Change of Dingle name supported by speakers at conference

The people of Dingle who don't want the name changed to An Daingean cannot have it both ways, according to a language expert.

Speaking after a debate on the future of the Irish language at the Douglas Hyde Conference in Co Roscommon, Dr Pádraig Ó Laighin said he thought it was reasonable to use the Irish version of the town's name "given the availability of considerable State support on the basis that it is a Gaeltacht community".

Dr Ó Laighin said concerns about the confusion for tourists could be met by ensuring that both road signs and maps used the Irish version.

This view was supported by Irish poet Louis de Paor who also attended the conference.

He said the name Dingle was "a nonsense - a meaningless word", and the change would be completely irrelevant to tourists once both maps and road signs were compatible.

Mr de Paor said there was a "huge cultural memory" in Irish place names such as An Daingean, which means fortress. He also alluded to State grants for Irish-speaking areas and said one had to ask "Is it a Gaeltacht or not?"

He added that he would be surprised if a poll in the community did not back the change.

"I wonder did anyone ask the people of Dingle their opinion in the 16th century when An Daingean was changed?" he added.

At the conference, Dr O Laighin appealed for an end to "bigotry and hostility" towards the language by some "so-called liberals".

There were two language communities on this island with some overlap, but recently he had observed a certain bigotry in comments about the Irish-language community.

He said some critics of the Irish language, who in other respects would be seen as liberals, seemed to take a bigoted attitude rather than accept there was a community which had a right to communicate in this language.

"I would appeal for a little bit more room and a little less overt hostility to the rights of the Irish-speaking community," said Dr Ó Laighin .

There had been a lot of exaggeration about the amount of documentation public bodies would have to translate into Irish in order to keep in line with the official Languages Act.

Dr Ó Laighin also said that, while the argument had been made that Irish should not be promoted in an increasingly multicultural nation, immigrants were interested in the language and did not want to be used to excuse its downgrading.

He told the Douglas Hyde conference that, while the first meeting of Conradh na Gaeilge in 1894 had had to be conducted in English, he had recently attended a meeting of Irish-language enthusiasts in Dublin's Temple Bar where 12 of the 14 present were non-nationals, and where all proceedings were carried out in Irish.

"Not a word of English was spoken in the 2½ hours," he said.

Mr de Paor, who addressed the conference on the vindication of the Irish language, said coverage of the Tour de France and Wimbledon on TG4 had done much to "normalise" the language.