This past weekend, my MA program organized a trip for our whole class to the gaeltacht-- the Irish-speaking region of Ireland. Half of the class is Irish, and therefore learned the language in school at least, but the rest of us have only been studying it since the beginning of the semester. I was a little apprehensive about it, as my Irish at this point is mostly limited to the title of this entry (Hello! My name is Ayla!), but it turned out very well.
The town we stayed in is called An Ceathrú Rua, or Carraroe. We stayed in two houses-- four in one and eight in the other. I was in the house with eight: Grace, Katie, Duíbhir, Jeremy, Beth, Megan, Jen, and I took up four rooms. (And one bathroom. Showering was quite an ordeal of scheduling.) Our Bean an Tí, or "woman of the house" (house mother), was a young woman named Maíre. She had a year-and-a-half old son, James, who was our entertainment the first day. He toddled around and responded to spoken Irish, but not spoken English. She and her mother fed us dinner and breakfast and gave us sandwich fixings to make Saturday's lunch. It was all wonderfully filling food, topped off with delicious tea. Everyone in the house spoke English but preferred to speak Irish, so we just pushed Duíbhir, Katie, and Grace to the front and had them speak and translate for us. I confidently thanked people, though-- "Go raibh maith agat" was the phrase I used most often during the weekend. I figure, if you only know one phrase in the language of an area you're visiting, "thank you" is a good one to have. Even if you can't speak their language, you can at least be polite.
We had a program of classes and activities scheduled. The activities were, for the most part, entertaining. The classes, as far as us non-Irish students were concerned, were very juvenile, which annoyed me. I may be a beginner but I'm also a grown-up. (A grown-up who, incidentally, has a double bachelor's degree in English and Linguistics and has, at one point or another, studied Spanish, Latin, and Italian.) I can handle a real textbook, I don't need a children's book. Still, I feel that my confidence and grasp of Irish improved from the weekend, just by being surrounded with it and listening to it. I was able to see it in use and get a feel for how the language really sounds.
The activities were things like singing, set dancing (think Riverdance, only done by clumsy tired grad students,) a short hike, a day tour, and a scavenger hunt. The singing was probably my favorite, followed by the hike. The weather was beautiful this weekend, and we got to see some of the beautiful desolate bogland of Connemara. I would post pictures, except I forgot my camera. (I'm pretty annoyed by this.) Other people took pictures, though, so eventually I might steal some of theirs to show. The landscape there was unlike anything I've seen before-- and this is only an hour's drive from Galway. I sometimes wish I had a car here, so I could drive around and get a real feel for the countryside. And then I remember that I'd have to drive on the other side of the road (not to mention the other side of the car) and I'm dissuaded. (Though I would like to try driving here some time, if only to see if I could manage a stickshift with my left hand. Most people here drive manual-transmission cars.)
Overall, the biggest thing I took away from the weekend was a much deeper appreciation of the Irish language. So far, I've been studying it in much the same way I studied Latin: with an emphasis on translation, little to no speaking, and no practical application. This weekend, I got to see people who use it as their first language, to communicate every day, and I was struck by just how cool it really is. My MA coursework includes Irish classes, but I think that (if I get into the PhD program here!) I am going to continue taking classes next year. Irish is a beautiful language, and I would really like to be able to speak it.
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