Teach
yourself Rathlin Irish? How?
The first
thing to remember that it would be extremely difficult thing to do, despite the
fact that the dialect is quite well recorded, it is extinct, therefore you
could not learn from a native speaker naturally.
Ideally, It would
require a gifted linguist to learn the dialect fluently himself or herself and
then teach it to others.
But, there
is a (slightly) easier way.
One could
simply learn either Scottish Gaelic or Irish and specialise in the dialect of
Once fluent
in one of these, or even both, you would simply adapt your dialect to the
Rathlin one, you would sound quite authentic.
The Gaelic
of Arran would have been an ideal one to learn but that opportunity has passed
unfortunately. If one was lucky enough to meet a native speaker from Kintyre, again
this would be ideal.
The Irish
of Ros Goill / Fanad would be closer to Rathlin Gaelic than the Irish of Tory,
but the language is not strong in either district.
Gaelic is still
the community language in Tory. There are plenty of native speakers in Islay , but the language is in terminal
decline with virtually no younger people speaking the language.
Good luck!
And with
that, I will sign off. I will not be posting onto this blog for the foresable
future. I have achieved what I set out to and this blog has been visited 10,000
times!
Thank you
all for popping in. It has been a pleasure. I hope that the blog has created
interest in Gaelic, the dialect of Rathlin and of course the island itself.
For those
of you who have never been to Rathlin .... what is wrong with you?
