Sunday 30 August 2009

Liam Carson


…de la Irish Indepent:

Irony' was how one friend described Declan Lynch's article on Irish, 'No surrender ever to the enemy within'. (Sunday Independent, August 23, 2009). I then showed it to my partner who thought it went well beyond the bounds of irony into the realms of gratuitous offence.

And offend it does.

Why? I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, with whom I speak Irish. For her, it is the language of affection and play. It is, therefore, disturbing to read Lynch's comments that "the majority of us cannot hear that language being spoken, in any context, without hearing some distant echo of physical and sexual and psychological abuse".

To respond with anger to Declan Lynch's article was an immediate impulse. I'd prefer, rather, to ask him why he uses hurtful and abusive language -- Irish is the "language of the enemy, of the abuser"; the "whine" of Irish; "children being tortured"; this "mad thing"; "bullshit"…

No comments: