Now translate Welsh into Irish
Newsnight (BBC2)
YOU could almost imagine you were in Ireland. They were talking about the state of the Welsh language on Newsnight, with journalist Ruth Dawson arguing broadly in favour of all efforts to promote it, and novelist Julian Ruck essentially calling bulls**t on various aspects of the project.
Dawson confessed that she uses very little of the language herself, but would like to use it more. There was talk of the strange inability of many Welsh people to speak the language in any practical way, even after years of learning it in school.
There were allusions to the waste of resources, how all the money being pumped into the cause is failing in its supposed purpose of enabling more people to speak Welsh — to actually speak it, as distinct from actually not speaking it.
There was argument over companies declining to invest in Wales because they feared the extra costs of “converting everything to Welsh”, as Ruck put it.
Ah yes, you could almost imagine you were in Ireland. And personally, I could quite easily imagine myself as Ruck, debating the Irish language with someone who seems to be considerably more cheerful about it all, than I am.
I recognised that body language. I could see that Ruth Dawson was exuding all sorts of positive vibes, that she was perfectly capable of sitting there admitting that she doesn’t use it much herself, but it’s still a great thing in general.
And I could see that Ruck was like me, that he knew deep down he could be saying his piece on every episode of Newsnight until 2020, and it would make no difference.
He was sitting in a studio in Wales while Dawson sat in the main Newsnight studio, their very location a sign that she was on the inside, and he was on the outside. That she didn’t need to be right, she only needed to keep saying the right things.
Being right, after all, doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Dear Lord, don’t I know it?
I have found that gaeilgeoirs give off this air of contentment — when they say that everything is going really well in relation to the Irish language, certainly there is no doubt that it’s going really well for them. This Irish language business has not been a total failure by any means, from where they’re sitting.
I mentioned recently that if RTE wanted to make some really intelligent cuts to their budgets, instead of getting rid of otherwise excellent presenters on the day they turn 65, they might look at the fantastic waste of resources represented by large tracts of An Nuacht.
I know that the Irish language business is part of the “public service remit”, but a creative executive class would challenge the idea that the public is best served by a news programme that most of them never watch — there are perhaps higher ways of serving the public, such as, for example, retaining the services of broadcasters whose programmes actually have an audience.
But hey, the likes of me and Julian Ruck could be making our case in many languages, with nothing to show for it but the bleak satisfaction that at least we called it.
The baleful influence of “nationalism” was mentioned by Ruck, and I was with him on this, too. It may have come to his attention that Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland is now using the Irish language as its main weapon of disruption, calling for an Irish Language Act, the desperate need for which never occurred to anyone until about last Tuesday week.
But in another way it makes perfect sense. For a long time in this country, you’ve been able to say all sorts of things about the status of the Irish language without the requirement that any of it needs to be factually accurate or true in any meaningful way.
You can say that 1.7 million people can speak it, and nobody will even give you a funny look.
Sinn Fein are just adding one more set of untruths, to that breathtaking collection. And yes, they seem pretty happy about it.