#níl sé aiteach

[duine-aiteach]

What are some ways to say "I love you" in Irish?

I’m assuming this is romantic so I’m going to say “Tá mé i ngrá leat/Táim i ngrá leat” which translates as I am in love with you. That would be my first thought (partially because of SayWeCanFly’s song Tá Mé I, I will admit).

Other suggestions I’ve found:

Tá grá agam duit - I have love for you

Is tú mo stór/stóirín - You are my treasure/sweetheart/honey

Mo ghrá thú - you are my love

Mo chroí thú - you are my heart

Is tú mó ghrá - you are my love

Is tusa mo ghrá geal/grá bán - you are my bright/white love

Gráim thú - I love you. Apparently not technically correct but it is used

Mo chroí ionat/mo chroí isteach ionat - my heart is in you

Is ghrá liom thú - I love you

Mo chuach thú - I love you

Phrases like this could help?

Mo ghrá-sa - my love

Mo stór/stóirín - my honey/treasure

Mo chuisle - my pulse

A chuisle mo chroí - my heart’s beloved

Mo cheol thú - you are my music

Mo chroí thú - you are my heart

ploika on Reddit says this:

Non native but reasonably decent Irish speaker here: "Is tú mo ghrá" - "you are my love", is how I'd say it if you want meaningfully tell someone you love them. Say, if you were to say it to someone for the first time. "Mo ghrá thú" - kind of "my love to you", would in my mind be more of the I love you you'd say at the end of a phone call to your partner. That's just my opinion though. People use "mo ghrá thú" in poetry so it's not a nothing statement either.

Someone in the same Reddit thread suggested a page that I can’t seem to link but here’s the url so you can copy and paste it - https://blogs.transparent.com/irish/saying-“i-love-you”-in-irish-without-the-verb-“to-love”/

I hope that helped in some way but if anyone has any other suggestions or corrections of what I’ve put here then please do add on!

Bíodh lá breá agat,

Bramble

[duine-aiteach]

Does the current curriculum for Irish fail the language?

On the 2016 census 1.7 million people indicated they could speak Irish, which was a 13,000 decrease from the 2011 census. 420,000 said they never spoke Irish and 587,000 said they spoke it only in education. A mere 200,000 indicated they spoke it weekly or daily, and I fear that that number is only going to fall. The number of fluent Irish speakers has declined since The Famine despite various attempts to revive it, and current opinions towards the language aren’t helping it recover. There has to be a change in the way it is implemented.

 The current examination system for Irish at Leaving Certificate level has an oral examination, an aural examination and a written examination. The results of these are then averaged out to get a final grade. This may seem like a good idea as the students can play to their strengths. However, the level of Irish required to take this exam is generally higher than students can manage. The teachers knew we didn’t have enough Irish to answer the questions on our own, so we were given essays and pages of notes to learn off. By forcing us to take exams at a much higher level than we could speak, most people who had any bit of interest lost it. If the way Irish is taught, and subsequently examined, isn’t changed the language will die.

Stringing a language along that not many people want to speak just to preserve it is ridiculous and ultimately a waste of time. Forcing the language on people does no good. At the moment we have a country full of teenagers who loathe the subject. We can’t actually speak it but can somehow answer an in-depth question on the themes of a poem?

 My proposition is to begin at the root – education – and split Irish into two separate subjects – Irish (native speaker) and Irish (learner). The first will be aimed mainly at Gaeltacht areas and Gaelscoils and rarely be taken outside of them, whereas the latter is aimed at people who don’t often use Irish outside of school.

Irish (native speaker) can stay pretty much the same as the current Irish curriculum since it’s aimed at people who can speak Irish the way most of us do English. Whereas Irish (learner) would be set up more like the foreign languages – French, German, Spanish etc – that are taught in schools already.

Currently, people who have only learnt simple introductions and past tense verbs are coming into secondary school expected to be able to write essays by themselves, and as time goes on it gets harder and harder. We are treated as if we should know things about Irish that we have never been taught. That needs to be changed. We need to be taught what things mean and why we use them more than just “because we do.” In primary school we were made to learn lists of Irish words off – liom, leat, leis, lei, linn, libh, leo; orm, ort, air, uirthi, orainn, oraibh, orthu etc – but it wasn’t until Leaving Cert. that I learned they had different meanings and you didn’t just alternate based off your gut feeling. I only learned that because of an offhand comment my teacher made that we as a class then asked about. He grew up in Connemara and seemed very surprised that we didn’t know the difference.

 Irish isn’t spoken widely anymore outside of Gaeltacht areas and the vast majority of Irish people who can “speak” Irish haven’t spoken it since leaving school. Most of what they do know is due to learning by heart and not actually learning to speak the language. The problem isn’t a lack of interest, it’s mainly the curriculum which forces the teachers to not actually teach the language properly because that isn’t important to get us through our exams.

I struggled with Irish greatly in secondary school and I believe most of that is down to being pushed into an exam I wasn’t able for. I was discouraged from taking ordinary level because as long as I passed, I would get more points in higher level. I put myself under a lot of stress that I think could have been avoided if I had had the choice to study Irish as a language I was learning, rather than one I seemed to be expected to know.

 If it was taught differently more people would want to and would enjoy learning the language. The only way Irish will properly survive is if they actually start teaching us how to speak the language not just acting like we are already fluent in it. I have heard a vast amount of people say that they can speak French or German better than a language they’ve been “taught” since they were four years of age. The language you’ve been around since early childhood should be much easier to speak than one you’ve been learning for three or four years.

 Although every Irish person’s first language used to be Irish it has to be understood now that that isn’t the case and the way of promoting and encouraging Irish needs to be changed to reflect that. A hundred years ago testing students on analysing a poem in Irish would work since the person spoke the language fluently, but now we do not and without a serious change in teaching we never will be. There must be a change to increase proficiency of the language in the general Republic or it will die out. 

[duine-aiteach]

Question - what are your feelings on W. B. Yeats? Yay or nay?

[duine-aiteach]

Me on a whim: hmm I wonder how well I’d do in the last section of Irish in Dulolingo? (Having actually only done up to level 1, the colours section)

Dulolingo:

[image description: a screenshot of Duolingo. It shows a sandcastle and says “you completed checkpoint 5!”]

[duine-aiteach]

I’ve just started numbers in Welsh and I love them? Eleven is ‘one ten one’. It’s beautiful

[duine-aiteach]

Is maith liom ag caint as Gaeilge uaireanta mar níl aon judging ar mise. TÁ mé dona ach ní care mé! Chuir isteach an focail as Béarla, cad a céap gach duine eile? Who cares. Tógann tú spraoi as

[duine-aiteach]

Tags I use:

As Béarla - the post is in English or English is used in the post

As Gaeilge - the post is in Irish or Irish is used in the post

Ireland - the post relates to Ireland or being Irish more than it does the Irish language

Cymraeg - the post is in Welsh, Welsh is used in the post or the post relates to Wales.

Gàidhlig - the post is in Scots Gaelic, Scots Gaelic is used in the post or the post relates to Scotland.

Scots - the post is about Scots. Not to be confused with my Scots Gaelic tag Gàidhlig

Brezhoneg - the post is in Breton, Breton is used in the post or the post relates to Brittany.

Kernowek - the post is in Cornish, Cornish is used in the post or the post relates to Cornwall.

Gaelg - the post is in Manx, Manx is used in the post or the post relates to the Isle of Man.

My own post - an original post that I have made, whether on this page or a different page.

Caint - I have not made this post but I have added a comment onto it.

Griangraf - a photograph

Ealaín - a piece of art

Filíocht - poetry suggestions or discussion

Litríocht - book suggestions or discussion

Ceol - music suggestions or discussion

Scannán - film or television suggestions or discussion

Stair - the post discusses history

Staidear - posts relating to learning Irish

Polaitiúil - the post relates to politics

Cearta an Duine - the post relates to fighting for human rights and equality

Béaloideas - the post relates to Celtic folklore

Seanfhocal - the post contains a saying or proverb

Greannmhar - the post is amusing though not a meme

Memes as Gaeilge - a meme or otherwise non serious post in Irish.

Aiteach - the post relates to being queer in some way

Níl sé aiteach - the post has no queer content

Aerach - the post relates to being gay or mlm in some way

Leispiach - the post relates to being a lesbian or wlw in some way

Trasinscneach - the post relates to being transgender in some way

Fear tras - the post relates to being a trans man or trans masculine in some way

Bean thras - the post relates to being a trans women or trans feminine in some way

Uamhan tras -  a warning that the post contains transphobia

Homafóibe -  a warning that the post contains homophobia

Ciníochaí - a warning that the post contains racism

Bratachaí ar aiteach Éireannach - the tag used for my series of graphics about being both queer and Irish.

Mo fhoclóir aiteach - the tag used for the graphics and definitions of LGBT+ terminology