DIARMUID O SE,
Madam, - Canon Pádraig Ó Fiannachta suggests (The Irish Times, January 20th) that the remark which got my namesake Páidí Ó Sé into trouble with the Kerry County Board of the GAA loses its apparent harshness if we regard it as influenced by Mr Ó Se's familiarity with Irish.
In that language, the canon says, the word ainmhí is not as derogatory of people as is its English equivalent, and is anyway used only rarely (of people, presumably).
He cannot have consulted Éamonn Ó hÓgáin's Díolaim Focal (A) Ó Chorca Dhuibhne in which a long entry on the word ainmhí distinguishes three subsidiary meanings referring to people: (a) boor; (b) noisy, obstreperous, person; and (c) pitiless person. Perhaps it is just as well that the county board did not consider the possibility of a Gaelic connection or they might have been less ready to settle with Páidí.
Anyway, the context in which one refers to somebody as an animal is crucial.
On page 7 of the same edition two leading European statesmen are referred to as "political animals" with no offence apparently intended. And surely the offence taken from Páidí's use of the word was compounded by the qualifiers "the roughest f***ing". If he had called Kerry supporters "the roughest f***ing people you could deal with" the offence would doubtless have been as great.
So perhaps the real cause of the problem is not Irish influence on the meaning of the word "animal" but that most global of English words: the f-word. I conclude with relief that the Irish language must be acquitted of all blame. - Yours, etc.,
DIARMUID Ó SÉ, Department of Modern Irish, UCD, Dublin 4.