Dialectical Confusions

On December 14th 1921 the underground revolutionary Parliament of the Irish Republic (Dáil Éireann, phonetically Dawl Air-in) met to debate the Anglo-Irish Treaty that was, with its ratification, to become the founding document of the independent Irish state. It was also the basis of the division that led, by the middle of 1922, to a relatively brief and small-scale, but, unsurprisingly, bitter and consequential, civil war.

Opening the debate, then President of the Dail government and an iconic figure in Irish politics from 1916 until his retirement as head of state in 1973, Eamon de Valera started off in Irish:

Tá fhios againn go léir cad é an fáth go bhfuilimíd anso iniu agus an cheist mhór atá againn le socrú. Níl mo chuid Gaedhilge chó maith agus ba mhaith liom í bheith. Is fearr is féidir liom mo smaointe do nochtadh as Beurla, agus dá bhrí sin is dóich liom gurbh fhearra dhom labhairt as Beurla ar fad.

But then switched to English:

Some of the members do not know Irish, I think, and consequently what I shall say will be in English.

My Irish is poor enough, but I can translate the first bit roughly:

We all know why we're here today and the great question that is before us. My Irish is not as good as I would like it to be. I would prefer it if I could put across my thoughts in English and I hope for the same reason that everyone will speak in English throughout the debate. [italics added]

So in Irish it's "I'll speak English because I can't Irish well enough", in English it's "I'll speak English because these fools won't understand me in Irish". You chancer Dev!

Another story, heard on the radio this evening: Dev is conducting a cabinet meeting some time in the thirties or forties - in Irish. In Irish, that is, until near the end when de Valera breaks into English and says: "Given its importance, we shall discuss the next item in English."

It's doubtful whether Dev's reputation will ever recover from Alan Rickman's brilliant rendition in the film Michael Collins. The first incident doesn't exactly disabuse one of the notion that there was indeed something rather slippery, a touch of the cute hoor about "The Long Fellow" - the joke about whom apparently went that, unlike many other independence leaders, there had never been a street named after him because "they couldn't find a street long enough, narrow enough and crooked enough to fit de Valera".