irish language

Where's Darach? He's not in the studio today, so Éimear and Gearóidín are running riot, throwing paper aeroplanes across the HeadStuff classroom and talking loudly. During her curation of the @motherfocloir account in January, Éimear…

Ireland and Scotland have a lot in common, and this is especially true of Irish and Scots Gaelic. Students of Irish could make a decent stab at the meanings of thousands of Scots Gaelic words and not be far off... left-facing fadas…

It is fitting that a book set in a cemetery has come to be known as the graveyard of translators. Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s masterpiece Cré na Cille was described in the New Yorker as “too good to translate” although different individuals have…

Irish speakers are referred to in Ireland as a community, a lobby group or even a kind of secret society: a bloc of people with specific and predictable values and objectives, distinct from the mórchultúr of mainstream Irish society. This…

"Hamlet has been performed in Klingon" - Aisling Carolan. For a poet, the fact that the Irish word tír (country) and the English word tear (a sad drop of water) sound the same is profoundly significant. For a linguist, however, this is a…

It's Mailbag time again, when the Motherfoclóir team review correspondence that has been submitted to the show by email to [email protected]. In this week's visit to the postroom, Darach, Ola and Peadar read and discuss exciting…

Irish presidential elections are rare and brutal, but voters have chosen some truly remarkable and inspiring people for the role. Perhaps more than the role of Taoiseach, the presidency has reflected the hopes and values of Irish people and…

For nearly two centuries, we have been told that English is the language of commerce and industry and that the Irish language sits outside this world, peeping in. Could a company from Ireland ever use Gaeilge in its product branding the way…

The Irish for Stradbally is an tSráidbhaile, which means village (or street-town if you want to be very literal about it). For a weekend at the end of summer every year, Stradbally hosts the Electric Picnic festival and this year the…

The breakthrough star of Irish twitter in 2018 must surely be @ruthiefizz – while other tweeters have hurled poorly-cogitated stock arguments at each other, her “Other Ireland” account has used the possibilities of the format to explore…