Ever since I was young, there was one thing you could be certain of. Well apart from death and taxes, that is. And that was that was the Irish language was on its death bed and soon would be no more.

It’s still dying according to the average person, even though I’ve never heard so much of it. Whether it be on the television, radio or when the Feile came to town.

They claim it’s Definitely Endangered. That young people no longer speak the language. This is despite the fact that 8 percent of students are now in all-Irish medium education.

Yes, things are so dire that I got a scam email sent to me in perfect Irish during the week. Does the Government have some secret deal with criminals, that a certain percentage of fraud must be conducted through Irish or they can’t claim some fraud grant. I wouldn’t put it past them!

Writing in Irish kind of worked too. I actually read the whole email rather than just deleting it. But the usual sob story wouldn’t work on me even if it was genuine, which it wasn’t.

I decided to do my own Irish exam yesterday. I know, the things I do for kicks. Even my parents looked at me funny when I told them about it. I got a D1 in ordinary level you see, something that my Dad loves to bring up. He got an honours in his, and it’s the only score of mine he remembers.

Anyways, I digress. After many years of watching and listening to Irish, mostly on TG4, I scored a B1 Lower Intermediate Irish. If things were really that bad for the language, I’d be heralded as part of the linguistic community. But I’m not.

Oiche mhaithe agat.