Rosssa O'Snodaigh

“I suppose I’m one of the revival generation of Irish speakers in that my parents didn’t grow up speaking Irish. My mother’s grandparents did have Irish but they didn’t speak it to their kids – for economic reasons, as far as I know. When my parents married they decided to bring up the family through Irish, which was a brave thing to do at the time. There were a lot of people against the language
“I didn’t have any English until I started picking it up in school. I have a very clear memory of a friend down the road speaking to me in English and me not knowing what he was saying.
“It’s a huge benefit to have the language, even for learning other languages. The most restricted people in the world are those who have just one language. You find people in Switzerland who can speak several languages – even the homeless on the street can beg in five or six languages.
“People have a lot of hang-ups about Irish. They say they hate it because it was forced down their throats. But so was maths and English and they didn’t hate that. They say they have huge problems with the way it was taught in the past. I’d agree with them on that one – having Irish in the Leaving Cert doesn’t help you speak Irish. If it was down to me I would start teaching the language the way French is taught.
“The Gaeltacht areas might be dying in some respects but there are more Irish speakers in the cities and towns at the moment and I believe the language is going to get stronger than it is now. The gaelscoilleanna are where it’s probably going to happen.
“I would love it if everyone in the country was able to speak Irish to each other. The richness that would inform our way of thinking would be huge. We’re losing out a lot by not speaking it more often. The lack of respect people have in Ireland for each other these days is, I believe down to a lack of respect for the language. In Japan, they speak Japanese. What do we speak? Fucking English!”
“Tá rogha le déanamh ag gach cainteoir; an ghaeilge a úsáid nó scaoileadh leíthí go hiomlán. Ní fiú pioc an teanga mura bhfuil sí á labhairt. Chun í a labhairt caifear an fód a sheasamh i gcoinne siúd a dheinfadhh neamh-shuim, siúd a dheinfadh magadh agus siúd a bheadh iomlán i naghaidh ár dteanga. Bítear á n-úsáid agus marfaidh an Ghaeilge.”