Firstly, I’m in Galway City, which is very close to a Gaeltacht (Irish-first) area. That’s why I went there, for the comparison to my previous video, which was Dublin City - the nearest Gaeltacht to there is over an hour away. Secondly, these are just the people that agreed to be on camera. The majority of people with little to no Irish that I stopped refused to be on camera. At the end of the day, you can only get what you can get. We were out there for 3 hours and this is what we got. I have a blooper reel on my Patreon that includes footage of me being told “no”, “no I don’t speak it at all”, “no I don’t have enough to say anything”, etc. Ps also I was wearing a top that said “Labhair Gaeilge liom” (speak Irish to me) which I think helped with Irish speakers being more interested in speaking to us but wouldn’t have helped us get anyone that didn’t speak any Irish. Although I’ve never managed to get a single person in these videos that doesn’t speak any Irish because they don’t want to be on camera saying they don’t speak Irish 🤷

@@Clisarethose are all very good points. Thanks for the reply

@@Clisare Bhuel, bhí hata Maigh Eo ort freisin, so b'fhéidir sin píosa don fáth nach raibh na daoine eile ag lorg caint leat i nGaillimh ;)

My grandfather’s native tongue was Gàidhlig being that his people the MacNeil’s had migrated from Barra in the Outer Hebrides to Cape Breton Nova Scotia but due to lack of land the migrated just across to the Codroy Valley in Doyles Newfoundland where Gàidhlig was the everyday speech for the people up until my grandfather had his children. All the children my mother included understood the language but were discouraged (same story everywhere) to speak it and were expected to assimilate into what would eventually become Canada after 1949. There is still a community of speakers and attempts to revive it are ongoing.

It’s such an Irish thing to self-criticize and beat yourself up. It’s hard for me to believe that hundreds of thousands of people that passed their leaving cert in Irish couldn’t do as well these people on the street. They just don’t have the confidence to give it a go and enjoy the Irish they have.

Maybe so, but generally people who understate things are better at them than people who overstate things.

that what i was going to say, its an Irish thing@@daivboveri

It happens with Scottish Gaelic too. Even older fluent speakers will answer "Tha beagan Gàidhlig agam". Part of the issue is is where you have native speakers they have not been taught Gaelic so it's "colloquial" and people dont have confidence in their own Gaelic especially speaking to learners with their Sabhal Mòr (College) Gaelic.

Absolutely. 35 million Americans are of Irish descent.

a'r Cymru/Unol Daleithiau...and Welsh America...sadly gaslighted over there...

Agreed.

Yes, the decline of Celtic languages is sad story, especially considering that, before Roman expansion (5th/6th century AD), almost ALL of what is now France spoke Celtic (Gaulish) languages.

It is sad indeed. I hope people learn their native languages and protect their respective cultures from decline.

You should start your own Frisian week

I love the UKposts channel Friesian Horses. 😁

They should add Frisian to Duolingo! I'm Dutch with Frisian ancestry. All my grandparents grew up in or very near to Friesland and spoke Frisian, but my parents only spoke a little and I never learned. I'm actually learning a bit of Irish at the moment, but I'd also love to learn Frisian.

Sorry, but Frisian and Dutch are extremely similar languages. Irish and English are completely unrelated.

@@gstads That is a very good point. I speak both Italian and Sicilian. Many people think Sicilian is a dialect of Italian, it's not, the local dialects derived from the original Sicilian language when Sicily was a separate kingdom. The difference is, is that both are of Latin origin whereas like you said, English and Irish are completely different from two different families of languages.

I visited the PSA plant in Vigo for work, and I was fascinated by the Mystical culture upon landing at the airport and around the city, and how close to our Irish mythology. I think even the weather was similar and changeable on the Atlantic cost to ours, but maybe that was just when I was there. Will need to come back sometime for a more personal holiday time soon.

@@user-se1gb3su9x absolutely I know we share alot of history ancient and more recent and so much folklore. I Know In Cork there is also a University that has a Galician Learning center! Ive always admired the 2 nations kinship and similarities. I am currently in US but funnily my partner is applying for engineer work in Ireland so we can enjoy some time there. Would love to dig into that connection more

Galician and Irish pipes for musical connection too.

Fair play duit, níor chaill tú a riamh é 😂

Maith an fear

Mo cheol thú!

Is féidir leat foghlaim agus cleachtadh a dhéanamh fós! Níl sé ródheireanach. Is mise Meiriceánach agus má tá mise in ann í a fhoghlaim, is féidir leatsa freisin!

Nobody in Scotland wants to speak Gaelic

@@MiloAnglin05ach tha na daoine in Èirinn ag iarraidh i a bhrudhinn cuideachd!

​@@MiloAnglin05English puppet.

🇮🇪🇮🇱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

There are and I've met them. @@MiloAnglin05

álainn

Bhí sé sinn go speicialta ar fad.

This was like watching an episode of Easy German, or Easy French... I wish there was an Easy Irish Channel, it would be good craic.

Thank you :) you were such a nice interviewer and everyone who you interviewed was so positive and pleasant and willing to share, thank you! :)

Well said. Maith an cailin.

I study German and Gaelic. I find Gaelic much more difficult. This is probably mostly because it is not a commonly spoke language or a commonly learned language. Therefore, resources are very limited. There are more resources to learn Irish, or even Latin than there are Gaelic. Outside of certain small regions of Scotland, or I've heard in Nova Scotia you will probably never get to speak it with another person unless you decide to learn it with someone, or meet someone online to communicate it with. Other than that it is sort of just a immersion into a people, and their history.

I was more talking about the American way they call it Gaelic but point taken!

@@Clisare Words can go from being common to almost non-existent within a generation. I do always feel the need to point it out that 'Gaelic' was once a very normal name for the language in Ireland (and is still not abnormal some places in the country), particularly on behalf of my granduncle a chuaigh ar shlí na fírinne deich mbliana ó shin agus a thug neart béaloidis agus piseoga ó Chontae Chiarraí dom, agus geallaim duit nárbh aon poncánach é! (B'iomaí uair a chuala mé 'Gaelic' i mBéarla in oirthear agus iarthar Chiarraí agus in iarthar an Chláir chomh maith, daoine níos sine a bhí i gceist, ach ba rud nádúrtha dóibh í ina gcanúint) Labhair tú le neart daoine deasa i nGaillimh ansin, 'Gaelic' mhaith ag cuid acu :p treise leat!

@@Clisare but it’s not wrong to say Gaelic so why say it is?

Ach is Gaidhlig a labhraíonn siad in Alba. Is saghas ‘catch all’ é an focail Gaelic d’eachtranaigh. Is teanga Gaelic í an Gaeilge.

In places with large Irish diaspora like the US, Canada, Australia and NZ, we call the language Gaelic because of historical reasons. During the time of most immigration (whether during the famine, due to other political or warfare issues, or as convicts in the case of the early USA and later Australia), Ireland was not an independent country. As an occupied colony of the UK, there was no official language of Ireland (except English), just the native language which in both Scotland and Ireland (dialects of which were mutually inteligible at the time) was usually called Gaelic. Gaelic speakers in the diaspora used this word, and this was also the word used in Australia when bans were put on the public use of the language by convicts in certain areas. The word Gaelic has a huge amount of historical importance in the diaspora (people were arrested for speaking "Gaelic" in some areas), and for the history of Irish people in Ireland. After independence, and especially after the "official standard" was created to teach in schools by mixing different native dialects together to form a version that could be spoken all over the country, the word Irish became the official term used. This was also when the word "Gaeilge" was chosen as the standard name for the language in Irish, rather than another varient such as Gaolann, Gaeilig, Gaedhlig, etc which are still used by some Irish speaking communities today. So yes, in Ireland, the official term is Irish for the national standard, but the language many diaspora people grew up hearing about was almost always referred to as Gaelic and it has its own rich history outside of Ireland (both in the diaspora and in the related languages in Scotland and the Isle of Man) which is easily forgotten when we demand that the language be only referred to as Irish. Educating people on the language is amazing work, but I hope that as time goes on, Irish people can come to realise that those of us from outside Ireland aren't using the word Gaelic out of ignorance, we are using it because of very specific historical and political factors that lead to the different terms being used in different countries.

Never too late. I studied and gained my BSc in my 40s

Try Duolingo's Irish Course for a start.

Maith thú! Tá mé ag foghlaim Gaeilge ar Duolingo le dhá bhliain freisin. Is breá liom féachaint ar Ros na Rún ar TG4 agus tá cúpla leabhair agam a léim cúpla abairt ‘chuile lá.

it feels great to understand at least half/most of a sentence without needing the subtitles lol

Fantastic! As I said in the chat it is mighty good to see younger folk speaking their native tongue. The world has lost too many languages and it would be a shame if Irish were one of them.

Thank you so much!

Chances are they were given where they were from and the time period, as long as they weren't from Galway city, unlikely then they would have been Irish speakers. Is as Gaillimh mé

Did you know, the only Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area) outside of Ireland is in Erinsville, Ontario Canada. They do have a festival yearly.

@@shamrock4500 No, I did not know that! How cool! Thanks for the info!

Kindly wondering why you said "obviously of Irish descent" ?

@@thesoul2sqeeze Simply because of my surname being Murphy, which, to many people, is instantly recognizable as an Irish surname. I apologize if my choice of phrasing left you puzzled. Sláinte!

The very first thing to do in decolonizing their minds, if they are serious, is to learn Irish and use it every day, and speak it to their own children.

If you’re getting regular exposure in lots of different ways and interacting with the language consistently (which you seem to be doing already) then it sounds like you’re well in on your way in terms of learning/relearning Irish! One thing I’d say from my own experience; after a certain point try to make sure you’re doing things THROUGH Irish, rather than focusing all your attention on learning ABOUT Irish. It’s a living language after all, and chatting in the pub, board games night with your friends, etc. will always be more engaging than poring over a grammar book!

That would be my advice, read it, listen to it, go to events in Irish and it’ll come back to you, that’s what I’m doing! Also take a course with Gaelchultúr

The An Siopa Leabhar website has a great selection of children's books; one I'd personally recommend is Scéalta ó Oileán an Turtair, it's a collection of short Native American folktales written in simple Irish.

@@johnmackenreillytag5692 native american stories wow! Interesting! Thank you so much for the recommendation, i will take a look through their options!

@@arwensdorf8311 Fadhb ar bith, bain sult as do thuras teanga! 💪

No, it's pronounced Gay-lik in English. Gallick in Gàidhlig

@@Chief_Brody The Scots speak English as well as gaelic and every Scot I ever heard on the 7 years I lived in Scotland including BBC Scotland pronounced the name of the language "gallick", never "gaylick".

@@Chief_Brodyit’s definitely gallick in both gàidhlig and english

Terma.ie has the different pronunciation for the different dialects. DuoLingo isn’t pronouncing most of right as the voice is very American

The language was banned in Ireland as a whole for 800 years but I don’t know if it continued to be banned in NI once the Republic got its independence. I know it’s recognised there now. I have a video called “can people from Northern Ireland speak Irish” talking to people from Northern Ireland about this

@@ClisareIrish was never explicitly banned in Ireland as a whole (the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1367 only applied to English settlements and even within the Pale it would have been very difficult to enforce) but it was progressively squeezed out of any realm of life which would have given it power or influence. The Penal Laws targeted Catholics, many of whom happened to be Irish speaking, but Irish was often used in official courts up until and even after the time of the famine and most courts had interpreters available for the judges (something we haven't had for a while now despite being independent, but with so few monolingual speakers I suppose the State does not consider it a real necessity...) It also wouldn't have been possible for Irish to have been banned all over Ireland for 800 years, as the country was never fully colonised until after the Flight of the Earls. Not including Dublin, the entirety of Ireland was under British administration for about 350 years.

Thank you so much for explaining my own country's history to me /s

@@cigh7445 it’s important to be accurate as you have here! Shame your comment wasn’t well received!

You don’t really need to learn Irish at all to visit. Tearma.ie has pronunciation tools

Sure you get 10% but you have to do maths and biology in Irish so that’s *hard*

Why don’t you?

That’ll take me a few days to a week, honestly, but I should be able to do it