Is buaine focal ná toice an tsaoil and may the buggy debate roll on

YESTERDAY, at lunchtime, headed for a tiny seafront restaurant, I encountered a group of people in their late 20s or early 30s, accompanied by a couple of toddlers and holding on to the business ends of buggies laden with sleeping babies.

And they were mad as hell. Collectively, they constituted an impromptu protest group.

Because the restaurant, apparently since their visit of the previous week, had put up a sign. NO BUGGIES ALLOWED.

“That’s discrimination,” one of the young parents said. “They can’t do that.”

“I have a sleeping baby,” another of them announced. “What am I supposed to do?”

One of the more risk-averse males suggested that the group might walk a bit further down the road to where there was another restaurant and eat there.

No bloody way, he was told. For a variety of reasons, none of them wanted to kick the brakes off the buggies and start walking.

They’d got enough exercise for one day already. Or the restaurant further down didn’t have potted crab with crème fraîche and lemon. Or — this was the view of a militant minority — they were not prepared to abandon their basic civil rights in the face of restaurant buggy apartheid.

An amused passer-by (or would-be passer-by: he and his bike couldn’t get past the group because were blocking the path and some of the road) gently told them that they were elevating their personal preferences into non-existent civil rights.

“If I wanted to bring my bike into the restaurant, they wouldn’t let me,” he pointed out.

What, one of the young mothers demanded, had that got to do with anything? “Have you LOOKED at your buggies recently?” the by-stander asked. “They’re much more complicated and space-absorbing than the average bike. Articulated HGVs, they are. Practically.”

“But they’re for CHILDREN,” one of the buggy-pushers told him, confident that this changed everything.

“Doesn’t matter who they’re for,” he said. “Why should waiters in a little restaurant have to navigate around four or five yokes as big as bikes? And while we’re at it, any chance you’d let me pass?”

Mortified, two of them pulled their wheeled obstructions out of his path. A man who had been listening to the exchange from the top of the stairs leading to the restaurant came down the steps and introduced himself as the owner.

Maybe, he suggested gently, the buggies occupied by children who were wide awake could be folded up and left on the veranda?

The children from each of them could be seated in the high chairs the restaurant had for this purpose. He would be prepared to stretch a point and let in the two buggies occupied by sleeping babies.

One of the mothers wanted to continue the fight on principle, but hunger and mollification on the part of the others overcame her and within minutes the entire bunch were gathered around a table in the window, ordering their starters, explaining what a jet-ski is to a questioning two-year old riveted by the appearance of one in the harbour, and asking waiters to warm up baby bottles against the moment when one of the sleeping infants would wake up and want sustenance.

The episode lasted perhaps eight minutes, but required protest, discussion, negotiation, concession and consensus, all of which were achieved by the use of the spoken word.

ON the fly, without much thought, each one of the people involved in the negotiation was arguably more lucid, expressive and interesting than they would have been if they’d been forced to put in writing the issues they were expressing.

That’s because the spoken word is used for as much as 80% of our communications every day. The spoken word is important from the moment we’re born. The written word comes later.

The lexicon of the written word is richer and its products last longer — hence Oscar Wilde’s expressed regret that he had poured out his genius at dinner and lunch tables, rather than making sure his every bon mot was committed to print.

The written word is the equivalent of a motorway: barred to bikes, invalid carriages, learner drivers, animals and pedestrians. It requires a bit of training and effort and adults do most of it. The spoken word, on the other hand, is for all of us.

That’s not to say that the spoken word cannot provide challenges. Ava Gardner memorably observed of fellow film star Clark Gable that he was “the sort of man who, if you said ‘Hello, Clarke, how are you?’ he’d be kinda stuck for an answer.”

For the most part, however, because we speak it every day, we learn the rules of the spoken word — its grammar and syntax — without ever needing to know the terms describing those rules.

For generations, with predictably poor results, we’ve tried to learn the Irish language the other way around.

With the exception of native speakers, who have been immersed in spoken Irish from birth, the rest of us have been forced to come to terms with Irish largely through its written version, ploughing our way through the laugh-a-minute pages of Peig Sayers, learning grammatical rules by heart and rhyming off sean-fhocail as if they had merit. In English, we try to eliminate clichés. Only in Irish do we give cultural value to the repetition of the obvious and banal: Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin. Briseann an dúchas trí shúile an chait.

Yesterday, the Minister for Education and Science made a significant, if controversial, move away from the traditional approach to learning Irish.

That move will mean that kids who progress, this coming September, from primary to secondary schools will face a radically different Leaving Cert exam in Irish.

Inevitably, this in turn means a radical change in the way they learn the language.

Mary Hanafin has — rightly — up-ended the Leaving Cert paper to favour oral Irish. Marks for the spoken language, at higher and ordinary levels, will go from 25% to 40%.

Marks for the aural section of the exam will be reduced to 10% at both levels, which means that the written element of the paper will be — for the first time — worth only 50% of the marks. So all those memorised essays, faithfully reproduced on the day of the exam, will be much less useful and instead, pupils will — sensibly — be judged much more on how well they can talk Irish.

According to the department, the new marking scheme will apply to those taking the Leaving Cert in 2012 and is the first time since oral Irish was introduced into the Leaving Cert that the marks for ability to speak the language have increased.

Heading potential teacher-protest off at the pass, the minister says she’s asked An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta agus Gaelscolaíochta to advise on the development of resources to promote the teaching of oral Irish.

While they’re at it, they might usefully look at the urgent need to exterminate the sean-fhocal. Perhaps by reducing the marks of any student in the Leaving Cert who parrots one of these tedious old clichés…