UK, Ireland /
Polish as Irelands Third Offical language? [123]
Hmm, this is the first I have heard of any move to have Polish made an official language of Ireland.
I live in Ireland, and take an interest in Polish matters here, maybe I spend too much time on the internet or studying Polish to not have noticed this....
(I wonder how many people were asked about this as a representative survey sample to speak for the "hundreds of thousands").
I believe the Polish Embassy figure of 170000+ polish in Ireland would be closer to accuracy than a figure of half a million.
Anyway, I think it is rather premature to think of making Polish or any other language besides the two we have already as an official language.
It is difficult enough as it is to maintian support for Irish as an official language. It requires a lot of resources, as for a start everything has to be translated into an official language and every part of every government organisation has to provide a full service in the language. This we fail to do even in Irish.
And then there are the inevitable usual questions which would crop up: What about the other cultural minorities? How many of each language group need to be resident here before their language qualifies as an official language? Is it not discriminatory to pick one and not others, etc.
Ireland has yet to learn how to cope with large non-national immigrant communities, and we're not very good at it.
As an example on the translation front I picked up a "Why do I need a TV licence" leaflet in the Post Office a little while back, written in about 10 languages. The Polish version was full of errors (no ogoneks on a and e, no dots or accents on z etc), whereas the romanian version was perfect. That shows a certain degree of chaos in its production. You'd expect them to get the Polish right before the romanian version!
Business has moved on faster. Banks and large companies selling things produce literature in Polish and employ Polish staff to communicate in Polish to their Polish customers. Chinese too, heh. There are adverts in Polish on buses and atm machines. Great for practicing my Polish on. Not so sure about the Chinese, a bit too difficult to learn I think, maybe when I have mastered Polish....
From my point of view, I am learning Polish because I think it is a part of Ireland's future. It is Ireland's third language, no doubt about that. As to being official, lets wait and see, say about 20 years.
We need cultural diversity in Ireland as we have been living in a cultural vacuum tube for too long.