The inevitable anti-Irish spiel

I got a bad mark on an Irish essay today. A normal person’s reaction: “Christ, I’d better knuckle down and develop better Irish-essay-writing skills.” My reaction: “Wow, that’s substantially lower than what I’m aiming for in June. Well, tally-ho. Time to shake things up with an overlong anti-Gaeilge spiel instead of addressing the actual problem here, because you’ll care less about doing badly in Irish if you don’t value it as a subject.”

My loathing for Irish is particularly vehement because I’m the type who should love it. It’s like when you have these two lonely, slightly desperate friends who have everything in common, but when you try to set them up, it just doesn’t click. Not that I’m calling Irish lonely or desperate. I’m sure it has a flourishing social life and more Facebook friends than you can shake a stick at. I, however, can live a fulfilled life without its radiant presence. I think that what kills it for me is the way it’s presented to us. Not as an academic challenge, but as this cultural mission. I know that there are valid moral reasons for generally educating the public, but I don’t see compulsory Irish as a moral question. I certainly don’t like to be told that I’m killing a language or that I’m some sort of seoinín salach for not speaking it.

Then there’s the “it’s a beautiful language” argument. To me, that smacks of cultural chauvinism. To be fair, I doubt you’ll find many cultures who don’t believe that their language has a lovely ring to it, is more complex than anyone else’s, has nuances that cannot be translated, and will generally improve your life, and they’re all right on all counts, but it’s far too emotive an argument to convince me that I should study Irish.

As for the ‘part of being Irish’ argument, I’d have to disagree. Forcing anyone to qualify their Irishness is about the least Irish thing imaginable, if we’re going to get into generalisations about what’s Irish and what’s not. One of the things I love about Ireland is that we’re generally above such a variety of pomposity. We may be caught up in a strong island mentality, we may have a bit of a post-colonial victim complex, but we’re rarely full of ourselves. Thinking that one can gauge how Irish someone is, perhaps adding Irish points for poor punctuality and subtracting them for preferring coffee to tea, is the sort of wanky behaviour that we’re forever accusing the English of exhibiting.

That said, I’m a good illustration of the ‘compulsory Irish = keeping it alive’ argument. The English couldn’t have done a better colonisation job on me if they’d personally marched over and injected liquidised crumpets into my veins, but I know some Irish. No matter how much I rant, I’m still going to acquire enough of the language to pass the Leaving. I’ll never speak it afterwards, but the point still stands: someone who otherwise wouldn’t have a word in their thick West Brit head has acquired their cúpla focal thanks to compulsory Irish.

Nonetheless, if I ever ran into that ‘na treoracha agus na ceisteanna a ghabhann le cuid A’ bint on the aural tapes, I’d give her cúpla ceist a ghabhann herself. Prime among them: “Shall I publicly knock your teeth out, or would you rather I beat you with this umbrella before cutting a square into your chest with this here pen-knife, reaching in, pulling out your vocal chords and continuing along my merry way, anticipating happy days unmolested by your seemingly reasonable request that I answer the questions on my aural exam?”

Disclaimer: I’m not criticising pro-Gaeilge people. If that’s what you’re into, I’m glad you’ve found something you enjoy. This is why we have subject options. I’m more disinclined to do Applied Maths than I’d ever be to do Irish, but I don’t resent Applied Maths in any way. If anything, I’m relieved that other people are applying Maths and whatnot so that I don’t have to. Also, everyone I know who does Applied Maths says that they enjoy the classes more than normal, compulsory Maths because you don’t have any blatantly non-mathematical people hovering around, slowing things down. I think it’d work better like that with Irish. Anyway, I know it’s something everyone feels strongly about, so I hope I haven’t offended anyone in my late night crankiness.