Honouring this ancient tongue enables those learning to reconnect with their heritage, country, landscape and their culture, in a way that few methods truly can. Therefore, to know that only a small percentage of people are able to speak the language so closely woven within their families, to know that only few can see how it holds extraordinary capabilities to make things that are otherwise dull and bland, graceful and personal, and that it ay is a real shame. However, we believe that this is something we can collectively breathe life into and invigorate once more.

Therefore, we want to share with you all, our wonderful Birmingham Irish diaspora and friends outside of the city, an opportunity to grow your knowledge and ability to speak Irish Gaelic each month through our new column, Cúpla Focal, translated, a couple of words.

We hope you enjoy our first instalment below, which explores simply to greet someone in Irish, and to find out more about our Birmingham Irish Online Language classes, please email terri@birish.org.uk.

Lesson 1 - Ceacht 1

We start with Dia duit (Jee-a gwitch): Hello

The response to Dia duit is: Dia is Muire duit (jee-a iss murra gwitch)

“How are you?” would be: Conas atá tú? (kunnis a-thaw thew)

And the response to that (I’m good, thank you) would be: Tá mé go maith, go raibh maith agat. (thaw may guh moh gurra moh ogguth)

Let’s turn that into a little dialogue now:

Seán: Dia duit

Bríd: Dia is Muire duit

Seán: Conas atá tú?

Bríd: Tá mé go maith, go raibh maith agat.

February tip:

Check out the Duolingo app for some excellent, free, daily teaching and to increase your vocabulary!