Everything you think you know about the Irish language is wrong. It isn’t your teacher’s fault you don’t speak it. Billions of euros are not spent every year on its promotion. Replacing Irish with English has not been an economic blessing for Ireland.

As a historian of languages and someone who learned Irish as an adult, Caoimhín De Barra offers both academic and personal insights into Ireland’s complex relationship with its national language.

This book explains why most people don’t learn Irish at school, where the deep hatred some have for the language comes from, and how people who want to learn Irish can do so successfully. Drawing upon the history of other minority languages around the world, De Barra demonstrates why current efforts to promote Irish are doomed to fail and proposes a radical solution to revive An Ghaeilge so it can once again become the first language of the Irish people.