Madam, - As a regular user of the splendid new Luas system, may I draw your attention to a number of rather crass linguistic solecisms I've noticed since it opened to the public?
As I was travelling for the first time towards the city centre on the Tallaght line, a nice voice informed us over the intercom that we were about to stop at "St James's Hospital: Ospidéal San Shéamais". Now forgive me, but don't we already have a perfectly good Irish word for "Saint" - "Naomh" - or has Dublin suddenly become some kind of American sunbelt city?
A few stops later the nice lady announced that the next stop would be "Museum: Árd-Mhúsaem" (pronounced Voo-zayum). Now this really was too much to bear. Where on earth did this come from? I really don't know, much less care, if the word "Músaeam" exists in the Irish language. I'm no Irish scholar, but I do recall that, here too, there is another perfectly good word in the language: "Iarsmalann". What's wrong with "Árd Iarsmalann" or even "Iarsmalann Náisiúnta" (for it is the National Museum, after all)?
Why was it deemed necessary to ascribe silly Irish translations to proper names? Why pretend there's an Irish translation for "Harcourt", for there is not, and coin some cringe-inducing fake word which has no meaning at all? Why not just say "Sráid Harcourt"? At least "Charlemont" was left untouched.
Now, goodness knows, enough money was spent on the thing that one might think someone would have had the wit to proof-read the signs and actually listen to the scripts given to the nice lady - or, heaven forbid, even purchase a decent English-Irish dictionary? To me, it all smacks of linguistic laziness and it insults both the national language and the intelligence of the public. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL FINLAY, Bellevue, Islandbridge, Dublin 8.