Morning Musings

Hearing the Ancestors

Learning the language we lost and connecting our souls

I grew up in an era where you could not speak your first language in school. Americans we would be, if the Sisters had anything to do with it. As youngsters in our Catholic elementary school, my brother and I were not permitted to speak our, albeit broken, Italian.

This message went home to our grandparents, who were raising us. In their panic that we were not American enough, we suddenly were allowed all sorts of sugary cereals. Before, our breakfast was a bowl of coffee, sugar, a lot of milk, and toasted, buttered day-old Italian bread. I didn’t complain, drinking the chocolate milk leftover from my Cocoa Crispies.

We still spoke a little Italian with my grandmother in stores. She loved nothing more than making sure salespeople did not know what she had to say about their merchandise. We spoke Italian with our great-grandmother and cherished her Americanisms as she secretly pushed “emina-eminems” candy into our hands as we passed by.

Our immersion soon ended as my grandparents’ concern about our being American enough, having emigrated at great cost to this country to achieve it, became too much to ponder. Coincidentally, we began learning Spanish in this Florida school from third to eighth grade. I’m sure our early Italian helped me excel in that new language.

Languages came easily after that. Latin in high school, which significantly improved my English. French in university, where my study partner from Quebec said I spoke “Parisian French with a Canadian accent,” thanks to her. And a continued immersion in Spanish, living and attending this university along the Tamiami Trail. The lilting rhythms of Miami surrounded me.

On the crowded Calle Ocho, buying ham croquettes and sipping Cuban coffee, listening to the slap of dominoes as we cashed our Work-Study checks at the cantina. My knowledge of Spanish diminished a little after moving away from South Florida, yet it still came in quite handy in the program I managed.

Often immersed once again, as many of the young men spoke Spanish, they quickly caught on when one cheerfully announced, “She knows what we’re talking about.” Ironically, I also was able to champion their right to speak their first language in the setting when it was challenged and taught them how to do so. It was meaningful work in that I’d lost a language because I had not been allowed to speak it.

Our connection to language and culture became urgent work in those years. In that way, a longing developed to know more about my father, his parents emigrating from Ireland. My Italian grandmother kept his stories alive, as he died when I was young. Stories of his brogue, his merriment, his family history as a quintessential Irish policeman, and how he became beloved in their Italian family.

He met and married my mother, a not-at-all-unusual immigrant love story. She worked in Idlewild Airport (which would become John F. Kennedy International Airport), and he worked as a New York Port Authority officer. This love story was missing a component: his story. Tales I was to discover of ancestors driven from their land by colonizers, driven by poverty and famine, to be indentured, to seek a new life in Scotland and then the United States. They had a culture and a language that was at risk of being wiped out. I wanted to know it all.

I soon discovered The 20 Year Strategy For the Irish Language, 2010–2030. This seemed a lofty goal, and I wanted to be a part of it. I began to study Irish, find resources, native speakers and classes, and learn more about the history of the language. Most importantly, it became a compact that I would teach my grandchildren.

After a year of study, I was ready to speak Irish with my grandson, who was born in 2019. We have learned the language together, the nuances, the intricacies of dialects, the beauty of cultural meaning, the geography, place names, and the influences of colonizers. A deep cultural tuning fork is struck as he wraps his mouth around a new word.

He can see our neighbor’s chimney through our garage window, upon which is a spinning weather vane for a home weather station. Watching his excitement and delight, I told him a name for it, “eite gaotha.” It is quite seamless when an Irish word is his first word for something. With his eyes on the instrument, he breathed the words in a whisper, wrapping his mouth around them.

He has a substantial vocabulary now and an understanding of phrases. His dad will call me to ask what he says because he will use Irish with them. As I reach more knowledge, I know I speak fluent toddler level. I’m an expert at board books. We are now including his younger brother, and my son loves the idea that they will have a language of their own to speak.

My grandson’s first word was “wan-wan,” an attempt at “ulchabhán” (owl), which he now can say correctly. He will say “agat” for the much bigger mouthful “go raibh maith agat” (thank you). His pre-school asked for a list of words to support language use. They tell him “slán” (good-bye). So we go, on and on.

There is a healing and soul-defining peace in hearing your ancestors in your speech. This is a bond that I hope my grandchildren will carry to the future after I am gone. Respect for cultures lost, abandoned, and driven away should be a part of our human lexicon. It should be available and encouraged for everyone. In culture, no matter how different, we find our human connection. There is no diminishment of one to foster the other. Find the pieces of your story and speak them in truth.

Since I began my journey with Gaeilge and back to my ancestors, there have been great strides made in the 20-year strategy. There are new initiatives to increase the use of Irish as well as having gained full official and working status in the EU. I am very happy to be a part of it.