DUP has no need to be afraid of Irish language

Almost every place-name is Irish or comes from Irish.

We can get our tongues and our mouths round them with ease.

Many Protestant Unionists have Gallic family names coming from Scotland and Scotland originally meant the land of the Irish.

I assume the DUP MP who tries hardest to make fun of Irish is proud of his own name. Well translate Campbell into English from its origin in Irish we get Cam - Twisted and Béal - Mouth.

This is not a physical trait but means lying or making false promises and probably was started by enemies and became through time a famous name. A language cannot and should not belong to a political party. Unionists used to be easy with Irish and numbers of them studied the language and worked to revive it.

It was in the second decade of the last century that hard line Nationalists drove Unionists out of the Gaelic League and its founder Douglas Hyde resigned in disgust.

From then Irish was painted with politics but why should Protestants and Unionists follow those sorts of Nationalists? Irish is not a flag, a banner, a shibboleth and it is an ancient and beautiful language that secretly runs through our homespun English and it belongs to all of us.

Really there is nothing to be afraid of.

Robin Glendinning, Comber