With Stormont’s continued suspension putting our long-term health in jeopardy, does it really matter whether we call it Belfast or Beal Feirste?
A survey showing only 15% of people here claim to speak Irish supports Peter Robinson’s contention that the language should not be an obstacle to the return of power-sharing,
Nearly 400,000 people in the UK listed their religion as “Jedi” in the 2001 census. Numbers had halved by the time of the next one, because the novelty of giving silly answers to nosy questions from the Government had worn off.
But it does highlight a problem with these data-harvesting operations. Who’s checking? Respondents can say anything, within reason, and no one will ever call them out if they’re telling porkies.
Questions about the Irish language are an obvious example. Every householder in Northern Ireland was asked in the last census if they could speak, write, or understand Irish. No one followed up to see how fluent they really are — or, more likely, aren’t.
I remember once filling out the census form and declaring that the people in my household could speak Irish, but not understand it, and write Irish, but not read it.
That ludicrous contradiction kept me mildly amused through
the tedious chore of filling out the booklet, but somewhere down the line that information was fed into a computer and informed Government policy.
The foolhardiness of relying on official figures is confirmed by a new study, released by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.
It found that around 15% of people here may claim to be able to speak Irish — much higher than the 6% figure in the 2011 census, incidentally — but that only 5% are competent enough to follow TV and radio programmes broadcast in the language.
By contrast, almost half of those who declare themselves to be Irish speakers (46%) only know a few basic words and phrases. They might say “slan” instead of goodbye as they head out the door, or “go raibh maith agat” when they want to express thanks, or order “fish agus chips” for dinner, but it goes no more deeply than that.
By that token, most of us are fluent in half-a-dozen languages, because we’ve learned certain useful phrases when on holiday. In Irish, there’s even a phrase for it: the “cupla focal” (a couple of words).
An allegiance with Irish is about more than just speaking the language, of course.
It’s a marker of identity. Those who regard themselves as Irish and nationalist like to see smatterings of signs “as Gaeilge” around the place, because it makes them feel more culturally comfortable.
Nor is there anything wrong with feeling that way.
It shouldn’t threaten anyone else’s sense of self to hear Irish being widely used, any more than we should all feel threatened by hearing Polish on the streets of Belfast. Language matters. Symbols matter.
What makes this whole area so fraught is that the language has been politicised from the start — and deliberately so.
Republicans indignantly deny this, but the history is there to see.
Back in the day, activists would infamously proclaim: “Every phrase you learn is a bullet in the freedom struggle.” Words, once spoken, can be hard to take back.
It’s not only the Irish language, either. Gerry Adams was recorded not so long ago admitting that the so-called “equality agenda” is a “Trojan horse”, too. Hidden agendas breed suspicion.
Unionists have politicised the language as well, not least by denying funding to cultural and educational groups on what has often felt like invidious grounds. DUP leader Arlene Foster’s “crocodiles” slip of the tongue was another reminder that hostility to Irish in parts of Ulster not only predates the Troubles, but goes back way before partition itself. That’s why Peter Robinson’s (left) latest intervention on the matter is both curious and significant. The former First Minister appears to have set himself the task in retirement of being a thorn in his successor’s side. But in saying that he “couldn’t care less about the Irish language” and would be happy to “let them speak it until they are green, white and orange in the face, as long as it doesn’t encroach on me”, he does suggest a different way of bypassing this particular legislative road block.
Don’t think of Irish as a trap, or as something foisted on an unwilling captive population.
Think of it instead as an irrelevance, because — whisper it — that’s how most Irish people, if they’re being honest, think of it, too.
The inconvenient truth has always been that, no matter the political resistance to an Irish Language Act, there is nothing stopping anyone from learning and speaking Irish. There’s an abundance of free classes, both in real life and online.
The only limits to the spread of Irish are a willingness to put in the effort to learn. I’ve tried a couple of times and given up. It would be reassuring to be able to blame someone else for that personal failure, but who would I be kidding? In a way, an inability to put in the hard work needed to learn Irish could even be seen as a defining national characteristic.
Despite being a required part of the curriculum for decades, with billions sunk into the project, use of Irish remains sporadic in ordinary life in the Republic and huge numbers of adults who spent years being forced to learn it at school will insist till they’re equally “glas”, “ban” and “oraiste” in the face that they can’t speak a word.
If unionists really want to discourage the use of Irish, they should campaign to make it compulsory, because that policy has been an unmitigated disaster down south.
Leaving aside his motives for a moment, Peter Robinson is, at least, on to something when arguing that the Irish language should not be allowed to hold back the restoration of Stormont.
Especially with the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Michael McBride, warning MPs starkly this week that the continued suspension of devolution is preventing long-term health
strategies from being implemented.
Whether to call a place “Belfast”, or “Beal Feirste”, does seem “such a small issue” when put into that context.
Perhaps the problem lies, as always, in allowing unrepresentative minorities to dictate the terms of the conversation.
A mere 15% claim to speak Irish, though they largely don’t, and another 15% claim to speak Ulster-Scots, though they largely don’t.
Fanatics in each faction simply have a strange and aberrant fetish which, like missionaries, they mistake for righteousness.
Unfortunately, Peter Robinson has nothing to say on how to combat that toxic politicisation, much less what he did previously to foster reconciliation, but that’s the beauty of retirement.
Ex-politicians can pontificate airily. Their successors are left to work out how to put those fine words into practice.
What makes this whole area so fraught is that the language has been politicised from the start
With billions sunk into the project, the use of Irish remains sporadic in ordinary life in Republic