December 10th, 2005
TG4 agus an teanga Gaeilge
I’ll stop right there on the Gaeilge front and spare you my very patchy Irish, but I have been wanting to mention something about the Irish language for a while and find that today, I have the perfect excuse.
I had a conversation some time ago with That Girl where we both admitted we’d like to resurrect our Irish. Subsequently, I have done very little about it, save for digging out my Collins Irish dictionary and unsuccessfully trying to find my copy of Scothsc�alta from school. Back then, I had (as I’m sure many people did) a terrible Irish teacher. I’m quite sure that from Inter Cert to Leaving Cert, my vocabulary advanced not a jot. I repeated my Leaving Cert a couple of years later after deciding on a change of direction and was determined to take honours Irish. Not because of a gr� for the language, but because I needed the points. The teacher was a man called M�irtin, who looked uncannily like gay serial killer Dennis Nilson and refused to translate anything. It was Gaeilge all the way. From September to Christmas, I really struggled and was about to give up when an uncle, who is a Gaelgoir, loaned me two massive English/Irish dictionaries. I proceed to read absolutely everything on the course, translating texts in an effort to increase my vocabulary. It worked because I got a B1 in honours (one notch down from an A) and for the first time in my life, I found that I loved the language - I finally appreciated it.
Forget what Enda Kenny has to say on the relevance of our national language, I think it’s important that we embrace it. So where do I start on this journey to rediscover Irish? Firstly, I will pick up some Irish books and start there but I’m delighted to find there are actually some Irish language blogs out there. The first one I came by is the bilingual An Spailp�n F�nach before noticing that Mick over at Slugger often posts c�pla focal, and the site - impressively - now has a dedicated Irish language blogger, Cathal O Foirreidh. There are blogs as Gaeilge by An tImeall, Blag Shomhairle and a significant number of Irish language bloggers who don’t live in Ireland, like Hilary, An Caomhach and Cuisle.
So I’m determined to make regular stops there in an effort to dust of my linguistic cobwebs. If anyone feels like joining me, this will be a useful resource.
Back to my point - why today? I’m going along to the recording of TG4’s discussion/music show Ard�n tonight as Halfset are performing two songs in the studio. As well as using guitars, glockenspiels, drums, melodica, analog synths, beats and programming, they incorpate harp into their sound and Harpist Sin�ad Nic Gear�ilt (an Irish speaker) will be talking about the band’s blend of instrumental electronica. It’s completely live and starts at 10pm on TG4 tonight if you’re staying in.
Note: When I had just posted this, I got an email from a woman in response to the women in blogging debate to point me in the direction of a blog by a Russian woman living in Ireland but blogging in English over at Here and Now.
December 10th, 2005 at 6:06 pm
*ahem* A certain male blogger has referenced her blog a few times…
December 10th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Good stuff, I hadn’t spotted it before.
December 10th, 2005 at 10:06 pm
ya the state of Irish is interesting. I could go on about my views but i already have here.
http://dossing.blogspot.com/2005/10/gaeilge-inniu.html
December 10th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
I thought I already posted this but must have disappeared anyway. Irish language revivle would be good in ireland. I have blogged about it here.
http://dossing.blogspot.com/2005/10/gaeilge-inniu.html
December 11th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
“I’ll stop right there on the Gaeilge front and spare you my very patchy Irish”
No - please don’t stop! Seriously Sinéad, the one thing you won’t find in the gael-blogs is people criticising each other’s grammar. We don’t tend to correct each other’s English in the wider blogosphere. Irish language blogging should be no different. Blogging is about removing barriers to self-expression, and that starts with self-consciousness!
Fáilte go dtí an bhlagchruinne! Looking forward to your contributions. This is blogging after all - passivity not allowed ;-). Do let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.
By the way, Nicole (cuisle.blogspot.com), has set up an aggregation of all the Gaeilge feeds at http://kinja.com/user/gaeilge. I think it’s a great place to start.
Slán go fóill,
Conn
An tImeall
December 11th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
So blag is the Irish for blog??
Must tell my baby sister who’s doing the Leaving Certificate…
i really admire your determination Sinead with regard to your work for the Irish in the Leaving Certificate.
I’m really proud of the fact that I got a B in my Junior Certificate Irish and then got an A in the Leaving Certificate. I ended up in the oral telling the examiner that Irish should be optional so people could love it without the burden of it being complusory. I have absolutely no idea how to say that now which is a comment on my interest in the language!
December 12th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
Sinead - head off to http://www.oideas-gael.com - I swear it was the best week’s holiday I’ve had in ages and I couldn’t believe how much Irish came flooding back. There’s a particularly good residential over Easter that people talk about.
December 13th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
I hear you when you say most of us had bad Irish teachers. Up in the North, we had a crazy Irish teacher who drove the most peculiar bright blue car in the world which we dubbed the moon buggy (the poor guy had terrible facial postules that we called craters) and I could never get beyond 12% in the tests he set us. unfortunately, not wanting to lower my “O’Level grades, I dropped Irish in favor of German when the time came. Habving said that, some pupils at my school left speaking Irish fluently and had gold faines (pins) to prove it.
December 13th, 2005 at 4:30 pm
Sinéad, thanks for the mention; I suggest another survey: “non-native women in Irish blogging” (joke)
December 16th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
So where do I start on this journey to rediscover Irish?
You have already started!
It takes quite a long time for most of us who learned Irish originally at school to come to this point, but from there on it is not so hard. There are all sorts of ways to approach it, the best I think is to find a few other people who feel similarly about Irish, you might have nothing else in common at first, (but that in itself is interesting)…and enjoy the journey, it will take you all over the place.
Go n-eirí an t-ádh leat