Cén t-Am É?

The Irish language and some surprising DNA results

Tá sé a ceathrú chun a dó dhéarg a chlog as I write this, and with that bit of a sentence I've practiced my time telling in Irish today.

As some of you may know, I signed up to take Irish language classes at Conradh na Gaeilge here in Dublin every week. I had no idea what to expect, as I had to choose a class level out of the blue with no prior formal Irish learning. I decided on the Beginners 2 class: I am not a complete beginner in the language, however I have very limited experience listening to and speaking Irish. I can generally read basic sentences with little difficulty and can spell well enough to say what I'm trying to say. Which isn't a lot, but I'm working on it.

The teacher of my class, Aisling, is about my age and is a native speaker from the Munster (southern part of Ireland) dialect. There are three main dialects of Irish: Ulster in the north, Connacht in the west, and Munster in the south. Within those, however, there are very location-specific dialects such as on the Aran Islands off of the coast of County Galway and County Clare. Pronunciation within each dialect is quite different.

Most of the people in my class are Irish and looking to get back into learning and speaking Irish after having been required to do it in school as children. A few were from other countries such as England and Belgium. I was the only American, and I was able to say that I was from America as we were introducing ourselves. Is Meiricéanach mé!

We jumped right into learning, and the topic was telling time in Irish. It was a topic that I'd touched on in Duolingo, but it hadn't stuck very well. Aisling handed out this worksheet with some matching times and descriptions in Irish on the back and we had to piece it all together. I panicked a bit, I won't lie.

A worksheet for telling time in Irish.

I'd imagine this is the type of worksheet 8 year olds receive in school while learning Irish, which is a bit humbling but I also appreciate that the class is designed to meet students where they're at. I walked out feeling much more confident in telling time and have been trying to practice constructing the sentences this week every time I look for the time on my phone or watch.

There was also a neat Irish-speaking pub in the basement where we went during the break halfway through our class. The idea is to have a cupán tae and a biscuit and probably speak in Irish with your classmates, but it would be quite a short conversation for the Beginners 2 class. Aisling also mentioned that there are conversation circles there on Friday nights to practice, and I'm trying to work up the courage to go sometime this term. Overall, it was a really enjoyable experience and I'm glad that I signed up. Doing something outside of your comfort zone, like learning a new language, is so difficult, but I believe that it's worth it.

As I've mentioned, I have an interest in learning Irish because it's the language that my family would've spoken for hundreds of years, and likely still would without English colonialism. Well, I've been doing some ancestry research and have found some really interesting info that I wanted to share that is related to this learning-Irish business. My parents got me an Ancestry DNA test for Christmas and the results finally came back this week.

Truthfully, there wasn't much information in terms of ethnicity that I didn't know. I am half Irish and half mutt essentially, which was information that was only confirmed by the test. What I did not know, however, was how small the area of Ireland is that I do come from, and just how much Celtic blood I have.

Ancestry was able to narrow down to very specific areas in Ireland where my DNA is from: North Connemara (which I visited back in October and you can read about in my previous post called "Baile"), Lough Corrib/Lough Mask, and County Galway, which are all areas in the Connacht area of Ireland. Today, these areas have some of the last remaining Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas in the world. Just imagine how many more people would've spoken Irish in these areas a few generations ago! Among them would've been my ancestors, and likely any living distant cousins do speak Irish in these areas.

Beyond being Irish, I've a good chunk of English DNA. The English percentage (shown as Sasana below; I have an extension that changes a few words on my webpages to Irish so that I can practice "in the real world") is also likely the cause of the Norway result. After doing research, apparently this can show up because Vikings had interaction with England from about 700-1100 AD and Viking DNA markers still show up today in people that have a long history of living in England.

My ancestry results!

The most surprising to me, however, was the percentages of Scottish and Welsh. I had no idea that I had such a (relatively) large percentage of Scottish ancestry and so little Welsh. My last name comes from Wales, so it was interesting that this only made up 5%. The Eastern Europe and Russia result was a bit out-of-left-field as well, and I have absolutely no idea where this could've come from.

Adding some percentages together, I am 70% Celtic, which I think is pretty cool. Each of the Celtic nations has its own language that make up what are called the Celtic languages. This is another class of languages outside Germanic and Romantic languages, which are languages like English, German, Spanish, and French that we have the most interaction with in the United States. I think that's part of what has made learning Irish more difficult; its development and evolution are separate from languages that I am most familiar with. It is older than many languages in existence today, as are the other Celtic languages still in existence. Only 6 of the original 16 remain: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Manx, and Cornish.

For me, learning Irish is quite literally in my DNA. Census records that I've been able to find state that my ancestors could read, write, and speak Irish. It is my intention to be the next in our line to do the same. It will likely be an uphill climb for the rest of my life, but what better way to connect to who you are. Nach bhfuil sé, go hiontach?

Slán go fóill as Gaeilge,

Bernadette