Sir, - "Why use Irish?" asks Michael Martin (letters, February 12). He is doubtless right that English is the more natural choice. It may be that few Irish people now speak Irish with the same fluency as English. But surely it is a little soulless to dismiss promoting bilingualism in Ireland as "flogging a dead horse".
As an outsider, Ireland's double-edged attitude towards its own language has always puzzled me. When I lived in Dublin a few years ago, I made a brief attempt to learn Irish. Friends initially reacted with astonishment that I should be bothered. Almost unanimously, they felt that if they found it hard to justify using Irish, it was doubly bizarre for a foreigner to try to learn it.
Yet then, and again all but unanimously, their surprised scepticism mellowed into an unmistakable pleasure that an outsider should want to learn. It became clear that most Irish people are (quite rightly) very proud of their language, despite their tendency to dismiss it.
Surely it would be better to harness this enthusiasm by doing everything possible to promote Irish, rather than abandoning the effort, as Mr Martin seems to suggest. The number of those speaking Irish as a first language may continue to dwindle, but there is not reason why its influence as a second language (which, I think, most Irish people underrate) should not be at least preserved, if not strengthened. - Yours, etc.,
Hampden Road, London N8.