There are different ways of speaking Irish at home, depending on your situation and preferences.

 

If you and other members of the family are fluent speakers so much the better. The more Irish you speak, the better your children’s Irish will be!

But other families can still help their children’s Irish. If one partner speaks Irish to the children and the other does not, that’s fine too. Many families round the world are raised this way, and children do not get confused.

 

If your Irish is rusty, why not polish it up by starting to use it with your baby? Or if you are learning Irish, why not share what you have with your children, and learn with them? If you use even a few words of Irish everyday, and encourage them to do so it will greatly help them.

 

It can be fun to learn together! There are plenty of attractive children’s books, tapes, CDs and TV programmes with songs and stories in Irish, which you can enjoy together.

 

There’s no need to worry about English- they will soon pick it up from friends, visitors, TV and in the wider world.

 

If we share our Irish with our children from day one, we give them a language and culture they can treasure all their lives.

 

Bilingualism is natural! More than 60% of the world’s people speak two, three or four languages in their daily lives. More than 100 languages are spoken in Europe. France has at least eight native languages spoken alongside French, while Italy has about 13 as well as Italian.