Pop-Up Gaeltacht

Looking for a casual environment to work on your Irish language skills? There’s a Pop-Up Gaeltacht coming to the UICC during the Saturday Seisiún from 3-5 pm in the Emerald Pub. Facilitated by Marcus Rooney, our Pop-Up Gaeltacht (Irish tob-Ghaeltacht) will be an informal gathering of Irish speakers of various abilities where they can meet and talk in a convivial atmosphere.

A Pop-Up Gaeltacht (Irish tob-Ghaeltacht) is an informal gathering of Irish speakers of various abilities where they can meet and talk in a convivial atmosphere.

The pioneers of the Pop-Up Gaeltacht were Osgur Ó Ciardha and Peadar Ó Caomhánaigh, language activists who established the first one in Dublin in 2017. The objective was to provide a space in which Irish speakers could chat freely without feeling obliged to switch to English for the benefit of any non-Irish speakers present.

In a study of the phenomenon Stiofán Seoighe has argued that such a project must be seen in the context of validation of the identity of non-traditional speakers of a minority language, and that this is a continuous process.

It has been estimated that there are about 200,000 daily and weekly speakers of Irish in Ireland, north and south, who are “nuachainteoirí” – i.e. not traditional native speakers. Of these, almost 15,000 live in Dublin, comprising almost 20% of daily speakers nationally. It was the intention of the founders of the Pop-Up Gaeltacht that even the less confident of those speakers should have a public space in which they could converse at their ease.