Kenny goes Irish

Kerrywoman tips me off to South Park as Gaeilge: yes, South Park is available in Irish. It got me thinking about globalisation. Irish is only spoken as a first language by 60,000 or so people, mostly because the British banned it - one of the major failings of the Republic is the stagnation of Irish as a spoken language, despite everyone learning it to 16.

So I imagine that dubbing South Park into Irish is seen as a way to persuade the youth that Irish is a viable language for everyday life (and no, I don't know what 'suck my balls' is in Irish). It's a great example of glocalisation, a horrible word which attempts to reproduce the hybrid product of globalisation meeting local culture.

Ironically for our religious and moral leaders, South Park in Irish wouldn't exist were it not for the Catholic Church. Why not? Here goes.

When the English captured Wales, they banned Welsh in public life, a situation that's slowly improving. Welsh survived solely because it was permitted in Chapels. The reason for that is that Protestantism insisted that everyone read the Bible in their own language and interpret it according to their own consciences. So even though Welsh was forbidden in other spheres, it was tolerated by the English authorities as the only way to get the Welsh to heaven. The language survived, and then started to thrive again in the twentieth century as it became a secular literary language again. One of the markers of this religious route is that Welsh swearing is mostly religious epithets - other words are adapted from English.

In Ireland, the population remained Catholic, despite the best efforts of the British. Catholicism demanded that the Bible and Church services be conducted in Latin, which only priests understood. He'd then tell you exactly what God meant, and you'd have to take his word for it. This lasted into the 1960s. The Irish language was completely banned and English made the only speech for public life and education. So it survived only round the edges and in secret - not even the Church would help. Numbers plummeted until only a tiny group still spoke it. When the time came to revive it, shock tactics were required - hence South Park as Gaeilge.

Globalisation's a funny thing.