Arrived yesterday in Dublin airport.* Whenever I come to
Ireland, one of the first things to strike me is all the signs in Irish and
English. (Many Americans, if they know there is an Irish language at all, call
it Gaelic. It is a Gaelic language to be sure, but in Ireland, the English word
for the language is Irish and the Irish word is Gaeilge, pronounced “gwale-ga.”)
Irish and English are the official languages here (with Irish being the first
official language), so that all street and other official signs appear in both languages,
as well as all governmental documents. Since Irish independence, students are also
required to study the language, but there are relatively few native speakers,
about 100,000 by some measures, concentrated in a few Irish speaking areas,
called Gaeltachts. It is one of the oldest languages in Europe. Under the earliest
English rule, it was actually illegal to speak Irish in English areas, but up
to recent times, use of Irish has been strongly discouraged. For example, before
independence, students were forbidden to speak it in school and would be
physically punished for doing so. My father’s mother, who was born in 1883 on a
small farm in southwest Cork and whose family could read and write fluently, remembered
being punished for speaking Irish at school. Needless to say, my father and
mother (who was from the east where the language had died out earlier) spoke
very little Irish. I know only a few words but there is a great saying, the
title of this post: Broken Irish is better than clever English.
* We flew through Heathrow in London, where security seemed
very high for those of us transferring to other flights. After standing in
several long lines—where agents seemed to be checking almost all the bags,
inside and out, with special wands presumably for signs of explosives—we
learned about the bombings in Brussels … So horrible for the people affected
and so discouraging.
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