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Child Item

Kicked out of a Taxi for speaking Irish.

GaelMise

Kathleen McAleer, 21, a mental health nurse, was travelling in the car with three other passengers in the early hours of December 16 in Glasgow. She was travelling across the city with her friend and two first cousins from Donegal. Her cousins, Joseph and Anthony Blair, 19 and 21, are native Irish speakers.Ms McAleer claimed: "The taxi driver turned around and said to [her cousins] 'Stop speaking in that language'.
"We didn't really know how to take it. He said: 'When you are in Britain, it is English you speak.'
"I said to the driver 'Excuse me', shocked that somebody would say that to them. "She told the taxi driver that he was out of order, and she claims that he told the group to get out of his taxi.

Independant

Unfortunatly not all that surprising, plenty of people in Ireland that are just as intolerent of the Irish language.

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ShamoBuc

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Slow news day? Not another fcuking pointless thread about the Irish language, news flash, most of us don't give a sh*t about the Irish language, the sooner it dies out the better. Nothing personal, I'm just sick and tired of hearing some nonsense about the Irish language, it's been done to death at this point, if only it was stickied.

Then don't click on the " Kicked out of a taxi for SPEAKING IRISH" thread...problem solved;):rolleyes:

tayto lover

I was beaten by an Irish teacher in school because I had trouble learning the Irish language. Nobody cared back then either.

ShamoBuc

tayto lover wrote: »

I was beaten by an Irish teacher in school because I had trouble learning the Irish language. Nobody cared back then either.

Me too, but then again, all my teachers were Irish;)

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

Wattle

GaelMise wrote: »

Independant

Unfortunatly not all that surprising, plenty of people in Ireland that are just as intolerent of the Irish language.

You wouldn't get kicked out of a taxi in Ireland for speaking Irish so stop linking the two together. There is no link. A lot of people are indifferent towards the language. That's completely different from the bigotry that these people encountered.

tdv123

Were ever the Orange Order has a big presence people seem to have a blind hatred of people different to them.

SpaceTime

Well, the taxi driver would get a shock when people in England don't even realise he's speaking English an think a strong Glaswegian accent is "Scottish".

But, his statement isn't even fact and what's even more shocking is that Scots Gaelic sounds very similar to Donegal Irish, so he could equally have been chucking out highlanders / islanders too.

And, he's totally wrong given there are approximately half a million Welsh Speakers in Britain along with speakers of Scots Gaelic, Cornish and other minority languages native to the island itself.

Welsh has official language status too meaning that official publications etc and interactions with the UK Government must be possible in Welsh.

woodoo

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

It allowed us to communicate without the dutch bosses knowing what we were saying. They all spoke perfect English.

PizzamanIRL

Another "Can you say that in English?" thread?

tomwaterford

pablomakaveli wrote: »

Not surprised. In my personal experience people from certain parts of Scotland hate Irish people and not afraid to show it. Funnily enough when i've met people from NI from a unionist background over here, i've never had any problems with them. Scottish people on the other hand i have.

Ya I stayed in a hotel for a weekend over there before and was surprised by the horrible little under-current of dislike/put-downs aimed at irish guests staying there from the staff
have had a good few friend who ended up studying in edinburgh who have said much the same,seems to anyone over age of 25 (though maybe their classmates were just being polite to their face I told them:P)

Carlos Orange

Wattle wrote: »

You wouldn't get kicked out of a taxi in Ireland for speaking Irish so stop linking the two together. There is no link. A lot of people are indifferent towards the language. That's completely different from the bigotry that these people encountered.

The taxi driver is probably sick of people telling him English is a foreign language,as is said in the article. People can be touchy about claims like that.

stefan idiot jones

I was kicked out of a taxi because the driver thought I was spitting at him.

I was talking Welsh.

SPDUB

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Not just the Irish . I know of 2 cases personally - Italian used in a chipper here in Dublin to talk about the customers ( some very disparaging comments ) and Spanish used by Spanish students on Dublin Bus to make similar comments about the fellow passengers .

Nodin

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Slow news day? Not another fcuking pointless thread about the Irish language, news flash, most of us don't give a sh*t about the Irish language, the sooner it dies out the better. Nothing personal, I'm just sick and tired of hearing some nonsense about the Irish language, ............

I'm sick and tired of people who seem to have it in for anything Irish, personally speaking. "Not giving a shit" in their case seems to mean "throw abuse at any opportunity".

Pumpkinseeds

Nodin wrote: »

I'm sick and tired of people who seem to have it in for anything Irish, personally speaking. "Not giving a shit" in their case seems to mean "throw abuse at any opportunity".

Not at all, it's such a dire and dreary language and there hardly seems to be a week that goes by without some dull thread about the Irish language, usually descending into some tedious mess about 800 years of blah dee blah dee blah

crockholm

Yet the amount of times I hear the "shur,we're the best of friends,we're all celts" when Irish people mention scottish people,laughable really how naive some folk are. IMO the runts of the litter in Britain,with sincere apologies to the 3 nice scottish people I have met in my whole life.
Even though the cabbies boss comes across as a real gem in the interveiw,it is most amusing to see the forelock-tugging,self-flagellating responses of some posters about the language when it is a secondary or even tertiary factor in this whole story.

roboshatner

very interesting story.

If you ask a taxi driver for a receipt

and he refuses to print it or says he is out of ink you can refuse to pay.

Nodin

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Not at all, it's such a dire and dreary language and there hardly seems to be a week that goes by without some dull thread about the Irish language, usually descending into some tedious mess about 800 years of blah dee blah dee blah

.....I realise that you find many of this countrys customs and history beneath your dignity. You don't fail to mention it at every turn.

poundapunnet

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Not at all, it's such a dire and dreary language and there hardly seems to be a week that goes by without some dull thread about the Irish language, usually descending into some tedious mess about 800 years of blah dee blah dee blah

How can a language be dire and dreary? As far as I understand it's quite a complex language that's interesting to linguists and I think it sounds beautiful. I wish I spoke it better, one of my best friends is a gaelgoir and it comes in very handy for her. The little bit I do have has come in handy a few times too.

But yeah it'd be nice if people would stop getting all Brits Out about it whenever it's brought up, and it's a dying language, acknowledging that fact doesn't make you some kind of west Brit.

Pumpkinseeds

Nodin wrote: »

.....I realise that you find many of this countrys customs and history beneath your dignity. You don't fail to mention it at every turn.

You're keeping track of my posts

I find a lot of Irish gobsh*tery quite embarrassing and tedious tbh. Irish has no relevance to me or my life or to the lives of anyone I know. I just don't get the point of pumping money into it or banging on and on about it. So, some taxi driver kicked someone out of a car for speaking Irish, for all anyone knows he could've mistaken if for Polish or Swahilli. But sure why not take it personally as an affront to the Irish? More English oppression of the Irish:rolleyes: Jesus, people have little else to be worrying about.

tdv123

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Not at all, it's such a dire and dreary language and there hardly seems to be a week that goes by without some dull thread about the Irish language, usually descending into some tedious mess about 800 years of blah dee blah dee blah

But the thread isn't about the Irish language. It's about a racial hate crime.

Why are you encouraging racist behavior?

Pumpkinseeds

poundapunnet wrote: »

How can a language be dire and dreary? As far as I understand it's quite a complex language that's interesting to linguists and I think it sounds beautiful. I wish I spoke it better, one of my best friends is a gaelgoir and it comes in very handy for her. The little bit I do have has come in handy a few times too.

But yeah it'd be nice if people would stop getting all Brits Out about it whenever it's brought up, and it's a dying language, acknowledging that fact doesn't make you some kind of west Brit.

I always hated it at school. Funnily enough I had an outpatient appointment at University hospital Galway recently and their were 2 girls sitting next to me, probably in their early 20's. I thought they were speaking an Eastern European language, until the girl was called into her appointment and I recognised the name as an Irish name.

If asked I would consider myself Irish not European. I just find all the pushing of the Irish language irrelevant to the majority of Irish peoples lives and I think it'd be better to focus on the modern progressive Irish culture rather than dreary suicide inducing poetry and a language most people have no interest in.

My in-laws are English and based on what they see and here from a tourist perspective, they consider Ireland to be 50 years behind England. When in fact we're anything but. We should be promoting ourselves as a modern country to attract foreign investment instead of persisting with a twee and dated image of Ireland.

nxbyveromdwjpg

tdv123 wrote: »

But the thread isn't about the Irish language. It's about a racial hate crime.

Why are you encouraging racist behavior?

What crime was committed here?

Pumpkinseeds

tdv123 wrote: »

But the thread isn't about the Irish language. It's about a racial hate crime.

Why are you encouraging racist behavior?

What the actual Fcuk are you talking about?

tdv123

nm wrote: »

What crime was committed here?

Eh, a hate one.

tdv123

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

What the actual Fcuk are you talking about?

I'm talking about you trying to stir the thread away from the fact someone was racially abused. The language they spoke is completely irrelevant to the thread.

mike65

This is why Catholics Irish speakers should vote against Independence.

poundapunnet

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

I always hated it at school. Funnily enough I had an outpatient appointment at University hospital Galway recently and their were 2 girls sitting next to me, probably in their early 20's. I thought they were speaking an Eastern European language, until the girl was called into her appointment and I recognised the name as an Irish name.

If asked I would consider myself Irish not European. I just find all the pushing of the Irish language irrelevant to the majority of Irish peoples lives and I think it'd be better to focus on the modern progressive Irish culture rather than dreary suicide inducing poetry and a language most people have no interest in.

My in-laws are English and based on what they see and here from a tourist perspective, they consider Ireland to be 50 years behind England. When in fact we're anything but. We should be promoting ourselves as a modern country to attract foreign investment instead of persisting with a twee and dated image of Ireland.

See I find that kind of "what will the neighbours think" kind of attitude more cringey and indicative of an out-dated inferiority complex about what "real countries" think of us. Ireland does reasonably well with attracting foreign investment, and the twee dated image actually serves us pretty well tourism-wise, it's the poor tourists that are getting tricked there. It was more than a few years ago but a survey of American visitors to Ireland found that (I think) more than half of them cited The Quiet Man as a contributing factor to their decision to visit. Most tourists are fascinated by the Irish road signs, fag warnings etc in my experience.

And, I'd say things like our atrocious health service, drink culture, bad roads and public transport, attitude to political accountability do a lot more damage to how sophisticated and modern we appear than teaching Irish in schools or encouraging its use. The pretence that it's anything but a niche interest (let alone the official first language of the country) is a bit annoying, but not high up my list.

I live in Galway, hear it spoken a lot and I find it nice, if I've been away from the wesht for any period of time it's lovely to hear even though like I say I'm nowhere near fluent myself.

WellThen?

Oh COME ON. You think some Scottish taxi driver "who can't be named" was so offended at the people behind him speaking another language that he kicked them out? You think Glasgow is a city with purely English speaking people? It's as multi-cultural as the rest of Britain.Eh he's used to it, probably foreign himself. It was 2am for gods sake, they were pissed and acting the bollix. And the woman who was with them is using the irish thing as a story to sell, twat. That's what i think until i see some HARD evidence.

Jimoslimos

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

You're keeping track of my posts I find a lot of Irish gobsh*tery quite embarrassing and tedious tbh. Irish has no relevance to me or my life or to the lives of anyone I know. I just don't get the point of pumping money into it or banging on and on about it. So, some taxi driver kicked someone out of a car for speaking Irish, for all anyone knows he could've mistaken if for Polish or Swahilli. But sure why not take it personally as an affront to the Irish? More English oppression of the Irish:rolleyes: Jesus, people have little else to be worrying about.

WTF are you on about? Did you even read the article before rushing in to have your pointless snipe at the Irish language? English oppression - the incident happened in Scotland.

Taxi driver knew damn well what language they were speaking, and even if he didn't it's of no concern to him. All he needs to know is a destination. Kicking someone out of a taxi because you either a) don't understand or b) actively dislike the language is a relatively rare occurrence which is why it's being discussed here.