Sir, – Pádraig Ó Cíobháin (August 15th) baselessly accuses me of wishing for a world in which English is the only language. In fact I merely projected a current trend to its natural conclusion, without bias, and looked for the bright side.
When the world was large and few people travelled widely, many languages evolved in isolated pockets. As the world shrinks rapidly, it makes sense that the number of languages will shrink with it. Those attached to particular minority languages like Irish may lament, but it is almost certain that in time everyone in the world will be fluent in at least one of a handful of “super-languages” used for daily business, the most likely candidates being English, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin.
Other languages will survive and even thrive locally, but global business and communications networks are already forcing the development of global lingua franca. Advertisements for jobs with international companies frequently demand English as a requirement. This is not because these German or Korean corporate giants dream of a world dominated by Britain or America, but because they recognise the cold pragmatic truth that a unifying language is required, and have chosen one which is already among the most universal and the easiest to learn. There is always sadness when something beautiful fades, but that is the way of things. History is littered with dead languages, but the world goes on. Can the foam-lipped ideologues of Irish please stand down? – Yours, etc,
JOHN THOMPSON,
Shamrock Street,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7
Sir, – Pádraig Ó Cíobháin accuses me of being selective in omitting his reference to English being compulsory for the Leaving Certificate, as if this was an issue, and then proceeds to repeat verbatim the whole first stanza of Yeats’s “September 1913”.
Mr Ó Cíobháin says that “in poetry seeming is believing”. It seems to me that while “September 1913” may be finding fault with the Ireland of the time, much of it could also be reinterpreted as being relevant to what went wrong during the Celtic Tiger years. It may also seem, from the repetition, that Yeats was writing a lament, and was at least resigned to fact the romantic Ireland was dead and gone. Is it as true now as in Yeats’s time to ask what kind of Ireland we are going to build for the future. Are we going to repeat the mistake of trying to rebuild the past or are we to do as Yeats concludes? “But let them be, they’re dead and gone / They’re with O’Leary in the grave.” – Yours, etc.
ANDREW DOYLE,
Lislevane,
Bandon,
Co Cork
A chara, – The much cited myth of the Tower of Babel is but one story from our wonderfully diverse human history. Another tells of Iatiku the mother goddess of the Acoma tribe in New Mexico. Wearying of constant fighting among the peoples of the earth, she caused them to speak many different languages so that it would not be easy for them to quarrel. She did not equate monolingualism with peaceful co-existence. – Is mise le meas,
FRANK NAUGHTON,
Ballyfermot Avenue,
Dublin 10