O’ Connell Street, Dublin

@DjangoD wrote:

Is this true??? Who are you on about?

It’s true alright. Sinn Fein carried out the stunt at the beginning of Seachtain na Gaelige to hightlight their proposal for all signs in the capital to have the Irish street name in the prominent font.

That sign was erected by some Gaeilgoirs last year. I don’t see any point in having Irish in large italics and English in much smaller font below. It’s ugly.. a terrible design. I much prefer to older signs that are in Gaelic script.

Over the past 2 years, DCC have started replacing signage around the city with Irish and English in the same font size and style.

As of March 2009, all government bodies must display both languages in equal font size, with preference for Irish. The legislation only applies to new or replaced signage. Public recorded announcements now have to be fully bilingual, so expect to hear a lot more Gaeilge on the DART and Luas over the next few years!

Official Languages Act Handbook: http://www.coimisineir.ie/downloads/Official%20Languages%20Act%20Guidebook_eng.pdf

@GrahamH wrote:

but around the back of what appears to be a munitions dump in the arse end of Monagahan.

Fucking LOL! 😀

Am totally shocked at this Gaelgoir stunt. They are a minority and are forcing their views on the rest of us. This is an English speaking country and there is a long history of that language being given greater prominence. I don’t agree with the new regulations that give greater prominence to Irish – it is a minority language.

Not that this is relevant to the O’Connell St stunt. It doesn’t give them any legitimacy. It’s littering, vandalism and shows a reckless disregard for heritage.

On a side note the lightning conductor should really be moved off the sign too.

@Satrastar wrote:

I appreciate that it was intended to draw attention to heritage, rather the opposite of “a reckless disregard for heritage” as you said.

But the sign they covered was more correct than the one they placed!

C’etait un Rendezvous is the name of the movie…

@Satrastar wrote:

Whether in common usage or not, it is part of Irish culture and Irish heritage and should be given the recognition it deserves.

It has equal treatment so what more do you want? Millions upon millions is wasted every day on translating documents which hardly anybody will read in Irish. Even in the Gaeltacht areas I’ve been to, most people speak English on a daily basis.

Although, not so good for motorists I’m still a fan of these.

@igy wrote:

Not that i want this thread to veer off-course into an Irish language discussion, but I disagree about making the signs English only.

Even if you ignore any heritage, preservation or language-encouragement, at the very least we should have standard street signs with both languages for the benefit of visitors.
The Oxford Street example above is something that’s done (in my brief experience of London) well and consistently.
I struggle to think of any category of street furniture or signs in Ireland that are either consistent or well maintanted.
Maybe a standard street sign in city center areas (I’m not advocating removing the very old ones by the way) is to be encouraged? I can’t imagine leaving Irish out of that.

I’ll give you one reason, but it is A personal one; when is the last time you heard anyone asking for a pint, a news paper or a packet of fags in irish in Dublin? Personally speaking, I’ve never heard anyone speaking the thing (in Dublin). My Grandmother, who was born in 1891 in Dublin, and lived to the ripe old age of 104 years, never spoke a word of it. As an infant, I was often beaten to a pulp to learn it by some mad (Christian) brother from Cork who also taught us that Cork was the capital of Ireland !!
It is as alien as Russian to me when I see it on road signs in Dublin! If it is to be preserved, so be it, as long as it’s not in my city: Dublin!
Rant terminated.

I love the Irish language but I dislike the semi-jingoistic and historically illiterate way it is often promoted. In this case, I have no sympathy for this sign placement. Irish has simply never been a working language of Dublin city during its history. Artificially imposing Irish names with dubious or no provenance on geographical features represents a somewhat pathetically futile attempt at linguistic imperialism. Why not just accept that this Island has had many languages (not just English and Irish) each of which has it’s own culture, history and value?

In contrast, having spent some time in a particular part of the country, I would know the Irish names of not only the villages and townlands but even of seemingly random sections of road or collections of fields which had been endowed with names. The Irish names belonged in this case – they were part of the culture, had been in use for centuries at least and in many cases could be sensibly interpreted and meant something. In contrast, “Sraid Ui Connaill Iocht” is just makey-upey bollox and has nothing to do with the the Irish language or its promotion. If this is seen as promoting Irish or this is the sort of thing promoters of Irish spend their time doing, then no wonder it’s in such poor shape.

The whole idea is completely misplaced anyway and represents an ignorance of the factors which allow “small” languages to flourish; there are examples in Europe of such small languages dominating without having a written form at all. Being plastered all over signs in the form of made up names for places is not a necessary condition for a language to be widely used.

The broader exercise is linguistically suspect in the extreme particularly with dictionary translations of English names which often result in incongruous unusable results or the phonetic transcription using Irish spelling which seems completely pointless. What does it achieve to use Irish spelling to badly represent English words and sounds?