Why Learn Irish?

To start this blog, I, of course, have to answer this question. Why does a middle aged woman in the U.S. want to speak Irish?

Well, it's because I'm Irish.....

Yeah, I know people from Ireland do not understand why we say we are Irish here and have never lived in Ireland. Let me try to explain. Nobody here is just American except the American Indians, the rest of us were always identified by what country we came from. As people got off that boat they were asked, "What are you?" and you were Irish or you were, Danish, Swedish..whatever and you were proud of what you were and you passed that pride down to your children and their children and that is why there are still proud Irish here today.

I don't know a lot about my father's family except little bits that he told me but he did say his family went from Ireland to Canada (Canada was cheaper) and his grandmother came with them and they learned French there but the names my great-grandmother called my father were all Irish endearments. (a chuislela mo croi is one of them). They later moved down to the US to Hartford, Conn.  My father and all of his 5 sisters all had red hair and brown eyes. 

On my mother's side there is some Irish as well. She always said she was half English, quarter Irish and quarter Scottish. She was always very pleased that her sister had a little girl with red hair and brown eyes. She said they had thought red hair and brown eyes was so unusual until she met my father. 

So I'm Irish.....but I didn't grow up with Irish traditions and ways. My father was a Catholic but my mother was an Episcopalian. She sent us to the Baptist church because it was close enough for us kids to walk to. My father never went to church. He didn't tell stories that his grandmother had told him about Ireland and he didn't speak Gaeilge except those few little endearments now and then. But I think there is something about being Irish that just never leaves you. For instance, I have loved Irish traditional Irish music from the moment I first heard it. When I started learning to play the violin it was all so that I could play Irish music. I have book after book about Ireland. Books with pictures of Ireland, books about myths and legends, and then I found my first Irish language book...and then I found websites and then I decided to learn. 

This blog is basically going to be about resources for learning the Irish language and it will follow my journey on learning it. I hope it will be helpful to others who want to learn Irish. There likely won't be lessons but there will be links to lessons, books, websites..anything that will help you immerse yourself in the language. There are a lot more resources out there for an struggling language than you would think.