Teach yourself Rathlin Irish?

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 Islay in Scotland and or Tory Island in Ireland.

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?