Sir, – How nice it was to see that our Polish friends chose, fittingly, to thank us in our national language (“Poland thanks Ireland of the welcomes”, April 24th).
It shows that the more recent arrivals to our nation don’t necessarily share the cultural inferiority complex that an influential minority among us harbour regarding anything too Irish and above all, the most Irish thing of all, our language. It was therefore somewhat ironic that the need was felt to specify in the same article that Polish, with 120,000 Poles living here, is the second most widely spoken language in the State.
While I am sure the reporter was only reconveying information she picked up elsewhere it is important to recognise the ideological basis of such a claim in the language context of Ireland. Ideological because claims about the death of the Irish language began to be made in the sixteenth century when it was the most widely spoken language in the country and are a tool to justify curtailing speakers’ rights, and untrue because Census 2011, which tells us that there are 119,526 people who speak Polish in the State, also tells us that there are 187,827 people here who speak Irish every day or every week.
This figure probably represents the core of fluent speakers from the 1,777,437 people who reported that they spoke Irish. Unfortunately, due to the dire economic straits we are in, the next census will probably show a decrease in the number of Polish speakers in the State. However, given that the trend in all recent censuses is for increasing numbers of Irish speakers there are likely to be even more of them by the time of the next census. It remains to be seen if the media will then feel compelled to seek different rationales for ignoring Irish. Yours, etc,
ROBERT GUNNING,
Bóthar Choill na
bhFuinseog,
Cluain Dolcáin,
BÁC 22