RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta celebrates 50 years this week, but however great its achievements and its positive impact on traditional music and song, Irish-language media cannot stand still, writes Toner Quinn.
I don’t think I would be able to speak Irish were it not for RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, which celebrated 50 years of broadcasting on 2 April. Many people who go to English-language schools are let down by the way Irish is taught and come out with a basic or poor grasp of the language. When I decided to address this gnawing weakness, I used to listen to RnaG while working in my first post-college job – the kitchen of a pizza restaurant in Dublin. At first, I could get lost in the range of dialects and the fluency of the presenters, but slowly I began to find the shows that I could follow, and, with some classes and reading the weekly newspaper Foinse, my understanding grew. When I moved to Conamara, I found I almost had to relearn the language; learned and spoken Irish are two different things. I can recall, however, a breakthrough moment when I was listening to a conversation on RnaG and suddenly realised I wasn’t thinking about the language anymore. My Irish is now good, not fluent, because fluency would mean I could express everything I think and feel through the language, but I am comfortable enough to use it every day. Once you learn Irish, it is like putting on a special headset, whereby everything is now multi-dimensional. You hear and see the language everywhere, you think in terms of both languages, and you are part of a very connected community.
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