Liam O Maonlai is a founder member and lead singer with the Hothouse Flowers whose fifth studio album, Into Your Heart has just been released. Along with the band’s guitarist Fiachna O Braonain, O Maonlai was one of the first of a new generation of Irish speakers to use the language widely, both at home and abroad.
“I love Irish. I see the language as something that is very much a part of my being. It has also been very good to me over the years. In fact, I probably wouldn’t be talking now as a so- called famous person if it wasn’t for the fact that I speak Irish.
“When the band got together first we got onto TV shows way before anybody else would have done purely because we spoke Irish. Fiachna [O Braonain] and myself use Irish almost every day if we’re hanging out together…it can come on in a second and we just start. There’s a lot of humour in the language that isn’t there in English. And there’s a certain self-confidence that comes with speaking Irish – you’re speaking the language of the land.
“As a family growing up in Clonskeagh in Dublin we were all Irish speakers. It made us different and we were definitely marked out because of it. We were victims of a kind of racism in a way. We were looked upon by some people as dirty and somehow lesser beings.
“It came to a head once when we were asked out to play by a couple of kids that we had never met before. There was a kind of a kangaroo court, almost like something from Lord Of The Flies and my brother and I were found guilty of something or other and ropes were put around our necks.
“There are casualties of the way Irish was taught in the past. I meet people again and again who were abused by Irish and by the panic the whole nation went into, in trying to save it. People got it beaten into them and as a result they hate it. But they’re sorry that they hate it and they’re angry that they hate it.
“It’s great to see the different unfoldings of the language these days – but the biggest pleasure for me is to hear people in the Gaeltacht speak Irish among themselves. People are saying there is a lot of pressure on people in the Gaeltacht to speak English. But they forget that there always was that pressure there. Now more people are buying houses in these areas and the kids are learning Irish, which can only be a good thing.
“The best thing for the future of Irish is to let it be. It will endure if people don’t panic about it. It’s got its own will and it will survive if there is lot less stigma put upon it
“Tá a neart féin aici. Go maire gach briathar in anam na Tíre. Táim buíoch agus cluinfear mo bhuíochas.
