Gaelic, what Gall! - LA Times, 17th March 2008
Dublin
Gaelic
– or Irish as we call it here -- is the first official language of Ireland
(English is second). And 41% of the population claim to speak it. But can that
be true? To put it to the test, I set off around Ireland for three weeks in the
summer of 2006 with one self-imposed handicap — to never utter a word of
English.
I
chose Dublin as a starting point. The sales assistant in the first shop I went
to said, “Would you speak English maybe?” I tried repeating my request using
the simplest schoolroom Irish that he must have learned during the 10 years of
compulsory Irish that every schoolchild undergoes. “Do you speak English?” he
asked again in a cold, threatening tone. “Sea,”
(pronounced “sha”) I affirmed, and nodded meekly. “I’m not talking to you any
more,” he said, covering his ears. “Go away!”
I
knew the journey was going to be difficult, just not this difficult. Language
experts claim that the figure of fluent Irish speakers is closer to 3% than the
aspirational 41% who tick the language box on the census, and most of them are
concentrated on the western seaboard, in remote, inaccessible areas. What I had
not factored for was the animosity. Part of it, I felt, stemmed from guilt: We
feel inadequate that we cannot speak our own language.
I
decided to visit Dublin’s tourist office which, presumably, was accustomed to
dealing with different languages. The man at the counter looked at me
quizzically when I inquired about a city tour. “Huh?” he said, his eyes
widening. I repeated myself. “You don’t speak English, do you?” he asked
coldly. I was already beginning to hate this moment — the point at which the
fear and frustration spread across a person’s face. I asked if there was any
other language I could use and they pointed to a list of seven flags on the
wall representing the languages they dealt in. To be honest, I could speak four of them but I had
promised myself not to, not unless it was absolutely necessary.
I
might have been tempted to give up the journey that first day had it not been
for some children who called into a radio station I was on that night in Dublin.
They spoke fluent Irish in a modern urban dialect. They were outraged when I
suggested the language was dying. These were 10- and 12-year-olds reared on
Irish versions of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Scooby-Doo” on Irish-language
television. They had Irish words for X-Box and jackass and had molded the 2,500
year old language to the styles of Valley-girl slang.
For
them the Irish language is not associated with poverty and oppression. They are
unburdened with the sense of inferiority that previous generations have felt since
the English labeled it “a backward
barbarian tongue” and outlawed it in our schools in the 19th century. The Irish, or at least, the
half of the population that survived the Famine, realized that their only hope
of advancement was through English and they jettisoned the language in a few
decades.
I
left Dublin with renewed hope. Outside the capital, people were more willing to
listen to me, though no more likely to understand me. I was given the wrong
directions, served the wrong food, and given the wrong haircut, but I was
rarely made to feel foolish again. Even in Northern Ireland, on Belfast’s
staunchly British-loyalist Shankill Road I was treated with civility though
warned that if I persisted in speaking the language I was liable to end up in
hospital. In Galway, I went out busking on the streets, singing the filthiest,
most debauched lyrics I could think of to see if anyone would understand. No
one did. Old women smiled, tapping their feet merrily, as I serenaded them with
filth. In Killarney, I stood outside a bank promising passers-by huge sums of
money if they helped me rob it, but again no one understood.
In
January 2007, Irish became an official working language of the EU, taking its
place alongside the 23 other official languages. It was a huge vote of
confidence by our European neighbors, and it seems appropriate that Irish
people should now decide, once and for all, what we want to do with our mother
tongue. Should we stick a do-not-resuscitate sign around its neck and unplug
the machine, or else get over our silly inferiority complex and start using the
bloody thing?
As
the children might say: Cuir uaibh an
cacamas! – say it kur uu-iv un
cockamas – meaning, “Just get over it!”
posted by Irish Media at 1:56 PM
