Regrets

I wouldn't be big on regrets in general to be honest. I believe that every high and low of life has brought me to where I am today and I'm happy with where I am.

Of course I regret that loved ones have died and I'd certainly change that if I could, but for less life and death situations, I'd leave most things as they are.

One regret I do have however is that although I reasonably fluent in my native tongue the Irish language, I'm not nearly as proficient as I'd like to be.

So to the title of this post:

A country without a language is a country without a soul.

This expression is deep and it comes from the Irish language and was first uttered by one of Ireland's brave forefathers who gave his life in the Easter rising of 1916. This is the translation in Irish.

Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.

It's a powerful qoute and as the years pass, I realise more the importance of maintaining our language, our heritage and our culture. So much of what makes us Irish is engrained within the language and it doesn't always translate directly into English.

With all of this in mind, I've recently started attending Irish language classes in my local village here in Ireland and I'm really enjoying taking part.

Learning Through Conversation

Here in Ireland, we start in school at the age of four or five, although I started at the age of three (I turned four in the October). We spend eight years in primary school and Irish is part of the curriculum, so realistically everyone should be fluent, but that's not the case at all. In fact I'd say there are only around 80,000 native speakers. 40% of adults say that they can speak the language, but the majority in my opinion have a fairly limited grip of the language.

We leave primary school aged around twelve or thirteen and spend five to six years in secondary school and again Irish is compulsory.

Maybe that was the mistake, forcing people to learn it. People should want to learn the language in my opinion.

I'm at that stage now and really want to learn the langauge and each week, we chat in Irish and learn new expressions and words and placenames.

I'm really looking forward to class again on Thursday.

How's your cúpla focal @blanchy @deirdyweirdy @niallon11 @fortune1m @killerwot

Thanks as always for stopping by everyone

Peace Out