The Leaba

Gerry Adams
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I am getting totally pissed off with the token use of bastard Irish.

As this is an equal opportunities blog, I should mention previous criticism of both FG an FF in an earlier post, just in case anyone should think I'm having a pop at Gerry Adams and him alone. I have also taken various bodies (eg) to task over their appalling use of the language in the past.

But Gerry Adams gives it an almost daily trashing in his tweets and this is coming from someone who purports to hold the language dear and have its compulsory use enshrined in Northern Ireland legislation. I needn't point out that pushing the language in the North is even more fraught than promoting it in the South. This is particularly the case when the language is being politicised and used as a silver bullet in the (decommissioned?) armed struggle for Irish unity. Nelson McCausland can testify more eloquently than I in this regard.

I have included a few of Gerry's recent tweets below to illustrate my point. Correct versions of booboos are shown in italics below the tweets.

oíche chiúin, oíche Mhic Dé, beannachtaí

Daidí na Nollag, sásta

an spéir, an ghrian, ar fad

an ghaoith láidir, an ghrian gheal

sámh

oíche, bonne nuit

Now I know the Taoiseach has stated that the next election will effectively be a choice between Fine Gael and Sinn Féin, and his Minister for Foreign Affairs has endorsed this most forcefully in a very gender specific and possibly personally offensive way.

I really am surprised, however, that the Taoiseach, who is reputed to be a fluent Irish speaker, seems to be descending to the level of Gerry Adams's Irish in the current phoney election campaign.

Reproduced below is his entry in the Charlie Hebdo book of condolence at the French embassy.

At least he got his French right, unlike Gerry in the last of the tweets above.

muintir na hÉireann, as ucht na tragóide uafásaí

All this garbage Irish reminds me forcibly of George Orwell's NEWSPEAK in 1984. The purpose of that restricted version of the English language was to limit people's ability to think outside a very restrictive and politically correct range of concepts. Current English usage, not only in social media, but in the mainstream media, is already sadly well along this road.

The current use of Irish in many quarters is simply a bad and clumsy transliteration of English. It strips the language of its richness and historical resonances and limits its net contribution to alternative and challenging viewpoints.

If the Irish language is not going to be taken seriously and treated with respect it should just be abandoned to the dustbin of history.

And the title of this post?

Well, the leaba is where Gerry tells us he ends up every night and it is one word in Irish that he always spells correctly.

Tá sé fear

Joe McHugh TD

Is this the nail in the coffin of the Irish language, or just a statement of the obvious, or both?

The Government has now appointed a junior minister, Joe McHugh, with responsibility for the Irish language, whose Irish is not up to scratch.

The Taoiseach tells us that Joe's first priority is a "refresher" course in Irish but it is not clear how much will be refreshment and how much new learning. He must, at least, have school Irish, which is a sort of a block to build on. But one would have expected him to be beyond the refreshment stage by now as he was already Fine Gael Seanad Spokesperson on Gaeltacht Affairs between 2002 and 2007.

He lives in Carrigart, which is described in Wikipedia as a Gaeltacht village, and it does seem to be part of the official Gaeltacht, though Scoil Eoin Baiste is described as "ar imeall na Gaeltachta". In any event a significant proportion of the area represented by Joe McHugh is Gaeltacht.

As the Taoiseach seemed unprepared for the onslaught that has now hit him, is it possible he was not aware of the Deputy's lack of fluent Irish, given that he was appointing him principally for geographical reasons (to counter Sinn Féin in Donegal)?

In any event it does not say much for the Government's, and in particular Fine Gael's, respect for, or interest in, the Irish language.

Needless to say, the opposition are in a steam and Éamon Ó Cuív was reported to be apoplectic. No shortage of baying hounds there.

Raidió na Life reported that the Government refused to supply a participant for their programme today, Beo@2, which covered the street protest and had contributions from Conradh na Gaeilge, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin. The programme's being in Irish can't have helped and the Government could hardly have expected Dinny McGinley,who had just lost the job, to do the needful.

And Fianna Fáil needn't crow either. I remember when a crew from BBC Alba (TV) were in town doing a programme in Irish on the banking collapse, the best Fianna Fáil, then in Government, could do on the day was field Martin Mansergh who did his section in English.

You get an increasing smell of tokenism these days in almost everything to do with the Irish language. For example, Newstalk puts out little shorts in Irish where the reader (very obviously reading) seems to think the quality of Irish is gauged by the frequency of séimhiús and the amount of spittle going into them. His grammar (what's that?) is also atrocious.

The old argument for holding onto, or reviving Irish, was that it gave you access to much of your background which would otherwise be inaccessible and it represented a different way of looking at things.

The current pidgin Irish that I hear around me does nothing for anybody. It degrades any true Irish that might remain and is nothing more than a bad transliteration of the speaker's native English.

Go bhfóire Dia orainn.

Electoral Ephemera

General Election 1969
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Some people may remember the 1969 general election for its red scare, including the "Reds under the Bed" rantings of Kevin Boland and a not insignificant number of his Fianna Fáil colleagues. The Labour Party and their Moscow masters. Seems funny now, but it may well have kept some of the troop in line.

General Election 1969

Local Elections 1967
Church Road, Ballybrack, Co. Dublin