(The title of this blog post is a nod to Orwell's famous essay "Politics and the English Language", which I just happened to flick past while browsing a collection of his essays. I couldn't resist the coincidence.)
There are posters up all over Dublin for an upcoming protest in favour of the Irish language. They have given the protest the title "Cearta", which means "rights".
Here we see the thumbprint of the left once again. It's always about rights, it's always about government intervention, and it's always about more public money.
Personally I am entirely sympathetic to the preservation (and revival) of the Irish language, and I'm also sympathetic to increased public funding and to the compulsory use of Irish in various contexts, such as education.
But without increasing a public appetite for the revival of the Irish language, no level of government support will ever be enough. And it's hard to see what arguments could be used to encourage people to speak Irish, considering anti-nationalism has become so engrained in modern Irish discourse.
And here we come to an interesting aspect of this campaign. Its website gives a list of ten problems, and here is number nine in its own words: "Over 50,000 students in secondary school are exempt from learning Irish and there is no plan at all to address this (the Department of Education has even made a point of saying that the upcoming 2 year Action Plan for the Irish language in English medium schools won’t deal with exemptions)".
The website avoids saying why so many exemptions have been given, but Dr. Matt Treacy spells it out in an article on the indispensable Gript.ie.
Personally I feel somewhat vindicated. I have been saying for many years that multiculturalism and the revival of the Irish language were going to come into conflict at some point. How can we have a "rainbow Republic" and still give special priority to one language over others-- a language, moreoever, that is now much more of a minority language than many others spoken here on a daily basis?
As far as I can tell, most immigrants to Ireland are very positive about the Irish language (and Irish culture in general) Many want to learn Irish. But, as always when it comes to this topic, it's the sheer weight of numbers that counts. All those new arrivals have their own roots and heritage, which they will naturally want to keep alive. It's asking a lot to co-opt them into a language revival that was already struggling (to put it mildly) before they arrived.
What's extraordinary is how the Irish liberal left refused to see this problem. Nearly all Irish language enthusiasts are from the liberal left persuasion and nearly all of them are pro-multiculturalism. And this has been the case for a long time. Either they couldn't accept that these two aspirations might conflict, or they reassured themselves with that old standby: Increased government funding (and eventually, the abolition of captalism) will resolve all contradictions.
Incidentally, this is nearly always the line I'm given when I present liberal-lefties with some cultural or social tension to which their own policies are contributing: it's a purely artificial tension created by capitalism, sometimes even a deliberate effort by the Powers That Be to create division. All aspirations will be compatible once we get rid of poverty, or private property, or whatever it is they want to abolish-- which is never entirely clear.
Having lived a long time in Scotland, and been brought up watching Welsh TV just over the border; I am very cynical about the motivations for reviving the Gaelic languages.
ReplyDeleteThe actual result seems merely to be creating many sinecure jobs that are de facto reserved for the local professional middle class (civil servants and other officials, teachers, professional writers etc) - which is why it is always this group that supports the project.
One problem is that - as you say here - there is a refusal to acknowledge that IF (a big if) there was a serious intention to make Gaelic the dominant - or even mandatory secondary - language (rather than just a vaguely cultural hobby), then there would be a big cost of doing so. That cost may be worth paying - but it would be significant, and permeate both national policy and many daily activities - and I don't just mean in economic terms.
Obviously it would require very strict controls on immigration from people who did not speak the language, or else relegating them to an officially second class status - excluded from many positions. As I said, such practices may well be justifiable, and overall a good thing - but it is a price that the advocates do not acknowledge, and indeed a price they will not pay because they care about other things (such as subsidizing and enforcing open-ended and accelerating mass immigration from "anywhere else but Ireland") Much more than they care about an Irish-speaking Ireland.
I don't think for a moment that those who are making a noise about promoting Irish have any intention of allowing it to affect the things that really matter to them - they are just looking for more and better paid subsidized jobs.
When I lived in Scotland 30 years ago - the BBC Gaelic broadcasting company was subsidized at the rate of 50,000 pounds per Scots Gaelic speaker per year - which would probably be something like £200K in modern money.
Of course these Gaelic speakers were not asked which they would prefer to have - some Gaelic programmes on TV and radio, or an annual top-up salary of 200K for each of them!
The whole thing works, in practice, as yet another sanctimonious subsidy for the middle class state-employees - served-up with a thick slice of pretentiousness and a patronizing attitude that "we know best how to spend your money"!
Bruce G Charlton
Well, that is pretty much my own thoughts, although I'm not too bothered about seeing people in Irish-language sinecures. It's better than sinecures in some kind of woke agency or professorships in some agit-prop academic discipline.
DeleteBesides, even the most cosmetic support for Irish DOES make a difference to the flavour of everyday life. I'm glad there's bilingual signage and that government agencies (and sometimes even private companies, like Tesco) use Irish. It's a visible (or audible) marker of Irishness.
And honestly I'm not too bothered about paternalism when it comes to the Irish language revival.
By the way, it's not entirely true that the language revival is a middle-class thing. Immersive Irish language schools in Ireland were very often created by local communities without much government help-- including the one I went to, which was in working class area. But it is true to a considerable extent.
(What does the 'G' stand for?)