1916 ar Luas

When Padraig Pearse read out Poblacht na hEireann and declared a new Republic the spoken language of the new nation would as it is today be English but the use of the Irish language had grown with Irish nationalism in the early part of the 20th century. The rebels had used the language to pass messages that their oppressors could not understand but the strength of the language has not grown since independence despite the best efforts of successive Governments, educators and organisations such as Conradh na Gaelige. The majority of Irish people remark that they would love to speak their native mother tongue but the language suffers as a minority language with Polish spoken more widely in Ireland than Irish. It is surprising what various campaigns have done to increase the usage of the language and ask people to use the school Irish they had learned but we use the language every day and Irish words we now take for granted have integrated with our use of English. The most recent example of this is ‘luas’, translated as light which is now used every day since the re-introduction of a tram transportation system to Dublin. There are many Irish words in everyday use which indicates that it should not be too difficult to create sentences and therefore conversations. Here are some of the words we all have in our vocabulary today hat often we forget that they are our native tongue and we should be proud. Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Taniste (Deputy Prime Minister) Gardai or Garda Siochana (The Irish police) Aer Lingus (the national airline, translated as ‘air fleet’) Political parties such as Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Sinn Fein are all Irish words Dail Eireann (Irish Parliament) Seanad (The lower house of Parliament) Nuacht (translated as News as it appears on TV daily) Radio Telifis Eireann (the national broadcaster, Radio Television Ireland))