Irish in schools, says teacher and former president of Comhar na M·inteoiri Gaeilge, Treasa N∅ Chonaola, is "surviving but not thriving". (You could, I suppose, say the same about English, but sin scΘal eile.) Anyway, given the jackboot methods with which Irish was taught from the 1920s until a generation ago, even survival is quite an achievement. Despite a few notable exceptions, the dull textbooks of schooldays, so jarringly at odds with lived teenage life, practically doubled as aversion therapy manuals.
When you're 17 and male, Peig is no ravishing rock chick and she lacks even the seditious appeal of Janis Joplin; Bulla∅ Mhartain might consider himself a bit of a lad but he lacks the cool of, say, John Lennon or even John Shaft; cΘil∅ bands don't quite produce a Jimi Hendrix vibe. No doubt there are equally discordant gaps between Irish-language schoolbooks and the psyches of teenage girls. Perhaps the current curriculum has lessened such remembered gaps of 30 years ago but for at least a half-century now, Irish has routinely appeared incompatible with popular culture.
It's a thorny problem. Attempts to make the language more appealing to young, primarily urban people have generally been clumsy and sometimes downright embarrassing. Modern terms such as bogearra∅ for software, spβ siutβil for space shuttle and micrishlis for microchip sound not only contrived but daft. Probably all languages except American English, which coins most of today's characteristically inert phrases and terms, have similar translation problems. But Irish, because it has had to define itself in constant opposition to English, is a chronic case.
Under such circumstances, survival is a fair feat. Even leaving aside the difficulties of modernising such an old language, debate about the place of Irish in independent Ireland has always been bitter, nasty and desperately divisive. Gaeilgeoir∅ often culturally and still sometimes politically fanatical, have repeatedly clashed with ultra-utilitarian, often philistine, English-only die-hards, who view Irish as an expensive relic and a waste of time. In fact, few subjects - the unholy trinity of sex, religion and the North aside - have consistently generated such verbal violence.
It's as if the languages were sabre-rattling through using their own most insulting words or tones. Terms such as "Gaeilgeoir∅", "West Brits", "culture of the c·pla focal" and "shoneens" carry sneers and smears far beyond their literal meanings. They act as shorthand for ascribed and sometimes despised identities. It's irrational, of course, but the Irish language - particularly because of the ways it was taught and experienced in school - can still be a hugely emotional issue. Only apathy seems to thrive in the middle-ground between bitterly polarised opinions. Rational argument on the subject seems impossible.
It's true that school, with its former emphasis on Irish as not just a language but a mark of cultural and even moral identity, turned many now middle-aged and older people against it. As the conservative and narrowly authoritarian era before television began to give way to newer orthodoxies, Irish was more safely and earlier attacked than the Catholic Church. You could vilify Irish and most of what it stood for without being morally ostracised. You could, indeed, even link the language to the most damning of all words in the last 30 years - Provo - to bolster your argument.
Though that was usually unfair, it sometimes created a view of Irish-language enthusiasts as primitive and anachronistic Brit-haters. The shift of Irish nationalists from politics to culture after the Parnell split, which gave us the Gaelic Revival, reinvigorated Irish, even if the split between culture and politics was never very neat. But the raw and violent politics of the North, albeit with undeniable cultural aspects, made Irish nakedly political. Is there a more charged political slogan in Irish politics than Tiocfaidh βr lβ? (Perhaps "Ulster Says No" is its equal but it is really just the other side of the same political coin.)
But the greatest obstacle to a sustained Irish-language revival has been the continuing hypocrisy of Irish governments. Officially the Republic's first official language, Irish is not the language of the Dβil or, in truth, of the civil service, despite official policy since 1922 that all aspects of administration be handled bilingually. It could never be the language of commerce, far less international commerce or, of course, of popular culture, driven by America and to a significant if lesser degree by Britain. So, facing hypocrisy, pragmatism, philistinism and revenge against the way it was taught, any kind of survival is creditable.
STILL, the omens for the future of the language are not all bright. Four centuries to the year since the Battle of Kinsale - generally accepted as marking the decisive blow against Irish - there is no mass-circulation Irish-language newspaper. There never has been. TG4 can be inventive and welcomingly idiosyncratic in an age when loud, industrialised trash dominates TV schedules but its audience share is minuscule. Likewise Raidi≤ na Gaeltachta. In the census of 1996, 41 per cent of people claimed to use some Irish and 10 per cent claimed fluency.
That 10 per cent are not the problem. It's the 41 per cent, with their hugely diverging levels of ability and commitment, who will primarily determine the future. Since Kinsale, Irish has not been the language of those with wealth, power or influence and it is certainly never publicly spoken by the entrepreneurial "heroes" of the present. The census figures suggest half the population can speak or read Irish to meaningful levels. But it's hard not to suspect that at least the less-fluent half of the 41 per cent are more statistical tokens than bona fide Irish-speakers and readers.
Underpinning the emotional tenor of spats over Irish, there's clearly a residue of the kind of class stigma which the Gaelic League encountered more than a century ago. Then, the league discovered the depth of negative feeling which, as a result of colonisation, the Famine and emigration, attached to the language.
English offered the way forward; Irish looked back to defeat and catastrophe. A similar, albeit less virulent version of this psychological dynamic arose with the growth of the Catholic middle-class in the 1960s and 1970s when French or German were publicly argued to be more useful (and privately considered more socially desirable and respectable) than Irish.
Members of what might be regarded (certainly by themselves) as the f∅or-culturati could tut-tut at the attitudes of this nouveau middle-class.
Yet, it was and remains true that Irish knowledge of continental European languages is poor. Arguments that foreign language skills needed to be developed - for cultural as well as commercial reasons - cannot be easily dismissed. Even with the No side winning the Nice Treaty battle, full-blown euroscepticism is unlikely to develop and Irish will continue to compete not just against English but also against continental languages.
So, the language, it appears, faces a difficult future. It's true the dramatic rise in the number of gaelscoileanna in the Republic and the growing confidence of Sinn FΘin, especially in the North, suggest that Irish-language enthusiasts are not without hope.
From 1928 (for the Inter Cert) and 1934 (for the Leaving) until 1973, Irish was a compulsory subject. Since it lost that status, the gaelscoileanna have grown in number and influence... yet, a full generation later, "surviving not thriving" is the assessment of someone well-placed to judge.
It seems clear now that schools alone cannot restore Irish to a status approaching parity with English. The decisive battles take place outside of the classroom and there is probably no more telling barometer than the number of native speakers.
The State's policy of industrial development in the gaeltacht areas has had considerable success but only about one in 50 of the population lives in these areas and the number of Irish speakers continues to dwindle. Sure, this gradual decline is not quite a death-rattle but neither is it a healthy sign for the future of the language.
IT'S sometimes said that the loss of the Irish language was the most decisive event in Irish history. Certainly Douglas Hyde's mission to "de-Anglicise the Irish people" accepted this. But that was then - 1893, in fact - and in a globalising world speaking English, most people rightly feel that such a project couldn't but be narrow and regressive now.
Given the role of clerics in teaching Irish during the earlier decades of this state, it is perhaps ironic that the decline of the Catholic Church may act as a fillip to Irish replacing Catholicism as a core element of national identity.
But the homogenising forces of corporate culture have already taken up much of the space left by the shrinking of Catholicism. Irish may benefit from a share of, metaphorically, the transferred vote. But in a multi-cultural future Ireland, albeit quite limited (don't hold your breath waiting for a black or Asian president), English is certain to continue dominating.
Indeed, under such circumstances, the Irish language may expect to be treated, as the occasion might suit its enemies, as a symbol of cultural elitism and even xenophobia.
So what to do? Well, compared with many other languages, Irish has little economic value. It has a vast cultural heritage and much negative cultural baggage. Typically, its supporters and its enemies emphasise one at the expense of the other so that debate inevitably becomes polarised and nasty.
But the refusal of so many members of Irish governments to practise what they have preached in relation to the language might be an opening issue to begin making any debate on official policy rational instead of emotional.
For isn't it the simple truth that after leaving school, few places or opportunities present themselves to the majority of Irish people willing to speak Irish? Sure, for the particularly keen, there are organisations and publications in Irish. But for most people, the intense concentration on the subject in school meets widespread indifference in the working world. Thus, Irish has come to be seen, like say, algebra or geometry, as something granted great significance in adolescent exams and very little in adult life.
Ironically, many of the 41 per cent will speak Irish abroad, especially because of the spread of English. Speaking a language that the locals don't understand, especially when you can't understand theirs, can be handy and, in being exotic and clandestine, can certainly be affirming of identity. But the resorts of the Mediterranean will not save Irish. All that can reasonably be expected is that some people may be awakened to a loss which is not always so readily apparent in Ireland itself. However, the tangible riches possible with mastery of a computer language will continue to compete against the deeper riches which the Irish language has to offer.
Even moderate restoration won't come easy.