Normalise our native language, or lose it

Myles Duffy (Letters, Febraury 26) misses the point. The Irish language has never been nurtured by the State.

On the whole, the language has been an ornament atop a monoglot anglophone system.

Where a language is excluded from public or official business, that language goes into decline. This has nothing to do with the survival of the fittest, but is a matter of policy. The Dutch language has thrived in Belgium since the normalisation of its use in public life there was achieved. The same Dutch language is dying out just across the border in Dunkirk, where it was the majority language for centuries, because of its being banned from official spaces by the French state.