A chara, - I am surprised that a number of Irish-language organisations appear so sanguine about the mass immigration that has overtaken Ireland in the past decade or so.
We are regularly shown photographs of a foreign-born student who is learning Irish, as if this constituted evidence that immigration will give a boost to the language. The fact is, of course, that about 0.1 per cent of immigrants appear to have made an effort to learn Irish; the other 99.9 per cent are quite happy to ignore the first official language of the State.
To say this is not to blame immigrants, since they can hardly be expected to become more interested in Irish than Irish people are. But it does raise troubling questions about the future of the language. Many immigrants are here to stay. They are already sending children to be educated in Irish schools. Is it not probable that Chinese or Polish parents will ask that their child be taught Chinese or Polish rather than Irish, a language with which they have no historical or cultural affinity?
Where is it all leading to? Sadly, I have no doubt of the answer. By the middle of this century, in my view, Irish will be lost forever as a vernacular of Ireland, gone the same way as Cornish or Manx or the dozens of other languages that die throughout the world each year.
Mass immigration won't be the cause of the enormous cultural disaster embodied in the death of Irish. Yet it may turn out to have been the factor that changed the prognosis for our sickly language from critical to fatal. - Is mise,
Dr DAVID BARNWELL, Serpentine Avenue, Dublin 4.
