Philippa, could you please tell me when was Irish banned from BBC N Ireland,I never knew that happened.

Now without bringing politics into this, more social stereotypes, was there not a fair amount of "protestants", N.Irish who kept the Irish language going. Please do not take this the wrong way I'm not trying to offend in any way.

I think Mc G of H has made the best argument for the preservation of the language, well it beats the pants of "what do you want to speak that old sh-t for" which my friends down south say. That's the sad part of the argument for saving Irish when some of the Irish themselves reject it.

There was a show on RTE the other night I forget which person, it was about a priest,the locals were not happy with him coming back to his home town to work, they thought he would impose Irish language on them. Goes to show stereotyes do not always work.

Well from my perspective and one who only knows a few words,the loss of the language will be a shame, so rather than as my contemporaries despise the sound of the Irish language I welcome it, especially with subtitles.

Now all I need is someone to explain Scots-Irish to me, again without any offence intended, are such languages a result of poor English and old words.But that's another subject.