Summer School in Irish – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, I finally returned to Irish school this summer after a decade away. You can find out more about Gaelchultúr's online North American Irish classes here: https://www.gaelchultur.com/en/courses/irish-language-online-cursai-usa-2022

Bhí mé ag staidéar Gaeilge an Samhradh seo le Gaelchultúr ar Zoom. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a formal Irish class, but when I saw the opportunity from Gaelchultúr to take classes scheduled for the North American evening hours on Zoom I jumped at the chance. Irish has a special place in my heart, it’s the language that many of my ancestors spoke only a century ago. I’ve always wanted to be able to speak Irish as well as read and write in it, but never to much avail. So, now as an adult I wanted to give it a second try.

I first started studying Irish when the Irish Center in Kansas City began offering classes back in 2007. I was one in their first class of students, and at 14 found myself studying two languages at once: Latin in school and Irish in the evenings. They’re different enough that I didn’t often mix things up, but I still don’t think I was quite ready to really understand either language. I’ve now taken Latin three times and Irish twice formally, and only now am actually properly beginning to understand the nuances and structures of both.

So, what have I learned this time around? Well, I learned how to form past tense verbs, something I’d bumbled my way into half-learning on my own in the past, and I learned about this nifty habitual aspect that can be useful to describe actions that are regular and frequent in happening. I’ve become more confident in my speaking abilities and my recall of words, phrases, and grammar. So far then, I’d say this time around of studying Irish has been a success.

My biggest piece of advice if you want to study any language, whether you already speak it or not, is figure out how you personally learn languages best. What’s your best method? If you figure that out, then you can really begin to make progress. I like doing all the week’s exercises before class so when class starts, I already have notes and am more prepared. I find I need the confidence boost of knowing the answers ahead of time to really let myself make progress in a task. In the same way that I always had a harder time ice skating when I started to think about it in my usual depth and excess than if I just did it and didn’t worry too much. 

The same, as it turns out, goes with Irish. When I’m not overthinking about what it is I’m trying to say I do pretty well; when I do overthink things, I’ll mess up either the pronunciation or chose a different word altogether that just doesn’t work as well. I’ve really learned how to learn languages through learning Latin and French. Using the methods, I’ve found helpful for those languages, particularly writing out sentences and reading text aloud, I’ve been able to really pick up on my Irish far better than I ever did as a teenager.

Irish for me has a particular potency, it’s the language that my name comes from, it’s the language that is best used to express the origins of my identity. It’s a foundational language for me that I was aware of for most of my life but hardly ever fully understood. I wrote last year about my struggles learning and retaining my Irish, that rather fittingly for a language spoken by past generations of my family I knew how to conjugate in the past and present tense only but not the future tense. Now having studied the past tense and muddled a bit with the present tense I know that looking at the future tense I could probably write future tense verbs if I had to though I don’t know any of the intricacies of the Irish future tense yet. So, from last year to now I’ve made some progress yes, albeit at a slow pace.

Where does that leave me today? Well, I’ve enrolled in the next class up. Even though I’ve taken Irish before I decided to start at the very beginning (a very good place to start) seeing as it’s been a decade since I last studied it. Thus, as I now finish up the A1 class, I’m looking forward to starting A2 in September. Maybe then by this time next year I’ll be strong enough near the end of the B2 to write some of these blog posts and podcasts in Irish. (Don’t worry!) To quote Florida’s own former Governor Jeb Bush, “Please clap.”