At the home of the Fighting Irish, increasing numbers of students
want to learn to speak Irish, even though only a tiny portion
of the people in Ireland do.
Demand for Irish language courses has been strong since the
establishment of the Keough Institute for Irish Studies in 1992.
Last fall 67 undergraduates were enrolled in Irish language courses.
The total was expected to top 80 this spring.
"The problem is not stirring up interest, the problem is finding
people to teach the classes," says Christopher Fox, director of
the Keough Institute.
Fox also heads the University's new Department of Irish Language
and Literature, established last spring. The Irish ambassador
to the United States, Noel Fahey, gave a lecture on campus last
October to mark the official inauguration of the department, which
is the only one of its kind in the United States.
Irish, sometimes referred to in the United States as Gaelic,
is the language that was spoken throughout Ireland from the fifth
century until the potato famine of the mid-19th century and resulting
Irish diaspora, explains Éamonn Ó Ciardha, program
coordinator of the Keough Institute and a native of Ireland. The
Irish people became convinced that if they were going to make
it in the world they had to speak English. According to Fox, 98
percent of Irish immigrants to the United States in the 19th century
arrived speaking Irish, not English. Within a generation they
had completely abandoned the language.
Ó Ciardha (pronounced oh-KEER-uh) says Irish has traditionally
been taught to school children in Ireland but in a manner akin
to how Latin is taught in the United States -- a dead language
useful mainly in translating historic documents and literature.
But Irish isn't entirely dead. About 50,000 people out of Ireland's
population of just under 4 million speak the language, Ó
Ciardha says. There are also private Irish-language schools, and
an Irish-language television station has been on the air for more
than a decade, he says.
Last fall a TV crew from Northern Ireland visited Notre Dame
the weekend of the home football game against Michigan. The group
was here to produce a feature on Irish studies at Notre Dame and
the Fighting Irish culture, which many in Ireland find curious.
The report, done entirely in Irish, was commissioned by the BBC
as part of its commitment to Irish-English cultural parity in
Northern Ireland, Ó Ciardha says. You can watch the piece
over the Internet at www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/irish/srl/abroad/notre_dame_eng.shtml.
Notre Dame was among the institutions of higher learning in
the United States to offer courses in Irish, according to Brian
Ó Conchubhair (pronounced BREE-en oh-KAHN-uh-COOR), assistant
professor of Irish language and literature and a fellow of the
Keough Institute. Records exist of a Brother Simeon teaching courses
here from 1868-74. One report says the courses attracted more
than 350 students.
The language courses apparently continued to be part of the
curriculum into the early part of the 20th century, after which
only Irish literature courses were taught, generally by visiting
professors using English translations. One faculty member remembers
courses in the Irish language being taught here in the 1960s,
Ó Conchubhair says, but they weren't offered on a regular
basis again until 1994, through the Keough Institute.
Many Notre Dame undergraduates are descendants of Irish immigrants.
Some say they want to learn Irish to reclaim a part of their heritage.
First-year student Erin Burns says she saw it as an opportunity
to understand the culture and traditions of her ancestors better.
She wasn't put off by the fact that Irish isn't spoken much in
Ireland anymore.
"Some may see this as a reason not to learn the language. I
see it as a motivation to learn Irish so that the rich history
and culture that accompanies it may be preserved," Burns says.
She admits that another reason she signed up for Irish was because
she was tired of Spanish and wanted to try something new. Arts
and Letters majors can use Irish to satisfy their college's foreign
language requirement.
Some students say they came to Notre Dame thinking they would
like to study abroad in Ireland so they wanted to learn more about
the country's culture and history. Sophomore Kerry
Lanigan says
she signed up for her first Irish language course merely because
she was looking for an elective and the class fit into her schedule.
She didn't plan
on going further. But "all that has changed." Irish is now her
favorite class, and she's applied to study abroad in Dublin next
fall.
Last
October the University dedicated a new home for its study abroad
program in Ireland, at the historic O'Connell House on Dublin's
Merrion Square. The building was refurbished with benefactions
from the families of Notre Dame trustees Donald Keough and Martin
Naughton.
More than 70 Notre Dame undergraduates study abroad at the Keough
Centre each semester.
(January 2005)
