GUEST,dáithí - 02 Jun 15 - 06:44 AM

Oh dear dáithí perhaps you should read more, the "English" and later the "British" did exactly the same in Scotland and in Wales - Ireland was not singled out for special attention - as for the rest of it well that sort of behaviour was pretty much par for the course for all the nation states that acquired "Empires" during the course of the last 600 years. Prior to the Acts of Union coming into force to create what became known as the United Kingdom the other superpowers of Europe threatened the security of the British Isles by playing primarily the Scots and Irish for complete and utter fools and the daft beggars obliged them by falling for it every bloody time (Usual line was: "You rise up in rebellion and we will supply you with men, arms and money" - none of which ever materialised in any sort of quantity that would save the "rebels" let alone make any sort of success of the rebellion).

On the language thing however the British Missionary Society has been credited with saving rather a high number of languages from extinction by recording those languages in a written form for the first time and compiling their very first dictionaries.