‘Where’s the eye hospital?’ shouted pretty much everyone standing outside a building signposted eye hospital in Irish.
‘An tAonad Oftailmeolaiochta’ read the sign on the brand new building and then in much smaller letters underneath ‘Opthalmology’, which is one of those English words that twists the tongue and isn’t much easier.
Good for the Irish, I say, because even though I don’t speak it, I respect the fact they are trying to preserve their own language and identity. In any case, let’s say I did mind, what has it to do with me? I’ve only just got here.
There is a funny sort of person who goes to live abroad and instantly demands the place adapts to them. The builder boyfriend was fixing a roof when the English gardener of the lady he was working for started expressing his contempt at the local horse fair which was happening that weekend.
‘They’ve had a lot of trouble,’ he said, making a face. ‘Well, it’s been going 450 years so I suppose the odd bit of trouble is inevitable,’ said the BB, who was brought up by Irish tinkers and always defends the travelling folk. But leaving aside prejudice against travellers, which is the last kind of racism being universally and disgracefully defended, the BB agrees with me about Irish nationalism.
He likes the fact they have Irish flags flying everywhere as standard and everything official is written in Irish, and if you don’t like that, as a newcomer, then please know that they’re not bothered.
The only slight problem when they put the Irish word first and the translation beneath in small letters is the Irish don’t speak much Irish any more, as a rule.
So I was standing outside this new eye hospital after parking the car in a hurry and getting my next-door neighbour inside before coming back out to check the car was all right with her blue badge on it.
And when I came back to the front steps I found a crowd of confused people with eye problems trying to read the small print translation on the sign.
‘Is this opto… opta…?’ said one woman. ‘Ofta… ofta…?’ said another.
‘Eyes!’ I shouted. ‘Eye hospital! In there!’ And they all gratefully proceeded up the steps.
I’d done my good deed for the day. Once she was checked in, my neighbour and I had to find waiting area 2, only the sign said ‘Ait Feithimh 2’, so we went past that blithely.
If you spelt the words phonetically – ‘At Fev 2’ – I looked it up later out of interest – you could teach it to everyone to really keep it going as a language.
Maybe they should put the traditional Irish spelling first, the English beside, then a phonetic version beneath.
I suspect the authorities know full well the practical limitations. The crowds stand outside the new eye hospital squinting at the word Oftailmeolaiochta and are late for their cataract appointments.
But that’s not the point. The signage is saying to passers-by: to whom it may concern, here is our language. This is Ireland. You are in Ireland. We are Irish. Get it?
Let’s say I did mind the signs being in Irish, what has it got to do with me? I’ve only just got here
Yes, I get it. I wind my neck in here because it’s very nice of them to have me. I took my next-door neighbour for her eye scan because she’s been very welcoming to me and I want to show her I’m grateful, that I value her friendship, that I value living in her country. It’s beyond me why anyone ever does the opposite, which is to say arrives somewhere then starts insulting the people already there about how much they don’t like them or their country, and demanding they make it more like the place they’ve just left – which raises the question, when they’ve changed it to that, what then? Do another bunk?
Aside from the irrationality of this position, it’s the worst form of rudeness. If the leftie English gardener, snipping bits of branches while wincing, is so snotty as to look down his nose at horse fairs, then why the hell did he come to Ireland?
All I can say is we went to this traditional horse fair and we wandered around the stalls selling car parts, bed sheets, rugs, toys, chainsaws and horses held on ropes between the stalls, including a mare with her foal, and we thought it utterly fantastic.
‘Ohhhh!’ I said as we stood there watching the little dun foal nuzzling its big grey brood mare of a mother. ‘That’s a very nice animal,’ said the BB, before declaring we couldn’t take on more.
When the unsold horses had been loaded up, a band started playing Dirty Old Town, which Ewan MacColl wrote about growing up in Salford.
It was a treat to listen to it in this village square festooned with tricolours, horse muck all over the streets, the BB drinking a pint of Guinness from the Southern bar, teenage girls dressed up to the nines, children and old people dancing after dark, and the buzz of a feeling that everyone was exuding the same happiness at being there.
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