Many of us have fluent Irish, but we seem ashamed to use it in our daily lives, writes Catherine Foley
TREND-SETTING Irish speakers such as comedian Des Bishop (who learned Irish in his TV series In the Name of the Fada), TG4 weatherman and broadcaster Dáithí Ó Sé, RTÉ's Gráinne Seoige and even Taoiseach Brian Cowen have all helped make it fashionable to speak the cúpla focal again.
But in spite of funky Gaeilgeoirí and all manner of hip presentations, the language is still suffering from negativity and intrinsic messages about roots, social standing, political thinking, bad classroom experiences and historic perspective. There are those fluent in Irish who refuse to use it. They clam up and turn off. It's just too big a deal.
The 2008 Oireachtas Literary Awards were presented in Croke Park this week to the writers of the best Irish-language works of the past year. But are such awards, coupled with dedicated Irish radio and television stations, a reasonable supply of magazines and newspapers, Irish language books, Gaelscoileanna, and various Government support bodies enough to engage people with the language?
For many, the Irish language is still too top-heavy with associations to even think about speaking it. Even people fluent in Irish often think twice before they speak it. Some believe that speaking Irish smacks too much of a certain smug attitude. It can be viewed as political. It can be viewed as an embarrassing middle-class thing. Even when it's associated with a young group, such as those young presenters on TG4, in some quarters it's just too cool for school.
Derry-born Jim McCloskey, professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says the "threads of cynicism, pessimism, and anger about the fate of Irish seem to me to be among the most pervasive themes in contemporary Irish cultural and political life.
"I am constantly now taken aback by the force with which such feelings are commonly expressed," he adds.
McCloskey finds that in schools in Ireland the language is "acting as a symbolic lightning rod for feelings that will never attach to more routine subjects like geometry chemistry or French" and that children coming from abroad do not bring "the emotional and cultural baggage that Irish children are burdened with".
He warns that the speed with which languages are now being lost is prodigious and "the world is losing varieties of speech and writing at a rate never before seen in human history".
McCloskey says we bear the mark of a community that "has been brought to feel that its language is a burden to be thrown off, rather than a tool which will serve useful purposes".
He says there are many issues facing us as the language goes into further decline. For example, should we send our children to English-speaking schools or Gaelscoileanna? How much pressure should we bring to bear on our young people to make sure they learn "our" language? Do we harm our children in applying it? How will they respond?
In a newly published book from Arlen House entitled Why Irish?, to which McCloskey has contributed a chapter, he reminds us that the urge "to be free of the weary burden of seeming and feeling different" is strong.
IN HER NEW book, More Facts About Irish, published by the Irish Committee of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, Helen Ó Murchú writes that it is "misleading" to refer to those who profess ability to speak Irish as Irish speakers, as happens in census returns.
The 2006 Census shows that close to 750,000 people currently speak Irish to some extent outside of the education system. But "ability" and the actual speaking of Irish are two different things, she stresses. The reality is that a large proportion of those who say they have an ability to speak Irish never use it. "They are potential rather than actual speakers." She adds that "the gap between ability and use of that ability is a further challenge".
The writer Siobhán Parkinson says her first book in Irish, Dialann Sár-Rúnda Amy Ní Chonchúir, which was published this year by Cois Life and which won an Oireachtas Literary award this week, explores what it is to be Irish and ultimately asks, "who is entitled to be an Irish speaker?"
In her book, the main character, teenager Amy Ní Chonchúir, who keeps a top-secret diary (the dialann sár-rúnda of the title), turns out to be adopted and from China.
"I was thinking about ethnicity and being non-national when you look different and are foreign," explains Parkinson. "I love learning languages. That's what I do for entertainment. It's just a language as far as I'm concerned."
Although she has good Irish and enjoyed it at school, Parkinson recalls how she lost touch with it over the years. "I always had a very positive attitude to the language but I was never involved in Gaeilgeoir circles. I didn't really feel welcome. I didn't have access to it so I didn't put my mind to it."
Then, she adds, tellingly: "Our prejudices are that people from the Gaeltacht speak Irish and it belongs to them."
