Muine Gall Agus Is Feidir Linn

Imagine my surprise when I heard President Obama speaking Irish!

I am a student of the Irish language (Gaeilge) and have great respect for this language with ancient roots and for the expressiveness of those who speak it.

And by now I am well aware President Barack Obama has an ancestor named Fulmouth Kearney who came from Moneygall, County Offaly, Ireland to the United States in 1850.

When Obama "came home" to the town yesterday, he said, “I’m Barack Obama, from the Moneygall Obamas ... And I’ve come home to find the apostrophe that we lost somewhere along the way."

My Irish teacher - Dr. Roslyn Blyn-LaDrew, says that the town name is "Muine Gall" in Irish. The first part should be said, "MWIN-yuh."

The name "Moneygall" has nothing to do with money as Muine means a “thicket” or a “scrub” area covered with shrubs. The “gall” part can either mean “a foreigner” or “of foreigners.” The word is also found in the place name “Dún na nGall,” or Donegal, as in the town or the county. So essentially “Muine Gall” means “foreigners’ thicket.”

During his visit to Muine Gall, Obama seemed to exhibit the speaking skills the Irish are known for.

At Ollie’s Bar in Moneygall, the President sought some advice on how much to let the foam on his pint of Guiness subside before drinking it. “You tell me when it’s properly settled," Obama said to the barkeep. “I don’t want to mess this up."

Plunking money on the bar, he added, “I just want you to know the President pays."

Standing in the low-ceiling pub, surrounded by distant relatives, Obama drew the connection across the big water saying: “There are millions of Americans who trace their ancestry back to this beautiful island. Part of what makes it so special is because the Irish influence on American culture is so powerful in the arts, in politics, in commerce."

But the President saying, "Moneygall," is not really Irish, as close as it comes.

The actual Irish I heard came is this quote:

"Ireland, if anyone ever says otherwise, if anybody ever tells you that your problems are too big, your challenges are too great and we can't do something, that we shouldn't even try, think about all that we've done together, remember that whenever hardships the winter may bring, springtime is always just around the corner.

And if they keep on arguing with you, just respond with a simple creed -- Is feidir linn. Yes we can."

This sentence, "Is feidir linn." is loaded with special Irish grammar.

Irish has the distinction of not really having a single word for "yes" as its function is fulfilled by the responder using the verb, most often, in their response. So the "yes" part of "yes we can" comes from the emphaticness of the sentence instead of a single word that means "yes."

An example might be translated as, "Are you thirsty?" and the Irish answer is, "I am thirsty."

The first word in "Is feidir linn," "Is" is known as the copula, which is an amazing grammatical structure we could puzzle over for hours. In order to keep it simple, we'll say the "Is" is like the verb, "Always is..." The Irish grammarians are coming after me with big sticks because I said that, but that is the easiest way to construe that word in such a sentence.

The second word, "feidir" means "possible" when used with the copula.

And "linn" is a prepositional pronoun, but in Irish the prepositional pronouns are conjugated like verbs in the Romance languages. The root prepositional pronoun is "le" which is one of those words with a maddening number of meanings. Are you ready? Le means "with, to, for, or against" according to Irish dictionaries. Other students and I have found it stretching even beyond this dizzying array of meanings, but maybe we imagined it?

Anyway, in this sentence the "le" part of the prepositional pronoun seems to mean "with" and the "inn" part of the prepositional pronoun is the ending that adds "us."

So real fast, "Is feidir linn" means "Always is possible with us!" or "Yes we can!"

At this point in my life, I have too many T-shirts, but I read an entrepreneur or two in Ireland are selling T-shirts with "Is feidir linn!" on them. If I see one, I'll probably buy it.

Such an optomistic phrase: Is feidir linn!


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Click here to hear to hear President Obama's Speech in College Green, Dublin, Ireland

Click here for more about an Irish American children's book for the President's and First Lady's children

Click here for more on Muine Gall by Dr. Roslyn Blyn-LaDrew

Click here to learn about one man and his part in bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

President Barack Obama Invited to Unveiling of Fredrick Douglas Monument in Cork

President Barack Obama has been invited to University College Cork when he visits Ireland in May so he may honor Fredrick Douglass, a former African-American slave.

Two Irish-American and two African-American congressmen: representatives Joseph Crowley, John Lewis, Donald Payne and Richard Neal, have penned a letter to President Obama asking him to travel to Cork for the unveiling of the Frederick Douglass monument, which will be the first monument in Ireland to honor an African-American. English artist Andrew Edwards, whose family emigrated from Cork, was commissioned to create the sculpture of Douglass.

Mr Obama dedicated a substantial part of his remarks to Frederick Douglass at the St Patrick’s Day White House reception. Both he and Taoiseach Enda Kenny see a resemblance between the suffering of the slaves brought from Africa and the Irish in the Great Hunger. The Taoiseach is the prime minister of Ireland. The Taoiseach is nominated by the Dáil Éireann (lower house of the Oireachtas, the legislature of Ireland) and appointed by the President of the Republic of Ireland. Don Mullan, a Dublin-based author is the originator of the monument idea and met Taoiseach Enda Kenny in Washington, D.C.

In 1845 Douglass published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave which became a bestseller and influenced American politics. Also in 1845 Douglass began a lecture tour in Ireland, where he “found common ground with the people locked in their struggle against oppression”. Douglass “was shocked and appalled by the living conditions of the Irish peasantry and later likened them to conditions endured by slaves on American plantations”.

Despite the desperate conditions of the populace in Ireland at the start of the Potato Famine, Douglass made personal connections that were to greatly influence his life. Douglass met Daniel O’Connell at a rally in Dublin and the men became friends. O'Connell was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century who campaigned for Catholic Emancipation—the right for Catholics to sit in the British Parliament. O’Connell hated slavery and called Douglass “the black O’Connell of the United States”. Douglass found his months in Ireland were “some of the happiest moments of my life”. The experience transformed him and he said, “I live a new life.”

Mr Obama said Douglass “modeled his own struggle for justice on O’Connell’s belief that change could be achieved peacefully through rule of law ... the two men shared a universal desire for freedom – one that cannot be contained by language or culture or even the span of an ocean.”
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Read about reconciliation in Ireland in a speech by Harold Goode - Click Here.