. This position of strength, which
was already weak, is getting weaker due to
government policies. However, despite the bad
press Gaeilge often gets, there are nonetheless
very positive attitudes among the people
towards the language:
All research assessments of the language
attitudes of Irish people confirm that the Irish
language enjoys immense goodwill as the
enduring indicator of the unique, distinctive
history and identity of Ireland and its people.
(Ó Flatharta, et al. 2019)
The National University of Ireland, Galway
(NUIG), recently reported in an extensive
study that 6 in 10 people residing in Galway
want to speak more Irish on a daily basis.
There is a desire both locally and nationally
to speak Gaeilge. A people-led campaign that
ignores government policy is essential. These
campaigns must come from the Gaeltachts.
They will need extensive organising and will
require funding from sources other than
government bodies. To achieve this we must
use the economic models that led us to our
malaise in the first place.
The new Ireland must use what it has at its
disposal before it can walk away from it (For
a similar argument see Chomsky and Pollin,
Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal,
2020). Funding proposals ought to be centred
on grabbing the attention of the corporate
world. And it may very well be that we form
global links to other indigenous language
groups to highlight the international plights
of endangered languages and the enormous
benefits of restoring them. This, we believe,
should be centred on the ideas of ecology and
language as Michael Cronin has suggested.
So, in essence, the question is: How do we
monetise the language? We argue by making it a
vital component to our very survival. By making
this move language becomes synonymous with
ecology. Environmental sustainability is the
vogue among corporations. They desperately
want us to know that they are interested in at
least appearing to monetise this movement
towards a sustainable world.
There is no lie here from the language’s
perspective, Gaeilge is the return to nature that
corporations so desperately want to portray.
In funding the Irish language they would
be making a commitment to the ecological
security of a small but well-known island. It
would be minimum spend for maximum buck.
At the same time it has the added advantage of
shaming government bodies, which will aid any
lobbying activities that we decide to involve
ourselves in. How we spend the money is an
open question that needs to be debated among
those who are most centrally involved.
But some ideas might be to expand the
Gaeltachts, develop ‘guerrilla Gaeltachts’,
have Gaeilge quarters in towns and cities that
reflect the values of the language, develop a
“meet Gaeilgoirí” phone app because Gaeilge
must be spoken to survive, and monetise the
language so that it becomes self-sustaining
rather than requiring swathes of funding from
external sources.
However, nothing is taboo and all ideas, no
matter how mad-cap they might seem, should
be explored.
About the authors:
Liam Tiernach Ó Beagáin is a UCD PhD
candidate studying the formal nature of
creativity in Noam Chomsky’s linguistics
and its relationship to the epistemology of
Immanuel Kant.
Laoise Ní Fhearchair is a fluent Gaeilgeoir,
holds a Masters in Education specialising in
Autism, and is Principal of a Special School.
