For those of you who missed out on it, Richard Waghorne wrote an extremely amusing post on the Irish language. Apparently a few people were incensed. I myself thought it was quite funny and I sent it to my wife straight away. She, not being as familiar with Waghorne’s antics, was quite convinced that it was a parody.

I didn’t have time to prepare a response due to other constraints. Soon after the post appeared I found a post which covered nearly every argument that occured to me to put forward over at Talideon.com. Even the post title which had arisen in my mind was stolen by some clever soul working at Údarás na Gaeltachta before I could use it.

I’m quite convinced that Ireland is in the midst of a cultural revolution. The economy is booming in Ireland and the McCulture that can be offered by the global entertainment industry and the appeal of excessive drinking can only hold the attention spans of an affluent population for a limited time. The popularity of the Gaelscoileanna are growing rapidly and visits to Irish classes in the Gaeltacht are booming. TG4 offers reasonable entertainment value which is at least as good as most of the programming on the english language stations. And now, we find that even youtube.com has modern Irish music in its repertoire.

As evidenced by the juggernaught that is the Welsh language, or the meteoric rise of Finnish, It doesn’t take long for people to take back their native tongue. All it takes is the will to see it used.

I look forward to the day when dinosaurs like Richard Waghorne will have to make a choice of whether to move into the modern era or hide under the swiftly fading shadow of Englands hegemony.