Motherfoclóir

The Swedish language represents a kind of "what might have been" for Irish speakers - although there were less Swedish speakers than Irish in the world at the beginning of the 19th century, Swedish is the language of choice for millions of people who also have perfect English. In today's episode, Gearóidín phones in from Finland to tell Darach and Eimear about how Swedish is a minority language th...

Some of the most powerful books for and about teenagers take the form of a diary: Adrian Mole, I Capture The Castle, Go Ask Alice and even The Color Purple (although that spreads beyond the teenage years). So begins Máire Zepf's extraordinary new book "Nóinín", one of the most exciting books published as Gaeilge in some time (featuring cover art from Motherfoclóir's own Kirsten Shiel). Belfast's M...

We’re nearly at the end of this strange and dark decade and it’s hard to know what to make of it at this stage. So much has happened since New Year’s Eve 2009 that could not have been predicted, much of it bad. However, one of the nice things that was not expected ten years ago has been the rise of Irish language activism through social media, where unconnected individuals with a love of the langu...

"For me, the Irish language was like a ghost limb". The days leading up to the 12th of July are often tense and dramatic ones in the North of Ireland, but never more so than in 2019. After months and months of stalemate and stagnation in Stormont - frustratingly coinciding with the British-Irish border being in the centre of a geopolitical crisis - the DUP's bluff was called with two amendments to...

Some people out there wouldn’t see a rabbinical calling and a love of Irish dancing and sean-nós singing as a likely pairing. Those people have not met Darach’s guest this week. Saoirse Cecelia Beyer is a New Jersey-based rabbi with a passion for traditional Irish singing and dancing styles which has taken her to fleadhs all over. In this week’s episode, she tells Darach about being a “purveyor of...

Gearóidín is a Gryffindor. Peadar is a Hufflepuff. Darach, however, is a muggle who has not read the books, only seen a few of the films and has not yet tuned into the audiobook (famously read by Ros na Rún guest star Stephen Fry). However, so pervasive is the influence of JK Rowling’s books that even he knows more about them than texts he has had to study for exams. The Harry Potter novels have b...

When it comes to food, television or books, there are no tougher critics than small children. They won’t spare your feelings the way adults have been trained to, but they are loyal to what they love. However, small children’s access to food an entertainment is controlled by busy, tired and all too imperfect parents, who often have a hidden agenda of wanting the child to “learn something”, “just be...

It’s mailbag time again! Here at Motherfoclóir we love to receive your correspondence, suggestions, corrections and observations. Since we last opened the mailbag we’ve received a wheelbarrow-full of such letters and it’s high time we shared them with you. Clodagh and Éimear join Darach in dipping into the bag and find communications about traditional music, An Triail, the notorious episode 82, po...

What's in a name? For most of the world's population, Irish names are the only contact they have with Gaeilge, and this is where its reputation for beauty and difficulty is perpetuated. Prospective parents have a great responsibility in naming a child… as to writers of characters in a novel. In this week's episode, Éimear, Darach and Clodagh are joined by Colm O'Regan, the talent behind the Irish...

Like an old friend you don't really want to see right now, summer has arrived in Ireland, and with it a smartly-turned out stampede of Spanish students. For decades, these stylish loudmouths have been teaching Irish teenagers how to kiss and how to swear like a Spaniard in their version of Irish college. In today's episode, Darach talks to reverse Spanish student Éimear Duffy and Salamanca Erasmus...

Peadar Ó Caomhánaigh, the Johnny Giles of the Motherfoclóir High Table, put his money where his mouth was this year, deciding to stand for election. After a gruelling PR-STV count, our boy won his seat and will represent his fellow Clondalkinites for the next five years. He is one of the 10% of South Dublin County Council representatives to have graduated from a single Gaelscoil, Colaiste Cillian...

Gráinne Ní Mhuilneoir is the new bainisteoir of An Siopa Leabhar on Harcourt Street, taking over from our good friend and occasional contributor Caitlín Nic Íomhar (who has since been published in the excellent poetry collection "Calling Cards"). You might know Gráinne from @BooksAsGaeilge on Twitter. In this week's episode, Gráinne tells Darach and Gearóidín about her time at publishing house Coi...

Welcome to series 2 of Motherfoclóir! We've missed you something terrible so we have. An awful lot has been happening lately so to kick things off we're having a quick look at a topic that's likely to be looming in the background for the next few months. At the end of 2018, it was widely noted that the movement to repeal the 8th Amendment want from being a political football "too divisive to even...

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We're really sorry, but sure look, it was bound to happen at some stage. Darach is still on leave and the gang has finally gone off the rails. They start out innocent enough, sure. Peadar and Gearóidín and Eimear and Osgur talk about the perils of machine translation, bad tattoos and lazy Government departments. We don't know exactly when it goes bananas, but they read a porno. An honest-to-goodne...

Motherfoclóir Beo was recorded in front of a live audience in the Maynooth Students' Union Venue as part of Seachtain na Gaeilge 2019\. Gearóidín and Eimear explore the 1937 Constitution and in particular the provision that a woman's place is in the home. Was this a betrayal of Brehon Law and Irish history? Or was it a reflection of what we've always done - sidelining women? Can a country fail the...

Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha is a researcher, educator and activist. It was in this latter capacity that she became the driving force behind An Foclóir Aiteach/The Queer Dictionary, a glossary of LGBTQI+ terminology as Gaeilge. So why did it take so long to codify these words about sexuality, gender identify and more? Was it the Brits? Was it the Church? Were we not bothered? Peadar and Laoighseach...

Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire is a lecturer in TU Dublin and a well-travelled chef and TV presenter. He's the world's leading expert in Irish food history, so why he agreed to appear on our podcast, we'll never know. Gearóidín and Peadar chat with Máirtín about the history of Irish ingredients, ancient cooking methods, and an absolute heap of cheese. Why is Irish food not held in the same regard as Fren...

Gearóidín and Peadar discuss the idea of fluency. Can you really be fluent? Even if you know literally all the words? Gearóidín and Peadar can communicate in Finnish and French respectively by shrugging and being rude, but that doesn't indicate fluency. And as for legal language, that's a whole other ball game. When your life is on the line, are you really fluent enough to understand the language...

Darach is on leave, so Gearóidín takes the hot seat as the gang are joined by a special guest. Brianna Parkins was the Sydney Rose in 2016 and when she took the stage in Tralee she used her platform to call for legal access to abortion. Two years later she returned to Ireland to campaign for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment and is now working in the media in Dublin. She called in to Headstuff St...

Darach is back in studio this week, as he and Peadar begin the podcast by discussing the rising trend of Alt-Right Twitter trolls attempting to weaponise the Irish language. The irony of two white men discussing racism is not lost on them. They meander through Brexit, national identity, Britpop and the halcyon days of 2015 as they chat about what it means to be "Gaelach". Dáithí De Mórdha's articl...

Where's Darach? He's not in the studio today, so Éimear and Gearóidín are running riot, throwing paper aeroplanes across the Headstuff classroom and talking loudly. During her curation of the @motherfocloir account in January, Éimear asked Twitter followers to tell her what drove their interest in Irish under the hashtag #WhyIrish. It was trending on Irish Twitter within hours. She tells Gearóidín...

Ireland and Scotland have a lot in common, and this is especially true of Irish and Scots Gaelic. Students of Irish could make a decent stab at the meanings of thousands of Scots Gaelic words and not be far off… left-facing fadas notwithstanding! However, though the two languages contain much of the same stuff, they were forged in different fires over the centuries- in Scotland, the language was n...

It is fitting that a book set in a cemetery has come to be known as the graveyard of translators. Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s masterpiece Cré na Cille was described in the New Yorker as “too good to translate” although different individuals have tried. It is widely regarded as the finest novel in the Irish language. In this week’s episode, Peadar (who has read it) tells Darach (who hasn’t read it) all abo...

Irish speakers are referred to in Ireland as a community, a lobby group or even a kind of secret society: a bloc of people with specific and predictable values and objectives, distinct from the mórchultúr of mainstream Irish society. This expresses itself in many forms, from characterisations on radio debates to the sexual othering of Irish speakers (the "hot Gaeilgeoir" stereotype). The truth is,...