Madam, - Conor Collins (December 16th) is very quick to disagree with Matt Nolan (December 15th) on whether Irish should be an official working language of the EU. I wonder why.
Mr Collins claims that the Government in 1973 "took a very pragmatic decision not to request Irish to be an official working language of the Community". It may have been "very pragmatic". It may also have been very wrong.
Mr Collins seems to be concerned about our language adding to the "enormous strain" on the EU translation and interpretation services when ten new countries join in 2004. I can't see why. All it takes are resources and, with political will, they can be found.
Mr Collins cites a list of other languages which, he says, have "at least equal, if not far greater, cases" for being an official EU working language. I can't imagine many Catalans, Basques, Galicians, Welsh, Frisians or Russians writing to their national newspapers offering to take second place to Irish speakers in the queue for official EU language status.
When Mr Collins writes "the simple fact is that no-one would actually work through it (Irish)", how does he know?
There are still thousands of people in Ireland whose first language or preferred language is Irish.
If such a person were to be elected to the European Parliament, would he/she be expected to simply accept that, as Mr Collins suggests, "providing this service (Irish as an official working language) for MEPs and bureaucrats would serve no purpose"? - Yours, etc.,
PÁDRAIC HARVEY,
Ballywaltrim Gardens,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
Madam, Conor Collins {December 16th) rightly says that Matt Nolan, in wishing to have Irish as an official working language of the community, is losing sight of the bigger picture. He points out that Catalans, with a population of almost 10 million, have much stronger reason to feel hard done by. Some 10 years ago I spoke at a political meeting near Barcelona. The English interpreter had vanished, so I spoke in Spanish and remarked that the audience would not need interpreters or ear-phones if we used the inter-people language, esperanto, which had been designed for just such purposes.
When I left the platform I was greeted warmly and told that when Catalonia had its own Republic it was decreed that only two languages be taught in schools; Catalan and Esperanto. This question emerged again in recent local elections.
Last July I visited the offices of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages (EBLUL) in Brussels. Spacious, gleaming, shelves with any amount of information about the endangered languages, but no indication of how it is hoped to protect them when even French and German see themselves as being threatened by the rising tide of English.
In fact, it is native speakers of English (including ourselves) who clearly have an overwhelming advantage when it comes to acquiring positions in European organisations and companies. In English-Only Europe? Robert Phillipson documents the well-financed campaign by the US and Britain since the 1950s to build on their two empires to gain dominance for English, a language peculiarly ill-fitted for international use.
Esperanto, a language for the global village, by Sylvan Zapt methodically compares the tasks of learning English and French with that of learning and using this elegantly planned language. (The book is published in Canada, so is not in bookshops here, but I have just ordered a few extra copies. My e-mail address is esper@eircom.net.) The president of the European Esperanto-Union is an Irishman; the efficient public relations activist is Welsh. - Yours, etc.,
MÁIRE MULLARNEY, The Laurels, Main Street, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.