There’s a fascinating discussion going on at Crooked Timber about the proposal that Irish should be an official language of the EU. Maria‘s attitude in her post “What’s the Irish for boondoggle?” is clear from the title alone, and the opening paragraph nails it down further:
It’s not every day that Fine Gael, the Progressive Democrats and Sinn Fein agree on something. But they all say Irish should be an official language of the EU, and complain that the government (which the PDs are part of) hasn’t done enough to make this happen during the Irish presidency. Our presidency of the EU is at best a partial success because we haven’t managed to force the EU to spend an extra 50 million euro a year to translate speeches and documents into a language that no one actually needs them in. It’s the principle, you see.
I agree with her, despite my fondness for an Gaeilge, but a number of her commenters don’t, and the debate spills over onto Maltese as well while staying remarkably civil. (Via MetaFilter.)
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