The Irish Language

There is not a language barrier here in Ireland because everyone speaks English. Over my spring break to Budapest and Vienna I learned to appreciate this lack of a barrier.  If we needed to ask for directs our first question was, “Do you speak English?” About half the time, the answer was no.  I now fully appreciate that the Irish teach English to all of their school children.

            Children growing up in Ireland must learn English and Gaelic.  Depending on where you live determines if your school will teach in English or in Gaelic.  In most of Ireland everything is done in English.  Most adults only remember a few phrases of Gaelic and it is only taught in school as a required subject.  In other parts of Ireland, known as the Gaeltacht Irish is the main language.  When meeting someone on the sidewalk, or a cashier at a store people speak in Gaelic first, then when they realize we are visitors they switch to English.  The Gaeltachts are used as a way to preserve the fading Irish culture.  They are found mostly along the west coast.   In these Gaeltachts schools are taught entirely in Gaelic.  Kids are punished if they are heard speaking any English at any time of the school day.  English is taught as a subject.  Here in Spiddal we are actually in a Gaeltacht.  This means we are able to hear the Irish language more and see more of the old Irish culture.    

            The Irish language is no easy language to learn.  In our Monday class we have been learning some basic conversation pieces.  We have learned how to say hello, introduce ourselves and discus the weather.  Gaelic is very hard to learn because the pronunciation of each letter is not similar to how we pronounce them. This makes sounding things out impossible.  When spoken by a fluent speaker it is a beautiful, flowing language, when spoken by me it is a serious struggle and no one knows what I am trying to say!

Culture

At first I did not notice too much of a difference in the culture here in Ireland compared to at home.  I did not experience a big culture shock.  However, the longer I stay here the more I am picking up on the differences between the cultures. 

The thing that has been the hardest for me to get used to is how tightly packed everything is.  The cars do drive on the other side of the road, but that is not as strange to see as I thought it would be.  It is, however, very strange how narrow and windy the roads are. They are not wide enough for two buses or large vehicles to cross each other.  One has to pull over to the side of the road so that the other can pass.  There are also no shoulders. The sidewalks start right where the roads end.  I have not gotten used to the feeling of the vehicles zooming by so close.

Restaurants here are also small.  The tables in restaurants are not usually any larger than just a simple square table set for four people.  Also, tipping is not expected and can even be seen as offensive to some.  The only time tips are accepted is if there is a tip jar.

Grocery stores are also very different than what I am used to.  I am used to buying everything in bulk.  Here things do not come in such bulk.  Which is understandable, because people cannot just wheel the cart out to their car, load up their groceries and drive off.  They have to carry everything they buy out of the store and either walk home or to their car, which is usually a ways away. They also do not have plastic bags.  You have to supply your own bag.   When we go shopping we take our book bags and reusable bags.  Book bags are good for carrying the heavy things and allow us to get more at one time. Seeing how the people here work around not having plastic bags has made me realize how much we waste in getting new bags every time we go to stores.

Edinburgh (not for a grade)

Edinburgh is my favorite place I have been to yet.  This place is not only a beautiful, historic city; it is also the birthplace of Harry Potter. I had a hot chocolate in JK Rowling’s favorite café. This café is where she spent most of her time while she was writing Harry Potter.  It over looks a 400 year old cemetery. This cemetery is where she came up with the names for some of her characters.  One of the graves she picked a name off of was Thomas Riedel.  I touched Tom Riedel’s grave! Another piece of inspiration was a school just past the cemetery.  In this school the kids are split into 4 house and they compete for a house cup each year.  (Sound familiar??)  Even just walking through the streets you can see inspirations for the series all around you. 

Besides everything Harry Potter Edinburgh also has an amazing 10K hiking trail up to Author’s Seat.  At the top of the hike you get to see a stunning panoramic view of the city.  The local mythology is that this is where one of King Author’s castles once stood.  Archeologist, however, have never found any evidence of any castles standing on the top of this hill.

Edinburgh also has an amazing art gallery.  They have nearly 30,000 works of art and over 50,000 books, journals, and slides.  They have works from Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and many others.  I have never been to an art museum with such famous artists.  We had to rush through the museum so we could catch our flight back to Ireland.  I could have stayed another week in Edinburgh and not ran out of things to do.

Yes! We really do have to go to class!

Between all of these field trips, adventures, and sighseeing we do actually go to class, sometimes.  In theory we have class Monday through Thursday from 10 till 2.  This rarely actually happens. When field trips fall on weekdays we do not have that class that week, or we move it to another time. We have four classes: culture, literature, history, and a general study abroad class.

For the culture class we have been learning some basic phrases in Irish.  Irish is not an easy language to learn because they use multiple sounds that the English language does not have.   This makes even repeating after the professor difficult. 

Irish literature is a homework intensive class.  We are assigned multiple readings that are due the following week.  Everything we read comes from Irish authors set on Irish lands.  We look into the lives of some of the more famous authors like James Joyce.  Joyce’s short stories were controversial at the time they were published because they did not sugar coat the lives of people in Dublin at the time.  The people of Dublin wanted to make others believe they had the ideal lives, but Joyce showed the truth behind these masks.  Reading his stories now give us an insight to the true lives of the people that lived in Dublin in the 1900s.

Irish history has some hard concepts to fully understand.  There are many historical figures that are celebrated in England, but seen as a criminal in Ireland.  One of these people is Oliver Cromwell.  In England he is seen as the father of their democracy whereas in Ireland he is seen as the man that used ethnic cleansing ideals to murder or enslave 25% of the population. Seeing how different Cromwell is viewed by different groups of people opened my eyes to the power of perception.

Our final class in the week is our general study abroad class.  In this class we work on our blogs, watch movies, or talk about upcoming field trips.  It is amazing to be given the opportunity to learn about something, watch a movie about it then actually get to travel there.  It makes the history and the stories of what happened at these places seem much more real than just learning facts out of a book.