“Once you start, you wont regret it. It will change your life”
It is a great privilege to be able to share some of Colette’s scéal here on IrishLanguageMatters.com. I always find it inspiring to hear of the language journeys of others because it encourages me that I can do it too. In Colette’s case, herself and her partner went from zero Irish speakers to seven (eight counting Cara!) – how fantastic is that? The reality is that our language and the Gaelic part of our culture and heritage cannot thrive without people making decisions like this. In the absence of any grand plan for our language, it is up to us as individuals and communities to make things happen. I’m sure you’ll agree that Colette has done that. I’ll let you read Colette’s story in her own words below. Bainígí taitneamh as!
Growing Up
“I grew up in a small village called Killeshin in county Laois, approximately 8 km from Carlow town. There was no recent tradition of Irish in the area, and both my parents had finished their formal education at primary level. I first encountered the Irish language in my local primary school.
My earliest memories of Irish are of doing my Irish spellings and Irish reading every night and describing the pictures shown on the projector each morning for the ‘am comhrá’. I enjoyed school and didn’t mind doing homework; Irish was just another part of school life.
In fourth class however, something changed. That was the year that Mrs Bolton started teaching us. She was already known as an exceptional teacher with a gift for bringing her classroom to life. She was also a gifted musician and had introduced the tin whistle and traditional music to the school. She would tell us that once we could play the tin whistle we would never go hungry; if we were very good, people would pay to listen, and if we were very bad, people would pay us to stop! Under her tutelage, some of us would graduate from tin whistles to flutes, accordions, concertinas and bodhráns, and by the time I was in fourth class she had managed to put a music group together to enter the ‘Slogadh’ competition.
In the weeks leading up to the competition, she explained to us that it was an Irish speaking event, and she suggested that we practice using our Irish in the playground. I was excited and intrigued at the prospect of using Irish to talk to people, and I took her advice to heart. I can still remember the utter amazement I felt when I began to ad-lib with my cúpla focal, in the absence of my reader or the projector. All of a sudden the subject actually made sense. It had a purpose: to communicate, and everyone could do it… even children in Killeshin! It’s funny; I can’t remember how we did at Slogadh that year, but I do remember trying to speak Irish at it.
My love for Irish grew from there and throughout my remaining years at primary school I dreamed of attending a Gaeltacht summer course. Unfortunately, despite many attempts, I never succeeded in winning a scholarship, and the financial cost was too high for my family.
New Languages
When I went on to secondary school, I began to study German and French. Now that I understood a little better how language learning worked, I was an enthusiastic and motivated student. When I was in Transition Year, a lady came to the school to tell us about an exchange programme with a school in Germany. I got a place on that programme and spent three months of my fifth year attending a German school. After my leaving cert, I chose to study French and German in DCU and completed my PGDE (H-Dip) in NUI Maynooth.
“It often occurred to me how bizarre it was that I was fluent in three languages and none of them my own”
In all the time from the completion of my Leaving Cert in 2001, up to 2009, I never spoke a word of Irish. It often occurred to me how bizarre it was that I was fluent in three languages and none of them my own. In 2009 I got married in Germany (to an Irish man from Meath) and we both instinctively decided our vows should be done in Irish. The morning of our wedding I had to ask a friend of mine, who was doing the Hibernia course for primary teaching, to help me with the pronunciation. When registering our marriage in Ireland, we instinctively chose the Irish version of our surname, but we still never spoke a word of Irish. A few months later we got a golden retriever and named her Cara (‘friend’ in Irish), and we again instinctively decided to speak to her and train her in Irish. She didn’t object, nor did she correct our grammar, and so we continued speaking Irish to the dog and English to each other. We went on a holiday to Dingle, in the hope of jump-starting our Irish, even bringing Cara on the boat to see Fungi, but our confidence in the language was still too low for us to use it with anyone else.
Raising Children Through Irish
Skipping forward to 2015, we welcomed our first child, and I cannot remember discussing Irish or making a big decision, we just instinctively did with her what we had done with Cara. We spoke to her in Irish. And similarly to Cara, she didn’t object to our broken language, our dependency on the dictionary, or our incorrect grammar. Our vocabulary expanded to include words like nappy, nap-time, bottles, temperature etc, and lo and behold, when the child began to speak… of course, her first words were in Irish. Even so, we were incredibly excited.
In order to keep ahead of her, and to help us develop enough language to de-escalate toddler tantrums, we attended a TEG course in Maynooth. Our teacher was a native of the Kerry Gaeltacht in Ballyferriter, one of the famous Begley clann, and aside from improving our Irish, his stories of growing up in the Gaeltacht were inspiring. We decided to spend our annual holiday in a different Gaeltacht each year, travelling first to Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore), then to An Rinn (Ring), then Daingean Uí Chúis (Dingle) and Baile an Fheirtéaraigh (Ballyferriter).
Bliain ar Inis Meáin – A Year on Inis Meáin (Aran Islands)
In July 2022 we were back in Gaoth Dobhair, with our (now 5!) Irish-speaking children, when my friend sent me a message on Instagram. It was an advert for a competition to live for a year on Inis Meáin, in the heart of the Aran islands, and after some soul searching we spent the rest of that week writing our application. By August 20th we had been selected, and on August 28th we moved from our little Irish-speaking island, in the heart of Navan town, to the slightly larger Irish-speaking island famous for its Ollscoil na Gaeilge where Pádraig Pearse and renowned Meath men like Fr Eugene O’Growney and Hector went to perfect their Irish.
Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t stop me to ask how it was, or how we managed to pack up with five children and a dog, and move to a remote island in the space of ten days. Truth be told, we have many stories to share in answer to those questions. The most enduring and mind blowing thing we experienced, however, was to see our children at home in an Irish speaking community for the first time, meeting and interacting with the islanders in their native Irish… The Irish that grew from the cúpla focal with the dog, which in turn grew from the cúpla focal in the schoolyard in Killeshin.
“My answer is always the same: if I can do it, anyone can”
People often comment when they hear us speaking Irish outside the home. Usually they say how lovely it is to hear it, and how they would love to be able to do it themselves. My answer is always the same: if I can do it, anyone can. For most of us, starting to use our Irish is just like standing on the beach in summer time, anxiously waiting to take that first cold plunge into the sea. There’s no way to escape the discomfort, you just have to dive in. It could be slipping the word ‘slán’ into conversations, or a ‘go raibh maith agat’. Or maybe even start with the dog or the cat… but once you start, you wont regret it. It will change your life.“
Foilsithe Mhí Feabhra 2025. Buíochas ó chroí le Colette Nelson Mhic an tSaoir!
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