From the illustrated Ulysess by James Joyce

Colm Ó Broin writes:

If you don’t believe there’s prejudice in Ireland against the Irish language and Irish speakers consider that people working in the national media have…

1 Denied the existence of the Irish language

“You see, the truth is there IS no Irish language. There was a bunch of dialects Dineen tried to turn into a language as a nationalist plot.” Sarah Carey, 02/10/2017

2 Described the Irish language as gobbledygook

“The bilingual street signs in Dublin are just a bit of English and a bit of gobbledygook to most people.” Malachi O’Doherty, Belfast Telegraph, 17/11/2015

3 Stated that English is superior to Irish

“I’m being excoriated [what’s the Irish word for excoriated?] for saying that English is a superior language to Irish. Which was tactless [what’s the Irish for tactless?] and a digression anyway. [Irish for digression?] But it is actually true. Try going round the world on Irish.” Malachi O’Doherty, 21/02/2018

4 Described the name Mac Gearailt as an “absurd Gaelic confection”

“Garret FitzGerald is clearly Anglo-Norman, no matter the absurd Gaelic confection that he occasionally translates his name into.” Kevin Myers, Irish Independent, 15/04/2011

5 Described an Irish language song as gibberish

“Somehow chanting pretentious gibberish is now considered to be cutting edge but it’s not and it never will be.” Ian O’Doherty, Irish Independent, 03/10/2015

6 Associated the Irish language with rich people

“Even now there is a class bias within the Irish language. At many Irish language primary schools in Dublin the favoured form of transport is an expensive SUV” Anne-Marie Hourihan, The Times, 15/02/2018

7 Associated the Irish language with poor people

“I had a real visceral dislike for Irish back then…It was the language of poverty and submission”. Ian O’Doherty, Pat Kenny Show, Newstalk, 14/06/2016

8 Used English words taken from other languages to criticise Irish words taken from other languages

“I am hurt by the reduction of Irish, the oldest spoken literary language in Europe, to phonetic translations from the relative newcomer, English. Who gains from the translation of ‘buggy store’ into ‘stóras bugaithe’? Anyone who wants to make fun of the Irish language, that’s who.” Victoria White, Irish Examiner, 2015





9 Falsely claimed that no new Irish words have been created in 100 years

“When there is no intrinsic word or phrase in a language for anything new to the world in the past hundred years or so, that language is not alive.” Emer O’Kelly, Sunday Independent 05/11/2006

10 Falsely claimed that the Irish language is dead

“So even though the language is dead – Erse is a hearse is how I have heard it described” Kevin Myers, Irish Independent, 26/01/2007

11 Falsely claimed that Irish language schools are exclusively middle class

“Gaelscoils don’t exist most parts of the country. And where they do, their appeal seems to have little to do with Irish language. More to do with exclusively middle class (non working class, non immigrant) environment.” Eoin Butler, 08/10/2016

12 Compared Irish language schools to the racist apartheid system

“While I appreciate the language, I abhor the educational apartheid that goes along with it.” Kate Holmquist, Irish Times, 09/12/2008

13 Suggested Irish language schools “weed out” children with special needs

“The department’s own audit showed few children with special needs in Irish-speaking schools – so are Irish-language schools weeding these children out?” Kate Holmquist, Irish Times, 09/12/2008

14 Described Irish language schools as “nationalistic Irish language nonsense”

“I’d create inclusivity by abolishing exclusivity. No religion, no private schools and none of this nationalistic Irish language nonsense, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the ultimate barrier in the Irish education system”. Sarah Carey, Irish Independent, 22/01/2017

15 Associated Irish language schools with snobbery and racism

“The snobs (Na Snobi) are those who reckon that sending their kids to a gaelscoil is the only politically correct way to keep their kids away from the lower classes. (They are not wrong.)…Of course, sending your kids to a school where the parents must speak Irish could be seen by some as a form of racial segregation. Na Snobi are at pains to point out they are not racists.” Pat Fitzpatrick, Sunday Independent, 02/06/2014

16 Described the growth of Irish language schools in South Dublin as “sinister”

“Apart from its straightforward careerist aspects, among the things we did not hear about the gaeilge during Seachtain na Gaeilge was the sinister development whereby the ruling class are sending their children to the Gaelscoileanna in unprecedented numbers — south Dublin, the land of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, is full of them.” Declan Lynch, Sunday Independent, 13/03/2011

17 Associated teachers in Irish language schools with Sinn Féin

“In recent weeks Sinn Fein fielded candidates who came across like gaelscoil teachers, while in Belfast a senior republican was declaring that they still had access to their own army.” Declan Lynch, Sunday Independent, 01/06/2014

18 Associated Irish speakers with IRA terrorism

“if you think there’s been some gross hypocrisy over the language thus far, just watch how dirty it gets when the Gaelgoiri and the ‘cultural republicans’ of post-terrorist Sinn Fein face the prospect of losing their precious shibboleth.” Kevin Myers, Irish Independent, 23/02/2011

19 Compared Irish language activists to the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement

“The guardians of ‘language rights’ as prescribed in the Official Languages Act have gone at the language like the Taliban went at Islam and left nothing except lumpen duty and legal threat.” Victoria White, Irish Examiner, 24/09/2015

20 Compared Irish speakers to Communists

“But don’t hold your breath waiting for a quarter of a million language-Stakhonovites marching into the 2033 sunset, Gaelic spanners in hand, chanting Erse verse.” Kevin Myers, Irish Independent, 15/03/2013

21 Compared Irish language activists to Neo-Nazis

“I’ve been writing about the futility of the state’s language-restoration programme almost my entire professional life, and the outcome has been threefold. One, vilification by brainless Gaeilgeoir skinheads, yawn. Two, the language is deader than ever. And three, the state money spent promoting this doomed language remorselessly rises.” Kevin Myers, The Times, 06/09/2015

22 Compared Irish language summer colleges with concentration camps

“It’s that time of year again, when schools try to tempt youngsters into signing up for a few weeks in one of the Gaeltacht’s vast network of concentration camps…sorry, summer camps.” Eilis O’Hanlon, Sunday Independent, 09/05/2010

23 Compared the Irish language to the Islamic hijab head covering

“A cúpla bliain ó thinn I wrote that the Irish language was our equivalent of the hijab, the headscarf worn by orthodox Muslim women as a badge of identity and compliance, a figleaf to cover a web of unacknowledged weaknesses.” Anne-Marie Hourihane, Irish Times, 05/03/2012

24 Compared the Irish language to bird that became extinct 350 years ago

“We pretend that Irish is our national language and lavish hundreds of millions a year on trying to revive what is a linguistic dodo.” Irish Examiner Editorial, 11/05/2012

25 Compared an Irish-speaking football team to fundamentalists and Nazis

“He said, look guys would you go and speak English, because everybody we do know, on this island does speak English. Not everybody on this island speaks Irish…this is fundamentalism. You vill learn the Irish and you will do it right, ja?!” Paul Williams, Newstalk Breakfast, 21/09/2016

26 Wrote that “the Gael” is dishonest

“The one true function of the Irish language today is that it demonstrates the vastness of the dishonesty of the Gael, and the piety that is his calling card.” Declan Lynch, Sunday Independent, 08/04/2012

27 Associated the Irish language with “mucksavagery”

“The Irish language’s unpopularity is rooted in the kind of mucksavagery with which it is surrounded. It has become the international language of cute hoorism, the babbling soundtrack to a world of strokes, chips on the shoulder and fast ones.” Diarmuid Doyle, Sunday Tribune, 19/12/2004

28 Compared an Irish language school in the Gaeltacht with a mosque in London frequented by Islamist terrorists

“The school has set itself up as a kind of Finsbury Park Mosque by the sea.” Irish Examiner Editorial, 17/10/2007

29 Associated Irish speakers with the sexual abuse of children

“The vast majority of us cannot hear that language being spoken, in any context, without also hearing some distant echo of physical and sexual and psychological abuse” Declan Lynch, Sunday Independent, 23/08/2009

…Or to summarise, I’ve nothing against Irish speakers – they’re just inferior, extinct, dead, poor, rich, snobby, dishonest, fundamentalist, savage, sinister, racist, terrorist, Sinn Féin-IRA, Commie, Nazi child sex abusers.

Colm Ó Broin is an Irish speaker from Clondalkin, Dublin and a member of Conradh na Gaeilge. Follow Colm on Twitter here.

