I Spent a Year Learning Irish
Introduction – Réamhrá
Ever since I was little I have been fascinated with the Emerald Isle. It’s not that I’m some “Plastic Paddy” — in fact, according to a recent DNA test that I took, I’m zero per cent Irish. Yes, I did voluntarily send my spit to some company that could potentially clone me in 30 years, but honestly, the kit was on sale and that’s their loss if they spend research and development money to clone me of all people. Regardless, an individual such as myself — of Mexican, Italian, and Turkish descent — can have an interest in a culture that they have quite literally no relation to of any kind.
REBECCA KLINGER // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
So then, why Irish? There are actually several reasons why I have undertaken the process of learning Irish since the beginning of last year’s quarantine. Did you know that almost every student in the Republic of Ireland is required to undertake courses in Irish — yet that the vast majority of those same people finish school without being able to string together complex thoughts in that language? If you have received foreign language education in one of the many school districts in the United States, you probably know the feeling of spending years learning Spanish, French, or Mandarin Chinese only to pop into a college-level language course as a freshman, completely and utterly lost. The difference between Spanish, French, or Chinese education over Irish education, however, is the lack of urgency in learning. The aforementioned languages are not on their proverbial deathbed — they have millions of native speakers and many more that speak them as a language other than their first.
For the Irish language, that story is much different. Due to a long and lasting legacy of English — and subsequently British — colonialism and imperialism in Ireland, the native Celtic tongue of the Irish was supplanted by the Germanic tongue of the English. Though Ireland re-instituted its native language to an official status after full independence in 1937, the Irish language did not experience the same revival and widespread adoption that Hebrew did during the same time period. Of a nation of nearly 5 million people, it’s estimated that only 70,000 people in Ireland use Irish on a daily basis. I determined then, that in my quest to be fluent in 10 different languages by 2028 (a promise I made to myself on my 18th birthday), I would include Irish in that group.
The Process - An próiseas
How does one go about learning a language that not too many people speak? This was the question that I asked myself at the start of my journey — after all, when I started learning French in middle school, I was able to easily find books and podcasts and even enrol myself in courses. Entrapped in my bedroom in Las Vegas, this whole endeavour felt futile. Traditional advice says that in order to pick up Irish, one must travel to the western countryside of the island where the language is the healthiest and live within these communities collectively known as an Ghaeltacht. This was an impossibility for two reasons: 1) This was in 2020 and travelling to another country across the ocean seemed like a not-so-great idea and 2) even if somehow the first problem was alleviated, my passport was expired, and I had no money to travel to or stay in Ireland. At least I have Derry Girls and the Cranberries to hold me over until that day comes.
It was time to get resourceful. Nowadays there are so many resources available to people trying to learn a language on the internet. I remember the day when I would go to Borders and Barnes & Noble and look at all the French-English, German-English, Italian-English, and Russian-English dictionaries only to feel despair that I knew all these words but not how to use them. For the fundamentals, we have Duolingo now which is great for vocabulary. Google makes it so that you can find so many grammar books on the web. Amazon.com will send you books that you couldn’t dream of finding in stores on the high street. YouTube has many recordings of native speakers speaking, making it easy to mimic and learn accents. After all, unless you’re learning a classical language, there comes a point where you have to be able to speak and not read your target language.
Books and media in hand, I continued my journey. I immediately learned that in Irish, the word order is much different than in English, French, or Spanish. You start a sentence with the verb, then you say the subject and the object: Itheann an cat a bhia. “Eats the cat his food” — or in English, we would say “the cat eats his food.” This was an interesting concept to wrap my mind around, but it would soon become second nature to me. I spent the summer reading and trying to understand An Hobad, nó Anonn Agus ar Ais Arís, which is the Irish translation of “The Hobbit” as well as video-chatting with Irish-speaking friends that I made online. Shout out to Siobhán for listening to me while I strung together barely coherent sentences in Irish!
My Reflections - Mo smaointe
Irish certainly isn’t the only language whose future is not secure. In a globalising world, there are many languages and cultures that will not survive the 21st century as we continue to encourage the usage of the largest languages as linguae francae. If you have a passion for indigenous, minoritised, or endangered languages, I strongly encourage you to follow through and learn them — whether it’s a Mayan language from Central America, Kurdish, Berber, one of the Chinese dialects, or yes, even Irish. I have found it incredibly enriching to immerse myself in another language while not having to worry about papers, projects, and grades deriving from performance in that language.
Though 2020-me didn’t have the resources to run off to Ireland, now that I am only a semester and a quarter from graduating college, perhaps a month or two in the Gaeltacht isn’t too much of an impossibility.
Slán!
