Pet peeves only I have: ¿hablas English?

I've picked three online fights about this topic in the last couple months, so it must bother me more than I've previously acknowledged: Why do people insist on using endonymic language names instead of perfectly acceptable exonyms? Here's a typical example from the All-Barcelona-Guide:

Even though Spanish is spoken and understood throughout the whole city, it is omnipresent that Barcelona is the capital of Catalunya. In Barcelona itself about 70 per cent of the inhabitants speak Català fluently and use it as their everyday language, more than 90 per cent understand it. The announcements in public transport, street names and Barcelona newspapers all are in Català.

"Català"? What exactly is wrong with "Catalan", the name that language has had in English for 500 years? (Longer than, for instance, than "Japanese" or "Frisian".) Does it look too much like "catalán", the oppressors' exonym?

There must be something to that, since if it were simply a matter of "respect for local cultures" (as is sometimes claimed), then I'd expect to read "Even though Castellano is spoken...", but I never do. This would explain why I see this usage most of all with minority languages, particularly Celtic ones. I'm sorry, but the national language of Ireland is not "Gaeilge", it's "Irish". Who says? How about Article 8 of the Irish Constitution?

1. The Irish language as the national language is the first official language.

You say "Gaeilge" appears in the Irish version? So it does, only there it's not the "national language", but rather the "teanga náisiúnta". Why translate one term and not the other?

What bugs me most about the use of "Gaeilge" or "Gàidhlig" in particular is that it's speciously specific. In the original languages, these terms are as ambiguous as "Gaelic" in English. When Irish-speakers need to clarify which varieties they have in mind, they'll say "Gaeilge na hÉireann" ("Gaelic of Ireland"), "Gaeilge na hAlban" ("Gaelic of Scotland"), or "Gaeilge Mhanann" ("Gaelic of Man")--in exactly the same way, incidentally, that they say "Gaeilge na Mumhan" for "Munster Irish" or "Gaeilge Uladh" for "Ulster Irish". Yet I keep seeing "Gàidhlig" written as if it referred only to "Scottish Gaelic" and not all the sundry varieties mentioned above and more.

(Consider this analogy: Imagine that Webster's reforms had taken off and Americans spelled the name of their language "Ingglish" rather than "English". Now how silly would it look to write "Estoy aprendiendo Ingglish por Internet" instead of "Estoy aprendiendo inglés" or "Estoy aprendiendo el idioma norteamericano"?)

A Welsh-speaking acquaintance (who wouldn't be caught dead referring to his mother tongue as "Cymraeg" in an English sentence) points out that he associates this sort of usage chiefly with language learners of the "Celtic Twilight" stripe, and my experience seems to bear that out. That makes this affectation "pretentious" in the prototypical meaning of the word, since it creates the pretence that the person actually possesses a skill that they're only just beginning to acquire. An actual Gaeilgeoir doesn't need to proclaim their special status by sprinkling "Gaeilge" throughout a text where ordinary "Irish" would convey their meaning precisely. It's a confession of insecurity, the verbal equivalent of a "POGUE MAHONE" sweatshirt in green, white, and orange festooned with little shamrocks.

Celtic hoakum week continues!

If all great art is the product of suffering, then--contrary to popular opinion--the Irish haven't suffered nearly enough. I'm struggling to finish Walsh's "Then came the Captain's daughter", a story with a conclusion so foregone it's in the Next World by now. Even delicious leprechaun nonsense like "God's will be done--blast it! 'Twas the bargain we made--but I'll absolve you tomorrow. No, begor! I won't aither!" begins to lose some savour after a hundred-odd pages.

Before stepping across the hall for dinner with Uncle Betty and Diego earlier tonight, monshu told me "Remind me to tell you about Celtic Thunder." As soon as we got back, I tracked down this video and, begorra! am I ever sorry. (Note: If you barely survived Michael Flatley's repeated assaults on sense and taste, you owe it to yourself NOT TO CLICK this link! Here, as before, the guilty party is PBS, but fat lot of good threatening letters to your Congressman will do about it.) They seem to make a big deal out of the fact that someone named Phil Coulter is a contributing songwriter, so--ever a glutton--I tracked down a recording of one his more well-regarded songs, "The Town I Love So Well". I thought I'd die from a fatal admixture of saccharine and whiskey when guest vocalist Ronan Keating rasped out the couplet:

There was music--there
In the derri--ère!

Well, actually that last bit was almost certainly "In the Derry--air!" but no matter--the suffocating spell had been broken and I guffawed like a sheltered middle-schooler. Nothing left to do now but keep playing the Wolfe Tones until my system's been well and truly cleansed of mush and malarkey.