Journey’s End

Irish Language Learning as Journey? Who thought that was a good idea...

It may seem strange to begin with Journey’s End as a title, but I might as well start as I mean to go on.

And beginnings often arise out of endings, germination is as much about the end of the seed as it is the beginning of the shoot.

But really, the title is concerned with the fact that the journeyification of all things seems to have led to the enshitification of the journey as a metaphor for many things, and in my case, in particular, the language journey…

Oh, and on that, how’s your language journey going?

I can remember the precise moment when the journey died for me as a useful metaphor to describe my experience of trying to learn the Irish language as an adult: I was driving the car, listening to the radio, and an ad came on, for a company, selling oil boilers or something, which offered to help me on my home heating journey.

I declined.

But that was it: the moment I realised that we had reached peak journey and that if the journey was not yet dead as a metaphor, it had fallen to me to kill it.

For I have, for many years now, characterised and imagined myself as on such a language journey: specifically learning the Irish language as an adult. It’s been practically central to my identity in a way and, as such, if some home heating engineer could just come and take all of that from me, and blithly use it to flog his particular widgets, where would that leave me?

Well, ar an trá folamh ~ bereft, that’s where.

No!

Journey?!

I don’t have a journey.

Because when you think about it, I mean, really think about it, the journey is a terrible metaphor for the process of language acquisition in the first place. It suggests linearity: a point of departure; a destination; a route in between the two, and a general sense that, if we’re doing it right, we’re going to roll up our sleeves and jolly well get from A to B here.

When in fact, language is concerned with the intersection of at least three of the most non-linear things that there are: the human mind; other human minds; and the world as it relates to, and is perceived by, the other two.

Added to that, the fact that as soon as anyone mentions a journey, my tiny human mind starts hopping up and down in the back seat shouting: ARE WE THERE YET?

The idea of a journey suggests we are going to get on a train at Cork, stop at Mallow (change for Tralee), stop at Limerick junction (change for, well, Limerick), and then arrive at Dublin (please ensure that you have all of your worldly belongings with you).

But there are leaves on the line; in fact, the leaves are the line.

I’m no educationalist, but I’m guessing that the general pervasiveness of the metaphor of language learning as journey has arisen from its neatness as a way of commodifying the language acquisition process. We will set these language-learning outcomes, provide you with a module of study and a series of classes, start at the beginning and by the end you will have achieved the learning objective; in fact, you might like to think of it as a journey, if you will.

But then, I hear you ask, “well smartarse, if you are so clever as to make fun of this wonderful journey that we have had you on for so many years, what exactly is it that you say you have been up to all of this time, and how is that this entire period of your life up to this point has not been a complete waste as a result?”

Ah, a good question; and I’m very glad you asked it!

Well, you see, I have come to realise that the process of language acquisition is not a journey but rather a peregrination.

And that brings me to the title of this publication and what I have chosen for what I intend to be about here:

An tIomramh.

In the sounds of English, it might be pronounced roughly:

/Un tim-rov/

Iomramh, in Irish, is the noun form of the verb iomair, to row, and literally means rowing. But it also has a literary meaning associated with voyaging (usually by curach) or, more particularly for our purposes here, a voyage tale. Iomramh is the modern Irish form of the word, but the older form is imram, which also connotes wandering or the tale of a sea-wandering, and it is here we are really starting to suck virtual diesel as far as I am concerned in getting to the bottom of the meaning of this word.

Thus: An tIomramh /Un tim-rov/ ~ (which I am choosing to mean) The Wandering.

And this, for me, is far superior to any journey and much better describes my experience as an adult learner of the Irish language for the last 10 years or so.

An tIomramh connotes a tale of a wanderer of the seas, rowing arduously, slowly, and seemingly endlessly at times, by hand. This wandering will have involved sights of wonder, and of terror, and periods of inevitable boredom.

And, of course, there will have been the odd chimera!

So if you have been waiting at the bus stop of your language journey for a while, I have both good, and bad, news for you: your language bus is ghosting you and it won’t be coming; but, on the other hand, there’s nothing whatsoever stopping you from just getting up and having a wander about right here where you are, right now; and you never know what you might discover in the process.

Giorraíonn beirt bóthar ~ two shorten a road; in other words, anything done in pleasant company makes the time pass quicker, and in this context it’s always good to have a second pair of hands at the oars.

So, if you’re up for it, let’s wander through this learning of the Irish language as adult learners together, sé do bheatha agus fáilte isteach ~ you are most welcome here, and I am so grateful to you for your generosity with your kind attention.

Mar sin, ar aghaidh linn ~ so, let’s begin.

Slán tamaill ~ bye for a while.