Good to see an interesting discussion over on Slugger about this article in the Guardian and (behind the wall) in the Irish Times.

Manchán Magan reports meeting quite a bit of resistance when he wandered around Ireland trying to speak exclusively in Irish. He describes intimidation, rudeness and, as Sinéad Gleeson puts it, weird hostility, especially in Dublin.¹

This is all presented as an unfortunate reflection of the attitudes of Irish people to their language, borne of a variety of factors. I'm a little suspicious about this though. As a veteran of the Gaeilgeor movement, I've known many people to expect arrogance and sneering attitudes from Irish speakers towards their own lack of fluency.

I'm sure that Magan was entirely polite, but I wonder if what he was meeting was an impression that his behaviour was borne from supercillious attitudes about people who don't speak the language.

Here's what I think was going on: a man walks into my shop. I knows he speaks English perfectly well. He knows that I know this. He also knows that I don't speak Irish well at all (because I tell him). And yet he insists on continuing to speak to me in Irish.

Not very nice.

¹ Let's put aside the fact that the Irish Times carries an apology today because an exchange reported as taking place in the Ordnance Survey Office, where Magan tells of being roundly abused, didn't take place there at all.