In the moments after a woman gives birth, her brain starts to work differently. Part of the explanation for this postpartum change is hormonal – oxytocin surges through her body during labour and after her child is born, intensifying her senses while simultaneously relaxing her body.
For me, it was an all-encompassing high during which any coherent brain functioning ceased to exist. In those first minutes of motherhood, one purpose came to me without question – to love my daughter. And that love, instinctively and immediately in my first words to her, came through the Irish language.
Brought up in a bilingual household, I’ve spoken Irish my whole life. My father, who is Irish but grew up in London, did not speak the language but encouraged my mother to speak her native tongue to me and my sister throughout our childhood. We attended a Gaelscoil but the real fluency was thanks to my mother’s tireless efforts, even through the early years when I insisted on responding to her in English.
I’ve spent most of my adult life telling people if I ever had children, I would speak Irish to them. Even during the years when I seriously planned on settling abroad, I never rolled back on my determination to speak Irish with my children.
Why was that? There’s no simple explanation. Passing on the gift of bilingualism was only one element of it. I believe the real motivation ran much deeper. Irish is part of my being, my family’s story, it makes me who I am. My great-grandfather cycled the roads of this country as a timire Gaeilge, teaching anyone who was interested in rediscovering a language which, in the early 20th century, had almost been completely wiped out by British colonial power. Perhaps I felt I needed to carry on his work, in my own personal way.
In the end though, the decision to speak Irish to my daughter was neither planned nor calculated. Because from the moment I held her on my chest, and breathed in her sweet newborn smell, Irish was the language that came to me – it was the natural order.
I’ve now spent nearly 14 months speaking Irish to my daughter from first thing in the morning till last thing at night. My partner, like millions of others on this island, learned Irish until the Leaving Cert but left school without much confidence in the spoken language. When we first discussed bringing up our daughter bilingually, he expressed some concerns. What if he didn’t understand what I was saying to her? It quickly became clear he had nothing to worry about. As the weeks and months passed, his own Irish vocabulary – almost entirely hidden away since school – started to re-emerge. Now, a year on, he proudly tells people he’s “relearning the language” with his daughter.
According to last year’s census, 1.87 million people on this island say they can speak Irish, an increase of 6 per cent on Irish speakers in 2016. Of these, 623,961 speak Irish on a daily basis both within and outside the education system.
Some 71,968 of these daily speakers use Irish outside the education system, a fall of 1,835 on the 2016 figure. Among those who indicated they could speak Irish, one in four said they never actually speak the language while more than half said they did not speak Irish well.
[ Learning languages: Why bilingual kids are smarterOpens in new window ]
Sibéal Davitt, who was brought up in an Irish-only speaking Dublin-based household, is now bringing up her one-year-old son bilingually. She speaks “exclusively in Irish” with him while her husband, who is taking classes to improve his own Irish, speaks English.
“I don’t really notice myself doing it,” says Davitt, who attended all-Irish primary and secondary schools and studied the language at university. “It would feel weird, otherwise, not speaking Irish with him.”
Davitt, a professional dancer and part-time Irish teacher, feels frustrated when people ask why she speaks Irish at home. “What’s the point of it, they ask. I get that question a lot and I’m really sick of it. It’s so loaded. What do they mean? It’s a way of communicating with people. People wouldn’t think twice if I spoke Spanish or French.
“Irish tradition has become so commodified – unless you can buy and sell something it’s hard to convince people to do it. We’re in this constant loop with the Irish language and I find it all a bit depressing.”
She believes speaking Irish will give her son “a completely different view” of the world. “I think it’s important for him to realise the different ways of being and seeing. He’ll always have English so it’s a gift to give him Irish.
“I do think my own brain is wired differently because of Irish,” she adds. “There are things that come to me more naturally as Gaeilge than they do as Béarla. It’s the notion of the beautiful ordinary – to be able to describe something in a minority language is beautiful and ordinary.”
If more people started using phrases like go raibh maith agat and slán in their daily life, Davitt believes it could transform how the population view the language. “It’s insane how much of a psychological shift this can be for people. There’s a barrier that people feel uncomfortable about. We need a total mindset change.”
Tomás Ó Briain, whose parents are both native speakers, also attended Gaelscoileanna but spoke a mixture of Irish and English growing up. Like Davitt, speaking Irish at home was “a natural thing. Other people can articulate better that they have a passion for the language but for me it’s just natural, I don’t think about it too deeply.”
Ó Briain now speaks Irish with his two-year-old and four-year-old children, while his wife speaks Spanish. “My wife can speak a couple of languages, she had a mix of Spanish and English growing up. I think it’s a bit more natural for someone in a non-English speaking country to have no issues with this.”
However, some members of his extended family warned that speaking more than one language at home would confuse the children and delay their speech development. “It turned out to be total b*****ks,” he says with a laugh. “They know Spanish is the language Mama speaks and Irish the language Dada speaks. If I ask one of them to throw me the socks, they hear me say it in Irish, walk to the bottom of the stairs, shout up to their mama in Spanish, and then turn to me and switch back to Irish.”
Ó Briain also believes bilingualism encourages a child’s musical ear. “It may be an old wives’ tale but they sing a lot to themselves and love listening to music. It activates another part of the brain, I think language and music are very mixed.”
Tara Dunne-Uí Admhaill was not raised through Irish and already attended the local national school in Palmerstown, Dublin, when her mother decided to send her younger brother to a Gaelscoil. “It was closer to our house and she really liked the vibe in the school so she moved me there for Rang a 2 (second class). I really had no Irish, just the basic stuff I would have learned in the national school. But I did a few classes and the school reckoned I had a flair for languages because by Christmas, I was at the same level as the other kids.”
Her dad was English with Italian background and her mum was a Dubliner, so there was no history of Irish speakers in the family. When it came time to move on to secondary school, Dunne-Uí Admhaill opted to take two buses to and from school each day so she could attend Scoil Chaitríona in Glasnevin. A stint in the Connemara Gaeltacht as a young teenager only cemented her love of the language.
“There was a family in Palmerstown that spoke Irish and I used to look at them in awe. I thought, I’m going to do that when I’m grown up and have kids. Seeing it as a living language just opened it up even further.”
Dunne-Uí Admhaill studied Irish and sociology at university where she met her now-husband, a fluent speaker from Belfast. “We never spoke English to each other, it was only Gaeilge, right from the start. It was the norm and Irish is his first language. Shortly after I graduated, I realised I was pregnant and there was no question whether we would raise our child in Irish, it came very naturally to us.”
After her daughter Aoibhí was born, Dunne-Uí Admhaill took nine months’ maternity leave. Her own parents then took over childcare when she returned to work. The only problem was, they didn’t speak Irish. “It was just when her language skills were developing and she suddenly started hearing more English. She understood Irish but her speech started coming in English. We were genuinely heartbroken.”
When she was pregnant with her second child, Dunne-Uí Admhaill decided to take a career break to stay at home with her children. “We couldn’t find an Irish-speaking childminder, there was no Irish-speaking creche, so we decided I’d take time off until they went to the naíonra [preschool]. It’s a massive sacrifice [taking time off work] but I wanted to do it for them. There have been consistent challenges along this journey we’ve decided to take.”
She ended up staying home until her three children reached preschool age and found a Brazilian childminder for their fourth child.
Dunne-Uí Admhaill admits she still sometimes breaks into English at home if she’s having an argument with her husband, but the rest of the time, it’s always Irish. “The kids think Daddy can’t speak English,” she says with a smile. “Our six-year-old recently heard him speak English and thought it was hilarious.”
Cormac Chambers, principal of Gaelscoil Lios na nÓg on Dublin’s southside suburb of Ranelagh, says his mother also took time off work when he was small so she could speak Irish while taking care of him. “She couldn’t afford to take the time off when my siblings came along so there was less Irish in the home.”
Chambers still attended Gaelscoileanna and developed a love for the language through his involvement in traditional music and during his teenage years at Coláiste Eoin in Booterstown. However, it was his time studying for a master’s in business in Poland, and interacting with people from different countries, that actually “solidified” his interest in the language.
Chambers and his partner spoke English together in the early years of their relationship but now only speak Irish at home with their son Cuadhán. They were slightly concerned when he started in the local naíonra with no English, but found he quickly adapted and now speaks both languages with ease. Chambers has heard concerns from some parents that their child will struggle with language development if they attend a Gaelscoil but says these issues “always iron themselves out”.
“In today’s society, people want things almost immediately. I explain to parents that they need to take the longer view with this. Out there in the real world it’s a tsunami of English, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Chambers also finds the children of immigrants who attend his Gaelscoil adapt to the language with ease. Bilingualism, and sometimes trilingualism, is the norm in their homes. “In some ways it’s easier because Irish is their third language. Many of them are being brought up with French, Spanish, Malay or Chinese as well as English.”
Only speaking Irish at home with your child requires a “big effort” and “can feel fruitless at the start” but over time children will really appreciate it, he says.
[ Haigh. I’m a black woman, and I happen to speak IrishOpens in new window ]
“You’re giving your child a different lens through which to see the world. And on a more philosophical level, it’s a window into their own soul. I think it’s very important, nobody who does it will regret it.”
My own mother spent nearly 14 years speaking to me in Irish before I really started responding as Gaeilge. Bringing my daughter up in a bilingual household, and as part of an almost entirely English-speaking circle of friends, I’m no doubt facing the same uphill battle with my own little girl. But in a world where bilingualism is increasingly common (experts estimate about half the human race is bilingual), speaking this country’s native language with my child should not be revolutionary.
And regardless of whether she chooses to respond to me in Irish next year, in five years, or in 20 years, I still believe my efforts will help her develop a more creative, empathetic and inquiring mind. And I hope, in the long term, she’ll thank me for this.
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