My middle-aged bid to finally learn Irish
During that mortifying performance, Fry — ever the bumbling, tweed-suited, posh country gent — fumbled his way through speaking Gaeilge, an Irish-English dictionary in hand, as he balefully tried to get directions to the Aran Islands.
Fast-forward to today, and I kind of know how he felt. Because despite living on the edge of the Connemara Gaeltacht, and with friends and neighbours fluent in our ancient tongue, like many Irish ex-pats and former émigrés returned home, I was educated in England.
Over the years, the closest I ever got to Irish was watching the nightly Nuacht on TG4 or tuning into Radió na Gaeltachta with my late father. He had fluent Gaeilge and to his dying day kept on at me for my failure to have no more Irish than ‘Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú?’ — as we ask ‘how are you?’ out here in the Connacht dialect.
So, it was time to bite the bullet at the age of 46 and try and learn some proper Irish, even in the midst of forgetful middle-age.
And, it seems, I’m not the only one of a certain age emboldened to at least give it a go.
Even though recent surveys show that only 1.8% of us use Irish every day, despite €1bn being spent on teaching Irish in schools, curiously it is those of us who missed out on properly learning Irish when we were younger who are now minded to roll back the years.
Unlike the swarm of hapless teenagers being dispatched off to the annual ritual of Irish language summer camps in the various Gaeltachts, there are many of us who never had the pleasure and pain of staying with a Bean an Tí.
As Ann Doyle, a national treasure, former RTÉ news anchor and like me a Gaeilge virgin, told me: “You know, just like you Paul, I was genuinely thinking in the last few weeks that I must try and improve my very little Irish.
“I even asked some of my colleagues in Nuacht if they could recommend some courses where people like us of a certain vintage can start again.”
Trust me, Ann: it’s harder than you think. Too ashamed to imagine myself sitting in a classroom of ruddy-faced teenagers, instead, in the privacy of my home, I took out an audio package from my local library and took to the internet.
For hours, I turned up the CD player, handbook in the left hand, cigarette in the other, as I paced the living room, enunciating useful, everyday Irish sayings. I had been told the most important thing was to control the back of the throat, to speak as if you are about to cough to ensure you get the guttural nuance just right.
To be frank, as I roared such useful phrases such as ‘Cá bfhuil an leithreas?’ (‘Where’s the toilet?’) or ‘Glaoigh na gardaí!’ (‘Call the police!’), I sounded less like I was coughing, and more like I was vomiting.
Late at night, I trawled thousands of internet sites, which were more helpful than my clutch of CDs because the former helpfully let you cheat by phonetically spelling out the pronunciation.
It became a doddle at this point, Gaeilge by Google. ‘Cad is ainm duit?’ (‘What is your name?’) is a lot easier to pick up when you’re told to mouth it ‘Coad iss annim dwit?’
So, having cheated a little by endlessly using a computerised, instant Irish/English translator, I plucked up the courage to drop into my Connemara local, Lowry’s pub in Clifden.
‘A pionta Guinness le do thoil,’ I (genuinely) and boldly asked.
Those in the pub who don’t speak Irish looked at me as if I’d already had too much porter, and those with Gaeilge had no idea what I was bloody on about, much again like Stephen Fry.
‘Do you know how to say ‘Help!’ in Irish?’ Maureen King, a friend from the Gaeltacht, asked me between smirks.
Funnily enough, I do: ‘Tarrtháil!’ (phonetic TAACH HOLL!) I proudly roared out.
‘Good lad,’ said Maureen. ‘But keep trying.’
What more could I say? ‘Go raibh maith agat!’
If you’re going to try and make Irish appeal to the i-Pod generation, then Micheál Ó Foighil, bainisteoir at Coláiste Lurgan in Indreabhán, Co Galway, seems to have found the very answer.
This is cutting-edge Gaeilge, brilliantly tailored in what Micheál describes as ‘New Age Irish’: typical three-week summer courses running from June to late August but with an emphasis on music, performance and making Irish trendy and applicable to the teenage market.
It’s no surprise, then, that the college in south Connemara has in the last 18 months become something of a home-spun internet sensation on YouTube. This summer, the students’ version of Daft Punk’s dance hit ‘Get Lucky’ — ‘An Ádh Nocht’ in Irish — clocked up an incredible 62,000 hits, registering 10,000 hits alone within just 24 hours of being posted. (Their ‘Cup Song’ has had almost 250,000 views).
In short, it’s ‘Gaeilge Rap’, performed and filmed by Blanchardstown student Ian Mac Gabhann and with the Irish lyrics subtitled at the bottom so viewers can sing along, with the song recorded in the Coláiste’s own state-of-the art studio.
The team in Indreabhán have also launched an Irish language video app.
I only attended Irish college once — as a 12-year-old with a couple of my older brothers. It was based in what is now today known as Trabolgan Holiday Centre in Cork but the facilities at the time were so primitive it reminded me of a prison camp. I recall two of my brothers escaping from the camp and they got as far as Whitegate Oil Refinery before they were caught. I’m always reminded of the film The Great Escape whenever I think of my time in Irish college!
The Gaeltacht for me was invaluable as I was about to attend an Irish-speaking school, Coláiste Íosagáin, in Dublin, coming from an all-English primary school.
I was 11 when myself and my cousin Jennifer were sent to Coláiste Ciarán in Carraroe, Co. Galway. My parents were enthusiastic about us learning to speak as Gaeilge and all of my six siblings had gone to the Gaeltacht at one point or another.
I do remember struggling to speak for the first week but it gradually got easier. We were in a house of around six other girls. I was always late for breakfast and missed the Rice Krispies, my cereal of choice! The ‘full Irish’ didn’t appeal to me!
There was a social element to Coláiste Ciarán, but at the age of 11, my cousin and I didn’t avail of it. We were simply too young — the other girls were mostly in their teens and had a ball, according to the talk at the breakfast table some mornings.
Like most of my generation, I’ve travelled in Europe, Asia and America... but to appreciate other cultures, we must also understand our own.
I would love to have gone to the Gaeltacht when I was younger. Unfortunately, this was the preserve of the more well-off. When it came to a choice between feeding us and teaching us Irish, my parents were forced to do as many before had, and that was to choose food. Pity it had to be that way, still is. A bit like brown bread, the poor only get to eat it when the rich didn’t want it.
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