the wedding in madrid a few weeks back had two parts to the guests. the spanish part (about 60%) and the irish part (40%).

the grooms father gave a speech during the afters that was in english with bits of spanish and irish aswell. at one stage he used a funny irish phrase to which a few people laughed, then he translated it into spanish and lots of people laughed. then then english speakers waited for it to be translated into english, but it wasnt. at that moment i looked around and could see a lot of irish people my age whispering to themselves. i could hear what a few of them were saying: “my irish is really bad, its junior cert level [irish state exams for 14year old] at best”. it was a slightly funny/surreal/tragic/sad moment.

anyway, irish is now an official eu language:

the irish language is to be given official and working status in the european union. eu foreign ministers meeting in luxembourg today supported the proposal, which is now certain to be formally adopted this afternoon. irish is to be become the 21st official language of the european union. this will mean that from 1 january 2007, all key eu legislation will be translated into irish. plans to extend this to other legislation will reviewed four years later.