Letter: Tone from some unionists may actually be encouraging people to take up speaking Irish
A letter from Arnold Carton:
I have never been a fan of Belfast City Council policy on dual language street names and believe that it was always a recipe for repeated battles over identity and culture, rather than doing anything to promote the Irish language.
How does adding Céide Suffolk to a sign saying Suffolk Drive, or adding Céide Knutsford to the Knutsford Drive sign encourage people to learn Irish?
If that was the objective then Belfast City Council should consider taking up the suggestion that I made last year of having a QR code taking anyone interested to an online pronunciation of the Irish word.
The current policy just provides the perfect issue for any unionist who wants to grow their reputation as a tough unionist to stand up for the encroaching of Irish in formerly unionist areas.
As a retired teacher, I know that learning a language is difficult and takes much hard work, yet Irish language learning seems to be growing in popularity. Where do new learners get the incentive?
Could it be that some of our unionist spokesmen who seek publicity by being rude about the Irish language are providing the incentive and actually encouraging people to take up Irish?
Several times over the past few years I have appealed to unionist politicians, both directly and via letters in the News Letter and other publications to try and come up with a common strategy to take the heat out of this issue.
Surely it is time for a common strategy to be agreed between the DUP and UUP to calm this down and make a sensible gesture on Irish placenames, along the lines of something I suggested to both parties directly in the past.
That all towns in Northern Ireland have the signs on entry displaying both the current name and original Irish name (where appropriate) with an explanation of the Irish for non-speakers.
This could be reinforced in the geography syllabus with schools required to teach the 15 most common Irish words that crop up in town names.
As a former teacher, I know this would not be popular with all, but Irish does have some relevance at the town name level, in a way it does not for streets and preparing our unionist young people for a world where they will come across some Irish names seems sensible.
Perhaps the News Letter could help encourage a sensible debate about unionism’s long-term strategy over Irish.
Arnold Carton, Belfast BT6