Madam, - Gabriel Rosenstock is wrong to imply (February 17th) that The Irish Times pays Kevin Myers to incite feeling against the Irish language. It is the zealous promoters of Irish who have been achieving this effect for quite some time. They have foolishly expected to foster a love of a culturally superfluous and economically defunct language by coercing people to learn it.
What better way to incite hatred of the national language than to present it as a block to the aspirations of a citizen whose desire to enter the teaching or legal professions has not been matched by their enthusiasm to learn the native tongue?
The "petulant self-hatred typical of post-colonial societies" is not epitomised by Kevin Myers, as suggested by Liam Carson (February 17th) but by the promoters of Irish themselves, who persistently and illogically grasp at what remains of our native language as a nonsensical, self-defeating and anachronistic display of impudence to the British.
As a people, we never readily accepted the oppressive cultural or political rule of a foreign entity. Why, then, did subsequent Irish governments and organisations suppose we would be receptive to inequitable, didactic coercion in their attempts to resurrect the lingual dead?
While it seems that it is now fashionable to counter-attack every word that emerges from the pen of Kevin Myers, should he no longer feel entitled to criticise elements of society that he feels deserve criticism? Is the punishment that we would exact upon him the cutting out of his journalistic tongue?
His views on the Irish language are supported by many people, including myself, who have found career doors shut to them because they didn't know the esoteric passwords. - Yours, etc.,
DARRAGH McDONAGH, Moyveela West, Oranmore, Co Galway.