Sir, - Donal Flynn (January 12th) would not like to see "a national split on lines of language - as has happened in Belgium". What would he like to see in Belgium: Fleming or Walloon supremacy? How much first-hand experience does he have of the linguistic situation in Belgium (or anywhere else in multicultural Europe for that matter)?
Somebody who spent five weeks in Belgium on a research trip was none other than P.H. Pearse. Mr Flynn may study Pearse's insights into that situation in the trilingual volume, An Piarsach sa Bheilg/P.H. Pearse in Belgium/P.H. Pearse in Belgie (1998, Ed Seamus O Buachalla).
I quote from Pearse: "For years the whole tone of education in Flanders had been militantly French. Flemish was a proscribed idiom. Not, indeed, that pains and penalties were incurred by its use; not that children were flogged in school if they let fall a word of Flemish; not that the tally, the ferule, and the cane were requisitioned for the purpose of establishing the supremacy of French. These enlightened methods were reserved for the use of the Russian in Poland, of the German in Alsace-Lorraine, and of the Anglo-Saxon in Ireland. . ." - Is mise, Gabriel Rosenstock,
Gleann na gCaorach, Co Atha Cliath.