Jeff W. Justice
Gaeilge: A Radical Revolution
Without doubt, interest in the Irish language grew during the COVID-19 global pandemic, which makes Caoimhín De Barra’s work one of interest to the Celtic studies community. The work attempts to take an approach accessible to a readership that stretches well beyond academia. In this regard, it would seem to succeed.
De Barra begins with a chapter outlining his trials and triumphs in learning Irish. In addition to mapping his journey toward acquiring it, he also offers sage advice to readers who might pick up this book with at least a modicum of curiosity about learning it themselves. As is the case with many Irish, he studied the subject in school. Also like many Irish, he never really used it outside of the classroom, so he resorted to self-study methods.
He describes his use of the long-respected Teach yourself books, which provide a good way to form a firm foundation in many of the tongues that they cover. He offers strong praise for Rosetta Stone, which teaches Irish (and other languages) through natural means that approximate the way we learn our native tongues. He also—very correctly—advises that language learning does not stop when one reaches the end of a given course. His organic advice, approximating language learning and retention to the need to exercise daily, is certainly spot on. One can appreciate this journey and may recognize one’s own linguistic journey through his commentary.
From here, De Barra moves into a narrative within the sociopolitical headwinds that Irish continues to face, framing the post-independence linguistic policy situation as one that was full of desire and perhaps some promise, but whose application was half-baked at best. He provides a brief history in which English colonialism relegated Irish to the fringes and discouraged new speakers through the economic advantages that English provided. He points sharp criticism at the education system for its failure to teach Irish ‘properly’, then moves into the social hatred that he perceives toward Irish, one that was simultaneously vague and pervasive. He asserts that this hatred does not stem—contemporarily, at least—from the State’s compulsory education policy in the subject. Rather, it would seem to come from English linguistic ideology, which he asserts has no tolerance for any other language. This attitude is a direct result of linguistic colonialism foisted upon Ireland in previous centuries:
This disdain for speakers of other languages appears to remain today, long after the age of Empire has passed. A linguistic study from 2006 sought to investigate parental attitudes toward their children learning a foreign language, with more students believing that parents had a negative view rather than a positive view about second language learning. It seems incredible that any parent could have a negative view about their children learning a second language, but this study shows that such attitudes are not uncommon in the English-speaking world. (138)
For sake of comparison, the prose delves into the sociopolitical headwinds faced by other languages, including several major tongues deemed by prominent public officials as ‘useless’ for no apparent reason other than those uttering the comments do not speak them. Celtic scholars will note with interest that he gives particular attention to Scottish Gaelic and Welsh as exemplars.
He takes issue, albeit only in part, with what he terms ‘Magic Béarla’, or ‘English worship’, in a chapter that argues that the Irish people overstate the value of English to Irish society and to the Irish economy in a nod to the effects of neo-liberal capitalism on minoritized languages. Next, he takes on six myths related to why Irish should not continue to be revived, such as that Hiberno-English is the real national language or the (alleged) heightened difficulty in learning it.
One chapter that will interest those who study language revival includes six case studies of minoritized languages which have been subject to (arguably) successful revival efforts: Welsh, Urdu, Québécois French, Catalan, Bahasa Indonesia, and Hebrew. In practically each case, the education system was key to language revival. De Barra submits a significant summary of Ó Laoire’s Athbheochan na hEabhraise. Ceacht don Ghaeilge? (The revival of Hebrew. A lesson for Irish?). His particular attention to Hebrew agrees with Ó Laoire in that language shift occurred due to a conscious choice of those who wanted it to become the national language of Israel and the Jewish people generally.
De Barra’s ultimate question is ‘What is to be done?’ He discusses a number of suggestions in previously published books or articulated through the media—establishing Irish-speaking social centers (see Mac Síomóin 2014), universal Gaelscoileanna, promoting use of Irish by Irish-speaking celebrities—then discounts each as being effectively not enough to reverse Irish’s fortunes. His suggestion? Establish a system of free and extensive on-line lessons through a national learning center. However, such learning should not come at the expense of English, as Ireland—he argues—should be a fully and fluently bilingual society. In other words, this should not be presented as a challenge to English, but rather as a re-introduction of Irish as a complement to it. Governing institutions should immediately convert to conducting all business in Irish and redefine it as the sole state language. Further, efforts should be made to make Irish economically attractive.
Taking stock of this tome and beginning with the end—the part where De Barra advocates for what he believes must happen—he presents ideas that were largely advanced by Republicans as they crafted and articulated their view of what an independent Irish state should be. They sought a state where Irish would again take its place as the primary language of daily use, literature, and the expression of what it means to be Irish. Taken from that angle, these suggestions could be viewed legitimately as ‘radical’ ideas, but in their day; wresting control and governance of a polity from the central state actually governing it is hardly a minor political change. The Irish War of Independence was just that, a war that resulted in the establishment of a new state which gained full-fledged independence from Britain over the course of a generation. It was not revolutionary in nature, certainly not in the same sense that the French Revolution completely and violently remade that society. Irish society post-establishment of Saorstát Éireann went on largely intact.
De Barra’s prose reads as if he were in a conversation with the reader or perhaps giving a public presentation. He avoids academic and professional jargon. He wants the reader to join him on his journey into Irish. Once the reader moves further into the book, the context of the seemingly out-of-place first chapter becomes clear. It also serves to illuminate this book as one that is aimed at a general audience more than at the academy. The short bibliography at the end includes books that are on the shelf of just about any Celticist who specializes in Irish sociolinguistics; while De Barra does submit a few differences of opinion with those works, his discussions of them do not significantly differ from or often take positions critical of the views that they contribute.
However, the book will likely leave the reader wanting. The last chapter offers sweeping and admittedly difficult-to-achieve means to revive Irish as a language of daily use, but it does not detail how these changes could happen. When details do appear, there is no evidence presented supporting how he came to them, such as his estimate of €20 million to establish the proposed on-line Irish learning center. Another derives from the statistic directly quoted above: no citation appears either in the prose or in the bibliography for it, which would have been useful for someone picking up this book who might want to follow up for purposes of working toward establishing the programs tied into the revival plan outlined at the book’s end. De Barra spends considerable time discussing anti-Irish attitudes, as well as those affecting other minoritized languages; his plan only vaguely touches on this highly important aspect in his assertion that Irish be presented as a complement, not a challenge, to English within Ireland. Nevertheless, this book does several useful things. It provides an introduction into the present state of Irish in Ireland, including the challenges of learning it. It makes clear that a multi-pronged approach will be needed to bring it back as a language of primary daily use. It makes clear that whatever future efforts are made will be met with practical, social, and political challenges.