(Gaeilge) Cead tugtha ag an Roinn Oideachais an luath-thumoideachas Gaeilge a chur i bhfeidhm
November 13, 2015
Funding boost for Derry school’s Irish language project
November 12, 2015
A Derry school has been awarded funding for a major project to encourage more pupils to study Irish beyond the age of 16.
St Mary’s Grammar School in Magherafelt is celebrating winning a British Academy Language Award.
The scheme is designed to support schools to implement imaginative new ways of encouraging more young people to take language learning to higher levels.
It also strives to address the social imbalance in the profile of language learners when they leave school.
The award scheme seeks to identify and stimulate good practice in this area which can be shared more widely.
A panel of judges assessed the originality, credibility and potential replicability of the proposals, with particular emphasis this year on building partnerships.
St Mary’s was the only school from the North to win the award this year.
It won the award for its Gaeltalk project, which will involve 40 sixth form pupils who are learning Irish or from an Irish-medium background. It will enable them to develop media skills by creating Irish language videos and radio broadcasts, an online blog and a YouTube channel.
The funding is be used to purchase media equipment to help young people work collaboratively to produce a series of short promotional clips pertaining to the use of Irish in the locality.
www.derrynow.com
Funding For ASD Classroom In Balbriggan
November 10, 2015
Local TD, Alan Farrell (FG) has welcomed the allocation of funding to Gaelscoil Bhaile Brigín, Balbriggan, for the development of an ASD unit classroom for children with autism.
He said, “I am pleased that Gaelscoil Bhaile Brigín has been allocated funding from the Department of Education and Skills for an ASD unit classroom in the school.”
“The provision of facilities, such as ASD classrooms is of the utmost importance in terms of supporting children with autism during their time in our education system. We must work to ensure that all children in our schools in the North County and throughout the country, receive the greatest possible benefit from our education system. In order to do this, it is necessary to provide our schools with all of the necessary investment and resources to adequately support the needs of all students. It is essential that all children who require additional assistance and support during their time in education receive precisely that.
“I am delighted that Gaelscoil Bhaile Brigín is receiving this investment from the Department of Education and Skills. With the youngest population in the state, North County Dublin is home to a large number of families with children in full-time education. It is vital that we provide schools throughout the North County with the necessary investment to ensure our children receive a high-quality education in an environment which is conducive to their learning. I will continue to actively engage with the Minister of Education and Skills, and her Department, to gain further supports for the future development of schools throughout the constituency,” he said.
www.northcountyleader.ie
Mary McAleese: How Irish invigorated my life
November 10, 2015
ONE hundred years ago the Republican Movement and the Irish Language Movement were closely linked in the minds and hearts and lives of many Irish people.
“Not only free but Gaelic as well; not only Gaelic but free as well.” This was a familiar slogan at the time. To most of the founders of the Irish State, the Irish language was an intrinsic part of Irish identity.
The Irish language is an important part of my own Irish identity, and always has been, even before I could speak Irish. The language itself, its vestiges and influences, play a significant part in Irish life.
Our placenames are firmly rooted in the rich soil of our linguistic heritage. They surround us. Each Irish place name is the distillation of a long narrative, a history of our people, and enriches us linguistically and culturally.
The English we speak in Ireland is heavily influenced by Irish. Where else would you hear: “I’m only after doing it”, or “Is it yourself that’s in it?” These phrases come word for word from Irish and are a seamless part of everyday life, carrying with them a memory of times we did not live in; but those who did shaped us and our world.
I was born and reared in Ardoyne, in north Belfast. My father was from County Roscommon, and during his brief years at school he was educated through Irish. His parents’ English was liberally laced with Connacht Irish. I heard it before I heard Ulster Irish.
My mother did not speak Irish to us but her younger brothers, who were educated by the Christian Brothers, did. They often spoke it among themselves when speaking of things we children were not supposed to hear.
Irish was not taught in our parish primary schools at the time, so my parents sent us to schools outside the parish, where it was taught. The girls went to the Convent of Mercy and the boys to the Christian Brothers. Later I studied Irish at St Dominic’s High School and spent many a wet summer in the Donegal Gaeltacht.
I lived in a part of Ardoyne that was predominantly Protestant/Unionist/British in its identity. The tensions between competing identities made for an unsettling conflictual environment, but did not prevent the growth of strong inter-religious friendships that endure to this day.
But there was a going of different ways, of looking to very different sources, drawing from other wells. I went to Irish dancing, took part in feiseanna, wore a fáinne, played camogie. My Protestant friends did none of these things.
Use of the cúpla focal was even more common in County Roscommon, where my father’s parents lived, and where I spent part of each summer. His cousin, the late Columban Father John Joe McGreevy, a wonderful Irish scholar, sometimes dropped by to chat.
When he did, no English was spoken. I remember being so proud of him, and knowing without understanding why, that in that tiny house on the Carrow Ard, something profound, beautiful and natural was happening… and changing.
Many years later, as President of Ireland, I incorporated Irish into every speech I made while on official visits abroad. I was often approached by expatriates who told me that hearing the Gaeilge again made them feel proud and close to home.
The cúpla focal can go a long way to make an exile feel connected to both today’s and yesterday’s global Irish family.
Lots of Irish people have what they think is only a smattering of Irish. But it is remarkable how that seemingly small vocabulary quickly expands and develops when you decide to re-engage with the language. That is what happened to me.
After university my engagement with Irish was intermittent, but when I took it up seriously again, words, phrases and sentences came tumbling, stumbling back, as if awoken from sleep.
If you haven’t used Irish for some years, you may be afraid to take that first step; afraid of failure, of getting mired in the rules of grammar; afraid of the effort it takes to kick-start the learning. Don’t let those fears hold you back. You will have lots of support and encouragement along the way. The learning road is full of adventure and fun, new friendships, new insights; and the rewards are great.
My own efforts blossomed when I became President. I worked very hard to become as fluent as possible. I revelled in the literature, the poetry, the songs, the placenames, the narratives.
Comprehension of the language revealed so much that had been hidden from me except in translation. Now I saw the creativity, the beauty and the artistry at first hand. It was like transitioning from black and white television to colour. Irish life came into view in Technicolor.
My understanding of Irish identity was enhanced and enriched every step of the way. The skin of identity became more comfortable, a better fit. From the language, the discourse and the culture of Gaeilge there developed a sense of a circle completed, a wound healed.
Do I feel more Irish than when I spoke no Irish? No. Do I feel I know my identity more intimately and convincingly? Yes. Is my life better for re-engaging with the Irish language? Definitely.
It has been the gift of gifts, a remarkable source of endlessly renewable energy in my life; and I cannot imagine how poor my life would have been without these past twenty wet craic-filled summers in the Donegal Gaeltacht.
Music education for all at Gaelcholáiste an Chláir
November 10, 2015
(Gaeilge) ‘Not to learn Irish is to miss the opportunity of understanding life in this country…’ – ráiteas Heaney scaipthe ar gach scoil sa Stát
November 9, 2015
(Gaeilge) Dráma nuascríofa ‘1915’ le hAisteoirí Bulfin ag teacht i Mí na Nollag
November 9, 2015
Linda Ervine: I realised Irish belonged to me – a Protestant – and I fell in love with it
November 9, 2015
I think the first time I saw Irish written down was on a visit to Donegal. It looked complicated and inaccessible, just random letters on road signs.
A few years later I had the opportunity to hear the language at a taster session in East Belfast Mission. It sounded strange to me; unfamiliar words which were difficult to say and impossible to remember.
Probably not a very promising start, yet this contact awakened a curiosity within me. For reasons that I didn’t understand myself, I wanted to learn Irish, I wanted to be able to read the signs and understand the words, something was attracting me to this strange language.
I began to go to classes, not in my own area as Irish classes didn’t happen in unionist areas. Myself and a friend started classes in a nearby nationalist area and I suppose we felt that we were outsiders coming to learn this ‘Catholic’ language.
At least that’s what we believed at the time and with good reason. I mean the classes were being held in what we regarded as a Catholic primary school, the names of the other learners were Séan, Mairéad, Bernie, Seamus, Paddy and a map of Ireland with no border was on the wall.
We felt that we were the only real beginners as everybody else seemed to know the language whilst we were ‘gan focal’, without a word. And although we were made very welcome and never made to feel different in any way, at times I questioned my own desire to learn Irish.
What had this language to do with me a Protestant from east Belfast? Was I doing something wrong by learning Irish? Was I betraying something and if I was what was it I was betraying?
Despite my doubts I continued to attend classes and I gradually began to encounter the truth about the language. For me it was a shock to discover that the Irish language is all around us, in our place names, Belfast- ‘mouth of the sandbank ford, Finaghy – ‘the white field’, Lisnasharragh – ‘the fort of the foals’; in our surnames, McCullough – ‘son of the hound of Ulster’, McCoy – ‘son of fire’, Mateer – ‘son of the craftsman’; in our local vocabulary; brogue, poteen, dulse, whiskey, banshee and also in the structure and syntax of our everyday speech.
Expressions such as, ‘He be’s here’, ‘She’s after doing that’, ‘I’ve the cold on me’. How could I have lived all these years surrounded by the language and yet be totally oblivious to it?
I began to read books and articles about the history of Gaelic, and was continually amazed to uncover fact such as, in the 1830s the Presbyterian General Assembly termed the language ‘Our sweet and memorable mother tongue’ and how during the 1840s they made it a requirement for all of their trainee ministers to have a knowledge of the language and that the largest Gaeltacht (Gaelic speaking region) is not in Ireland but in Scotland where the majority of speakers are from the Protestant tradition .
My feelings of doubt and confusion gave way to anger and sadness; this was my language, the language of my homeland, a language spoken in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, a language which had been denied to me for one reason and for one reason only – I was a Protestant. I was determined not only to reclaim it for myself but to share it with others and to defend it from those who wished to use the language as a target for their hatred and bitterness. I had fallen in love.
Over the past few years I have met many Protestant speakers and visited the Gaelic regions of Scotland. I even went to a Rangers Club in Stornoway and was given an official Rangers t-shirt with the Gaelic motto ‘Sinne na daoine’ – ‘We are the people’ emblazoned on it.
The more information I uncover about the links between my own community and the Irish language the more ridiculous it seems that I could ever have believed that I was doing something wrong by learning Irish.
And to those who would accuse me or point the finger and question why I am learning a ‘foreign language’, I would tell them to have a look at their British passport.
They’ll see that it is written in three languages; English, Welsh and Gaelic. To those who fear that learning the language will somehow change people’s political viewpoint I would state that it has given me a renewed pride in my Presbyterian heritage and made me more aware of the links between Ulster and Scotland.
I have lost nothing of myself through learning Irish but have gained so much. ‘A different language is a different vision of life’, Fedrico Fellini.
(Gaeilge) ‘Múnla’ i gcomhair ‘meánscoil lán-Ghaeilge Gaeltachta’ le cur faoi bhráid na Roinne Oideachais
November 9, 2015
(Gaeilge) Tuairimí éagsúla ann faoi chruinniú ‘Meánscoil Lán-Ghaeilge do Chonamara’
November 5, 2015
