The importance of the learner in revival of Gaeilge.

It's a sad fact, to which I can attest first hand, that there is a widely held perception that the language revival movement is elitist and exclusive. I can count myself firmly among the ranks of the under-confident learner, unsure of my own fluency and reluctant to look like a gobshite in front of fluent speakers, stuttering and taking too long hunting for vocabulary or the correct grammar in the auld memory banks. This obstacle of confidence is among the most difficult to overcome regardless of what language you may be learning.

When we started Craobh Chrua, there was a niggling in the back of my mind about being a mere learner of Gaeilge preaching and ranting about cultural awareness and individual responsibility etc etc and I often worried about how our efforts to join the language revival movement would be received given the fact that I could just about hold a basic conversation in the language!!
I was worried that whatever we decided to do would be met with a "sure how can you go on about a language that you can't even speak fluently yourself?!" attitude but thankfully I'm beyond giving a rats arse about whether that sort of opinion is out there or not!

In time I came to realise that the perception of the language movement being exclusive is, in most cases, nonsense and derives more often than not from ones own feelings of inadequacy as an English speaking Irish person. However, I do have personal experience of being brow-beaten and derided for my lack of fluency by a few fluent speakers but that has more to do with those people being arrogant and self-important than it has with them having the language.

More power to the beginner!
The role of the learner is of the utmost importance in the revival of the language as the learner is coming from an English speaking background and an English speaking social circle. This has the great effect where the learner acts as a channel for other English speakers in his or her own family or circle of friends to be able to come into contact with the language without any of the above obstacles.

The language really benefits from being spread and promoted, strangely enough, by people who don't necessarily speak it fluently but who are openly enthusiastic and who encourage their friends and family to use it in everyday conversation. It allows people to converse and enjoy Gaeilge without the pressure of fluency. The learner is, in my opinion, the key to the success of the language revival but more often than not this importance is overlooked. Not least by the state whose lack of imagination has done more damage to the language than anyone could have imagined.

Our Humble Efforts.
Anyway, it was around this time last year that we finally decided to take the plunge and throw our two cents into the language movement for better or worse. We'd talked and talked about how learners such as ourselves could encourage people to learn the language and we finally struck upon the idea of a "Teach Yourself" course that wouldn't need us to be teaching anybody. We'd be simply providing the means for people to learn freely and they'd be teaching themselves. To be honest, the teach-yourself approach is how I've always preferred to learn anything.

The first thing we had to do was to get 'legitimate' in order to get funding and trust me when I tell you that support and information for non-profit organisations in Ireland is disgracefully low (so much for active citizenship eh!!). We needed to be able to get our hands on some state funding if we were to do anything so we wrote ourselves a constitution, formally stating our charitable intentions, and opened a bank account. After a lengthy application process, with it's fair share of set-backs along the way, the funds came in from Foras na Gaeilge and we could finally put the cash to good use and buy dictionaries, workbooks, grammar books and the like to send out free to the first 25 people who applied for a course pack.

Now I know that 25 learners seems a paltry figure given the scale of the language issue but, as proof of the importance and the effect that learners can have on the language, I've already got emails from people who have received the course packs only two or three days ago telling me that their family members are getting on board too. So, 25 becomes 50 becomes 100 and so on and so on. Being now firmly of the opinion that Irish language education and support should be completely free and geared, first and foremost, toward the absolute beginner we will most certainly be seeking funding for more of the same in the near future.

Lastly, and by no means least, the very best of luck to all who are teaching themselves and encouraging others to learn by virtue of their own enthusiasm. Fair play t'ye. You don't need Gaeilge to love Gaeilge.