Is é an bealach is faide timpeall an bealach is goire abhaile — translated from Gaelic, this quote means, “It’s often the longer, more deliberate route that delivers a quicker result.” My Irish grandmother would often say a sentence similar to this quote, reminding me never to take the easier path. I never knew what she meant by that back then, but I think I’m starting to understand the quote more as I grow.
My maternal grandmother was a no-nonsense kind of woman. She rarely spoke about our Irish heritage, and if she did, it was often because something had slipped out by accident. I always wondered if that was because she felt disconnected from our language.
You may ask why Irish people don’t speak Irish (Gaelic), and it’s not so simple to explain. One could say it is an effect of colonization by the English, and it is, it is because of the English banning our language and trying to remove the Irish identity from Ireland.
“Conas atá tú?” my great aunt would often ask me, meaning, “how are you?” Whenever she would pose this question to me, I was always reminded that I could never answer back in my own language, that I had been denied the right to learn my own language due to centuries of colonial oppression.
I was never intentionally taught the Irish language by my grandmother, she sadly passed away before she could teach any of our family any of the language. However, I would like to think that I am now honouring her by learning the language.
I recently picked up Gaelic after returning from my trip to Ireland where I noticed an abundance of Irish speakers all speaking Gaelic to one another, with a clear distinguishing factor among them — they were all young.
Young people in Ireland have decided to reclaim their language, integrating it into music, conversation and art, and now it is seeping out to the rest of the world to people like me who have been wanting for a while to reconnect to their Irish roots.
I’d like to think my grandmother would be proud of me for picking up the torch and continuing the use of Gaelic within our family. I hope that whoever reads this article takes away the idea that Irish is more than just a language — it’s the reclaiming of identity for Irish citizens and for individuals with Irish heritage.
