Seachtain na Gaelige is, simply put, a celebration of Irishness through the medium of Irish language. it includes music events, conversation evenings, table quizzes, different workshops and more. The events are organized all around the country by local councils, schools, libraries and other cultural bodies. For a full listing check their website. Another thing we get every year for Seachtain na Gaelige is a music CD containing rerecorded Irish pop songs, that were originally recorded in English – Ceol 2010 this year.

St. Patrick’s Festival in Dublin starts on February 12th March with funfairs for children and music and comedy gigs for adults. But there is much more than just those, with all events culminating with the big St. Patrick’s Day parade on Wednesday 17th, starting at 12 noon from Parnell Square.

Limerick is organizing the second biggest parade in Ireland, or that’s what they’re promising! It has to be checked out – starting at 12 noon and going down O’Connell Street. Limerick also has it’s famous Band Parade – the Limerick International Band Competition, taking place on Sunday 14th March at 12 noon, same location as the parade.

Both Cork and Galway have cultural events scheduled from Saturday 13th all the way to the big parade day. In Galway the parade starts at 12:30 on Dominic Street, in Cork a bit later at 1 pm from South Mall.

Welcome!

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

Fíorghael

This short film deals with modern politics in Ireland.

Others

Mac an Athar (downloadable)
An Teanga Rúnda

We’ll start with some simple Irish language toasts.


Cheers!
Sláinte! /sloyn-cha/

A hundred thousand welcomes!
Céad míle fáilte /kayd mee-la foyl-cha/
This is a common phrases, and you would use this toast when inviting a close friend into your home, for example.

Good luck!
Go n-éirí an t-ádh leat.
/guh nire-ee on taw lyat/

St Patrick’s Day blessings upon you!
Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!
/ban-ock-tee na fay-lah paw-rig ur-iv/
You can listen to a whole lot of St Patrick’s Day Irish sayings over at Irish-Sayings.com.

Happy New Year!
Athbhliain faoi mhaise duit!
/ah-vleen fwee vosh-ah ditch/

Would you like more here? Why not post a comment below to ask for it.

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.

Patrick in the Irish Language

The equivalent of the name Patrick in the Irish language is Pádraig.  It can be pronounced as either “paw-rig” or “pawd-rig“.

In fact, the Irish language at the time of St Patrick did not have a native “p” sound! So, the Irish probably adapted the Latin Patricius into a name beginning with “c”.

St Patrick’s Day in Irish Gaelic

The basic way to say St Patrick’s Day in the Irish language is “Lá ‘le Pádraig“. Pronounce it something like “law leh paw-rig“. Do you see the “le” in the middle with an apostrophe before it? This is actually the word “fhéile“, and shortened as it makes the phrase easier to say. “Féile” means festival in Irish Gaelic. “Lá” means Day in the Irish language.

Other St Patrick’s Day Sites

Try Irish-Sayings.com for St Patrick’s Day sayings.

RnaG is owned and operated by RTÉ, the national broadcaster of Ireland. The Irish language radio station used to time-share with “Radio 3″ which was a classical music station. However, RnaG now broadcasts 24 hours a day on its own frequency.

A long-standing rule at RnaG was that it was not allowed to play any English-language songs. This sounds fine theoretically, but it held the station back from providing up-to-date pop music for young people. It is of my opinion that this policy probably damaged the radio station for a long time. At the time, I had no interest in listening to Irish traditional music on a daily basis. Now that the rule has been lifted since around 2005, there are some great evening music shows that play both pop and indie music. These evening shows have been branded as AnochtFM. RnaG offer lots of archived Irish language radio programs to listen to, check out their web site.

Raidió Fáilte is a Belfast-based Irish language community radio station. It is most definitely a hip, cool, fun radio station. Of course, they broadcast live online. Raidió Fáilte landed a major coup by arranging a radio interview with Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionists Party (DUP) in Northern Ireland.

The BBC is quite surprisingly doing a great job with Irish language radio programming. They are said to have 40 hours of Irish language programs every week.

Raidió na Life is a Dublin-based local Irish radio program.

An up-coming trend is also for the English-language radio stations in Ireland to provide some programming through Irish Gaelic. My local radio station is called Spin South West. Their radio station Top 40 Oifigiúl na hÉireann features all the latest pop music, and is a great advertisement of the language for young people.

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.

For example, it would be perfectly natural in Ireland to ask someone “Do you speak Irish?”, or “I learned Irish in school”.

And be sure not to call the Irish language simply “Gaelic”. While some people in Ireland will refer to the language like that, it’s an ambiguous term. This is because there also exists Scottish Gaelic, which is often simply referred to as “Gaelic”.

Another Name – How the language calls itself

When speaking in the Irish language, you call the language Gaeilge. Pronunciation of that word does vary between regions of Ireland, depending on the dialect of Irish. Even another language for Irish Gaelic is “Gaolainn” (you’ll see several spellings of this) and it’s a variation only used in the south of the country.

The Irish language, also known as Irish Gaelic, or simply “Irish” in Ireland, is a member of the Goidelic group of the Celtic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. The language is categorised into three periods: Old Irish (7th–9th century A.D.), Middle Irish (10th–16th century), and Modern Irish (since the 16th century). (Lehman, An Introduction to Old Irish, 1975)

Irish and her sister languages, Welsh and Breton, are among the oldest living languages in Europe. There are written records of the language going back to the early Christian period.

The Celtic language we now know as Irish came to Ireland before 300 BC. The first evidence of writing in Irish can be found in the markings on commemorative Ogham stones. Ogham was a writing system consisting of notches or strokes on a stone. Only when Christianity was well established in the 5th Century did true literacy in Irish begin. Using Roman lettering, Irish monks wrote little poems or translations in the margins of manuscripts. Many of those manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells, still exist to this very today. The coming of Christianity and, with it, Latin brought many new terms to Irish, especially those concerning literacy and religious life.

Facts and Figures of the Irish Language

Not to dwell too long on this fact, the Irish language was previously surpressed by the ruling English in Ireland. In fact the language was prohibited until 1871 (Gaeltacht Travel.com). Other events irreversibly harmed the language, most prominently the Great Famine (1845-1848). But that’s all certainly in the past, and the Irish language still struggles with the people of Ireland!

In 2006 (according to the official census) there were 1.6 million Irish speakers in the Republic of Ireland above the age of 3, and 2.4 million non-speakers. Also, there were 68,000 private households in which people spoke Irish daily. The Central Statistics Office is your source for the latest information on Irish language facts for the Republic of Ireland.

More Quick Facts on the Irish Language

• The Irish language came to Ireland before 300BC, replacing existing languages.
• As early as the 4th century, the language spoken in Ireland spread across in to Scotland. The language in Scotland emerged into what is now termed as a different language (Gàidhlig/Scottish Gaelic). The language replaced English in considerable areas (see Wikipedia).
• Irish has been influenced by the Viking raids, adopting many commercial and maritime words. For example bád from bátr (boat) and cnaipe from knappr (button). Read more about the Vikings in Ireland [PDF].
• The Irish language experience rapid decline under English rule. By 1800, Irish had ceased to be the language of anyone in Ireland who had political, social or economic power.

* Munster dialect (south of Ireland, such as counties Kerry, Cork and Waterford)
* Connacht dialect (Connemara Gaeltacht and Aran Islands in the west of Ireland – both in County Galway, and County Mayo)
* Ulster dialect (north of Ireland, such as Donegal and Belfast)

How different are the Irish dialects?

On Irish-Sayings.com, you may only hear a slight difference of pronunciation between speakers of the different Irish language dialects. For single words this is true, but the dialects can differ in their word and phrase selection, and there are even some grammatical differences. Given the existance of national Irish language radio (Radio na Gaeltachta) and Irish language television station (TG4), speakers across Ireland can mostly understand eachother. However, quickly-spoken conversation in another dialect may be difficult at times to understand.

Which dialect is the proper dialect?

None and all of them! It doesn’t matter which dialect you learn or use, you’ll be understood by any Irish speaker.