[LINK] "Protestants go for Gaelic in Northern Ireland"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera's Peter Geoghegan describes the somewhat unlikely spread of Irish Gaelic among Protestants in Northern Ireland. Apparently building on ancestral traditions of Scots Gaelic and close cultural connections between Ireland and Scotland, apparently knowledge of Irish Gaelic is starting to pick up.

Seomra ranga - "classroom", in Ireland's indigenous language - reads a cardboard sign tacked onto a door. A little further down the hall, a leabharlann is filled with books. It is a very Irish scene, but in a very unlikely place: East Belfast Mission on Newtownards Road.

Across the street, a mural commemorates the Protestant paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force. Union Jack flags fly from lampposts in the shadow of the shipyards that built the Titanic.

In Northern Ireland, the Irish Gaelic language has traditionally been a largely Catholic pursuit. The overwhelming majority of the 5,000 children in Irish-language education hail from nationalist areas.

But this might be about to change. The Turas Centre in the East Belfast Mission - turas means "journey" in Irish Gaelic - hosts 10 Irish-language classes a week. About 90 percent of those filing in and out of the seomra ranga and reading textbooks in the leabherlann are Protestant.

"The Irish language is part of our culture. It belongs to everyone," said Linda Ervine, an Irish language development officer at the East Belfast Mission.

Ervine is the closest East Belfast comes to royalty: loyalist leader David Ervine was her brother-in-law; her husband, Brian, is like his late brother David, a former leader of the Progressive Unionist Party.

Linda Ervine's soft voice and gentle manner bely a formidable passion for the Irish language - and for why Northern Ireland's Protestant community should take it up.

"There is every reason why Protestants should be learning Irish," she said. "Ninety-five percent of our place names come from Gaelic… We are using words in our language every day that come from the Gaelic language. We are steeped in it."

On a nearby wall hangs a map of Britain and Ireland turned on its side, showing the ancient Gaelic-speaking kingdom of Dalriada, which spread across the north coast of Ireland and the western isles of Scotland in the late sixth and early seventh centuries.