Grá-some power of the cúpla focal

Our reporter reawakens her slumbering Gaeilgeoir

- 

WALKING to my first Irish class at Conradh na Gaeilge on Dublin's Camden Street, I hear two fluent speakers yapping behind me.

Despite 40% of the population claiming they can speak our national tongue, it's seldom heard in the city streets of the capital.

Hearing cúpla focal fills me with nostalgia and transports me back to some of the happiest times of my life.

The summer after my first year in secondary school, when I was 13 years old, I attended a three-week course in the Gaeltacht in Connemara.

Despite having been taught Irish in school for eight years at this point, I barely had a word.

Kids and teenagers are sponges, espe- cially when it comes to languages.