Motherfoclóir

In this week’s episode, Peadar and Darach are visited by Manchán Magan, the creator of the Gaeilge Tamagotchi project, Gaeilge Amháin and author of “Thirty Two Words For Field”, his new book about the Irish language and the ecological and social wisdom contained in its precise vocabulary, wisdom that would be lost if the language is lost too.  Manchán tells the lads about his travels, his encounte...

Once upon a time there was a young woman from Derry called Emma who loved dogs, baking and movies. She didn’t think about politics very often. Then she met a Californian called Jake and fell in love. She had no idea that she was about to find herself in the middle of a half-decade-long legal battle which would open a can of worms at a time when Anglo-Irish relations were already being tested. On t...

Earlier this year when AOC guest starred in a Donkey Kong Twitch stream in which she declared trans rights to be human rights (while batting off criticism from greying 90s pop culture warhorses like Aaron Sorkin and Graham Linehan), it felt for many that a generational Rubicon had been crossed.  Computer games. Físchluichí. They've come a long way since Darach was playing Pole Position on his Atar...

It's summer again. You know what that means.  In this episode, Darach, Peadar and Gearóidín look at this year's hot takes about the Irish language  --- Support Motherfocloir on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darach  Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/  --- Contact the show: twitter - @motherfocloir and @theirishfor email - motherfocloir@headstuff.org -...

Darach chats with musician and writer Thom Dunn about how perceptions of Irish America have evolved rapidly in his and his father’s lifetimes, and what he hopes Irish America will be like when his newborn is old enough to understand it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you stood on Henry Street with a big smile and asked a hundred Dubliners who it was named after, it’s unlikely you’d get a single correct answer. If you walked into a history tutorial in one of the city’s finest universities and asked the students who Westmoreland was, you’d definitely get a few blank stares. And what’s the significance of Nassau Street - does Dublin have a Caribbean connection...

On the week that saw the world said goodbye to civil rights hero John Hume, today’s guest and topic feel especially apt. Maev McDaid is a Derry woman in London, completing a PhD on retired Irish people in that city, as well as being very active in Clapton Community FC. On today’s podcast she talks to Darach and Peadar about the problems with “the UK” as a concept, and how the confusing term raises...

Eid al-Adha shona daoibh! Why are some bilingual teenagers seen as a triumph of aspirational middle-class parenting, but others are treated as a problem to be solved? This is a matter that strikes to the heart of discussions around the Irish language as it forces us to think about what monolingualism and multilingualism really tell us about intelligence, culture and community. In today’s episode,...

Taylor Swift broke the Irish Internet today when she wore a geansaí. It launched a thousand versions of the same joke - she looked a bit like one of the Clancy Brothers.  In today's BONUS episode we look at the history of the Aran sweater, what knitters know that the others don't, diddly-eye erasure and much more.  --- Support Motherfocloir on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darach  Get Kirsten S...

Back in episode #74, Darach and Clodagh discussed Scots Gaelic in general and a book of transgressive verse called “An Leabhar Liath” in particular. One poem they shared - Bhruadair mi leat a-raoir - got a particularly huge response from listeners and the wider twitter community. Nearly eighteen months later, Motherfoclóir has finally managed to track down the poet who created it. Niall O’Gallaghe...

Tea. It’s a national obsession - just ask Irish emigrants to America about the first time they tred to get their hands on a kettle. While the infusion of tea leaves in hot water might unite the city dweller from her country cousin, the tiny differences in the way it’s prepared can speak volumes.  This week Darach chats to Sligo’s Laura Gaynor, formerly the tea critic with Raidió na Life. She tells...

Back in 2003, a schoolboy sitting at his home computer was messing around on the internet and, without fully realising it, opened a window for the Irish language. That window was Vicipéid, and seventeen years later it is still letting light and air in. But who was that boy and what did Gaeilge and Ireland mean to him? Well, that boy was Gabriel Beecham and he is the guest on today’s show. He chats...

It’s been another normal and sane week on the internet. It feels like only yesterday that we were chuckling about the Kardashians asking what the Debs was and Gucci were producing rip-off GAA shorts. Well, last Friday a bit of distinctly Irish culture yet again crossed over into the mainstream when talented midlands hunk Niall Horan was savagely roasted by a puppet of a turkey. For Irish people, n...

One of the participants in “Women in Harmony”, a charity single for Safe Ireland (which tackles domestic abuse) is Eve Belle, a singer songwriter from Donegal. While still in college, she signed with the influential Rubyworks label - the very same people who discovered Hozier and Rodrigo Y Gabriela. In today’s episode she tells Darach and Clodagh about the creative process, moving from the songwri...

Most of us have a very clear idea of what an Irish American is and have an overview of the community's journey from the Famine to the White House. The Irish community in Britain is a different and far more complicated story, however. And since 2016, it has become even more complex.  In this week's episode, Darach is joined by Niamh Lear, a PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle. Niamh tells...

Meet John Hyland, an Irish NGO worker whose career took him to Brussels where he fell in love with a French woman. A perfect European love story which led, as these things do, to a perfect European family. But what happens when this most European child, born in one of the world’s most proudly multilingual cities, has a name with a fada? In today’s episode, John tells Darach about his journey to Be...

This week saw the final episode of Normal People, the hit TV show based on Sally Rooney’s novel set in Trinity College. Rooney’s book is just the latest in Ireland’s long tradition of novels set primarily on university campuses, and in today’s episode, Darach chats with Éimear and Peadar about some of the other ones. Were all the great UCD novels written before the construction of the Belfield cam...

Friend of the pod Póilín Ní Géidigh (@poilination) is back on the show! Since she last joined us (in one of 2019’s most popular episodes of the show) she has taken up quill with the wonderful Irish language website, nos.ie. In addition to her Tuesday lunchtime painting sessions, Póilín is the site’s social media critic, casting her gimlet eye on the mysterious otherworld of online Ireland.  In tod...

The Irish for bilingual is dátheangach, which literally means two tongued. When Clodagh McGinley isn’t contributing to this podcast, sneaking off to be a guest on other podcasts (hello, “I Love This Band”) or curating her photography on instagram, she’s producing her bilingual zín In the social media age where so much creativity is chopped into chunks of content designed to go viral, zines are pre...

Ireland’s relationship with wine is unusual - we drink a lot of it but we do not produce it ourselves, and historically we fall between the stools of Europe and the post-colonial “New World” which divide the wine business. These factors allow us to be completely neutral in deciding which ones we like. So what do we like? And what do we talk about when we talk about wine? Conversations about wine -...

In the past decade, certain subcultures have been identified in social media. Fiat 500 Twitter, FBPE and Scottish Twitter have all been documented to some degree as having their own implied sets of rules, values and norms which are distinct from whatever mainsteam or “normal” is. And then there’s Irish Twitter.  Whatever about Ireland itself and wherever you consider its borders to be, Irish Twitt...

We had some very fine plans for Season 3, but, like the best laid schemes of mice and men, they have “gang aft agley” (been ruined) by external events. We have been fortunate that the team is all doing well and we send our best wishes to our listeners around the world and their loved ones at this time. In this week’s episode, Peadar and Darach consider how rapid change and displacement are represe...

To keep you all going during these strange times, here is Motherfoclóir's own Darach Ó Séaghdha in conversation with Sam Blake on another HeadStuff Podcast, Behind the Bestseller.  Stay safe and well. .. Non-fiction is a different beast to fiction, and in this episode Sam Blake chats to Darach Ó Séaghdha, the Irish writer, podcaster and Irish language activist. The author of Motherfoclóir: Dispatc...

“Basic Structure of an Irish Fairytale:  Don’t do the thing Does the thing Death”     Do you understand what mythology is, and its role in the way all stories are told and heard? Do you understand what TikTok is and why teenagers are spending hours preparing nine-second one-person plays in their bedrooms? How could these two things possibly be linked? Fortunately today we have a guest who can expl...

It’s a new year and Gráinne Ní Mhuilneoir from An Siopa Leabhar is here to tell us all about the new and upcoming books as Gaeilge in 2020.  ====Translations now available==== Asterix agus na Cluichí Oilimpeacha Asterix i gCoill na Cinsealachta  Tintin: Ciste Castafiore Tintin: Slat Ríoga Ottakar  Asarlaí Oscartha Oz (The Wizard of Oz) Ar Luch agus ar Dhuine (Of Mice and Men) Nioclás Beag (Le Peti...