Cead mile failte
A report commissioned by the Department of Gaeltacht Affairs has highlighted the decline of the Irish Language.
It is reported that the language will cease to be spoken within 20 years unless steps are taken.
Initially efforts are to be concentrated on Gaeltach areas [areas where Irish is the predominant language]
Already progress has been made. All place-names have been compulsorily changed to their original Irish and all road signage must be in Irish. This has caused great confusion in the regions, with several families now unable to find where they live.
“We just want to go home to Dingle,” said one confused family “but they keep directing us to Daingean Uí Chúis, which we’ve never heard of. Please help us. We are tired and hungry.”
In the next phase, the Irish Language is to become compulsory within the areas. All television aerials are to be removed and the only channel available will be TG4. Mobile phones will be programmed to work only within the areas to prevent residents speaking in a foreign language to outsiders. Non-Irish newspapers and books will be banned.
Visitors to the areas will be issued with phrase books to enable non Irish speakers and tourists to communicate. These books will contain such everyday phrases as “can you direct me to the nearest underground station” and “my dentures have fallen under the table”.
People wishing to reside in the area must first attend ‘transition camps’ where they will be given 24 hour intensive training in the language. Once they have proven that they are fluent in the language, and have forgotten how to speak any other language, they will be allowed to move into the area.
People wishing to holiday in the area will be given a special emergency telephone number where they will be given on the spot help with translation. This number will be manned by specially trained Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians and Bulgarians who are experts in native languages.
Any person found speaking in any other language other than Irish will be brought back to the transition camp where they will be forced to memorise ‘Peig’.
This might be Useful?
Whoops! As may a lesson in HTML for moi!
Nice one SID.
And I managed to fix your HTML! Maybe it’s time I resurrected S.H.I.T.?
I never agreed with Dev’s grandson’s methods of promoting our language and once again his department has proposed using force to achieve its (his) aims. I blogged about this before and got some constructive criticism* on my views. But I still believe force, even if not seen as such by some, is not the way forward.
*Constructive criticism from one guy – the other just rode on his coattails.
I missed that post of yours somehow. It must have been when I was away?
Speaking as one who was educated in “enlightened” times when Irish was compulsory [a classmate got honours in all subjects in his Intermediate but failed the exam because he failed Irish!], I strongly disagree with the concept of enforcement. The majority attitude in my school was one of “I can’t wait to finish school so I can forget about this damn language”.
Irish is a beautiful language. I don’t deny that, and would hate to see it become extinct except in the realms if academe. However, enforcement is the wrong way to go.
I have often made the argument that the best way forward is to ban the language. Make it illegal. That way, there would be national outrage, and people would deliberately set out to learn it out of a sense of rebellion.
Yup, Grandad. Banning it worked before, it could work again.
The best way to promote the Irish language is to compel people to spend a day on the DART listening to OMG D4 and DART women’s voices. Gerry Adams as Gaeilge would sound attractive afterwards.
But can you imagine Irish in D4? It would become BAC4!
Ah, it was hard enough spending a year and a half getting to grips with all those sheep, the narrow lanes, that nonsense about leprechauns and pookahs, never mind dealing with things like the Gaeltach and realising that Seán Óg Ó hAilpín was a sportsman and not a curse and that hurling was a sport not something you did after too many jars of the dark stuff. Please god, don’t let them what thinks they know make it any more confusing for the rest of us that don’t know.
Do you mean Seán Óg Ó hAilpín is not a curse?
“Please god, don’t let them what thinks they know make it any more confusing for the rest of us that don’t know.” should be re-written –
Please god, don’t let them what thinks they know make it any more confusing for the rest of us that do know.
From now on, that shall be my morning mantra.
[The mantra wishing for man-boobs to play with never worked anyway]
Seán Óg O hAilpín is a curse! The Sneeze’s present squeeze ignores me completely when the feker is on TV.
That in itself is an argument against the Irish Language. At least I haven’t seen Seán Bán in a long time.