FROM time to time, for some reason, I get letters from people who are outraged about what they regard as the waste of public money on the Irish language and who have decided that I am the man to bring this appalling situation to public notice.
They will invariably have gone to a lot of trouble gathering information about how much the language is costing the taxpayer and will sometimes come up with all sorts of other uses to which the money could be put. They always take for granted that I will agree with them that Irish is of no practical use and that this dead language should not be subsidised from the public purse.
As it happens, I do not agree with them in the least. But I am always fascinated by their fanaticism. This is not for them a little matter, but an abiding passion. I invariably throw their letters in the wastepaper basket. But judging from the volume of hostility towards the Irish language in the print media, and especially in the recent discussions about Teilifis na Gaeilge, they are able to find plenty more willing targets for their passionate hate.
My own Irish was never anything to write home about, but that is not something I have regarded with undue pride. Is Irish unique among languages in that it is possible to present an inability to speak it as a virtue? When sometimes I am quite unable to avoid it and find myself reading one of the frequent diatribes against the Irish language in an Irish newspaper, it always strikes me that if the commentator in question was writing about French or German or Italian or Greek or Swahili, he or she would admit - and I emphasise admit an inability to speak that language with humility and embarrassment.
Yet in the case of Irish such people feel the urge to advertise their philistinism to the entire nation.
It was therefore with some pleasure that I heard the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins, taking on these philistines at the sod turning ceremony for the new Teilifis na Gaeilge headquarters at Baile na hAbhann last week. To see the Minister pushing ahead with the project, despite organised opposition and vicious personalised attacks, is a source of enormous hope and delight.
FOR THE past few months I have been attempting to revive my Irish. Before Christmas I did a five week Gael Linn course in the evenings, and it was the best £125 I ever spent. I am hoping to do another course in the spring. I am determined that this will be the year in which I bring my Irish up to speed. I have begun to notice, incidentally, that I am far from alone in this resolve.
It is not an exaggeration to say we hated Irish in school. We could not see what conceivable use it might have. It was dead and buried, and good riddance. We found most of the prescribed literature tedious and irrelevant. The fact that Irish was compulsory made us all the more determined not to learn it. The people who set great store by the language were not in the main, people we wished to emulate. They had a tendency to wear tweed jackets and sensible shoes. It was, after all, the Sixties - in modern Ireland!
This is about the only thing that happened in school that I truly regret. That I learned precious little else there doesn't worry me much, but the fact that I didn't learn Irish causes me pain and shame. I am at least glad to say that I cannot recall a moment's pride on account of my failure to speak my own language. On the contrary, I have secretly envied those who could. I am determined to put this right now, both for myself and for my child or children.
I am somewhat startled to observe the number of people who are beginning to think in the same way. It is as though some thought capsule has exploded in the public mind. I notice it both in the attitudes of people who have, like me, resolved to teach themselves Irish, and in those who, have not (yet?) got around to it. All the old antagonisms appear to be melting away.
The Green Paper on Broadcasting, published last year, said there is "a sizeable gap between actual levels of linguistic competency and usage and positive attitudes to the language as a focus of Irish identity", and that is certainly my own impression. The reawakening of public awareness on this issue is not recognisable as a fad or trendy, idea, but as an intoxicating glimpse that now, with the prejudices and complexes and compulsions fading away, something as beautiful as the restoration of Irish may now be possible.
These are all added reasons why Teilifis na Gaeilge is so crucial. But even if none of this was happening, there were already sufficient reasons why none of the tight fisted financial arguments deserved to be heard. The existing Irish speaking community has a civil and moral right to an Irish speaking TV service which would provide a platform for debate in the first national language. To argue otherwise is anti democratic and racist.
"The decision on Teilifis na Gaeilge," as Mr Higgins said last week, "had to be taken now or a crucial moment affecting citizenship, the Irish language and democracy would be lost forever". Michael D. Higgins deserves the fullest support of the Irish public for his courageous and determined stand on this issue.
I have the strangest feeling that we may be about to begin something which a decade ago would have seemed impossible: the revival of the Irish language as a means of everyday communication. It would, of course, be a mammoth task, but not an impossible one. Once we grasp two essential facts - one, that it is possible and two, that is beautiful beyond words, there will be nothing to stop us.
It goes without saying that Teilifis na Gaeilge will have a major impact in jump starting the reawakening public consciousness in this regard.
A FEW months ago, I confided to a world renowned historian that I was thinking of brushing up my Irish. He asked me why and I said that I felt it was just about the most modern thing you could do at this moment in history. He expressed surprise. Surely, he said, a truly modern thing would be to learn, say, Chinese, rather than a disappearing Celtic language from the periphery of Europe.
This is a nice, gentle way of saying what the native opponents of Irish are saying.
But no human being can truly lay claim to modernity on the basis of consumption of other cultures alone. Even in a global culture - perhaps especially in a global culture we must be ever awake to the fact that the globe is but the sum of its localities. There is no "great outdoors" to which a loyalty superseding the loyalty to one's own place can be declared.
Part of our duty as cultural beings is to the source of our own culture. Only when we have taken care of that have we the right to go in pursuit of the experiences of others. For if we do not take care of our own language and culture, what right have we to expect Chinese to be there for us when we go looking for it? Without our own language, what have we to offer the Chinese in return?