Irish for Beginners
Recommended reading, watching, and listening for anyone thinking about absconding to Ireland
Dear friend,
I learned very basic ‘hello, how are yous’ in Irish from a girl at Helly Hansen in the early 2010s. She was a bit of a wild card and we haven’t really kept in touch, but for some reason the dia duit has stuck with me for over a decade.
It’s been the gateway to some very strange conversations over the years; it’s kicked off work friendships and been used as a poor attempt at flirtation. But I can safely say that before this year, I never thought I’d one day be surrounded by the language, let alone the accent.
Irish is now pervasive in my day-to-day. The DART warns me to seachain an bhearna, le do thoil. In my house, the evening news is sometimes as Gaelige. The signs around me are often bilingual. For a country who’s native language was suppressed by their colonizers for so long, it’s pretty cool. Who doesn’t love a language reclamation and revitalization story?
I’m not harbouring any notions about being able to learn the lingo, but I have sort of taken it on board as just another part of my cultural education here in Ireland. So, please enjoy this recommended reading/watching/listening for Irish for beginners—a bit of language, a lot of love.
Reading, very broadly, about Ireland
Ireland has a long and complicated history. If that’s what you’re looking for, there’s always the Short History of Ireland (be warned, it’s not that short), but I think it’s more interesting to approach things a little differently. You should already be reading Sally Rooney so I’ll not spend time on her today, but here are some of my recent Irish favourites.
A friend introduced me to Kevin Barry’s work this year and it’s been an exercise in frustration ever since. His prose is so beautiful and wicked, I roll my eyes every time I pick up his books because I always find a sentence that is so perfect it makes me angry to know I’ll never write something half as beautiful. Start with Night Boat to Tangier—about two old Irish drug dealers and their sordid tales from Ireland to Spain—then chase it with The Heart in Winter—an western with Irish accents. (If you want to blush, send me a note and I’ll text you my favourite line from The Heart in Winter.)
If you want to break your heart a little bit this Christmas, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan should do the trick. Bill Furlong is delivering coal in the run-up to Christmas 1985. His gentle life is shattered by an encounter with a young girl from one of the laundries run by nuns. Until 1993, Magdalene Laundries kept 30,000 young women for being considered ‘fallen women’ until they were finally exposed for their terrible abuse. David Sedaris raved about this book at his show in Toronto for very good reason. It’s also been made into a movie starring Cork cutie Cillian Murphy.
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s certainly the best nonfiction I’ve read in recent memory. Writing about the IRA and the Troubles is a bit of a tumultuous task.
Where some authors gloss over a lot of the atrocities on one side or the other, Keefe tethers his reporting around a woman who disappeared in December of 1972. It covers the hunger strikes, the Price sisters, and the human suffering throughout the Troubles with meticulous research and a strong narrative voice. You won’t be able to put it down. It was also recently adapted by FX in case a show is more your style, but I promise the book is fantastic.
Watching movies with subtitles
A language can only thrive when people are able to connect and communicate with that. It cannot be frozen in time or limited to textbooks. The Quiet Girl and Kneecap couldn’t be more different as far as films go, but where they both thrive is in their use of language.
The Quiet Girl, set in 1981, follows a neglected little girl who gets sent away to live with her mother’s people. The film became the first Irish-language film to be shortlisted for an Oscar in the Best International Feature Film category and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, becoming the first Irish film to be nominated in the category's history. It’s sad and beautiful and a powerful envoy for the language.
On the other side of the spectrum, Kneecap is a raucous, fictionalized telling of the rise of the rap group from the North of Ireland, and their general debauchery as they raise hell while raising the language. For them, rapping in Irish is an inherently political and controversial. Controversial or no, some of these songs are just bops, and I’m glad the housemates recommended this one.
Listening to Irish
In no particular order, and without much in the way of context, please enjoy these songs from Ireland.
Best thing I’ve heard lately
From the archives of my notes app:
“I could deliver a baby with a forklift.”
While a horrifying mental image, that is some undeniable forklift dexterity prowess/confidence.
Recommended Reading is sent on the first Friday of every month. In the meantime, what’s on your nightstand? I’d love to hear what you’re reading.