I attended my first Lá Gaeilge (Irish Language Day) this past Saturday. It was at Elms College in Chicopee, MA. God, I hate the Mass Pike. But the event was fun for the most part.
It was very interesting hearing a bunch of folks speaking the language in a million different little day-to-day conversations. Words that I know but don’t use via Rosetta Stone really stood out, so I am going to try and start using them a bit more. Words like “too” and “now”, you know? Small words that we use so often that we don’t even realize it.
Anyway, I was in the bottom-most class (as it was my first time speaking in public). There were to be five of us, but two were no-shows, so it was me, the college-aged daughter of one of the women involved in the whole Irish Cultural Center at Elms and an older woman who had never uttered a word as Gaeilge in her life. The college-aged girl leveled up to the next class after lunch, but I stayed safely in the kindergarten. 😀
After an hour of class, we broke into different groups for an hour. For some reason, I found myself in Drama. These workshops mixed the folks from all the different ability levels. In the drama workshop, there was me and four women…acting out Three Little Pigs. HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! And, actually, I picked up a few useful phrases from this and we all had a good think on the Irish word for “wolf”, “mac tíre”, which means “Son of the Country”.
The afternoon event was Conversation, which again was a mixing of all the levels…with the Fulbright Scholar, a native of either Donegal (possibly the worst of the Irish dialects) or Northern Ireland leading. I was never quite sure where he was from. My poor woman from class who only that day learned how to say “Hello” was in well over her head, but she made the most of it. I am not sure if she is going to continue her studies of Irish, though. I think it was a bit much for an absolute beginner. Folks in the Intermediate level, with years of study under their belts, were having troubles with the Fulbright’s awful Donegal/Ulster accent. At one point we were playing 20 Questions to try and figure out who he was. I happened to figure it out (Was about to ask if he was the Queen, but just then someone asked if he was old, to which he said not so much. I then asked if he was Hillary Clinton.), so he handed me the pen and I had to stand at the board and answer the questions for the next round: Arnold Schwarzenegger. So it was a bunch of fun, but nerve-wracking, at the same time.
Then we had to have a conversation, based on five questions that he wrote on the board, with the person next to us. I had one of the women from the Drama workshop in the morning. She was there with her little baby. I mean little, like two or three months old. I think she took a shine to me during the Drama, as she sat with me at lunch, had me hold the baby for a bit, and immediately sat next to me in this Conversation thing. Being a bit more advanced than me, she started asking the questions from the board…and then follow up questions that were not on the board. I then had to ask her the same stock questions. Eventually we went around the room and told the Fulbright what we learned about the other person. Remember, I was marked as Beginner Level 1, so absolutely nothing was expected from me, but I got to shock the Teacher a bit when I smashed the “Where was she born?” and “Where does she live now?” questions into a single answer and even landed the proper lention (?!?!) on one of the words that had changed spelling due to my ad libbing. He seemed impressed that I pulled that off…I definitely was! Also, it was pretty difficult holding the conversation with this woman. Not only was I trying my damnedest to speak Irish, but she was breast-feeding the baby at the time! Now, I am all for breast-feeding, but let’s face it, ladies, it can be a bit distracting to those not involved in the process.
After the class, I heard the baby lady saying to some of the others that she wasn’t going to stick around for the closing seisiún with a baby in her arms so I wished her safe home, “Slán abhaile”, and she blew me a kiss from across the room. Being married and all, I bolted out of there to go find my sister! Crazy Western Mass hippie chicks!
Oh! The best part! The last living person to be born on the Great Blasket Island now lives in Springfield. He came by and had an Irish on him that was so easy on the ears and easy to understand that it that I think even the woman who had no Irish could gather what he was saying. That was pretty cool. My sister wanted to try and get our picture with him, but he slipped away as 90 year old men are prone to do.
I was relieved that there wasn’t anything about Nationalism, the Queen’s visit or anything like that. As far as I could tell, there was nothing about politics or religion (save for a woman that I think was a nun, as the staff kept calling her “Sister”). The Fulbright gave a lecture, as Gaeilge (with as Béarla subtitles), on the present state of the language. The Internet seems to be Gaeilge’s best friend. The Irish Government is most definitely not. He did speak a bit about the “Jailtacht”, but not all that much; just as a way of presenting the fact that Gaeilge is even spoken in the heart of Belfast.
As a matter of fact, there was so little in the way of Republicanism or Nationalism or politics being forced on us that I was taken aback when we were asked to stand for the singing of the Irish national anthem followed by the singing of our own national anthem! I stood, but did not sing for either song. I’d never even heard the Irish national anthem before, and I wasn’t feeling patriotic enough to sing our own.
It was a good day, overall. I’d go back to another one. Looks like some other MA college is having one in August. I was amazed at how quickly the day passed. Ach bhí mé an-sásta a bheith ar ais ar mo bhaile féin.