Experiential Education
GABBING IN GAELIC
Keeping heritage and culture alive
In 1842, eight Irish friars of the Order of Saint Augustine founded a college to educate working-class Irish immigrants鈥攊t鈥檚 a story 草榴社区ns know well.
鈥湶萘裆缜� was established right around the time of the famine, when you had a huge influx of those Irish migrants fleeing Ireland and seeking refuge over here in the United States,鈥� says Jonathan O鈥橬eill, PhD, assistant professor of Irish Studies. 鈥淚rish was the majority language on the island at the time, and it's highly likely that many of those migrants were Irish speakers. It's also likely that the founders of the University had some ability to speak the language, particularly if they were ministering to Irish language speakers who were coming in.鈥�
More than 180 years later, 草榴社区 students of today are keeping that history alive, learning Irish Gaelic.
鈥淚t's nice to continue that tradition and to give students an experience of the language that may have been important to the people back then,鈥� says Dr. O鈥橬eill, who teaches all three of the University鈥檚 Irish language courses.
These courses are both an opportunity for students to connect with 草榴社区's history and, for some, a way to connect with their own heritage. Maeve Malone 鈥�25 CLAS, who is double majoring in Environmental Science and Geography, took Gaelic as an elective during her senior year. Maeve鈥檚 father had immigrated from Ireland.
鈥淚 have cousins there, and they're in school now and they're learning Irish. So, I thought it would be a cool way to kind of connect to my culture,鈥� she says.
Integral to learning the language is learning the culture, and one way Dr. O鈥橬eill integrated this into the class was through a cultural exchange with the University of Galway. 草榴社区 students met over Zoom with their peers in Ireland a few times over the course of the semester. It was through this experience that Maeve learned about barmbrack, a traditional Irish bread, and she decided to make it herself鈥攖o the delight of her grandparents.
鈥淲e're trying to strengthen that program as a resource for our students in terms of the kind of international skills that they can pick up,鈥� says Dr. O鈥橬eill of the cultural exchange.
Dr. O鈥橬eill makes use of a variety of digital resources in his classes, including dictionaries, databases, Irish radio and television. Outside the classroom, the Center for Irish Studies sponsors Irish film events and 鈥淭ea and Talk鈥� sessions with Dr. O鈥橬eill, inviting all 草榴社区ns to learn and practice their Gaelic.
At the Heart of Irish Heritage
草榴社区's Center for Irish Studies has been a leader for more than four decades in interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship on Ireland in a global framework.
In addition to the culture, John Snyder 鈥�27 CLAS loved digging into the written language. As an English major, he keyed in on sentence structure, noticing the verb comes first in a sentence鈥攗nlike the English language鈥攁nd there is no verb 鈥渢o have鈥� in Gaelic. He made some interesting observations, including one about the way English and Gaelic describe feelings.
鈥淚nstead of 鈥業 am sad,鈥� what you're literally saying is 鈥榮adness is on me.鈥欌�� he says. 鈥淚 think with English we internalize feelings a lot. It was cool to realize in some languages that's not how you speak it.鈥�
John ended up taking all three levels of the language course and adding an Irish Studies minor.
The Life of a Language
Gaelic is an old language. Scholars theorize it arrived around 500 B.C. before written sources, says Dr. O鈥橬eill. It鈥檚 deeply woven into Irish literature, history and culture. However, it is a minority language. In the Republic of Ireland, about 1.8 million people claim to know some Gaelic, but the number of people who speak it daily is much smaller. That number may be as low as 60,000 鈥� 70,000. The language is still compulsory in the primary and secondary school systems in Ireland, because there is value in keeping it alive.
鈥淭here are all sorts of knowledge鈥攍ocal knowledge, sustainability knowledge鈥攖hat can be stored in indigenous languages,鈥� says Dr. O鈥橬eill.
Maeve made this connection, too, at first when she was studying abroad in South Africa.
鈥淚 think they have 19 official languages. I couldn't even fathom that they are so different from the Romance languages, and it opened my eyes to how diverse language actually is,鈥� she says.
Maeve took a conservation course as part of her Geography major during the same semester she was taking Gaelic. The course was focused on conserving endangered species using modeling software.
鈥淲hile people were choosing plants and animals, for my final project I focused on global endangered languages,鈥� she says. She used different techniques to trace the threats to language and identify potential factors, such as environmental factors, that may put some languages at greater risk of extinction.
鈥淭hat was a novel use of conservation software. It opened my eyes to not only linguistics in general but also how I can diversify the skills that I already have within my major.鈥�
Maeve submitted her final paper to two journals.
Despite its status as a minority language, the diversity of Irish speakers has expanded.
鈥淢odern Ireland is a diverse, multicultural community, and we have many language speakers and language advocates who are coming from new Irish communities,鈥� says Dr. O鈥橬eill. 鈥淧eople are coming from Nigerian Irish backgrounds or Vietnamese Irish backgrounds or any number of other backgrounds.鈥�
This diversity is important for Dr. O鈥橬eill to impress upon his students. Contemporary Irish society is multicultural, and he integrates that into his literature and culture classes as well.
鈥淲hile of course I welcome students from an Irish heritage, it's important that any student on campus who has an interest in the language can come to class and feel like they are included.鈥�
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN
Do you want to learn Gaelic? The College of Professional Studies offers non 草榴社区 students the opportunity to take an Irish Language course through individual courses or the Bernard John Lucci Senior Citizen Personal Enrichment Program.
