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Caoimhin only speaks Irish to his 3 kids despite living in US
AN Irish university lecturer living in the US is raising his children through the Irish language despite being over 4,000 miles away from home.
Corkman Caoimhin De Barra lives in Washington state with his young family and has committed to teaching his three kids, Aisling, Saoirse and Tadhg, through his native tongue.
Caoimhin said: “I speak Irish every single day and only speak Irish to my three children. My wife, Kathy, is American and understands a fair amount.
“My eldest daughter Aisling is fairly fluent and speaks to me 95% of the time in Irish.
“My middle child Saoirse understands everything I say in Irish and is starting to speak back to me in Irish and my youngest son Tadhg is only 19 months.”
Caoimhin moved from Ireland to the US to pursue his PHD at the University of Delaware. He lived in New Jersey, where he met his wife before moving to Washington State to teach History at the prestigious Gonzaga University.
A passionate advocate for the language, Caoimhin has now penned a book “Gaeilge: A Radical Revolution” exploring our complex relationship with our native tongue and suggests a radical approach to reviving it for future generations.
He said: “I wanted to share my story with others. I was very weak at Irish at school and hadn’t mastered it and learned Irish when I was an adult.
“With the book, I was trying to tell other people you can learn Irish as an adult and to pass it on to your family and raise your kids with it. If it even inspired one or two people to try and do what I have done then it is a worthwhile project. You don’t have to be fluent, you can learn the language as you’re going.
“I was reasonably fluent in 2015 when our daughter was born but quickly realised what I had learned were my hobbies or sport but that I didn’t know what the Irish was for ‘mermaid’ for instance. These were the things I had to learn speaking it at home.
“You can learn as you are raising your kids, start with basic sentences and follow through.
“If you are serious about giving your children the immersion experience, it really must be Irish and nothing but. In our household, I only speak Irish and nothing but to my daughters and will occasionally say something bilingually if there is a misunderstanding, but 99% of the time it is Irish.”
You don’t have to be fluent, you can learn as you go CAOIMHIN DE BARRA YESTERDAY