Kicked out of a Taxi for speaking Irish.

I was beaten by an Irish teacher in school because I had trouble learning the Irish language. Nobody cared back then either.

I was kicked out of a taxi because the driver thought I was spitting at him.

I was talking Welsh.

Yet the amount of times I hear the "shur,we're the best of friends,we're all celts" when Irish people mention scottish people,laughable really how naive some folk are. IMO the runts of the litter in Britain,with sincere apologies to the 3 nice scottish people I have met in my whole life.
Even though the cabbies boss comes across as a real gem in the interveiw,it is most amusing to see the forelock-tugging,self-flagellating responses of some posters about the language when it is a secondary or even tertiary factor in this whole story.

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

I always hated it at school. Funnily enough I had an outpatient appointment at University hospital Galway recently and their were 2 girls sitting next to me, probably in their early 20's. I thought they were speaking an Eastern European language, until the girl was called into her appointment and I recognised the name as an Irish name.

If asked I would consider myself Irish not European. I just find all the pushing of the Irish language irrelevant to the majority of Irish peoples lives and I think it'd be better to focus on the modern progressive Irish culture rather than dreary suicide inducing poetry and a language most people have no interest in.

My in-laws are English and based on what they see and here from a tourist perspective, they consider Ireland to be 50 years behind England. When in fact we're anything but. We should be promoting ourselves as a modern country to attract foreign investment instead of persisting with a twee and dated image of Ireland.

See I find that kind of "what will the neighbours think" kind of attitude more cringey and indicative of an out-dated inferiority complex about what "real countries" think of us. Ireland does reasonably well with attracting foreign investment, and the twee dated image actually serves us pretty well tourism-wise, it's the poor tourists that are getting tricked there. It was more than a few years ago but a survey of American visitors to Ireland found that (I think) more than half of them cited The Quiet Man as a contributing factor to their decision to visit. Most tourists are fascinated by the Irish road signs, fag warnings etc in my experience.

And, I'd say things like our atrocious health service, drink culture, bad roads and public transport, attitude to political accountability do a lot more damage to how sophisticated and modern we appear than teaching Irish in schools or encouraging its use. The pretence that it's anything but a niche interest (let alone the official first language of the country) is a bit annoying, but not high up my list.

I live in Galway, hear it spoken a lot and I find it nice, if I've been away from the wesht for any period of time it's lovely to hear even though like I say I'm nowhere near fluent myself.

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

You're keeping track of my posts I find a lot of Irish gobsh*tery quite embarrassing and tedious tbh. Irish has no relevance to me or my life or to the lives of anyone I know. I just don't get the point of pumping money into it or banging on and on about it. So, some taxi driver kicked someone out of a car for speaking Irish, for all anyone knows he could've mistaken if for Polish or Swahilli. But sure why not take it personally as an affront to the Irish? More English oppression of the Irish:rolleyes: Jesus, people have little else to be worrying about.

WTF are you on about? Did you even read the article before rushing in to have your pointless snipe at the Irish language? English oppression - the incident happened in Scotland.

Taxi driver knew damn well what language they were speaking, and even if he didn't it's of no concern to him. All he needs to know is a destination. Kicking someone out of a taxi because you either a) don't understand or b) actively dislike the language is a relatively rare occurrence which is why it's being discussed here.