We should rediscover our love of speaking Irish. The grammar can wait!

AFRIEND recently told me of the time he was involved in a production of the Plough And The Stars in California some years ago. The director told him to ‘say those words in your own language’ yet he could not.

So he went off and learned them, and then went on to learn to speak Irish fluently. He told me: ‘You see, the director didn’t say “Say it in Irish”, he said, “Say it in your own language”. That’s when I realised how important it was’.

That story sprang to mind when controversy broke last week over the Irish Daily Mail’s revelation that more than 3,000 parents use certain psychologists to exempt their schoolchildren from compulsory Irish yet the same pupils go on to study other languages such as French and German.

This inevitably led to comments about Irish being a ‘dead language’ which is ‘bet into us’ even though ‘it’s no use when you’re looking for job’. And this is despite the fact that: more than half a million people speak it at least once a week, often on social media; kids are no longer ‘bet’ in school and when we were it was for maths or English – or just ‘looking a bit smug in yourself’ – as well as Irish; and in this, the Age of Communication, a good grasp of an Gaeilge opens up plenty of opportunities for highpaying jobs in education, the media, PR, administration, the civil service, politics and, of course, the highly lucrative translation sector in Dublin, Brussels and Strasbourg.

Grá

Poll after poll, plus the growing numbers going to gaelscoileanna, while the Department of Education drags its heels, illustrates this. The 2016 census showed that about 1.7million of us can speak Irish, over half a million speak it once a week and 74,000 do so every day – and that doesn’t include Irish spoken in schools and colleges where, presumably, most of it goes on.

But that doesn’t tell the full story. A recent article in the IndependCanada, ent revealed that there is a whole generation of millennials out there who have discovered it’s great to be bilingual. Bilingualism, which exists in most countries, has found its niche here thanks to the gaelscoileanna, the internet and pop-up Gaeltachtaí.

The gaelscoileanna phenomenon – created by families determined to see their children educated in all-Irish schools – has been so successful that a place in a gaelscoil is now a most sought-after prize. And the gaelscoileanna generation are urban (and urbane), well-educated and sassy. They have no problem mixing it up with a bit o’ Béarla and chatting away in public. Snapchat and Twitter are alive with quotes from anyone from RuPaul to the Kardashians. Websites such as nos.ie and tuairisc.ie feed their hunger for celebrity gossip and straightforward news, and @motherfoclóir, @theirishfor and others hold massive international conversations, as Gaeilge and in English, that are hilarious, great craic and often very rude. Anyone can drop in for a chat at any time. And then up popped the Gaeltachtaí. Ireland, England, Scotland, France, the US, Japan, China, Australia, Hong Kong, Bolivia, UAE, Germany and other places that the organisers Osgur Ó Ciardha and Peadar Ó Caomhánaig haven’t yet been told about, have become home to pop-up Gaeltachtaí.

The biggest saw 2,300 gather on Dame Street on St Patrick’s Day 2017, but usually they are run midweek and between 200 and 350 turn up. The key to their success is the ‘labhair Gaeilge badly!’ attitude. And why not? It isn’t as if we talk English goodly. Irish people’s demonstrable failure, over the centuries, to succumb to the niceties of English grammar is something we’ve become quite famous for. And quite proud of, if the truth be told; it probably helped bag us a brace of Nobel prizes for literature. As Brendan Behan boasted: ‘The English taught us their language, and we taught them how to speak it.’

So when chatting away at the pop-up, with no pressure from the Irish grammarians, you realise how much Irish you actually did learn when it was compulsory in school. And suddenly it’s fun.

Irish people – partly because we have long been an emigrant nation, and are now a small player in a global world – have a very strong sense of identity that is not insular, backward or insecure; we don’t need to shout the loudest or be the greatest. But it is our strong roots that put us at ease celebrating other cultures, assimilating into different societies, and succeeding abroad, as generations of Irish have done in Britain, America and elsewhere. The stronger we are in ourselves, the better we treat others.

Blas

The Irish language is not simply a device for communicating. Those who claim that we only need English because it is universally understood, just don’t get it. Would you shut down the GAA because soccer and hockey will do?

Subjects are compulsory in school because they are essential. Maths is. So is English prose and poetry. Yet what kind of country would raise children with a knowledge and love of Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and the Brontës and without a word of the language of their own people?

We all have the basics because we learned them in school and so can pick it up again at any time. The country abounds with courses, online and off.

Our own Education Minister is the perfect example of someone rediscovering our language. When Enda Kenny made Joe McHugh junior Gaeltacht Minister he found himself struggling with his cúpla focal when faced with merciless reporters who had mischievously rediscovered their own grá for the lingo for the occasion.

But with a few lessons Mr McHugh realised just how much had being lying dormant. In no time, he was popping up on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, with a wonderful blas, promising deontaisí (grants) for every schoolyard, hillock and handcart that wasn’t tied down in Donegal. He has since become as fluent as a hedge school teacher.

And the Joe McHugh example is the answer to those who are asking: How on earth do children who have been taught a language for 12 years end up with little more than a ‘cead leithreas’ and various phrases about looming dark clouds, sandy beaches and pleasant green forests, phrases that they learn off just so they can write that damned essay?

But the rest of us have, hopefully, learned a lesson too: Irish can and should be taught to every pupil, first as a spoken language, then written – and only then should they unfold the precise grammar. If there is a buzz as Gaeilge all around you, does it really matter if someone says ‘rang an múinteoir’ instead of ‘rang an mhúinteora’?

Of course it doesn’t.