Not Currying Favour

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Gregory Campbell DUP Assembly Member and MP for East Derry attempted to ridicule the use of Irish in the Assembly today.

When invited to speak by principal deputy speaker Mitchel McLaughlin, Mr Campbell replied: “Curry my yoghurt can coca coalyer“.

Irish speakers in the Assembly when called to speak, routinely reply “Go raibh maith agat, Ceann Comhairle” which means “Thank you, speaker”.

Mr Campbell was accused of “pure ignorance” by Sinn Féin Culture Minister Carál Ní Chuilín.

Ná bac leis.

Tá sé jalfrezi.

‘Curry my yoghurt’: ‘Pure ignorance’ NI Assembly clash over Irish language (BBC News NI)

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120 thoughts on “Not Currying Favour

  1. Am I Still on this Island?

    The guy doesn’t believe in evolution either. And he hates the LGBT community. And he’s not a fan of immigrants either. No surprise there, he’s a Unionist.

    1. ABM

      She was let out under the Good Friday Agreement.

      The world doesn’t revolve around gays, lesbians, cross-dressers, you know.

    2. ABM

      Evolution is a dated scientific theory. The way people like you go on about “evolution”, you’d think the church had a polar opposite position. They don’t.

      You might find some off-shoot of an off-shoot young earth creationist movement somewhere in remote USA who believe the earth is 6,000 years old and the dinosaurs are “made up”, but please don’t try and attribute these nut-job views to those of the Vatican.

      1. trobuff

        Ah there’s ABM now. Fabulous.

        1) Yes, evolution is dated. It’s been around for ages, and yet this guy still doesn’t believe in it.
        2) These people are Protestants. There has been no mention of the Vatican which, as it happens, has no offiical position on evolution, despite what certain Pope’s have said recently and further back.
        3) Pointing out a man’s hatred for particular groups is not about those particular groups, it’s about the man’s hatred.
        4) The world does not revolve around the Catholic Church you know.

        Sigh.

        1. Janet

          Agree to all points +
          3) Also so about his ego, just couldn’t resist trying to look clever in front of the other boys and girls. ..

    1. scottser

      did we ourselves not completely take the p1ss out of our own anthem here not a few short months ago – ‘shoving connie around the field’ and all that? taking offence at this muppet is really dropping your tone.

      1. Mikeyfex

        I’m allowed beat up my younger brother, Scottser, but if I see anyone else do it…

        That’s natural isn’t it? It’s not that much of tone drop.

  2. ahjayzis

    I really think the time has come for the world to stop holding NI’s hand.

    I mean if instead of reacting to their rattle-throwing childishness with high-level diplomatic talks with US Senators in the chair, we should just laugh at their immaturity and leave them be until they cop the feck on and learn to stand on their own feet.

    “Serious issues around flags and marching” would be treated as ridiculous bullshit if it was causing political instability anywhere else in the world.

    1. DD

      I agree. Have you ever watched BBC Northern Ireland news and wondered if it has been on a loop for the last 20 years? It’s all fleg, fleg, march, march, bitch, bitch.

      1. B Bop

        Every JCB in this country is utilised to dig deep along the border- let them float away to their “Rar rar Norn Iron” rants & hysterical fleg waving.

        1. Justin Disminute

          Or just send the Scottish land grabbers home once and for all. Hated everywhere they’ve ever ended up. Not to be confused with ordinary Scots mind you.

          1. CousinJack

            Leave Ireland to the pure blood gaels, who are whom exactly?
            Not those related to slaves taken from Britain by gaels during the dark ages?
            Not those with viking ancestory?
            Not the Normans?
            Not the anglonormans?
            etc, etc, etc
            Perhaps Britain should kick out all those with Irish abcestory in the last 20 odd generations

            Ignorant muppet

          2. Janet

            Humans are humans. Never any Irish land grabbers ? These kind of comments bring the argument/ attitude down to his level. Be better than that.

          3. Neilo

            Do you want us to disinter the bones of their forebears for repatriation to Scotland as well? People of planter stock have every right to live here and have done so for 400 years. Cultural chauvinism isn’t solely within the purview of Irish Protestants – the grotesque politicization of the Irish language by Sinn Féin got the response it deserved in this instance.

    2. rotide

      Couldn’t agree more with this and this clip illustrates it quite well indeed. Both sides are idiotic and no more proof is needed by yer womans po faced outrage.

      1. rotide

        It’s nothing like that. That’s just calling a black person a monkey which is obviously racist and offensive.

        Thats a guy using phonetics to speak in a foreign language and making a joke out of it.

        Nothing like as insensitive. People who are offended by this need to cop on a bit.

        If obama did it we’d be in stictches.

        1. Justin Disminute

          You’ve missed the point of that horrible sectarian dinosaur who’s been breast fed by Lpmdon through generations. This is the cause of its lack of evolution and greatly misplaced sense of security in its act of superiority. Its a slowly dying breed, it just hasn’t noticed yet. There was no fun intended in his comment. To dismiss it as such is to dismiss the hundreds of years of physical and mental torture all peoples of this island have had to endure, irrespective of their background, because they weren’t of the same tiny gene pool that was backed by the crown all those years ago. They’ll be gone soon.

        2. Parp

          How did you get to monkey from “black person” and “Ooogaboogabooga”?

          Only you made that connection.

  3. Janet

    Wow ! She is spot on about the ignorance. What a derogatory approach. At least she had the dignity not to get into a slanging match with this kind of childish BS.

  4. ivan

    Jesus – the DUP, champions of Ulster Scots (an accent, masquerading as a dialect, with notions of being a pidgin) taking the piss out of Gaeilge?

    That’s me ironymeter fupped again…

    1. colmobrian

      in fairness its more like a derivation of middle english which the english stopped using a few hundred years ago which just happens to be the time period this man still lives in

      1. Am I Still on this Island?

        It’s not a deviation of Middle English, no linguist believes that. Unless you can name one? It’s modern English (1700 onwards) with some archaic Scottish archaic words.

      2. ivan

        well yes, when you put it like that…. :)

        levels of current usage notwithstanding, the language he’s taking the mick out of is a trifle more ‘mature’ than the one he himself champions…

  5. missred

    I had to read that witty retort of his about six times to work out what he was trying to mock, even after clicking the link. If it has to be explained, Fleggory, it ain’t up to much. Absolute bigot

  6. Louis Lefronde

    No fan of the DUP, but let’s be clear about this Gaelic is a dead language, and despite all the efforts of deluded romantics and ‘Republicans’ it will never be the language spoken by the majority of Irish people ever again.

    It is a minority language spoken by a small number of native speakers plus a small portion of Dublin Gaelgeoirs largely working in the public service (teachers and civil servants) Yet the cost to the taxpayer of supporting it (education system) since the foundation of the state has been an outrageous burden on the taxpayer!

    1. scottser

      yeah maybe, but on the list of things to be outraged about, it’s way down there. i mean way down, just below garth brooks at croker.

    2. TheBeef

      You call it a dead language, then go on to state that it is ‘spoken by a small number of native speakers’. Might I suggest that you look up the definition of a ‘dead language’?

    3. Clampers Outside!

      My favourite is the fact that the constitution enshrines the Irish language as the first language of the country.
      But….
      If you want to do an academic study of the constitution through Irish you will have to revert to the original constitution…written in English!

    4. Janet

      Without deluded romance you might not be here to give your ( Canadian ? ) opinion ;)
      Personaly I have forgotten every word but a language represents a way of thinking too.. it is more than a few words you are forced to learn and I would champion Irish for that alone in a world becoming steadily more homogeneous and grey.

    5. Calerz

      I went to an English speaking school, studied it from 4-17 years and still not anywhere close to fluent. That to me is a waste of teaching hours. All my cousins went to Gael Scoil and speak it fluently. It makes me so jealous… If everyone went to gael scoil we would all be fluent and I never once heard someone say oh i wish I wasn’t fluent in that second language I have…

      1. IDB

        Or if English speaking schools taught Irish (and any other languages) correctly, we would all be fluent.

    6. Nigel

      There have been many, many outrageous burdens on the taxpayer. The Irish language is not one of them. I appreciate it’s in decline and I appreciate that it has been taught disastrously but I’d rather not see it killed off just yet.

      1. Calerz

        It is a tax burden if no one can speak it after years of study… They should instead put the money into turning primary schools into gael schools nationwide otherwise this debate will go on and on for years. Israel did it with Hebrew and it worked out pretty damn well…

        1. Langer

          Yeah and we can put all of those that dont want to speak it in the pale and rename it Dublinon……

        2. huppenstop

          Yes! I’ve long thought that art, sport and music should be carried out through Irish in primary school so kids get used to speaking it as well as getting formal instruction. They’d then be much better placed to start studying literature in secondary. But I wonder if the minimum standard of Irish required for teaching means that there are perhaps quite a number of teachers who may not have the ability themselves to have this level of sustained communication. I think we need to remember that the purpose of teaching Irish is supposed to be to produce competent speakers. We’re clearly failing and I think we need more imaginative approaches to teaching Irish in schools. We might find a lot of the bitterness against Irish which so often sours any debate about the language then disappears.

          1. Calerz

            Totally agree and a very good suggestion i might add… also your right too, there would be none of this moaning if we all could just speak the language… people get very frustrated when they feel like they have done so much study on something for years and have very little to show for it at the end

    7. Justin Disminute

      Maybe we should bludgeon a few Ulster Scots to death and then they’ll be a minority too. Balance it all up a bit.

      (Said in jest, to prove a poin,t before the really easily offended internetters – who selectively decide when to take things literally or not – end up with their knickers in a twist)

  7. Eoghany

    At the risk if sounding like a pure ignorant myself, what the hell was he trying to say? Like, what phrase was it supposed to be mocking?

    Sincerely,

    Lost.

    1. Spartacus

      From the BBC News item (link above):

      “When invited to speak by principal deputy speaker Mitchel McLaughlin, Mr Campbell replied: “Curry my yoghurt can coca coalyer”.

      In Irish, the phrase “go raibh maith agat, Ceann Comhairle” means “thank you, speaker”. “

      Don’t feel bad about having to ask. It’s a bit of a Broadsheet.ie thing to assume that all readers & contributors understand Irish, are Irish, and are living in Ireland.

      1. Frilly Keane, Anyone?

        Ah now Broadsheets’ readers being Irish and Living in Ireland is a bitta’ve a stretch.

        Dublin 2
        Dublin 4
        Dublin 6
        Dublin 8 ish
        Suth Conty Dublin
        Some more Dublin 2 and 4

      2. Eoghany

        Cheers for that Sparticus, but I’m still kinda lost. “Can colyer” sounds like ceann comhairle, agreed… But curry my youghurt doesn’t really sound like “go raibh maith agut”… But thanks for the explanation. He’s obviously just stupid as well as everything else!

    1. Ms Piggy

      Me too, I wasn’t educated here so I don’t speak Irish. I can figure out the second half of his ‘joke’, but not the first half. Hopeless bigot, either way.

      1. aoh

        If you say it in an Ulster-Irish accent (which any Irish speaker educated in the north does) then it’s actualy quite funny. But he’s still a plank.

          1. Sparks

            +1 And the faux outrage by the Minister looked like a spurious excuse to avoid having to answer the question.

        1. Frank

          Got it now, too !
          Say “Curry my yoghurt” in the WORST No’rn Ir’n that accent you can muster and that’ll sound fairly “Go Raibh Maith Agat !!!!!
          F.

  8. Frenchfarmer

    Thanks to the internet everyone, in about 15 years time, will end up speaking polyglot english but will be able to communicate with anyone else on earth and will probably use their local language to talk with friends.
    The Shepherdess and I talk to our Scots friends in Lowland Scottish and our French friends either in Parisian French or the local French Paysan mumble depending on which they speak
    English is already a mixture of just about every language ever yet every region of england has its own vocabulary.
    Soon english will cease to be english and a wonderful world of old languages will return.
    P.S. The Hallowed grammar of our child hood is just a bunch of academics trying to explain how we speak to each other.
    In academia a “rule” just means “that’s the way it is and here’s why” and is created so that somebody can claim it.
    Wot a load of tosh.

    1. Tom Stewart

      “Wot a load of tosh.”

      If you intended your last line to sum up your post, you did a good job.

  9. Anne

    Tá sé ina buachaill dána ar fad ar fad.
    Nil sé ina chónaí in aon India.

    Agus madra rua.
    Is maith liom cáca milis
    Agus Sharon Ní Bheoláin.
    Tá geansaí orm.
    Tá scamaill sa spéir.

  10. Zaccone

    Building a Berlin wall style fortification around Northern Ireland would really be the best solution to this sort of thing. Preferably with a dome over it. On the one hand, a giant public works scheme of this nature would help drastically reduce unemployment. And on the other, we wouldn’t have to hear about this sort of Norn Iron ridiculousness from both sides of their political spectrum ever again. Win-win.

  11. Niallo

    I think the late Rev Dr Ian Paisley put it best when he said Never, Never, Never, Never !
    And then later, oh go on then.

  12. Ppads

    Flag waving humour from Norn Iron by those who earn a living by waving sticks with a bit of cloth at the end of a property tax?

  13. rotide

    People really will find the slightest thing to be offended by.

    Cop yourselves on and realise he was just having a laugh.

    1. Janet

      Maybe he was but it’s fair to ask is it the time or the place ? Down the pub maybe with his mates maybe but in this situation call me old fashioned but I’d like to see a bit more respect/dignity as a spokesperson.

      1. Janet

        He knows he is going to get her back up with this claptrap so what’s the point ? How about an adult conversation? I mean the guy is going grey. Time to grow up ? All I see is disrespectful hate mongering.

      2. rotide

        Why not? If they’re going to live together they need to understand and be able to laugh with each other.

        It wasn’t even close to hate mongering, jesus. He has no background with the language and used the accurate phrase in a not particularly clever way. He might have plenty of other faults but this isn’t one of them

        1. Janet

          I guess I just don’t know him as well as you do and that’s ok. I was brought up a Prod in the South to NI parents, I was brought up to respect others values maybe even be over zealous that’s why I find this stuff embarrassing in this context. My point is yeah have a laugh in a social context but is this one ?

          1. Janet

            I mean it would be a stretch to call this a promotion of open mindedness and tolerance no matter how entertaining you might find it.

  14. Hashtag Diversity

    What’s the problem? He’s no worse than tens of thousands of kids every year in the Republic come the oral Irish examinations… kinda funny actually…

    1. Bingo

      I just blushed thinking about that.
      A horrific experience, a female teacher from another school asked me a simple question (I presume) in our native language & the blank look on my face cause her to take pity on me…..
      She said it in English & I mumbled a few words in Irish.
      FAIL!
      I felt really stupid.

  15. Kieran NYC

    On another topic, the double-jobbing some MLAs/MPs do is ridiculous.

    How is he supposed to represent his constituents in Westminster if he’s shite-ing on about this in Belfast?

  16. ahyeah

    This is the same guy who wanted the UK govt to put pressure on the Italians to ban (and remove from dictionaries) the word ‘Pravda’ because…”The use of this word shows Italy’s support for terrorism. I’m surprised the British government has not forced the Italians to withdraw this word, as well as others which sound similar to words used by the IRA.”

    Imbecile.

  17. inotherwords

    In the spirit of trying to build a more inclusive Northern Ireland, where people should be encouraged to celebrate their similarities rather than highlighting what divides them, isn’t it a touch rude of an elected representative to speak in the assembly in a language that others there don’t understand.

  18. Sinabhfuil

    Those who think this is all a bit of fun might consider whether they feel the same when a troglodyte white South African or Rhodesian jokes that “A cosy sick old lady, Africa” is the first line of the new South Africa’s national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.
    As for the usual sad chorus of “I learned Irish for 12 years and I can’t speak a word of it, so let’s stop teaching it”, this says more about the standard of language teaching in Ireland than it does about speaking and learning Irish.

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