‘Is féidir linn’ echoes as far as the Big Apple

IT’S HOT AND HUMID in Hell’s Kitchen but in a stuffy classroom on the second floor of the Irish Arts Centre, Elaine Ní Bhraonáin wants to turn the noisy air conditioner off.

She needs silence because one of her students, Elyse Mattiaccio, is loading up a YouTube clip on her iPad of the Queen talking ‘as Gaeilge’ just a few days beforehand, a huge source of pride for the energetic Irish language teacher.

Just hours earlier, Barack Obama had spoken Irish on College Green. It’s the last class of term and Ní Bhraonáin couldn’t be happier with the gift-wrapped introductory topic she’s been handed by two of the world’s most famous heads of state.

“Is féidir linn,” Ní Bhraonáin annunciates. “Is féidir linn,” the 14-strong class responds. “Louder! Is féidir linn!” Each syllable is exaggerated and the students answer back, accentuating the elongated ‘e’.

There’s quite a diversity of age, about 40 years between the oldest and the youngest, while the split between male and female only just about favours the latter. But there’s no disparity in the enthusiasm shown by these New Yorkers for our language.

Elaine Ní Bhraonáin was raised bilingually on the southside of Dublin and earned a degree in Irish language and Irish Folklore followed by a Masters in the language, both obtained at UCD. She scooped up a second Masters at Queens, this time in Irish history, before chasing her dream of living and working in New York back in 2003.

“I always had a real passion for Irish,” she tells me. “My Dad spoke Irish a lot of the time at home and it was usually my best subject in school, probably because I never stopped talking. If I ever want anything from him, it’s usually better to ask in Irish.”

She fell in love with the Big Apple during a J1 visit there in the summer of 2000 and secured a job teaching at the Arts Centre soon after returning in ‘03.

“I was only 23 when I started teaching here and there were a few times that a few of the more confident Americans got to me. If a student starts trying to challenge me then I simply get the student to teach a portion of the lesson. Sometimes they just like the sound of their own voice so I give them a few minutes of airtime, then quickly move onto something new.”

But the emphasis is clearly on combining the drudgery of grammar with some lighter asides to keep the energy levels up. She gets her students watching ‘Ros Na Rún’, completing crosswords and she even translated ‘Cluedo’ into Irish.

“You have to realise that most of the adults (she had eight adult classes and four kindergarten) I teach are hardworking and come to my classes after a long work day in Manhattan, it is a big commitment to make and I try to make their experience as pleasurable as possible.”

One of those adults, Timothy Hull, a 32-year-old artist living in Brooklyn, was drawn to the language by an impromptu visit to Dublin last November.

“It was only to Dublin but I was completely floored. I mean, totally blown away. It really solidified my interest in the history, mystery and magic of Ireland. I coincidentally ended up staying across the street from Oscar Wilde’s birthplace on Merrion Square and that meant a lot to me as he was my favourite writer in high school.”

He also read up on the Easter Rising after visiting the GPO and became “immersed” in the history of the troubles and the movement for Irish independence, leading him directly to search out a means of studying the language back in his hometown.

“I think the most difficult thing about learning the language is pronunciation — or the disconnect between what you think it should sound like and what it does — is what makes Irish so difficult. You have to re-learn a lot of the ways an English speaker intuitively wants to pronounce words.”

Whereas Hull derives his love of the language from a political standpoint, Elyse Mattiaccio, a 31-year-old fourth-grade teacher from the Bronx, became smitten with Irish through her network of Irish-American friends.

For her it’s a community thing. Language, she believes, brings people together.

“I wanted a challenge and this was something that looked completely different to me as an American. There’s also something very romantic about it. It is a dying language and I think it’s very important to save it.”

Just like Hull, she took up the class in January and she laughs as she tells me about a significant recent breakthrough she made.

“I finally worked out that ‘bh’ makes a ‘v’ sound and I’m excited about that. You guys throw h’s in everywhere! When I’m studying by myself, I find it very hard to work out how to pronounce groups of letters. It’s completely backwards to me.

“Now that I’m learning it, I love going to a pub where the bartender is Irish or where there are Irish people watching a Celtic game and if I want another beer, I’ll say ‘ceann eile le do thoil’. They can’t believe it: ‘What? This American just said that to me!’ And that will always start off a conversation and there you go, I have a new connection and a new friend, all because of the language.”

Mattiaccio will make her first trip to Ireland in August and she is bracing herself for a trip to the Gaeltacht where she will try out her new-found skills.

“If I can go over there and give a few people a surprise when I speak a few words of Irish, that’d be great. And if a few friendships come out of that, even better. But if I get a strange look off people, then that’s fine too. I’m a New Yorker, I’m used to weird looks. It’s not a big deal.”