There are many ways we can start to save the Irish language, if we really want to make the effort, writes Colm Ó Broin
Fine Gael may have done the Irish language a service by their recent proposal to drop it as a compulsory subject for the Leaving Certificate. Hopefully the proposal will promote a proper debate about the language and its place in Irish society.
There are, in fact, two debates going on in Ireland regarding the language. The first is whether we should try to save it and the second is how we should go about it.
These two often overlap but they are two very different issues.
For example, when people say that the teaching of Irish in English medium schools has failed, there are two general responses: that we should improve the curriculum or that we should get rid of the language altogether.
This makes Irish speakers reluctant to discuss the difficulties facing the language as they feel these issues will be used against the language itself, and not the way it is taught.
As an Irish speaker himself I have no doubt that Enda Kenny is acting with the best of intentions regarding the language, even if his plan is misguided. Others, however, are not so benevolent. They may be a small minority, but the fact that there are Irish people who, instead of finding better ways to save it, want to abandon the language altogether says a lot about our self-worth as a nation.
Imagine if Manchester United went bankrupt, all the top players were sold off and the team was relegated from the Premiership all the way down to the non-league football Conference, with no prospect of a recovery. How many people in Ireland would still follow the club? Some might remain supporters but few young people would follow it and I wouldn't blame them. Young people are very good at picking up signals about what is successful and cool, and the Conference is neither.
This is, in essence, what has happened to the Irish language over the past 500 years. The language has remained for many people a badge of backwardness and poverty, while the English language is one of success.
How did this come about? Irish culture was once, after all, strong enough to assimilate the AngloNormans, who were connected to one of the major European political and economic powers in the Middle Ages. During the 17th century the Irish-speaking upper classes were driven out of the country or dispossessed of their wealth. Then people who didn't speak English were discriminated against and excluded from advancement in society. This naturally led to English being the language of power and status, while Irish was the language of the poorest section of society. Add in several centuries of being told that your culture is inferior and you have the reason the language started to decline in use.
Many Irish people started to believe their language was inferior and passed on this attitude to their children, something that has continued to this very day.
Many of these arguments against speaking the language are still with us. The main ones are that we don't have to speak Irish, there is no practical reason for doing so and that it is useless in the real world.
Let me be the first Gaeilgeoir to state that these statements are completely and absolutely true. But they miss the point entirely.
We don't have to speak Irish. We, also don't have to support the Irish soccer and rugby teams when they play, and if there was some practical reason we cheered on Sonia O'Sullivan at the Olympics then I am not aware of it. Would any rugby fan in Ireland even dream of abandoning the Irish team and supporting the All Blacks when the two teams play? If entertainment was the only reason we followed sport we would all follow New Zealand or France in rugby and Brazil in soccer, even against Ireland.
This may seem like an obvious point, but why exactly do we support Irish teams and athletes? We don't have to and in economic terms there is no useful reason for doing so.
We do these things anyway, because they represent us as a people, they are part of who we are, just as the Irish language is.
People often say they are not against the language itself but as a minority interest we shouldn't be spending taxpayers' money on it.
If people were concerned about money being spent on minority cultural interest then why is it I have never seen one letter, opinion column, editorial or news article in the newspapers, nor heard one talk show host or phone-in caller on TV or radio complaining about the money spent on other minority cultural interests; for example, Lyric FM. I support Lyric FM 100 per cent and wish it every success. The point here is that the reason people don't complain about it is because classical music is not unique to Ireland.
A curious phenomenon has arisen here since independence. To certain sections of society the only parts of Irish culture that are acceptable are those which have originated overseas.
Why else would some Irish people refer to Irish as a "bog language", Irish sports as "bog-ball" and "stick-ball", Irish music as "diddley-eye music" and deride Irish dance as "Riverdancing".
As the least widespread of the indigenous parts of Irish culture, the language suffers the most from this cultural cringe; strange when you think that there is not a single corner of this island that was not Irish-speaking in the past.
A major effort was made to wipe out the Irish language and if the historical trend continues the Gaeltacht will eventually disappear.
Why should we accept this? If it happens then we, as a people, will have been beaten.
We can say that we don't care, but we will only be fooling ourselves. My parents learned Irish when they were in their 20s and they sent everyone in my family to Irish-speaking schools. The language had been dead in my family for hundreds of years, now all of us can speak it. If it can be done with one family then it can be done with every family, it's as simple as that.
Learning language is no easy thing for an adult, but with children no effort is required at all - they just naturally pick it up.
The best way to ensure that the next generation can speak Irish is to promote the Gaelscoileanna as much as possible; and plenty of people in English-speaking schools can also become fluent, especially if they have been to summer colleges in the Gaeltacht.
Reform of the curriculum is also vital. Many Irish speakers have been reluctant to discuss the difficulties facing the language because they fear these may be used against the language as a whole.
That era has to end if progress is to be made.
Other attitudes within the Irish-speaking community have to change. I once heard a man on Raidió na Gaeltachta complaining about a PlayStation because his children started to speak English to each other after playing it.
His solution was to try to stop them from playing computer games, yet the first thing that appears on the screen when you start a game is a language option. Why can't Irish be one of them? TG4 often shows films from overseas with English subtitles. There is no reason these cannot be translated into Irish. Why can't we have European, Latin American, Asian films with subtitles as Gaeilge? How about an opera series with Irish subtitles? If we can watch Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma in Italian on TV, with English subtitles, we can do it with Irish too.
There are infinite ways to promote the language and the above are just a few. If we want to save the language we can. The only thing we need is the desire to do so.
• Colm Ó Broin is a journalist with the Irish language newspaper Lá