There is a story (apocryphal, I hope) about a Japanese scholar who landed at Dublin airport and began to ask directions from the natives in his finest Munster Irish. Never having visited Ireland before, he assumed that everyone in the country spoke Irish. When he realised that no one understood a word he said, he began to use the world's lingua franca, English. Problem solved, he was soon on his way to the city centre.
Something similar seems to have happened last week in Brussels gium when a member of a Sinn Fein delegation, Barra Mac Giolla Duibh, addressed a Dutch member of the European Commission, Mr Carlo Trojan, in Irish and then in English. The Dutchman, not unreasonably, replied: "I'm sorry, I don't understand a word you have just said." It was a polite way of saying that Irish was double Dutch to him. Boom, boom.
Tyrone accent?
The Belfast Telegraph reported that the Sinn Fein's man "accent could have been part of the problem" (Mac Giolla Duibh is a Tyrone man). Perhaps the EU man had fluent Munster Irish (emphasis on the second syllable) and did not understand Mac Giolla Duibh's Ulster Irish (emphasis on the first syllable). Or, being a Dutchman, it could be that he simply did not understand Irish. After all, the windmills at which Irish speakers tilt at are not the same as the ones in Holland.
There followed a bit of a diplomatic incident wherein the Shinners accused the official of belittling of the Irish language. It's lucky there's a peace process in train and that the army has other things on its mind; otherwise, we might well have had to invade Holland to defend our cultural rights.
Mind you, if ignorance of Irish belittles it, then the Dutch will have to join a very large queue of, ahem, Irish people. No one belittles the language more than the very people who claim to treasure it. The usual line is that Irish is a wonderful language, love to speak, terrible teachers at school, Christian Brothers beat it into us, hated Peig. Sound familiar?
In his defence our EU official can quite legitimately claim to be entirely ignorant of Irish. The language has no status as an official working language in the European Union. And you know whose fault that is? The dirty Dutch/Brits, I hear you cry. Well, no. It was actually the government of this State which decided on the Republic's entry into the Common Market many moons ago that English (the other first official language) would do as a working language.
A sensible, utilitarian decision, say you.
A decision, say I, that laid bare once again the gross hypocrisy which informs much of this State's dealings with Irish. So while Irish, the first official language, is feted in the Constitution, English, the second official language, has its status as "useful" reinforced. Irish is taught in primary and secondary schools but when little Aisling's parents confront the teacher with the old chestnut that she won't get a job with the language in Europe (better to study French) they're not far wrong.
Powerful message
Irish (sounds beautiful, very musical) was effectively downgraded and with that decision the State's politicians sent one of the most powerful messages ever to all Irish speakers and especially to the native speakers of Ireland's Gaeltacht - people, it's all a bit of a joke.
Yes, yes. We really, really, really do support Irish. Don't we give you a grant for raising the little buachailli and cailini through that beautiful tongue? Don't you hear us at election time telling everyone about the importance of the language. For goodness sake, sure, it's mentioned in the Constitution. What more do you want us to do?
Speak it in Ireland? Well now, be reasonable. That's a bit much. No need to go that far. Free choice and all that. I choose not to speak Irish and you choose to let me not speak Irish. Very liberal.
Working status
Speak it in Europe, you say? Give one of Europe's oldest vernaculars working status, thereby making it useful outside of Ireland, raising its profile inside Ireland and giving Irish speakers jobs in the land of chocolates? Lock that Gaeilgeoir up, a dhochtuir. I'm not sure about the rest of you but it seems to me to be both hypocritical and discriminatory to support something on one hand and to undermine it on the other. Whatever you might think about the claims of people (like myself) who have learnt Irish and think it A Good Thing, there are communities on this island who are born with this language, who raise their children with this language and who represent a linguistic tradition of great antiquity and value. These same people are being told by this State that the language they speak is not as important as English, not as viable as English, not as valued as English. They are not stupid. They can see the difference between what is and what isn't. We all can see, native speaker and learner, the difference between what the State professes and what the State does. Double Dutch? Double think, more like.