Vol. 504 No. 1
2 Mr. O'Shea asked the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands the urgent proposals, if any, she has to enhance the terminology of the Irish language and to provide new dictionaries to stimulate a nationwide debate regarding the language; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11170/99]
My Department does not have responsibility for terminology in the Irish language nor for the provision of dictionaries relating to that language. Responsibility for the development of terminology lies with the Department of Education and Science.
One of the functions of An Foras Teanga or The Language Body, the North-South implementation body to be established under the Good Friday Agreement, is the development of terminology and dictionaries in the Irish language. This work will be effected on the establishment of that body.
Does the Minister of State agree that little or nothing is happening in the organic growth of terminology in the Irish language, even in the Gaeltacht areas? For a language to be real and alive it must grow organically. When one hears that there are 20,000 new words per year coming into English it gives a measure of where we are. What Department is responsible for the development of terminology? What role will the Minister of State have according to the new Foras Teanga and will his Department have new responsibilities as a result?
De réir mar a thuigim, tá Coiste Téarmaíochta ann i láthair na huaire. There is a Coiste Téarmaíochta which works on this but it is not the responsibility of this Department.
Traditionally Irish has had many more words in it than English, which is an advantage. There has been a great deal of development in the use of Irish terminology. Creating terminology has not been a difficulty; until now dissemination of that terminology was the problem. We know of the difficulties that arose in the Gaeltacht as a result of a lack of meáin chumarsáide. From the 1930s to the 1950s words like nurse and bicycle were common in the Gaeltacht as these terms were introduced through English. Raidio na Gaeltachta and TnaG have given great service in accepting new terminology and making people aware of it. For example, "idirlíon" is now accepted for the Internet.
I often wonder if there is a necessity in English for some of the terminology that has been created. Much Eurospeak is beyond my comprehension until it is explained to me in ordinary English. I am not a big jargon man; much of the jargon we have is unnecessary, and I hope we do not introduce jargon into Irish as it would destroy it in the same way that Shakespeare's English has been destroyed.
Which Department is responsible for the Coiste Téarmaíochta? I do not propose to jargonise Irish, but given the age of information technology, does the Minister of State accept that there is a need to expand Irish terminology so that Irish can cater as effectively as English with the involved nature of that terminology? My difficulty is that there has been a trough period in Irish words evolving through usage, and Irish has not moved forward in this regard. The Minister of State did not say when the Foras Teanga will be put in place, but when it is will it be responsible to his Department? How will it be linked to Government Departments or State agencies?
It was an oversight on my part not to be more precise. If one looks at the Act passed recently dealing with the Agreement, which has not been implemented because of other difficulties, the Foras Teanga would be responsible to the Ministers. Those Ministers would be the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, the Minister for Education and Science and the appropriate Ministers in the North who would be dealing with language and related issues. One is not talking about a specific Minister.
Within the Act there is a power to give any direction, general or specific, from the Ministers together, North and South. The Coiste Téarmaíochta is at present under the Department of Education and Science and is not the responsibility of my Department.
Irish has been bedeviled recently by the effort to find direct translation of words in English. We get translations that are in no way dúchasach and there may already be a way to say these things in Irish. Translation and finding matching terms in Irish is a very highly skilled occupation, and we should avoid direct translation. Words such as "Internet" and sites on it need Irish names, but we have found that it has not been hard to find words in the Irish idiom that give a graphic description of the term that is sometimes better than the English. Take "software", which is "bogearraí" in Irish. That is not a problem because "bog" and "earraí" are old Irish words. There is a need to develop terminology, and that will become a very important function of the North-South Irish language body. We will have to have a focus for the dúchas, and then, having created terms, we must disseminate them, which has been a problem. The word "rothar" existed from the time the first bicycle was invented, but "bicycle" was commonly used in the Gaeltacht by people who had very little English because there was no way to disseminate "rothar" as there were no meáin cumarsáide. The big change for those who use Irish every day has been the meáin chumarsáide láidir béalGhaeilge in Raidio na Gaeltachta. That station has introduced new words into common usage as they are introduced in English by using them in news and official reports every day.
Cohesion is a big European word for all sorts of things that have nothing to do with cohesion. How did we get familiar with this buzz word? We got it through the meáin cumarsáide, and we need vibrant meáin cumarsáide in Irish to make sure that new terminology is disseminated widely. We are moving in that direction, but I hope we do so in a way that does not lose the rich dúchas of the language.
There are people who think that Irish has some difficulty with the modern world, though I do not include Deputies Kenny and O'Shea among them. I often hear native speakers in my constituency describe things in Irish that are indescribable in English. There is no particular lack in Irish as a language. Going back to what I said earlier about Douglas Hyde and knowledge of Irish words, I do not think we have a problem creating words or terminology. However, we have, historically, had a problem with dissemination. I hope the money we are spending on the meáin chumarsáide will deal with that.
In sharing the Minister's view that we should, as far as possible, retain the dúchas, the case he is making seems to be for updated dictionaries. When new terms come into common use in the English language, we would then be able, using the dúchas terminology, to cover new definitions. There should be a definitive dictionary to which people can refer. From time to time, I look up technical terms in the dictionary and I am of the view that they do not come from the dúchas but from Gaeilge Bhaile Átha Cliath. Can we expect to see a comprehensive, modern dictionary in the Irish language in the near future?
That is part of our remit. A great deal of work has been carried out on dictionaries but even the Oxford dictionary requires constant updating. There are a number of issues here, one of which relates to terminology. Relying on dictionaries per se could give rise to problems. When the word ‘rochtain' – meaning access – started to appear in documents, I was not sure what it meant. Any native Irish speaker would say ‘an bealach isteach go dtí' or ‘fáil isteach go háit' and that would be perfectly correct. If one were to use the word ‘rochtain' to a native Irish speaker in Connemara they would ask ‘céard faoi atá tú ag caint?'. One would answer ‘tá mé ag iarraidh go mbeadh fáil isteach do chuile dhuine go dtí áit éigin'. We must be wary of the one/one match.
When we create official names for things using ordinary words in conjunction with each other, we should at the same time create an equivalent Irish version. We have a responsibility to do that. When we use terms such as Agenda 2000, we should immediately create an Irish equivalent which would be accepted as the standard Irish version of the English term. We must create that type of bilingualism. I regret that there seems to be less inclination now to give Irish names to agencies and bodies than there was in the past when everyone referred to Bord na Móna as Bord na Móna and to Bus Éireann as Bus Éireann. We could make our lives a good deal easier by ensuring official bodies or programmes within Government or the public service have official Irish titles.
The time for Priority Questions has expired. We cannot take Question No. 3 but Questions Nos. 4 and 5 can be transferred to Ordinary Question time.
