What made me special in secondary school?
My nifty ticker tape communicator with it’s two-pound battery? Maybe.
The distinctive catwalk poise I had? Getting close.
Having full exemption from doing Irish? Bingo! 40 minutes a day free! Homework done before putting a foot back in my home. Sweet.
You read that right. Just because yours truly had a disability, there was an instant exemption from Irish. It can only be described as tokenism in reverse. It also says something about the quality of teaching in 'special' schools. Back in the day 'therapy' came first. We were taken out of class to go to speech and/or physiotherapy. It was a given. Low expectations? Or lack of imagination in not seeing how the therapeutic part of the day could dove-tail into the educational? Even today, fractions and decimals also leave me cold.
Where did the fact that I can count to 10 as Gaeilge and that I put some bainne in my cupán tae come from? My home life? No, we were not a gaelgeoir household but I remember words getting thrown into day-to-day conversation. It was the ideal way to learn.
"We feel OK saying English is our first language but Irish is there in the background. Like a fine wine... we can sip it and feel its quality."
I have as much Irish as anybody else.
This was rammed home to me when curiosity got the better of me and I sneaked into an Irish class. It was third year so I really thought there was no way I could follow it. I did, which was great for the ego but a bit sad. I was robbed of a part of my cultural heritage.
These memories came flooding back as I read that, despite everything, we like the Irish language. Let's give that a bula bus (I’m showing my age here). My hunch is we might be growing up when it comes to Irish. We seem happy to use the amount we have and we might expand on it when we feel we want to. We feel OK saying English is our first language but Irish is there in the background. Like a fine wine... we can sip it and feel its quality.
Will I return to the mother tongue in the future? Watch this space.
