Katie Byrne: How can we know ourselves when we don’t know our native language?
Imelda’s right — we can’t understand ourselves if we can’t speak our native language
Imelda May took to Twitter this week to express the sense of loss she felt after watching Fleadh 2020. The singer had been watching the final event of the traditional music festival on TG4 and it got her thinking about the decline of the Irish language and her own lack of fluency.
“I’m overcome with grief for the language that was stolen from me,” she tweeted. “The stories, poetry, songs that should be on my tongue. The embarrassment at having to learn like a child my own teanga that should never have been taken away from me.”
It didn’t take long for the comments to pour in. People with several fadas in their names shared encouraging seanfhocail. People in their fifties talked about learning the language later in life — it’s never too late, they told her.
For the most part, Irish people understood the sense of loss she described. They related to the embarrassment of being an adult learner.
They got it — just as I did.
Yet there was a time, not so long ago, when I didn’t really get it. Truth be told, I was obstinately positioned in the other camp. I didn’t see the point in learning Irish when I could learn a far more useful language. I didn’t support the battle to preserve something that was clearly in decline. I didn’t understand the grammar.
Still, I went through the motions, as many young people do. I did a summer course in the Gaeltacht because I wanted to sit on walls beside boys who smelt of Lynx and chewing gum and heady pheromones. I harnessed my cúpla focail to speak in muffled code with other Irish people when we ended up in dodgy house parties in foreign cities — níl aon craic anseo.
For many years, I thought of the Irish language as a cultural relic, at best; a novelty, at worst. Indeed, it was only in my thirties that I started to think differently.
The realisation occurred when a friend who had studied philosophy told me about an Italian professor who visited their university to deliver a lecture on Aesthetics. The lecture segued into a conversation around linguistics, which is when the professor shared his own theory.
“The trouble with you Irish people is that you’re trying to communicate in a language that isn’t your own,” he said to the class. “English is so limited,” he added. “How can you understand yourselves when you don’t understand your native language?”
Granted, this is probably a realisation that has occurred to every single Gaeilgeoir but to me, at the time, it was nothing short of an epiphany.
I had always thought of the Irish language in transactional terms. It was a tool for connecting with others, I thought.
It didn’t occur to me that people learned Irish to connect with themselves. Or that the language was imbued with our cultural identity. Or that a simple word might provide profound insights into the Irish psyche or a sense of true north.
It was around the same time that I met Manchán Magan who was promoting an installation called
I had no idea there was an Irish word for ‘loneliness at cock-crow’ — iarmhaireacht, or a stain left by tears — súghóg
Gaeilge Tamagotchi and asking people to adopt “endangered” Irish words.
For years, I had been fascinated by words that had no English equivalent. I knew there was a German word for ‘a face I’d love to slap’ — Backpfeifengesicht, and a Japanese word for the ‘sunlight that filters through the trees’ — komorebi.
Yet I had no idea there was an Irish word for ‘loneliness at cockcrow’ — iarmhaireacht, or a stain left by tears — súghóg, or a panoply of words that convey the romanticism, pragmatism and cute hoorism of the Irish identity.
I’m not going to pretend that these revelations led to a better grasp of the language — ranganna Gaeilge are still on my to-do list — but they encouraged me to approach the language in a different way.
I’ll get around to rote learning the grammar but for now at least I’m much more interested in the emotional resonance that occurs when I speak in my native tongue. Slán feels like a warm hug.
Dúchas feels like home. Sometimes I put emotions I’m feeling into the English-Irish dictionary and, honestly, I can feel some of the translations in my bones.
It’s a different way in — some might say it’s the only way in — and while I can understand the grief and embarrassment that Imelda May is feeling, I’m just glad that I finally understand.