Sir - Beatha agus slainte! T na G - properly pronounced closer to "Tay na Gay" than "Tina Gee" - is finally on the air. If it succeeds, the consequences could be far reaching. A received diet of Anglo American fodder, on which the majority of the nation's children are raised, leads inextricably to the acquisition of hip phrases and the attitudes and values therein enshrined.
Some of these received, cliched phrases, idioms, greetings and what have you, are innocuous enough and may even be liberating - unless one becomes dependent on them. Such dependence can lead to language shrinkage, self limitation in the areas of linguistic growth and creativity.
I would very much like to see a linguistic survey on changes in popular current idiom - in English, Irish and the fast disappearing Hiberno English - perhaps over the last thirty years. How long do certain phrases stay in vogue? Are there parts of the country immune?
For instance, when did shop assistants, taxi drivers and, for all I know, neuro surgeons begin to use "no prob"? Can we expect this to shrink further, to "no"? Irish, generally, lacks abbreviated forms, though a few are creeping in, viz "caide mar" for "caide mar ta la" as well as such amusing hybrids as "heileoigi" and "no way, a mhac!" For the most part, however, one usually gets the full grammatical whack, so to speak, with a splash of dialectical colour.
Irish, then, is a highly developed language which the lazy, cliche ridden, abbreviate, standardised mind tends to reject as being too rich, too intricate too demanding. The mental skills to handle it may be atrophying. The "no prob" response to life is so much more convenient. Why think? Why speak? Why write? Why read? Not that the iniquitous points system allows time for such luxuries!
In Irish language circles, I increasingly hear "fadhb ar bith" as a "no prob" equivalent. If T na G resists tendencies to pidginise Irish - while, perforce, allowing for natural evolution and corrupt forms in sit coms etc - it might, at the very least, give pause to those whose language (and thought) is beginning to lose its meaning, its muscle and sinew, its bone and marrow, its originality.
Is me agat go buioch beannachtach,
Gleann na gCaorach,
Co Atha Cliath.