I am re-reading some of Brian Friel's plays . Mr. Friel lays claim to being Ireland's greatest living dramatist . Apropo nothing he also hails from my home town . The mise en scene and characters in his plays are very familiar.
In his play Translations he deals with a well worn theme - the death of the Irish language. Friel has described it as "a play about language and only about language" . It is set in the fictional town of Ballybeg in County Donegal in 1833. The plot is straightforward. A local man returns home after six years away in Dublin. With him are English cartographers working on the Ordinance survey map of Ireland . Both Irish and English characters speak their respective languages and they cannot understand each other. This failure has ruinous consequences. Drama is as much about what is not said as what is expressed and understood.
When I was at University I was asked to contribute to the Irish language society . Though I donated I flippantly said there was no point as it was on its uppers. Language is a reflection of politics and power . We are exhorted to learn Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as these are the languages of the new economies. It's unthinkable now but in a couple of centuries someone may be asking for donations to keep the English language alive.
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