Love Island as Gaeilge shows us that Irish is bringing sexy back

There is a moment when one of the girls, trying to sleep in her top bunk, warns the canoodling couple squeezed into the single bunk below her that if they’re going to have sex, they should go to a different bedroom. None of the other twentysomethings in the room seems too concerned. After all, these young people have been living and loving together, sharing a hot tub, swapping beds and wearing very few clothes for weeks now. Oh, and they might just be the salvation of the Irish language.

No, me neither, when I was first told about it. Love Island, but in the Gaeltacht, with the contestants speaking in Irish as well as English? It sounded like too broad a brief, too ambitious a reach. I privately guessed it might be a bit of a mess. But I signed up to work on Grá ar an Trá because there were good people already on the payroll and, for the first time in my working life, I would get to use my Irish.

That, at least, has been a long time coming. When I moved back to Ireland in 2001, TG4 was up and flying and I reckoned that with a little tune up in evening classes, so too could my Irish be. Within weeks, I could be discussing turf cutting rights in Connemara with the best of them. But I got bogged down in the labyrinthine grammar and by the end of the course, I was still stuttering my way through conversations for fear I might misuse the Tuiseal Ginideach. Every couple of years since, I’ve returned to my Irish evening classes, usually finishing at a higher level than before but still a hesitant, halting speaker. Now, I can recite lengthy lists of word endings that are feminine and masculine, but by the time I run each noun through the list in my head for fear I might misplace a ‘h’, the pop-up Gaeltacht has shut up shop.

Meanwhile, nationally, the language seemed to be heading for the Last Chance Saloon. The native speakers charged with the preservation of Irish seemed so reluctant to share it with people who weren’t born speaking it that, as the population of the Gaeltacht regions diminished, our beautiful language seemed destined for extinction.

And then, recently, a subtle shift. With the Gaelscoileanna in Dublin and other urban areas in rude health, there has been a sense of a handing over of the responsibility for the Irish language to young, non-native speakers who aren’t shackled by history or don’t feel compelled to only speak the language in some sort of Celtic twilight.

I’ve lost count of the number of hip hop acts I’ve seen using Irish in their music. An Cailín Ciúin, far and away the most successful international exposition of the Irish language since the foundation of the State, features a shining cast of non-native speakers. Hozier has more than a cúpla focail on his latest album. Suddenly, it feels like the Irish language is the one thing it has never been in my lifetime: cool.

Against that landscape, Love Island As Gaeilge actually seems like a bit of a no brainer. And yes, I’ll admit I winced at some of the grammar when I started sorting through the footage. Yes, I rolled my eyes when a graduate of a Gaelscoil said ‘tá mé múinteoir’ on camera. But the more I watched and the more they spoke, the more I realised that everything I thought I knew about the preservation of Irish was wrong. That it’s far better for young people to say ‘tá mé múinteoir’ than to say nothing at all. That plenty of English speakers get grammar wrong every day of their lives and never consider just stopping talking.

There is a competition element in Grá ar an Trá, but even if there hadn’t been, after five weeks it looked like these young people were speaking Irish because they wanted to. Sentences were half in English and half in Irish, random Irish nouns and verbs were replacing their English counterparts and the young girl who announced that she was raining instead of crying on her first day was flinging focail around to beat the band.

Even this Grammar Garda’s reservations were quickly replaced by the joy and excitement of witnessing a flourishing hybrid tongue emerge. That, I think, is the wonder of Grá ar an Trá, which starts tomorrow night on Virgin Media One. It feels like the future. Though of course, if you’re only interested in beautiful young people wearing very few clothes, that is also there in abundance.

Whatever floats your bád, as the young stars of GAAT might say.