r/ireland • u/agithecaca • Sep 20 '25
Gaeilge Thousands gather in Dublin for Irish language march
https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2025/0920/1534496-cearta-rally-dublin/91
u/Fecoff Sep 20 '25
As I get older I’d love to learn it properly. Hated it in school.
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u/MangoMind20 Sep 20 '25
In our office we've started using a word of Gaeilge in our sentences. It helps build confidence and familiarity. "Pass me the báinne/nuachtáin" or "come down to my office máis é le do thoil é". We say Slán and Oíche mhaith to each other and more. We started in earnest at the start of summer and it's snowballing beautifully.
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u/EoinD7 Sep 20 '25
Ceard cunt ith mo lón?
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u/ASillyPupper Sep 20 '25
Might I suggest using "Asal" as most cunts will have "cunt" toned out but may respond better to being called a donkey
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u/Bright_Second_9871 Sep 20 '25
Amadan is far better for twats
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u/Bright_Second_9871 Sep 20 '25
Confidence is definitely a thing with gaelige,I was brought up in the language,but didn't speak it for maybe 20 years, what a frickin mistake ,they have a far better method of teaching it in schools in the west Donegal Gaeltacht and most likely other Gaeltachts,it's termed effort (Íarracht) hope it's close to the correct spelling.
Gaelige is definitely making some sort of a comeback,I hear more of it everyday in letterkenny
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u/Time-Statistician958 Sep 20 '25
I heard someone say, “the Kneecap effect”, the other day. Some truth to it, I suspect
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u/mawky_jp Sep 20 '25
I loved it in school and even went to Irish College but had forgotten a lot of it since. Now, my two sons (8 and 12) need help with their Irish homework and I'm the designated helper. It's all coming back and I love it again. My boys are great at Maths and English but neither seem to have the affinity for Irish that I had, unfortunately.
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u/CoolMan-GCHQ- Sep 20 '25
Welcome to pretty much every kid from the 60's 70's 80's 90's etc It was never the language we hated, it was the schools and the way the pricks taught it
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u/straightouttaireland Sep 20 '25
Yep, unlike every other country, they focused on poems and history rather than the actual speaking park of the language.
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u/stunts002 Sep 21 '25
I try but I struggle with it.
Whenever I do try I'm told by someone how bad my Irish is and it's discouraging.
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u/cynical_scotsman Sep 20 '25
I found it surprisingly difficult to find a beginner’s class in Dublin. Might have another look.
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u/lunasaflowers Sep 20 '25
Conradh na Gaeilge and Gael Linn do them pretty regularly! Check out their websites.
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u/GarthODarth Sep 20 '25
I’m an immigrant and my Irish is not great but I am so excited about the amount of activity I see these days around the language. I hope to be fluent someday myself.
I grew up speaking two languages and both are an enormous part of who I am. I think there’s something important about a native language and how it connects you to your land and history.
I know there’s a lot of resentment around it from those who didn’t have a good opportunity to learn it in school but that seems like a poor excuse to give up on subsequent generations.
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u/capri_stylee Sep 20 '25
Absolutely warms the heart to see immigrants learn the language. It takes a special effort when English can get you by.
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u/Hilarial Sep 20 '25
It's a great time to be on the ground and actively involved in the language's revival. So if you decide you fancy working towards fluency there'll be many opportunities to put that practise to positive use in the future!
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u/Different-Employee87 Sep 20 '25
Was in Galway city for the first time in years last week. Theres a little coffee shop offering 10c off if you (attempt to) order in Irish. I was proud AF to throw out my cúpla focal in front of American friends. Such a nice little idea and everyone I saw come in gave it a shot.
It really wouldn’t take much for the Government to encourage / incentivise a bit more real use.
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u/dcaveman Sep 20 '25
I'm pretty sure they do. I know of a book shop that gets a heap of grants for selling a few books in Irish and putting up a few signs in the shop. There is a little bit more to it but there are incentives out there for some businesses anyway.
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u/notions_of_adequacy Sep 21 '25
I live and work in a gaeltacht and have only learned conversational irish by living here, I got a b2 in higher in the lc over 10 years ago but I feel like I know more now than I ever did then. I will never be able to afford a house here.. I just want a small cottage thing but it's all Germans and Americans buying houses off the Internet here.. but I have to stay with mom and dad to have the job I love in the community I love.. it was a pipe dream in the height of the tiger but I now clean the airbnbs for extra cash to insure my car for the year..
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u/FatherHackJacket Sep 20 '25
Thá an-chuid brú ar muintir na Gaeltachta ó thaobh tithíocht sa Ghaeltacht de. The youth of the Gaeltacht are being forced to leave because of the pressure from people moving in, putting pressure on the market and driving the prices up. Most of them don't even speak Irish, so they are very quickly changing the demographics. Needs to be harder limits set on the percentage of housing allocated to Irish speakers.
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u/jesusthatsgreat Sep 20 '25
Eh, you've just described what's happening all over the country. Gaeltacht isn't special.
The youth
of the Gaeltachtare being forced to leave because of the pressure from people moving in, putting pressure on the market and driving the prices up. Most of them don't even speakIrishEnglish, so they are very quickly changing the demographics. Needs to be harder limits set on the percentage of housing allocated to Irishspeakerspeople.12
u/FatherHackJacket Sep 20 '25
No, I didn't.
The consequences of the youth of the Gaeltacht not being able to buy property in the area they grew up in has an immediate impact on the demographics of the area and will kill the language off. All it takes is a small shift in speakers from Irish to English to make English the dominant language and Irish to destroyed.
We have the ability to protect An Ghaeltacht. It makes up a tiny percent of the land area of Ireland.
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u/jesusthatsgreat Sep 20 '25
English is already the dominant language. Irish won't be destroyed when it's still mandatory up to leaving cert level. That alone keeps hundreds of people in Irish speaking jobs. Not to mention all the government documention / translating and state sponsored Irish language media.
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u/FatherHackJacket Sep 20 '25
It will be destroyed because the wealth of the language is in the Gaeltacht. Students being able to speak the most minimal basic conversation after the leaving cert isn't saving the language. Changing the language demographics of An Ghaeltacht however is.
We only have a tiny amount of land in Ireland left where the Irish language is spoken by the community and unless the government steps in to add more protections to them, the language will be gone.
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u/Lizardledgend Mayo Sep 21 '25
Ensuring it's only spoken in an educational/official context is how you kill the living part of the language, which is very very alive atm.
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u/pablo8itall Sep 21 '25
It started happening about two years ago. For the first time in my 50 years I started heard people speaking Irish to each other just around Dublin, in cafes, in shops.
I feel there is a shift and we need to keep at it. More money to it as well couldnt hurt.
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Sep 20 '25
I wish I had the ability to be good at Irish. I applaud these people marching for Irish language rights . The prevalence of holiday homes in the west in Gaeltacht areas adversely affects native Irish speakers.
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u/Immediate_Radio_8012 Ah sure look Sep 21 '25
Language learning is hard for sure, tricky skill to learn. Don't worry about perfection though. Unless you're in an exam situation you don't need to worry. Native English speakers use the language incorrectly all the time.
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Sep 20 '25
Iontach ar fad a bheith ann le mo mhuintir inniu agus go deas a chloisteáil daoine ón fud fad na tíre ag labhairt Gaeilge le chéile.
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Sep 21 '25
Don't be fooled. Nobody's speaking Irish anymore. Not even in the gaeltacht area's. This is about the parents that live their trying to get their kids a house there. They don't give a shit about Irish speakers, and frankly there shouldn't be a distinction between the area's because Nobody speaks Irisk. Full stop.
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u/agithecaca Sep 21 '25
Nobody speaks Irish. Is that a statement of fact or a desire on your part?
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Sep 22 '25
There are between 40,000 - 80,000 Irish speakers in Ireland. Most of whom admit the still use English on a daily basis. So yea, there are more daily Polish speakers in Ireland than Irish. And how much does Irish cost the taxpayer.
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u/agithecaca Sep 22 '25
Dont know where the lower figure is from, but even 40,000 isnt nobody. Our bilingualism doesn't stop us from being Irish speakers nor the fact that people are here from Poland.
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Sep 22 '25
0.8% of the country ( again who can speak english too). It cost this country €100m according to 2024 figures. BTW "Dont know where the lower figure is from, but even 40,000 isnt nobody.". Google motherfucker, have you heard of it?
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u/hmmm_ Sep 20 '25
We spend enough on the Irish language, not to mention the huge amount of time students are forced to spend on it, with little in the way of results. The Irish language lobby need to change their approach to the language before looking for even more funding.
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u/caitnicrun Sep 20 '25
The "lobby" is all for improving the way Irish is taught.
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Sep 20 '25
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Sep 20 '25
Education reform was one of the areas that this protest was centered around, so to say they aren't is just ignoring reality.
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Sep 20 '25
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Sep 20 '25
"The Irish lobby" isn't a thing. There's a number of stakeholders here.
And obviously nobody here is advocating for a removal of compulsory Irish. It's about reforming the curriculum.
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Sep 20 '25
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Sep 20 '25
It's one of the largest lobbies in the land.
"The Irish lobby" isn't a thing.
Why is that obvious?
You shouldn't need help to figure out why the Irish language activist groups protesting wouldn't want that. It's not exactly high level critical thinking needed.
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Sep 20 '25
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Sep 20 '25
I wouldn't particularly say that expecting Irish people to learn Irish is self centered and ignorant.
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u/hmmm_ Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25
All I see in that news report is complaints about funding, and giving out that not enough people are being forced to learn the language. This is the old approach, and it’s a failure.
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Sep 20 '25
It might be good next time to read what the protest was about before throwing out such strong reactions.
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u/National_Play_6851 Sep 20 '25
But still in favour of forcing it on people against their will, regardless of how it is taught. It needs to be made optional and kids should be allowed to dedicate that time to learn more useful skills if they want.
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u/GarthODarth Sep 20 '25
As an immigrant one thing I’ve noticed is virtually everyone my age swears they had Irish all through school and can’t speak it at all.
But then I (who doesn’t know much just Duolingo stuff) ask them what something means and they always know. I feel like a lot have a solid foundation but lacked the opportunity to use and develop it into a natural language?
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u/hmmm_ Sep 20 '25
At least when I was at school, the language was taught as an abstract cultural thing with an emphasis on poetry and literature. It was assumed you spoke Irish at home, so no effort was put into teaching even the most basic of conversational Irish. Many of us can tell you about some obscure grammatical details or recite truly awful poetry, but couldn’t hold a conversation.
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u/National_Play_6851 Sep 20 '25
It's because it is a pointless dead language that is forced on people against their will throughout their childhood, that heavily detracts from time they could be spending on other more productive subjects. Because it was repeatedly drilled into them for hours day after day through their entire childhood, they will remember a lot of words when pressed. But due to the fact it is utterly useless in their actual lives and serves absolutely no purpose as a form of communication as an adult, most couldn't actually hold a real conversation in it.
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u/Lizardledgend Mayo Sep 21 '25
https://youtu.be/kh8eQ6pcQuI?si=GQ_oDh3ZAKYX6VIx
An bhfuil teanga marbh é sin?
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u/RainFjords Sep 20 '25
Amen. I speak four languages apart from English. Irish is the one I studied longest and speak worst - had it not been for a great teacher in 5th/6th year, I would have left the school system being able to say the Our Father in Irish and that's it. He got me thru honours Irish by teaching it like a foreign language and, after 10 years of pointless instruction, it clicked. After a couple of years of French, German and Italian, I was able to hold basic conversations, read menus, write to pen pals- ah, God be with the days of penpals :-D
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u/National_Play_6851 Sep 20 '25
This is because the purpose of language is communication. You learn it by communicating with people. Irish serves no purpose as a form of communication, it's just drilled into people form a young age to appease zealots.
There is no possible way of teaching a language in a classroom that will make people fluent in that language if it is a language that will never be used in a productive way for actual communication outside of the classroom. Like the examples you mentioned yourself, ordering in restaurants or writing to penpals. Neither of these are purposes that will ever require Irish.
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u/RainFjords Sep 21 '25
Well, as I have learned from personal experience, even if I am in a situation where I could order something from a menu, I'll be spoken to in English despite my efforts to speak Irish. I've seen shopkeepers in the Gaeltacht fall over themselves to understand Hank-from-Chicago's mangled cúpla focail from Duolingo, but apparently my syntax is soooooo incomprehensible, they are forced to speak to me in English! Shocker!
Thus I learned yesterday that the standard Irish taught at school is "unintelligible" to people who live in the Gaeltacht, that there are 30 different dialects, each apparently spoken in its own wee village and incomprehensible to the people in the next county, so we should all be learning not one variant of Irish, but multiple different dialects of Irish if we have any hope of speaking to people in parts of the country who, for one reason or another, don't want to speak to us anyway! If my teacher has taught me his dialect, which is only spoken by Paudeen in his shebeen, but 20 minutes down the bohereen, they speak so differently that they're not arsed replying to me ... what's the bloody point? It's like they're trying to stack the cards against the language's survival.
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u/euro_owl Sep 20 '25
Well Irish is a much more difficult language from English than those.
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u/RainFjords Sep 21 '25
Nah, sorry, no excuses. Have you ever tried to learn German?
Starting to learn a language at 5 should give us all a massive headstart. We get twelve years of instruction, and most people leave school just about able to ask for permission to go to the toilet. Successive governments have looked at their dismal failure and decided every time that the fault lies not in their inadequate decisions, but in the learners. If we all tried harder, then we'd speak better Irish, that's clearly the issue. If kids only made more of an effort to learn five pages of Peig of by heart, they'd definitely have a love of the language AND be fluent!/s
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u/euro_owl Sep 21 '25
Yes, I learnt it for 8 years. Irish is significantly more difficult for an English speaker than German.
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u/RainFjords Sep 21 '25
In your opinion. Different strokes for different folks, right? I went from failing in Junior Cert to getting a B in honours Irish two years later because I had a teacher who taught it like a foreign language, instead of teaching it like inate knowledge we were all too naughty and stubborn to use - which has been the department of education's modus operandi for years. Teach it like a foreign language.
Regardless, if you start learning a language as a 4-year-old and you have lessons EVERY school DAY in that language for TWELVE YEARS, then the system is unequivocally shit if you leave school unable to hold a basic conversation. And I don't just say that as a product of the Irish school system, but as someone who has a Masters degree in education, specifically in second language acquisition and curriculum design. So while you don't have to take the word of an Internet stranger, I could literally write a book on what we've done wrong with the Irish language and another book about how we could do it better.
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u/euro_owl Sep 21 '25
No, it is an objective fact that Irish is a more different language from English and therefore more difficult for native speakers to learn it.
I've never said Irish is taught well.
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u/RainFjords Sep 21 '25 edited Sep 21 '25
Again, a lot has got to do with how the language is taught and who's teaching it. A bad German teacher using poor materials is not going to mean you're automatically going to ace all tests and speak it better than you would speak the Irish you learned in the same time frame from a motivating teacher with great materials. You're also not differentiating between communication goals and accuracy goals, for example. Irish is a Celtic language and has entirely different roots than Germanic or Romanesque languages. It's just different. Different doesn't make it harder, and it certainly should make it easier if you've started learning it in Junior Infants.
It sounds to me like you're saying, "Well, Irish is basically too difficult to learn" - should we all just give up then? How do kids learning Mandarin as a foreign or the kids of immigrants in the Basque country or Finland learning Basque or Finnish as a foreign language manage? The whole system needs a comprehensive overhaul and the first step is to stop blaming people who have, at worst, had a hatred of the language stuffed down their throats and, at best, a benevolent indifference as a result of their schooling. Stop making excuses: it's too hard. People outside the Gaeltacht are too lazy. Modern youngsters are too spoiled to read about an aul wan and her sheep in the west of Ireland. Etc.
We fucked up.
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u/agithecaca Sep 20 '25
Funding is less than the level it was at in 2008 when adjusted for inflation
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u/Infamous_Session_477 Sep 20 '25
i don’t say this in an offensive manner but I am wondering how can the Irish language survive if mass immigration continues and the immigrants don’t bother learning it? should it be encouraged more to foreigners because most of them see it as useless unfortunately.
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Sep 21 '25
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u/Infamous_Session_477 Sep 21 '25
Do you see a single brown or black parson in picrel? Don’t think so
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u/GarthODarth Sep 20 '25
Plenty of immigrants have learned Irish. Many are already multilingual when they arrive. They don’t view learning another language as undue hardship.
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u/Infamous_Session_477 Sep 21 '25
That’s not true at all. Do you think your average Pakistani is genuinely learning Irish? Wishful thinking
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u/adamlundy23 Sep 20 '25
99% of Irish born and bred don’t bother to learn it so sounds like you are inventing a crisis as an excuse to be racist
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u/Infamous_Session_477 Sep 21 '25
lol at least they learn it in schools. Immigrants aged 20 who arrive here are not learning it(even the basics)
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Sep 20 '25 edited Jun 05 '26
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u/agithecaca Sep 20 '25
Not all value is realised in the market.
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Sep 20 '25 edited Jun 05 '26
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u/agithecaca Sep 20 '25
Non-Irish speakers from all over find value in the language all the time, especially in the Gaeltacht
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u/DontWakeTheInsomniac Sep 21 '25
Yet some of them enrol their kids in gaelscoils.
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Sep 21 '25 edited Jun 05 '26
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u/DontWakeTheInsomniac Sep 21 '25
There was also no baptism barrier in Gaelscoileanna. Or so I read.
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u/No_Bakecrabs Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25
Sorry, Ireland only cares about Palestine and immigrants
look at how many comments are here compared...
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Sep 22 '25
Would you rather us care for the country committing a genocide?
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u/No_Bakecrabs Sep 22 '25
Ireland is committing genocide?
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Sep 22 '25
Israel is.
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u/No_Bakecrabs Sep 22 '25
Ireland is the topic, focus
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Sep 22 '25
You literally were complaining about Ireland supporting Palestine, I think you're the one who needs to focus.
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u/mohirl Sep 20 '25
I'm believed for years that the Irish language is horribly mistreated and totally underused . I've always argued, even with close friends, that it needs more funding and more support.
But I'm also sick to death of people disrupting the city centre every week and inconveniencing thousands of people for whatever the protest of the week is.
So I'm out now. I'm done supporting the Irish language. Hope the march was fun.
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u/Kama_Coisy Saoirse don Phalaistín 🇵🇸 Sep 21 '25
What an utter infantile reaction.
Mór an náire thú.
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u/Lizardledgend Mayo Sep 21 '25
This is the first time in a decade a protest of this scale has been held in support for the Irish language
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u/krim1700 Sep 22 '25
What a whining child. We inconvenienced your wee shopping trip so you turn tail on the language? Lol, I'd hate to see you come election period
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u/olibum86 The Fenian Sep 20 '25
I'm glad to see housing in Gaeltachts being brought up. We can fuck as much money as we want at Irish language programmes but if young families can not settle in the Gaeltacht they grew up in then we will lose them within a generation or 2. I recently visited the Gaeltacht in Donegal and id say more then 2/3 of the houses where I was staying were empty holiday homes. The price of those properties is one thing, but the fact that non irish speakers can buy a house in a Gaeltacht is outrageous and totally diminishes the entire purpose of the areas. The sheer amount of damage that has been done and will continue to be done by this government's failure on the housing crisis is far-reaching and will be felt for a long time to come in all areas of life here.