Briefly Noted

The Wall Street Journal (European edition, subs. req'd) editorialises about the Irish Republic's new law requiring single Irish language placenames for towns in the Gaeltacht (designated Irish language areas). The Journal's take is basically the correct one -- that it's another piece of government tokenism towards a language the idea of which we all like in the abstract, but which few of us actually speak:

And although its study has been compulsory since independence in 1922, most Irish never learn more than a smattering of it, despite the huge sums the state spends every year supporting the language's use. Politicians honor its use more in the breach than the observance, conducting most parliamentary debates in English while preaching the virtues of Irish to the masses.

Their main focus is on potential confusion for drivers:

Requiring the use of Irish place-names, meanwhile, is being sold as a way of making life easier by unifying around one name. We'll try to remember that next time we're lost in County Kerry.

Of course, it's possible to get utterly lost on Irish roads even in areas where the cupla focail are not an issue.

UPDATE: The WSJ tale of sudden changes in what signposts say is not quite apposite, as this post explains; scroll down to comments.