Some people do not understand why the national language of Ireland is so significant in the north-east. They do not understand why its visibility has been opposed (brutally and politely) for generations.

Denying the Irish language is denying being in Ireland.

That is it. Sin é.

Domination of it has nevessitated denying its status in its home place.

It has necessitated attempts to equate it with foreign languages and dialects which are not languages. Hence, the recent bigotry, purporting to invoke inclusion, asking "why not a Polish language Act"?

On the 16th of February, it will 102 years since W.T. Miller (apparently - like @cllrjohnkyle - polite, personable), Ulster Unionist Party, opposed the addition of Irish to English-only road signs in Tyrone and suggested signs with Hebrew and Italian.

Like J. Kyle, he took the

position that English only signage, which excluded the indigenous language of the place, was not political but signage which added the indigenous language of the place, alongside English, was political.

Histories of supremacist insistence on exclusion of the indigenous language

are understood and discussed around the world, from Kenya to New Zealand to Algeria.

All of that comparative context is typically omitted in media discussions in the north-east.

Perhaps, Sir John Davies would have approved of the culture of amnesia. Writing "A Discovery of

The True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued" (1612), he stressed the importance of removing the Irish language from public life so that subsequent generations "will in tongue, and in heart, and in every way else, become English".