Khan-do attitude

WE IRISH are a proud lot.

We can be found in the four corners of the globe, draped in our tricolours, belting out the Fields of Athenry and swelling with pride at the thought of the nation we delight in. We will go to extraordinary lengths to voice our support for the boys and girls in green, be they of the footballing, artistic or any other variety. But one area we shy away from showing any affection towards is our language.

Purged from our national psyche by the English and beaten back in by the Christian Brothers, 41.9% of the population said they spoke Irish to some extent in the most recent census. But only 10% of those were fluent speakers, 2% of whom spoke it as a first language. There’s been an attempt to sex it up with the arrival of the Seoiges and Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, as well as several TV shows that looked at the challenges of learning or speaking the language. But the scars left by Peig Sayers and the modh coinníollach run deep and the language regularly finds itself on the defensive.

But despite talk of its less than robust health, the opposite is perhaps more true. Irish language primary schools are attracting record numbers of children, while in 2007 Irish was recognised as an official language of the EU, creating work for translators both at home and abroad.

One person doing their bit to create awareness of the possibilities that await Irish speakers is Raj Khan, 27, a native of Bangladesh, who is literally getting on his bike to spread the word on the benefits of having the cúpla focail. On Wednesday he’s starting out on a three-week cycle tour of Irish universities to spread awareness of the opportunities that are out there for people with a proficiency in the language, as well as promoting his chief sponsors Foras na Gaeilge’s vision for its future.

Beginning at IADT in Dun Laoghaire, Khan will travel to Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Derry and Belfast, cycling for up to eight hours and covering a distance of around 100 kilometres per day.

This is his second stab at peddling his wares to the nation’s student body. His first attempt was last November. “Once I had the idea I was eager to get up and go,” Khan explains. “But Foras na Gaeilge were keen to make sure that I had a proper plan in place. Who was I going to speak to, where was I going to stay, what exactly was the message I was delivering.”

Among the issues he discussed was the need to establish a Gaeltacht and cultúrlann cultural centre in every major city and town, the need to create more bunscoils and, most importantly, changing the way Irish is taught in schools.

“There is a lot of anger and a lot of passion out there,” says Khan. “The teaching issue seems to be the biggest problem.”

Khan came to Ireland with only €100 in his pocket in 2002, intending on the briefest of visits before heading to Milan to attend the fashion school, Istituto di Moda Burgo. Decamping to London after six months he realised that he missed Irish culture too much and returned. While working as a courier in 2004 he was given a package with an Irish address on it.

“I thought it was written in Hebrew,” he says. “It got me to thinking, after spending two years in any other country, wouldn’t I have encountered their national language a lot more? The more questions I asked about the subject the more hostile people seemed to get. I’ve never been to any other country where people are so negative about their own language.”

Thankfully for Khan, the package was to be delivered to Foras Na Gaeilge, the governing body of the Irish language, where he picked up some leaflets about free classes. He started attending Ionad Buail Isteach na Gaeilge, an Irish language drop-in centre where he conversed with Romanians, Nigerians, French and Belgians. There were no Irish in the class. “Even my teacher was foreign,” he says.

Khan started drinking in the bar of the Conradh Na Gaeilge where he met other young native speakers with a passion for the language. They co-opted him into their struggle to get Irish recognised as an official European language in the EU. “It was the first time that I realised that there were people out there who cared about the language and who were doing something to insure its survival.”

One of the people he met was Rossa Ó Snodaigh, a member of trad group Kila who got Khan to lecture passing Dubliners on their lack of love for their native language from a speaker’s corner he ran in Temple Bar every Saturday.

“Day after day I kept going deeper and deeper and deeper until one day I stopped thinking of it as being your language and started thinking about it as being my own.”

It was around this time that he came up with the idea of cycling around Ireland to do his bit. “I kept thinking ‘If I had money I could open a cultúrlann. Or if I had money I could open a TV station’.” But he didn’t have any money. Yet he could cycle for hours. “So I said, feck this, let’s just use my bike.”

While Foras na Gaeilge agreed to cover the cost of his accommodation, and his bike and skins were provided by Cycleways, he still managed to rack up debts of over €2,000.

Khan was keen to learn from the mistake made by other speakers who he feels didn’t do their issue justice as they never engaged with the people they’d come to lecture.

“By day I’d cycle from one place to the next, talking to the media and the students. But in the evening all I did was party.

“I’m still friends with the people I met at my talks and when I go back to Galway, Cork, Carlow, etc, I call them up and hang out.”