Let’s talk about decolonization, specifically decolonizing your mind.

I see a lot of people who say that

learning Irish will decolonize your mind. This is, honestly, not true. That isn’t to say that Irish can’t
have that effect, but it won’t unless you put in effort. Why? Because Irish isn’t equivalent to the Gaelic
mindset. Irish was what was used to express it, yes, but it isn’t the same thing, and learning Irish does
not automatically grant you some look into the ‘Gaelic mind’ in and of itself.

There is hope. You can learn the Gaelic mindset, but it gets harder and harder to do. As Lakoff
discussed in Metaphors We Live By, our language is riddled with metaphors that speakers often use
unknowingly to discuss the world. This is what is meant by the English mindset. Simply by learning
Irish, you won’t automatically learn the metaphors that the Gaels lived by (the English mindset is, quite
sadly, coming into the younger Gaeltacht speakers as well due to influence of English and, quite
honestly, poor Anglicized Irish being seen as more prestigious).

In fact, research has actually shown that the opposite is happening as people learn minority languages.
Instead of adopting the metaphors and idioms, sounds, etc of the minority language, they instead import
the metaphors of the majority language onto it. An entire book was recently devoted to this, titled
Endangered Metaphors.

As can be seen in this snippet from the book, languages are being ‘semantically colonized’ across the
world, becoming ‘modernized’ (as is often heard with regards to Irish as spoken in the Gaeltacht, either
implicitly or explicitly). But what is interesting is that, while this happens, the very same people doing
it are also those claiming they’re ‘decolonizing’ their own mind. That’s not what’s happening. Instead,
they’re taking the English mindset and importing it on to Irish, trying to directly translate something
from English to Irish.

A few examples would do well. I’ve recently seen people giving out about the use of aimsir to mean
‘time’ in the sense of Is maith an scéalaí an aimsir. They said it should be am because, well, that’s the
word for ‘time’ as it’s mostly used in English. In fact, some even go so far as to literally translate the
idiom to be Inseoidh am, which is a direct translation from English, and honestly not even good Irish
(Irish would prefer at least the definite article). Now, something similar was attested in Irish, but it was
still aimsir, which showcases the difference, something most learners don’t pick up on and don’t try to
pick up on.

Or the people who say they don’t want to sound like an ‘old fishwife from Mayo’. This is implicity
stating that the Gaelic version of the language, as spoken by the older generations in the Gaeltacht, isn’t
‘modern’ enough. That is, as the article above suggests, it’s not translatable directly to English. Usually
this is used in terms of sounds, where people think it’s acceptable to substitute /k/ for /x/ because it’s
‘my dialect’ (no, you’re not a native speaker raised in a speech community, you don’t have a dialect and
you didn’t learn one in school despite what your, most likely quite poor, teachers told you).

Or, another example with idioms. “Hit the road” would not commonly be used in Irish, and teanglann
gives it as ‘gread an bóthar’ in the sense of telling someone to ‘be off’. Not ‘buail an bóthar’, and to
suggest buail an bóthair is proper is just another way to import the English mindset and metaphors into
Irish. Yes, I’m aware foclóir gives this, but foclóir has the dubious honor of being a dictionary which
includes non-natives in its corpus; it’s, honestly, not as trustworthy as FGB (and Dinneen is even
better).

Overall, the point is that, to truly ‘decolonize’ ones mind, one needs to stop imagining everything as
translatable to English, and to stop thinking of English translations for things. It’s not enough to learn
Irish, we also have to learn the ‘Gaelic mindset’, it’s idioms and metaphors. This gets harder with each
passing year as the best Gaeltacht speakers die off. So how can it be done? Reading. Lots and lots of
reading. And not just any reading in Irish, but specifically older stuff. The older the better, honestly.
And stuff from Gaeltacht authors. Read Ó Cadhain, study the metaphors and idioms he uses. Read Ó
Grianna and Mac Grianna, study them in depth. Read Peadar Ua Laoghaire. Go further, read classical
authors (use léamh.ie to learn). Maybe one day someone will update those, word for word into modern
Irish grammar and spelling without trying to go through English (Diarmuid Johnson and Feargal Ó
Béarra have done this, though I don’t know how close it is to a modern edition versus a modern
retelling), and make that mindset more avaialble to modern people. But do not constnatly ask ‘how do
you say X in Irish’. Odds are, in Eglish, it’s either a metaphor or an idiom and honestly might be
something that wouldn’t be said in Irish. Just because all ideas can be expressed in all languages
doesn’t mean they are. Especially not in the same, or even an analogous way.

To end, to truly ‘decolonize’ your mind, you need to read lots and lots of older Irish language works,
before the effect of English was too profoundly felt. You need to immerse yourself in the language of
the Gaeltacht, especially the older speakers. You need to get the proper sounds, idioms, metaphors. You
can not do this by simply ‘learning Irish’ from a textbook and calling it good, and trying to translate
everything in your head. Translations from English are just another sense of cultural and linguistic
colonialism, shaping the metaphors and idiom of the target language to be more English-like. It’s the
last thing Irish needs, so quit trying to hype up translations.