I never imagined I’d be a teacher, especially not an Irish teacher. I grew up in Dalkey in Dublin. We’d have the cúpla focal at home, but my grandmother was a Gaeilgeoir and she really inspired me.
I got kicked out of the Gaeltacht when I was 13. I said one sentence in English – it was very strict. I went back and became cinnire and then príomhchinnire, so I did have a good level of Irish. I did well in the Leaving Cert, but I never really connected with Irish on a deep level.
I studied English at Trinity. I travelled, and did the Cambridge “teaching English as a foreign language” qualification. I taught in the Basque Country and in Hungary and started teaching on an online language platform. They said, “oh, you’re Irish, can you teach Irish?” – I thought, I suppose I could.
Very soon my schedule was packed. There were people in Kentucky talking to their horses in Irish, someone managing a pier in Alaska who listened to Irish music all day, people in Morocco, and someone in Indonesia who had been learning Irish for years.
I realised there was a real appetite for Irish. There were lots of very enthusiastic eccentrics, or DNA enthusiasts who wanted to connect with their heritage and identity.
When the pandemic hit, I was booked out. I set up @irishwithmollie, my Instagram and TikTok accounts, and created self-paced courses.
Words in Irish can mean such funny and tender things. I think people connect with the very colourful nature of it. It’s very onomatopoeic and it really brings a new lens and perspective.
An orchestra is a ceolfhoireann – a team of music. Today I was reading the word for “misogyny” and its “fuathaitheoir ban” – like a hater of women, and it’s just very clear. Vegetarian can be “veigeatóir” or “feoilséantóir”, which is a “meat denier” or “meat shunner”. Vegan can be “veigeán” or “fíorfheoilséantóir”, a “true meat denier”.
I love looking at how much Irish has impacted how we speak English in Ireland, and how fun it can be. People say, “I haven’t a word of Irish”, and that in itself is an Irish structure – “Níl focal amháin agam”. We are basically speaking Irish using English words.
In Irish, there is no word for “yes” or “no”. We answer with a verb, and that’s very common in Hiberno-English. You might say, “Will you have a slice of cake?” “I will.”
Colm Bairéad, who directed An Cailín Ciúin, said you can feel Irish haunting the way we speak English.
Irish can be very revealing about who we are as a people. Feelings in Irish are “on” us: “Tá brón orm” – “sadness is on me”. We are not defined by our sadness. In English you say, “I am sad”.
I find it fascinating that there is no verb “to have”. There is no j, k, q, w, x, y, or z in Irish. There are only 11 irregular verbs – English has 220.
These are all amazing, unique quirks about Irish that Irish people might not even know. A lot of people feel very detached from the language, or maybe there is a sense of resentment. There isn’t a sense of joy.
Disinterest changes memory. We are not going to remember something well if we are not interested. If you make something more meaningful, relevant and playful, you will actually learn it two or three times quicker and you are going to retain it longer.
People can view a language in terms of utility, for passing an exam, whereas it’s really about keeping our ancestors with us. It’s about understanding the land more, understanding where we are from, our history or the way people thought in the past, the way we need to look after nature and each other. There is so much wisdom in the language.
John O’Donohue, the Irish poet, author and priest said, when you steal a people’s language, you leave their soul bewildered.
A lot of people would say they were dragged up through the system – “Now you are writing an essay on social problems. Now you are going to analyse this poem.” They were not understanding the poetry or enjoying the poetry. They were just memorising reams of material. We never learned the stories behind the words.
I meet students from around the world and it’s incredible how people who don’t have that trauma with Irish are so ready to absorb and love the language. They are just lapping it up, really enthusiastic. They don’t have these blockages.
There is so much humour in Irish. People might connect with it more if they knew these wild aspects and how freeing it can be.
I think learning Irish is a kind of a healing thing. A lot of people feel they are really themselves when they are speaking Irish.
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There are beautiful insights into how Irish has affected other languages too. We have words we never knew came from Irish, such as to “sup” a drink or to “have a puss on your face” if you are grumpy.
Ali G [the comedian Sasha Baron Coen] used to say the Jamaican Patois expression “Booyakasha”. He said it meant, “praise be, glory be, power to you”. There is a theory linguistically that it comes from “Buíochas le Dia”.
In Jamaica they also say “Irie”, which sounds like “éirigh”, “to rise, or get up”. That apparently comes from the Irish language too, after Cromwell sent thousands of indentured servants to the Caribbean against their will.
My course has two private groups – one is on Telegram, a bit like Whatsapp, where students from around the world can share voice notes or a daily diary like, “I’m making this for dinner tonight” and share a photo and it’s all in Irish.
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There is a Zoom conversation room too, like a ciorcal comhrá, which is open 24/7 where people are logging in all day and night. We have specific meet-ups like 6pm Irish time and 1pm New York time. They are chatting away, putting into practice what they have learned.
I love it when people write to me and say they came on a trip to Ireland and managed to surprise someone in a bar with a cúpla focal, or wrote their first postcard in Irish. They feel this intangible sense of belonging when they are speaking Irish.
I don’t despair that Irish is fading forever or that we are going to lose it. There is a resurgence happening, there is something stirring. People are naming their kids Irish names, restaurants are opening with Irish names, people are becoming more open-minded and are reclaiming that rich heritage.
My grandmother passed away two years ago. When she was getting older, I would call her because I was working abroad, and speaking Irish to her made it much easier to connect. She could just hear in Irish better for some reason. It was like her hearing was going in English.
A lot of what I’m doing is trying to keep my grandmother alive in a way. I want to keep that soul, that loving energy of words. Like the way she would say things like, “You are a real dote, so you are”, “You are a little divileen”, or “diabhailín” – a little pest, an endearing pet name for your granddaughter. - In conversation with Joanne Hunt
