Madam, - I fully support the call to make Irish an official language of the European Union (Editorial, January 13th). Perhaps, just perhaps, such a move might raise the profile of one of our cultural treasures. Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that the idea smacks of the kind of tokenism and hypocrisy that has characterised our attitude to the language for a very long time.
Wouldn't it seem typically Irish to see the president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, addressing the EU in Irish while Dáil Éireann does its business in English? Furthermore, if Irish were to become an official EU language, resources would have to be deployed to develop the tools to translate from Irish into other EU languages. An Irish-Estonian dictionary, a Polish-Irish dictionary and so on would have to be developed.
The shameful reality, however, is that there isn't even such a thing as a proper Irish dictionary (i.e. the Irish equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary). You can look up the meaning of an Irish word only by looking up an Irish-English dictionary which is now 25 years old.
For a country with such pride in its literary heritage, it would be a sad irony if we equipped translators in Brussels with the tools to translate Irish into 20 other EU languages while at the same time denying our scríbhneoirí Gaeilge the most basic tool that a writer can possess - a good dictionary. - Is mise,
CIARÁN MAC AONGHUSA, Nice, An Fhrainc.