Sinn Fein Irish is enough to mkae you sic (Belfast Telegraph)

[diy01]

Pól Ó Muirí of the Belfast Telegraph (and the Irish Times) takes Sinn Féin to task over their poor quality Irish language brochures. Too bad his editor can't be bothered to spell the name of either the writer or the party in question correctly.

Full article:
Sinn Fein Irish is enough to make you sic - Pol O'Muiri, Columnists - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Except Sinn Féin is misspelled too.

They stumble at the second hurdle...

By Pol[sic] O[sic] Muiri[sic]

Anyway...to the ARTICLE itself....is Mr. Ó Muirí being too critical or should Sinn Féin (who like to remind us that they are *THE* Irish language Party up North) pay more attention to the quality and accuracy of their Irish brochures etc?

Sinn Féin, the richest party in Ireland and a party always boasting about its commitment to Irish, has obviously not invested in something as mundane as an Irish-language dictionary or the marvellous computer spellchecker, GaelSpell (Irish Spell Checker and Irish Grammar Checker Software - faster than an Irish dictionary!).

Party president Gerry Adams writes: “Tá eolais (sic) sa (sic) foilseacháin (sic) seo ar obair do chuid Airí?” and “tá am deacair eacnamaíochta, naisiúnta (sic) agus idirnaisiúnta (sic) romhain (sic).” While the piece from Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, talks of “sochaí cothrom (sic) a cruthú” (sic), “obair furasta” (sic) “ar fud an Tuasiceart” (sic) and “chun phobail (sic) níos sábhailte (sic) a cruthú (sic) ?”

Conor Murphy’s wee bit of Irish has mistakes in it as does Bairbre de Brún’s, Michelle Gildernew’s and Gerry Kelly’s.

Yes, there is enough bad spelling to make anyone sic! The party has declared war on feminine nouns, the genitive case and the síneadh fada (forward accents), all the things that make Irish the distinctive language it is.

[Evil Eco-Fascist]

I had experience of that when I was in college. SF posters around campus in Irish, with genuinely atrocious grammar and spelling mistakes (not just one or two typos, but whole words spelt completely wrong), that even a cursory proofread by someone even half competent in Irish could have corrected. Even though they feel obliged to put the ''cúpla focal' on just about everything they publish, there does seem to be an attitude of "It's only Irish!" in SF too, when it comes to publishing documents.

[diy01]

For some, "it's only Irish" is exactly what it's about. For others, "at least it's in Irish" seems to suffice. And to hell with basic typos. "At least the effort is there." etc

That's irritating too.

[Kf]

You know one the greatest difficulties in learning Irish is the attitude of those already speaking, the sneering I hear about Adams Irish is incredible. Its linguistic fascism.

[diy01]

How come the thread title appears as "...enough to mkae you sic" in the recent discussions menu. But "...enough to make you sic" in the thread?

That would be an unfortunate typo by me considering the topic of the article.

[Culann]

Its true to say that there are a lot of gramatical mistakes pointed out there and that they should at least give official documents to someone le Gaeilge mhaith to proofread, but at least they make the effort. I'm sure Irish language brochures and leaflets of other parties are littered with mistakes too - thats if they have any Gaeilge in them!

[diy01]

You know one the greatest difficulties in learning Irish is the attitude of those already speaking, the sneering I hear about Adams Irish is incredible. Its linguistic fascism.

What are some examples?

[QuizMaster]

This is not a problem. SF are wise to something very important in electoral politics: There are more dumb people than smart ones. How do you think they get any votes?

[Evil Eco-Fascist]

You know one the greatest difficulties in learning Irish is the attitude of those already speaking, the sneering I hear about Adams Irish is incredible. Its linguistic fascism.

Gerry doesn't speak the Queen's English either. But you can be sure the English in their documents is spelt right!

[factual]

This is not a problem. SF are wise to something very important in electoral politics: There are more dumb people than smart ones. How do you think they get any votes?

By focusing on the smart ones and leaving the dumb to everyone else.