A chara, - You recently reported (June 6th) IBEC's worry about a drop in the number of students taking Leaving Cert French and German this year. There is no doubt that the position of languages other than English in Ireland is giving cause for worry. Just a few weeks ago we saw another gloomy report on the status of Irish in the Gaeltacht, while foreign languages are by no means thriving in the school system.
Messages that play down language proficiency are rife in the media, be they radio ads which rely for their "humour" on supposed foreign accents, or travel correspondents who appear a little annoyed to find that people in a country they visited did not speak English.
I am certain that IBEC'S representative, Ms Caroline Nash, agrees with me that language proficiency must be seen in terms of both its benefit to the economy and its value to the individual.
Thousands of Irish people, from primary school children to those taking adult evening classes, also recognise this, and are achieving very worthwhile levels of proficiency in second and third languages.
Languages are being taught and learned in an extraordinary variety of settings, and for many and diverse purposes. However, the enterprise is proceeding in an uncoordinated way, with no systematic analysis of goals or inventory of resources. We need direction and planning for languages at the national level.
I would respectfully urge the new Minister for Education and Science to consider the need for a national policy for languages in Ireland. In my own view, a rich and unified vision could draw together a number of differing goals.
We must preserve and strengthen the position of our first official language, Irish, raise the proficiency in this and other languages of those born and educated here, and plan for the language needs (and rights) of those who have come from other countries to take up residence in Ireland.
Ireland has always been to some extent bilingual; a walk down any city centre street now tells us that multilingual Ireland is at hand. - Is mise,
DAVID BARNWELL, Ph.D,
Head of Modern Languages,
ITE/The Linguistics
Institute of Ireland,
Fitzwilliam Place,
Dublin 2.