Look, I get it, but people are allowed to have complex relationships with their language and history. I don’t know the specifics of this guy and I’m not exactly defending him (or his complaints, which seem petty), but nobody owes anything to a language because if their blood.

I’m Irish, and the oppression and near-loss of our language is a real pity, but I can’t deny either that we have have 150 years of real, actual Irish people speaking, writing, creating, singing, dreaming in English. Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, O’Brien, Heaney, Lynott, Sinead O’Connor, Samantha Mumba… they’re not less Irish for having created or performed in English.

It can be hard for Irish, native-English speaking people (i.e. to a statistical approxination, literally everyone) to understand the amount of effort and resources that are poured into funding Irish-language art that the majority of our modern nation cannot read or understand, in a language that they associate mostly with an abusive and failing school system and patriotic guilt, while English-language art in general struggles with the odd and cold assumption from our society that the ready market for English-language Irish art and culture abroad will pay for anything with actual reach. If you have a weird niche idea, you’d better make it even more niche by sticking a cúpla focail in it - now a tiny fraction can enjoy it, but at least you get paid.

The same applies every time I am frustrated with the state of our healthcare system in a waiting room and pass a tall stack of pointless support resources and documentation in the Irish language, the cost of which could have paid for at least one dose of medicine.

We have very little going for us resource-wise in Ireland, but by christ we can write in the global language at least, whether it be for job opportunities or art. If someone sticks a knife in me I shouldn’t be called a traitor for keeping the knife.