_Irish_Frankenstein.jpg "The Irish Frankenstein. The fear of Hibernophone Ireland that still pervades Anglophone Ireland...")
In the continuing debate sparked by the resignation of the Language Commissioner Seán Ó Cuirreáin there is a good opinion piece over on the journal.ie by Seán Mag Leannáin, a former senior civil servant, examining the culture of institutional discrimination towards Irish-speaking communities and citizens that is all-pervading in Ireland’s public sector. I’d recommend a read though you may want to skip the Comments below the article from the usual motley crew of racists representing the extreme fringe of the English-speaking community in the country. Unsurprisingly the points made in the piece, the restricted civil rights of those citizens who speak Irish versus those who speak English, are pretty much ignored as the discussion focuses on the Anglophone red herring of education:
“Ger Finch: Is this article clever satire? I thought it was one of the silliest things I had seen written on the journal but then I looked closer… It has a child-like composition to it (which plagues Gaeilgeoiri composed articles)…
John Dunne: Should scrap it, as its outdated rubbish. Its missing words in all. Caveman talk. Rubbish caveman language. English is a beautiful language, speaking Irish makes people sound inbred.
Luke Sullivan: Many of them are dying from the forced over exposure to Irish as children. It’s well known scientific fact, and all but dwarfs the teenaged sun bed scandal, it even kills more people than smoking.”
So there you go. Those who speak Irish are mentally retarded (child-like), primitive (cavemen) and responsible for the killing children.
Now whose propaganda does that you remind you of…?
As I said before, they don’t hate Irish. They hate those who speak Irish.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Luke Sullivan: Many of them are dying from the forced over exposure to Irish as children. It’s well known scientific fact, and all but dwarfs the teenaged sun bed scandal, it even kills more people than smoking.”
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Obvious troll is obvious.
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So you would think but what are the opinions of high-profile newspaper columnists?
“…Irish is not part of what we are… And it never will be part of what we are…
They have tried everything, including torture.
The only thing they haven’t tried is laying off the bullshit for a while, and abandoning their insane policies of compulsion… And if it doesn’t work, that’s all right too.
They can start the beatings again.”
Same stock language, same stock phrases, same stock accusations.
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Irish is not part of what we are
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If he does not speak or understand the language then it is definitely not part of him.
Just like German or Spanish is not part of me.
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Yes, but he claims to be speaking for the Irish people as a whole. I make no bones about wanting to restore Ireland’s monolingual Irish-speaking nation. But I have no desire to force Anglophones to speak the Irish language. Unfortunately the same consideration does not come the other way. Bilingualism is the fair compromise. Anglophone supremacists like Lynch do not know the meaning of fairness or compromise.
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Well – there are a lot of people like him – monolingual English speakers that do not want to learn Irish.
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I make no bones about wanting to restore Ireland’s monolingual Irish-speaking nation.
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Even if you somehow managed to pull it off – that would be the stupidest thing you could possibly do.
Small nations must be multilingual to be competitive – it is just a fact of life.
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Being monolingual and learning second and third languages is the norm in Europe. The Danish do it very well. The Poles have a fine system of English language teaching (as well as German, etc.). The Finns and Dutch have very high levels of second language use. The Norwegians too. I could go on. The examples are legion.
Ireland could be majority Irish-speaking with English as a secondary language. Why not the reverse of what we have now? And why not other languages?
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Yes it could be, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Because the general population does not want that.
Pretty much everyone here is “English language supremacist” – they are not a minority.
It does not matter what they say – all that matters is what they DO.
And absolute majority does not want Irish Ireland – they want English Ireland.
You don’t see bilingual or Irish-only advertisements, shop signs, notices or anything like that anywhere.
Everything that is not financed by the state is in English and English only.
As I said – website of the company that I work for is in 20 languages and Irish is not one of them.
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Reblogged this on seachranaidhe1.
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