It seems we are destined to forever talk about Irish and never get around to actually speaking it
The queue and the tension were building behind the elderly woman slowly calling out her shopping list to the grocer standing behind the counter. "Agus punt bananai freisin, le do thoil," she called in her musical West Cork Irish. The grocer was dutifully weighing the bananas when a frustrated man in the queue blurted out: "Don't you have an Irish word for banana?"
With a banana dramatically held aloft, the grocer instantly shot back: "No sir, and they're still trying to put English on it."
The giggles of the delayed shoppers signalled resounding victory for the whole ancient Gaelic-speaking world in that linguist skirmish.
The larger and interminable "war of words", which has characterised the politics of language in Ireland since the 12th century, would soon resume in many parts of the country and in varying degrees of intensity.
This little vignette happened in beautiful Ballingeary, West Cork, in the early 1970s. I was among a group of young boys attending the August cursa Gaeilge at Colaiste na Mumhan.
My parents' ambition was that I would "get the honour in Irish" in the state exams. My own ambitions had more to do with getting to grips with a young girl, any young girl, behind the ceilidhe hall. Unsurprisingly, the teachers, ever vigilant around the ceilidhe hall, were in cahoots with my parents and determined to thwart my own ambitions - which they did . . . for a time.
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