There’s been a nice selection of Irish language films in the past few years.

Oideas-gael.com sell a DVD with of a whole range of Irish short films.

Yu Ming is Ainm Dom

A favourite of mine is Yu Ming is Ainm Dom. It’s about a Chinese guy who learns the language and then tries to use it when he arrives in Dublin:

Fluent Dysphasia

Fluent Dysphasia is about a guy who drinks so hard the night before that he forgets how to speak English.
Fluent Dysphasia

FĂ­orghael

This short film deals with modern politics in Ireland.

Others

Mac an Athar (downloadable)
An Teanga RĂșnda

It’s not easy to learn to speak any language. But isn’t it nice to get a taste of a new language? The following are a couple of Irish language links to get you interested.

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The Irish language has a few toasts or blessings that people have found endearing for generations. Actually, the language has a very rich tradition of proverbs, many of them witty and funny.

We’ll start with some simple Irish language toasts.
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We’ve covered how to count numbers in Irish. But when you’re counting people, Irish Gaelic has a special way of counting people. It’s a nice specific way of counting, as the words make it instantly obvious that you’re talking about a collection of people rather than things.
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The 17th of March is a day of international celebration of Irishness. At least, that it what it has come to be.

St Patrick arrived in Ireland when the Irish themselves were not yet renowned for travelling the globe. He is now one of the patron saints of Ireland, and his day of celebration is shared amongst Irish people in Ireland and further afield.
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Our aim here is to give you a complete overview of how and where to get Irish language lessons. While the language is weak in its traditional areas, there is a huge buzz about the language. This includes people who haven’t grown up in Ireland but still have a great interest in the Irish language. To that end, there are Irish language lessons available worldwide.
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Irish language radio has come quite a long way since the “old days”. Once confined to a few radio hours a day, there are some cool Irish language radio programs to listen to these days. What’s more, with podcasts or simple MP3 downloads you can catch archived shows without having to listen in to the Irish radio live.
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Let me tell you a secret!

Irish Gaelic is not called Irish Gaelic by Irish people in Ireland.

It’s nice that we could get that out of the way. So if you’re looking for another name for the Irish language, you can begin with “Irish“. Many Americans have said that this sounds unnatural to them, but it is how the language is called in Ireland.
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If you’re a native English speaker, you’ll only be familiar with counting such as “One, two, three”, and also counting things using the exact same words “One dog, two dogs, three dogs”. But the words for the numbers in the Irish language change depending on the following situations:

  1. If you are just counting numbers.
  2. Or if you’re counting things.
  3. Or if you’re counting people.

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We have covered the top Irish language baby names in another post. Remember that a lot of names in use for Irish babies are not in any way “Irish”. Still, many a young person has been named in the Irish language over the years. This tradition continues quite strongly in Ireland, even though the English language is by far the most dominant language in society (see Irish language facts for more about this).
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