Lessons on how not to promote our precious Irish language |
Picture the scene…
It’s a beautiful day in August 1974 and I’m on one of my first jobs with the local paper, the Donegal News, sent off to Gweedore to gather what the editor told me were ‘local notes’ – literally births, marriages and deaths.
This really was journalism at the most basic level, but being a whipper-snapper, just in the door of the media, I thought it was on a par with a major assignment for the Washington Post.
Anyway, I got off the bus in Bunbeg, and this being an Irish-speaking area, the first person who came past me – a big, burly fisherman – uttered the words “Lá breá anois”.
Brian Feeney: After two bad by-elections, it looks like voters no longer see Sinn Féin as the main opposition
Patrick Murphy: Sinn Féin can’t keep changing the label on the tin
After eight years at primary school and five years at secondary school learning Irish, including passing my Leaving Certificate, to my utter shame I offered the immortal response: “What?”
It would hardly have taken a genius to work it out... the sun was splitting the rocks, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and all he was saying was “lovely day”.
To digress a moment, on the way down on the Lough Swilly bus, a famed institution now sadly gone, myself and the photographer, Paddy Stevenson, were sitting behind a guy who kept sneezing every couple of minutes.........