#also yeah i would be lying if i said I didn't have impostor syndrome about this

[trans-cuchulainn]

I legit thought you were irish because usually the only people I see with Gaelige in their bio are Irish 🥲

I do not think it’s bad for non Irish people to like or have an interest in Gaeilge!! The sad face was for the lack of knowledge about it outside Ireland, as someone who is fromIreland I’m really really glad you like it!! Not that you need my validation or opinion but I realise the other message could have been misinterpreted

tbh because my area of academic expertise is medieval irish literature and i post about irish stuff a lot (and also in irish, and also used to live in ireland for a while which really confused things), i think a lot of people on tumblr assume that i am irish, to the point where at one point my bio said "disappointingly british". because it did always seem to be a disappointment when people discovered this and i wanted to preempt that

(i use "british" rather than "english" because a significant portion of my dad's side of the family were welsh, even if they are dead now, and i also have family connections in scotland, so this feels more accurate to me. some people get weird about british/english distinctions so i always feel the need to clarify on this front. but i was born and raised in england)

and every time anyone irl finds out what i study or that i used to do irish dance or that i play trad music, their next question is always "oh so is your family irish then?" and when i tell them no, not meaningfully, they're like ?! because their brains can't compute that somebody might just. like stuff

it makes me a bit sad that so many irish people don't realise that irish lit and language and music can stand on its own two feet. it's good! people don't only like it because they have an Ancestral Connection! it is interesting even without that! so i feel you on the 🥲 but like. from the other side of it because the very fact that nobody expects people like me to exist seems sad

(but actually within my academic field itself i probably know more non-irish people than irish people, and while some have a family connection, many others don't. most of my academic friends are not irish. we cluster together in solidarity and weep over learning gaeilge as adult beginners because we never had the chance to do it at school)