Irish people undoubtedly have their slang words and funny expressions that can pose language barriers but there’s something more complex than that: the Irish language! 

Irish is a Celtic language (as are Scottish and Welsh) and is not much similar to English! Irish has constitutional status and is the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland.   

No reason to worry though! Apart from bilingual road signs, bilingual bus-stop announcements and Irish names, you will not encounter the language much.  

Why? Because nowadays English is the majority language spoken. Irish is still being taught in school but only around 30% of the 4.7m population can speak Irish, and 5% use it regularly. With the colonisation of Ireland in the 16th century the Irish language declined massively. 

However, as I mentioned above, Irish is still commonly used for first names and if you hang out with your Irish friends you might want to know how to pronounce their names.  

So here’s a short guide on how to pronounce some Irish first names:  

- Sinéad  ("shin-aid")  

- Eoin ("o-in")  

- Darragh ("di-re") 

- Oisín ("osh-een")  

- Pádraig ("paw-drig")   

- Dáire ("di-re")  

- Niamh ("neev")  

- Aisling ("ashling")  

- Clodagh ("clo-da")  

- Ciaran (“keer-awn”)  

Final useful hints: sometimes toilet labels are only in Irish – so you might want to know that Fir stands for men and Mná for women. And if you arrive to Dublin Airport you will read “Fáilte" which means "Welcome".