This page was created by Emily Bengtson. 

Star of the Sea : A Postcolonial/Postmodern Voyage into the Irish Famine

Contemporary Music

There are essentially summer camps that teach Irish in Ireland.  One in particular, Coláiste Lurgan, does this by having students translate popular songs into Irish and perform them at the end of the camp.  The practical use of the language matters much less when it’s a song.  People sing in Latin and Greek and dead languages all the time.  It’s about communicating, yes, but not so much what the words are saying but what the music is.  And when it’s a popular song that is already well known, the students already know the English translation and this can help solidify the language for them.

You can check out their YouTube channel, but here are some examples of how they're fostering the love of language in the next generation:

Watch for traditional Irish instruments and dancing in these two videos and how they celebrate their culture by bringing it into something already popular.


These two videos either have lyrics or the words were especially easy to pick out, for example "agus" (and) in Little Lion Man


These two are just beautiful and fun and show of how beautiful the Irish language is.
Works Cited
Researcher/Writer: Michaila Gerlach
Technical Writers: Emily Bengtson and Maren Connell

This page has paths:

This page references: