A Sting in the Tale

Irish language enthusiasts were delivered a further blow recently with the announcement that fluent Irish is no longer a requirement for employment in NUI Galway (an announcement that went largely unnoticed in the media). This change in policy comes in the wake of recent decisions to drop Irish as a requirement to join the Gardai, and amendments to planning regulations in Gaeltacht areas allowing non-Irish speakers to buy property there. And of course, Enda Kenny has also waxed lyrical about dropping Irish for the Leaving Cert exam, without providing any alternatives for promoting the language.

All of this points towards our standardisation and generalisation as people, pushing us further and further towards becoming a nameless and faceless nation. Our national identity has died at a similar rate to the loss of our village shops to chains. But when it comes to how our national identity is connected to the Irish language, the question is, does anyone care anymore?

Gaeilgeoir Smaeilgeoir

I watched the first episode of TG4's reality TV show NÍ GAEILGEOIR MÉ last night, a show in which eight competing Irish personalities are put into a house for a week to see who can improve their Irish the most. As an Irish language advocate and a fan of TG4 productions in general, I had presumed that I would enjoy this show. Having now seen the opening night, I'm not sure if I can bear to sit through the rest of the series. It was nauseating to watch the presenter (Aoife Ní Thuairisg) congratulate the participants for spitting out the Irish equivalent of "My name is X" when they were asked to say a sentence in Irish to show off their "skills". For God's sake, every person in this country who sat the Leaving Cert would, in theory, have studied Irish from the age of 4 to 18. After 14 years of study, is that really the best we can do? Apparently so, if this show is anything to go by. Why is it that we can study French in secondary school for 5 years, never speak a word of it again and yet miraculously reclaim it when in France if we need to, but we can't be called upon to say anything more complex than "Can I go out to the toilet?" in Irish? The much wheeled-out line about the way Irish was taught in school must surely be out-of-date at this stage - the wave of old-school voices that peddle that line must surely be in the company of twenty- and thirty-somethings who didn't have a traumatic Irish-learning experience involving fire, brimstone and the whip at school. This almost thirty-something certainly didn't. Despite the many articles that have been written of late suggesting that Irish is on the up due to the rise in popularity of Gaelscoils and the beauty of the TG4 presenters, it seems inevitable that the language is on its deathbed. The Irish themselves aren't willing to use their own language, so why should the one in ten foreign nationals in this country bother to learn it when they're struggling to learn English as it is? So if the language is destined to die, perhaps we should let it die with a bit of dignity. While avenues that encourage people to speak Irish and to watch our Irish language station are to be welcomed in my book, it's highly likely that the Irish reality TV addicts who will tune into this show will tune right back out of TG4 again the minute this show ends. This show has the salvation of raising money for charity, but any learning of Irish is merely incidental.
A good excuse for a TV show, yes. A valid way to learn Irish, no.

Spit City Revisited

Maybe Ireland should take a leaf out China's book when it comes to our spitting problem?

Chinese to cough up for spitting

CHINA: Foreign visitors to Beijing are often dismayed to have to dodge the phlegm spattering the paths to the Temple of Heaven - and just about everywhere else in the Chinese capital. But with the 2008 Olympics fast approaching, a new government anti-spitting campaign aims to clean up the city's streets and manners.

Officials yesterday identified spitting as Beijing's worst habit and vowed to crack down, supported by a new high-tech police unit. They will be fighting tradition and geography.

For most of Beijing's 14 million residents, spitting is considered not only acceptable but necessary to clear the throat of the dust and grit in one of the world's most polluted cities. But surveys show a growing number find the habit unpleasant and unhygienic.

Anti-spitting volunteers are already handing out small "spit bags" in which people can deposit their saliva. More than two million guidebooks to good manners are being distributed, and police have launched a "mobile command car", equipped with a satellite link and two rotating video cameras. Costing more than €110,000, it is meant to spot spitters and present them with video evidence to back up their 50 yuan fine.

Spit City

Not a very pleasant subject, but one that's been getting on my wick so much that it has to get an airing. The Amiens St/North Strand Road area of Dublin must pay its residents to spit and generally produce mucus-related by-products. Not forgetting the vomit.........I've been walking on these streets on my way to work for nine months now, and I still couldn't tell you the name of one shop or business on them....I'm far too preoccupied picking my steps carefully to avoid the assortment of vile effluent to even dream of looking around me. Even crossing the road is pot luck. Spit Strand is a battleground that I haven't encountered anywhere else in the city. Monday night must be pissup night around those quarters, as the puke quota seems to come up (that wasn't intended) on Tuesday morning. It's at the stage where I'm going to visit a few showhouses on a rainy day just to get those blue plastic shoe covers that the smiley guides distribute with a crocodile smile to stop you messing up the lovely white carpet. At this rate, I'll be bankrupt from having to throw away my trainers.
I would suggest that we impose a mucus fine in this country, but we can't even impose the litter fines.

Question for Dublin Residents....

Does anyone know why the Christmas street lights are still up in North Earl St? It's a week after the Feast of the Epiphany, but they're still there.
A shop on North Earl St is closing down, and it's selling everything for €2. Is this connected to the lights? Are they trying to tell us that on North Earl St, everything is such a bargain that it's like Christmas every day there???
Come to think of it, I think that shop has been closing down for the last year or so....

Anocht FM - Is There Anybody Out There?

Last year, Raidio na Gaeltachta changed its scheduling guidelines to allow English language songs to be played on the station for the first time in its history. The result of this change was Anocht FM, a show that is broadcast from 9 pm to 1 am, seven days a week.
I recently had a good Anocht FM user experience. I listened to the show a few weeks back and entered a competition to win two tickets to a gig. And lo and behold, I won them! The following night, the presenter was giving away more tickets for the same gig. As I had two visitors coming up on the night of the gig, I entered again on the other half's phone to see if I could win a few more. And what do you know, I won tickets again that night! Sensing that the odds were good, I got my sister to text in the next night to see if we could get a few more, and.....well, you can see the pattern here. All in all, we ended up with six tickets, and a very good gig it was too.
Although this situation was very much to my benefit, it's a disturbing reflection on the show's listenership. I can only surmise that very few people - well ok, nobody - entered the competition when I could win so easily and consistently. And no, I don't know the presenter of the show, so it wasn't a fix. So is nobody listening to what is a very good show just because it's on an Irish language station? The Irish language has been getting one beating after another of late. TG4 had a report on the 7 o'clock news last night stating that 98.8% of children in Irish-speaking schools don't speak Irish when they leave school and go home in the evenings. In December of last year, NUI Galway announced that they have dropped their Irish language requirement for employment in the university. While many will welcome that, it shocks me how easily we are willing to give up on the language. It wouldn't happen in any other country. And don't get me started on Enda Kenny and his ramblings about Irish....
For anyone who's looking for something decent to listen to on the old wireless from 9-11, give Geill Sli on Anocht FM a go. You'll hear a good mix of tunes from decent artists. Just give it a go once and see what you think. Oh, and if there's a competition on when you're listening to it, you know what to do.
Find out more about Anocht FM at:http://www.rte.ie/rnag/anochtfm.html

Here we go again......

There's always someone in trouble in this country of ours. Today, it's the turn of Mary
O'Rourke. She hasn't hit the headlines in a while, but she's made front page news today.
Having gained third place selection in the Fianna Fail general election for
Longford/Westmeath, she thanked her campaign workers profusely for all the hard work they'd
done and said that they'd worked "like blacks". No sooner had the phrase escaped from her
mouth than the entire country was jumping down her throat asking her to explain her choice
of words.
It seems to me that we're absolutely terrified of being perceived as racist in Ireland, to
the extent that political correctness can escalate out of all reasonable proportions. Does
nobody remember the era when people used that phrase on a day-to-day basis without any
racist intent? There are probably people all over the country who still do. Contrary to
public opinion, the old Ireland still exists in places. The Ireland where people use phrases
like "working like blacks" with the innocent intention of stating that someone works hard.
The Ireland where people can complete a sentence without stuttering, stopping, restarting or
fluffing their words because they're being so bloody careful about what they're saying, they
can't even say things properly anymore. The Ireland where every word that's uttered isn't
measured and assessed for PC-ness. Mary O'Rourke is part of that old Ireland. She's a 68
year old woman, a very capable and intelligent 68 year old woman, and a woman who is of a
different generation where you were brought up saying things like that. When Joe Higgins
discussed the privatisation of Aer Lingus in the Dail last year, Conor Lenihan famously told
him to "stick with the kebabs" (referring to Turkish workers). This comment was overtly
meant to offend a minority, whereas Mary O'Rourke made use of a stock phrase that was
widespread in her generation. I'm sure she copped immediately that it wasn't a very clever
thing for a woman in her position to say, but that doesn't mean there was any malicious
intent behind the comment.
Sometimes, we need to just get over ourselves.

A Keanely-Felt Loss

Clyde have just beaten Celtic for the first time in 48 years and have pushed Celtic out of the Scottish Cup. Unfortunately for Roy Keane, this event has coincided with his Celtic debut. What's even more unfortunate is that we are going to be beseiged by press coverage and editorial analysis of this event for the rest of the week. People of Ireland, we need to get over our Roy Keane obsession. We gave him acres of print when he walked away from his team in Saipan. We allowed one man to divide the nation as a result of his action. We spent weeks speculating on what he'd do when he upped sticks from Man Utd. Enough is enough. If you choose a team like Celtic over a team like Real Madrid, you'll be involved in matches where the outcome will be negative. It's that simple. So let's not obsess over the reasons why Celtic lost today even though they had the Keane talisman on their side. He played quite well today, but Celtic just don't set the world on fire.
There is one thing I have to thank Keane for though - his existence provoked Eamonn Dunphy into producing the best TV moment of 2005. You all know the one I'm talking about. For that, I thank him greatly.