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The Irish
Language
Irish is one of the Celtic languages, the other being Scots Gaelic, Welsh and breton. Irish speakers and Gaelic speakers can understand each other reasonably well. Because of their close contact with each other Irish and English have borrowed words and other elements from each other. The English spoken in Ireland is much influenced by Irish. Suc influences are of course transitory and their results are constantly changing, particularly between generations.
Language is of course the vehicle of culture and tends to carry the "world view" of its speakers, that is to say it is very often reveals how they see the world around them. Part of that view is how they see themselves. For those reasons a knowledge of Irish is often deemed necesssary by thosewo would like to "really get to know" us and our culture.
The following few expressions make a good starting point as much for the fact that they indicate an interest and an empathy with us for their usefulness. We give them here with a phonemic rendering, but if you are not familiar with this international script, we suggest that you get an Irish speaker to help you master them. Remember that irish, like many other languages, uses the Roman alpgabet but assigns values to the letters that may be related to but are not the same as those assigned to the same letters in any other given languages.