Nanohedron wrote:
PB+J wrote:
I just finished Tomás Mac Síomóin, The Broken Harp, which makes an argument for why irish (he says) is failing based on genetics. ... A smart and interesting book even if unconvincing.
Smells of Social Darwinism, if you ask me.
PB+J wrote:
It is odd that irish is declining, given that it is so closely linked to nationalism
I think the worldwide presence of English as a
lingua franca has made English more convenient for the Irish on a day-to-day basis, and inertia sets in. Tourism alone probably has a huge impact on it.
I was and am extremely wary of genetic explanations for behavior. It's oddly not social darwinism though. He cites scientific studies of trauma victims--victims of the holocaust, and victims of famine on Holland during WWII--that conclude that gene expression in adult sis heritable in their children--genes themselves are not altered, but the expression of traits is effected. I asked a friend who is a research biologist working on the brain and he said yes, there is some credible evidence that points towards the heritability of gene expression. Mac Síomóin thinks trauma in the past explains the persistence of negative traits in the irish today--so it's not genetics per se, it actually reinforces
cultural explanations.
It's interesting to compare the two books. Mac Síomóin is a very literate man with a deep love of the literary tradition in irish but also kind of a Jeremiah scolding people for failing their heritage. He decries BBC TV, American cultural hegemony, and pop culture while
Motherfoclóir is genial and full of humor and treats Irish as a living source of earthy and poetic insight. With MacSiomoin the stakes are really high and everything is fraught, while Motherfoclóir is more about the varied ways language expresses human intelligence. He clearly loves Irish, but he also takes a lot of delight in English phrases as well