Sir, - Mr Paddy Jordan, director of an IBEC programme teaching foreign languages in 18 weeks, is quoted as saying (January 7th) that the EU has consistently found that the Irish are the least linguistically competent people in Europe.
The Hungarians are commonly considered to be among the most linguistically competent. The December issue of Eventoj, a fortnightly bulletin published in Budapest, apologised for a gap in publication, explaining that the staff had been otherwise engaged. It seems that the stocks of Esperanto dictionaries in the shops had run out and demand was great because of a recent decision to require for a student diploma a pass in a state-recognised language examination. Since Esperanto is recognised as a living language and a proper subject for study at primary, secondary or third level, many hundreds of students all over the country took it up.
Hence the dictionary famine. The staff of Eventoj were better equipped than anyone to compile and publish a new one suitable for the course. Half of the first edition is already sold and the staff of Eventoj are free again to produce their international bulletin.
The relevance of this information is that the Esperanto Association of Ireland is organising a scheme to provide introductions and materials to enable groups of five transition-year students in half-a-dozen schools to teach themselves Esperanto in eight or nine weeks. Since a long list of research reports agree that a grounding in Esperanto saves time and increases competence in learning other languages, one hopes that Mr Jordan - and others who complain about lack of language skills - will visit the Esperanto stand at the Education Fair on March 25th to hear about the results of this experiment. - Yours, etc., Maire Mullarney,
Whitechurch Road, Dublin 14.