Like most children growing up in Ireland, I was taught Irish every day at school from age 4 until 17.
Back then, Irish felt about as relevant as Latin did to my father: archaic, not particularly useful, and challenging to grasp.
It was my least favourite subject, I didn’t learn very much, and I just about passed my final exam.
I left Ireland in 2010 and moved to London – a melting pot of people and cultures.
I met and worked with people of all nationalities, many of whom spoke their native tongue, in addition to one, two, or even three other languages.
Most of them assumed I was fluent in Irish. They’d heard it was one of the oldest written languages in the world and were curious to hear me speaking it.
Embarrassingly, I knew very little and so I’d improvise. The “ghrian” (sun) was always “ag taitneamh” (shining) despite “scamaill” (clouds) being “sa spéir” (in the sky).
The more this charade went on, the more I wanted to understand Irish. Not just the basics, but its nuances, and ways of weaving words together.
Without dwelling on the past (after all, I was happily living and working in the UK), I felt a growing desire to learn the language my ancestors were no longer able to speak freely.
And so I started in an elementary fashion and slowly began to remember words and phrases I'd once learned. I had never fully appreciated the beauty of An Gaeilge until then. A rhythmic language so immersed in its country’s soul, and so creative, descriptive and poetic, that it loses some of its magic when translated.
‘The Islandman’ by Tomas O'Crohan is one of my favourite books, but I know I won’t truly experience it until I can read it in its original form: ‘An tOileánach’ by Tomás Ó Criomhthain. One day.
Now living back home, the learning continues through my stationery brand, Pawpear (a phonetic play on the Irish word for paper, "páipéir"). Every product proudly displays Irish as its first language.
You learn best when you love what you’re doing, and reclaiming this part of my heritage has become a passion project.
