The Times They Are A-Changin’

While some have tried to reprimand An Sionnach Fionn and its readers for our assertive contribution in redefining the debate around around Irish language rights in Ireland it is clear that we are merely in the vanguard of a far greater movement. From an article by Maitiú de Hál featured on thejournal.ie:

“FOR THE PAST number of weeks, a debate has been ongoing about what place the Irish language has in Irish society. All sides from the moderate to the extreme have been aired in the media, with one article in particular being flagged for using “hate speech”.

There are those who would view such a claim as a disingenuous ploy by the Irish language community to curry favour and to tug on people’s heartstrings invoking the same emotions felt when discussing South African apartheid or the Montgomery Bus boycott.

As an Irish speaker, I want to make it quite clear that I am not grooming myself to be the next Rosa Parks or Rodney King. Although our cases are not comparable, the current campaign shares a common thread with campaigns against racism, homophobia and all other sorts of prejudice. That is – respect.

Every human being on this Earth deserves respect, tolerance and not to be judged by ill-informed prejudice.

…broad generalisations by journalists, bloggers and trolls alike that accuse Gaeilgeoirí of the basest of motives are hate speech. Characterisations that we are stubborn, fanatics, “Gaeilgeoir Grenadiers,” “an indulged minority,” “Nazi Gaeilgeoirí” and “Gaeilge Taliban” fall into this territory. Commentators have not thought twice about uttering that raising your children with Irish is tantamount to “child abuse” and that we “should try living like the rest of us then.“ Utterances such as the latter create a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and only serve to divide and alienate.

We can be dismissed as an “other” but not protected as an “other.”

What I do know is that awful feeling that can come over me when it comes up in conversation that I am an Irish speaker, being asked what my name is in English or being berated for all the evils inflicted on Irish school children from 1922 until present day. I know what it is to be verbally abused in the street and at work. Go back to your own country. Stop speaking that dead language.

This is a feeling which reduces you to that awkward “other.” You are no longer Maitiú. You are a stereotype, pigeon-holed for convenience and dismissed as delusional, a fanatic RA-head, hell-bent on singing seannós at a séance at Newgrange to resurrect Dev, Peig and Cú Chulainn and inflict your senseless, archaic, irrelevant culture upon a country that is just getting by. A country trying to pay the bills, the mortgage and the social charge.

Must I forfeit my right to be an Irish speaker to retain my privilege as an English speaker?

Irish is my primary language. I use it in my professional and personal life. To speak English to many of my friends would be as alien to us as it would be for many to suddenly start speaking Irish to each other.

Current practise misleads Irish speakers into thinking that they are not entitled to services yet many non-Irish speakers are led to believe that we receive everything for which we ask.

In spite of these obstacles, Irish speakers continue to exist but the contexts in which we can exist as such are being eroded by our fear of antipathy and apathy of the State and of a very vocal minority in the media.

What has sustained our language as a living one is the deep personal bonds between us which have been forged through family, social, educational and professional relationships. We are representative of an entire spectrum of different classes, ages, nationalities, colours, creeds and sexual orientations. You always see us, you just might not hear us. While some may ask why weren’t we all out on the streets for something else. We have been. At different times, at different places and with different people. And still, we came out on Lá Mór na Gaeilge. To us, it is that important.

What will you come out for?”

The vast majority of people in Ireland, Hibernophone and Anglophone alike, have no place in their hearts or minds for petty prejudice. Most English-speakers on this island nation rightly regard the indigenous Irish language as their own, whether they speak it or not. They see that tongue as the historic national language of their country and support its continued protection and eventual restoration. Few fear a truly bilingual Irish and English Ireland, and many would welcome a monolingual Irish Ireland. In truth there is only a tiny minority of bigots who hate the Irish language. Or rather they hate those who speak the Irish language. They are the inheritors of the anti-Irish racism of British colonial rule in Ireland, throw-backs to the age of Pale and Plantation. They think Ireland’s native language and culture is inferior to all others and certainly inferior to the Anglo-American brand of Oirishness that they have adopted and which they believe is superior to that which came before (or which still exists in rivalry). They hold sway over much of “Official Ireland”, from politics to the media, and it these self-denying Irish people, lost in time and place, who hold back the use and growth of the Irish language.

For they see the writing on the wall… מנא, מנא, תקל, ופרסין.