An Ghaeltacht - areas of Ireland that speak Irish as the first language  

Thank you. The basque people are very close genetic relatives to the native Irish. We go all the way back to the Stone Age and before :-)

It’s not the easiest language to learn. But you are learning a very ancient language and a gateway to deeper Irish culture. Plus your friends and family will be impressed. 🤩 Good luck searching for your O’Brien family. Dún Laoghaire is a suburb of Dublin, so their ancestors may have come originally from a different part of Ireland. O’Brien is quite a common name in Ireland. It means that you are a descendant of Brian Boru - the Irish king who defeated the Vikings!

@@irishmatthew Thank you for this information. 🙏🏻 I won’t give up. One day I will find out where my family comes from and will speak with the people who live there now. I’m so thrilled for my upcoming adventures. I love your videos.. thanks again.

I am an O’Brien. I’m about 80 lessons behind you. Keep up the good work! Persist!🎉

Nice. The Orchard County! I hope you get to visit us here in Ireland some time and get to learn a cúpla focal.

Next time Robert 😃 The scenery in the Gaeltacht areas is amazing.

Go raibh maith agat a Carola 😀. That’s great you are learning Irish. It’s such a cool language. You are one of a very few people on the planet who can speak it 🤩 Meas mór! I hope you will get to visit Ireland and to practice your Irish ☘️

An-mhaith👍

Keep learning! I'm learning Irish too. It's difficult but I love it and the people I've met through it.

Maith thú, a Charóla! 👍 Is iontach an rud é go bhfuil ag foghlaim na Gaeilge thall sa Ghearmáin Lean ar aghaidh leis.

He sounds like he was a wonderful man.

That’s fantastic Mary. Which island were you on? Tory? Arranmore?

@@irishmatthew I have no idea Mathew, all we knew it was as An Ghaeltacht....all the old ladies wore black shawls it would have been 1964/65 or it could have been earlier than that....Rolling Stones were singing I can't get No Satisfaction at the time haha! someone had a radio on speakers on the Island and it was blasting out that song, I just remembered Arranmore :)

@mary maclaughlan hahaha. Great memories. Rocking Arranmore with the stones 😎

@@irishmatthew That's about the height of it Matthew Haha!

Thanks Paula. It is becoming really popular to learn. There is something like a million people learning it on Duolingo.

@@irishmatthew Good , I am glad people are doingthat so that we don't lose it!

Maith thú a a phongop. Is iontach é sin.

Maith thú agus go raibh maith agat. Duolingo is an easy way to start learning straight away. TG4 has great content and the Irish is relatively easy to understand. Radio na Life has relatively easy Irish as well. Radio na Gaeltachta is great, but can be difficult to understand if your irish is not good. There are a few pop up Gaeltachtai coming back now that covid has ended. I love this site as well - www.bitesize.irish/

So it's one year since you posted ,so how is your Irish now

Well done Pete. It’s not the easiest language to learn 🤓 The ultimate way is to spend time in the Gaeltacht immersed in the language. But that can be difficult to do. I find watching TG4 good and I also listen to Radio Na Gaeltacht.

Thank you Odette

​@@irishmatthewMy grandfather came from Mullingar then over to Liverpool and I am in the Caribbean, Irish are everywhere!

That’s fantastic Alex. Well done. What do you use to study?

For the most part, there was no intention by the English to make the Irish give up their language. It was mostly economical. The English crown always had a foothold in Ireland, in Dublin. But most of Ireland was still Gaelic and spoke Irish. That changed in 1601, when the old Gaelic order was defeated by the English. The upper class was replaced by English speakers and English culture. The legal, political and educational system became English speaking. Most of the people still spoke Irish, but it was the language of the poor and of the defeated. It gradually lost it’s prestige as a language. All this changed dramatically with the great famine (1845 to 1852). The famine devastated Irish speaking areas. The language of trade, commerce, the law and social advancement was English. So in one generation half of the country changed from speaking Irish to English. It was to give their children a chance to succeed and so that they would never have to endure what their parents endured (ie die of starvation). To answer your question - it was the fact that all the organs of state were through the medium of English - ie the legal system, the educational system, the political system etc. Also English was also the language of trade and the language of the world (and still is). It opens a lot of doors to be proficient in English. As far as I know, there are similar examples in other European countries - eg most young people in France, Germany and Italy now speak the same language. But 100 years ago, their dialects may have been totally different. A central authority brought about a ‘correct version’ of the language eg metropolitan French, High German, Tuscan Italian. I presume something similar happened in Greece in the 19th and 20th century.

The english banned Irish from public life ,so any thing got to do with the state was in English and it was also not in the schools and when they did let it in to the schools it was just as a token, the same is happening in the Republic of Ireland at the moment Irish is of no use in life or in work and is of limited use in education ,if you are interested in language revival study the revival of Hebrew in Israel all education was in Hebrew and all public life was in Hebrew and the language of home was mostly Yiddish the revival of Hebrew does not get the attention it deserves because of the history

Hahaha. I never noticed 😂 There is no official Gaeltacht in South Armagh. I don’t know why it is on the map. But I am sure that Irish would have been spoken there well into the 19th century.

@@irishmatthew there is a small Irish school in newry that used to be run by a caraher (a notable Republican family in south Armagh). I’m American but my grandparents hailed from south Armagh and I would go in the summers. My grandma who just passed two months ago taught me prayers she learned in Irish. I still hold those memories close to my heart and can say my summers spent there are some of my fondest memories. It’s such an overlooked part of Ireland and beautiful now especially with the towers and soldiers gone! Thanks for the video man! Cheers

@@shawnfinnegan64 Thanks Shaun. It is definitely a beautiful, overlooked part of the country. My granny was from just over the border from south Armagh. Sorry to hear about your granny. ‘’Keep the faith…’ as your president says 😀

The old district of Oriel (south Armagh, south Monaghan, north Louth) was the last major Irish speaking district in the eastern half of Ireland. The dialect they spoke was East Ulster Gaelic, which was once spoken from county Antrim to the Boyne in county Meath. That particular dialect is now extinct, but there is a recording in the RTE archives of a woman called Annie O’Hanlon speaking it in the 1960s. She came from outside Omeath in the Cooley mountains in Louth, close to the border with Armagh. She was the very last native Irish speaker in Oriel. Anybody who’s interested can just google it and listen and read the history of this once substantial Irish speaking district.

🙂

GRMA

Go raibh maith agat a bhainne. Ní raibh fhios agam go raibh daoine fós i gConamara nach labhraíonn Béarla. Is cuimhin liom a bheith ag obair mar dhochtúir i nGaillimh agus ag bualadh ar dhaoine scothaosta as Connemara a labhair Béarla maith comhrá, ach nuair a bhí siad tinn níor theastaigh uathu ach labhairt trí Ghaeilge (tuigim cén fáth)

County Mayo i’m from ty 23 & Me

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🙁 You could learn a few words on Duolingo. You might find that some words have gone in by osmosis through your parents. Or learn some Māori - its a beautiful language as well

Go raibh maith agat a Genevieve. I think I mentioned it. But I’ve never been there. It’s on my list of places to visit.

Go raibh maith agat a Dheagánaich. Tá sé sin ana suimiúil. Ní raibh a fhios agam faoi Tuair Mhic Éadaigh-Partraigh i Mhaigh Eo theas. Smaoiním i gcónaí ar Ghaeltacht Mhaigh Eo mar Acaill agus Béal an Mhuirthead. Táim fiosrach ar an gcaoi a litríonn tú Gaeilge - Gaeildhilige. An é seo mar a litrítear an Ghaeilge i Maigh Eo? Beagán cosúil le ‘gaelainn’ i gCiarraí.

@@irishmatthew Tá fáilte romhat. Sea, Dúiche Sheoighe ea thugtar air. Ach drochuair tá sé i mbaol 😔 Iorrais agus Acailla na Gaeltachteanna eile i Maigh Eo san Thuaidh. I Mhaigh Eo Theas litríonn muid Gaeilge - Gaeildhilige ach fuaimnítear sé an rud céanna. Litríonn siad Gaedhlage i hIrrois, ach tá na scoile a'marú an sean litriú

​@@deaganachomarunacathasaigh4344Na bi Ag caint, since 26 it's official, they have been trying to eradicate the Gaelic

I don't understand how people can be such idiots. If you want to give feedback, at least be more polite. The internet is already full of idiots who do nothing but complain. My advice is that you make better videos than Matthew and stop just complaining about your ass sitting on the couch.

@@cacabulock Camilla, you were unable to deny the truth of what I said. A Gaeltacht formed from poor learners of the language, that is not a Gaeltacht. Ní Gaelainn mhaith a labharthar sa Cheathrú Gaeltacht Bhéal Féirste, is baolach - nílid siad ach ag imirt leis an dteangain.

What is your problem? Go fix what to do in your useless life!

@@cacabulock Camilla, you are unable even to argue properly. Mo thrua do cheann!

Thank you for the comment Disappointed Englishman. I’ve never been to the west Belfast Gaeltacht, so I can’t comment on the standard of spoken Irish there. But you may well be right. However I do find the tone of your comment disparaging, especially giving the amount of trauma the community there has sustained in recent history.

This was a factor. Also poverty - to succeed in 19th and 20th century Ireland, you needed to speak English. Daniel O’Connell recognised this. And snobbery / racism from the ruling establishment class in London at the time. (This hasn’t died - just tune into some of the pronouncement from Boris Johnson, some in his cabinet and other prominent Brexiteers) The Gaelic revival of the late 19th century was a recognition that the language was dying and that an effort was needed to stop it from being lost entirely.

Sorry but that is not true and is just a very common myth. Speaking Irish was never illegal under the Penal Laws or any other statute. What is true is that the court system introduced procedural rules that prohibited use of Irish when presenting cases and in other legal contexts. But that didn’t mean that the language was illegal. The real reason for the language’s historic decline was that Irish people came to believe that it was economically advantageous to speak English. My own maternal grandmother was born in far West Cork shortly after the turn of the century. She was raised by her grandparents who were native speakers but they absolutely refused to speak Irish to her because of the stigma and the disadvantage they believed it would bring. Just to be clear, I’m not saying that the decline of Irish wasn’t a consequence of the British occupation. I’m just saying that the reasons were economic rather than legal.

Unfortunately, this is a lie. The British did NOT beat Irish out of a single person. Irish-speaking parents DID beat it out of their children. It was NEVER illegal to speak Irish in Ireland!

@@disappointedenglishman98 Irish parents refused to teach their children their native language because they were colonised and made to feel ashamed of their own language and culture. Just because it wasn't technically illegal doesn't mean that British colonialism isn't to blame.

@@patriciag6030 That is simply a lie.The reason why Irish people beat their children for speaking English was an awareness after the Famine that they couldn't carry on in poverty and squalor - and the economic opportunities were in the English-speaking cities such as Dublin and Cork. They beat their chlidren to help them, funnily enough.

Yes, it is sad. The language has nearly died, but there is a revival of sorts and I think Irish is going to get a lot stronger in the coming decades.

Was, but not anymore.

Yep. That is true and is still a huge subconscious bias against the language in a significant proportion of Irish people.