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Martha Tsutsui Billins (host): Hello and welcome to Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork. I’m Martha Tsutsui Billins, and today’s episode is with Alexandra Philbin. Alexandra is originally from Dublin, Ireland, and now lives in València, Spain. She is carrying out doctoral research in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of València. Her research focuses on the experiences of urban speakers of minoritized languages, particularly Irish speakers in Dublin and Valencian (Catalan) speakers in València. Before moving to València, she completed an undergraduate degree in World Languages at University College Cork, and a master’s degree in Linguistic Anthropology at Maynooth University. She also taught Irish to adult learners and carried out research on Irish-medium education on behalf of the Irish government. As well as completing her PhD research, Alexandra teaches Irish and works as a Language Revitalization Mentor with the Endangered Languages Project, offering free, online support to those working to promote Indigenous and minoritized languages around the world.
I’ve been hoping to do an episode on Irish for quite a while now, so I’m delighted to share this interview with Alexandra from the Endangered Languages Project. I think Irish is one of those languages that many people have heard of and might know a tiny bit about, or think they know a bit about it, myself included. So it was really fun to learn more and hear about Alexandra’s experiences as an Irish linguist.
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MTB: Alexandra, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. I’m super excited to hear about your experience with Irish. To start, how did you first become interested in linguistics?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I first started getting interested in linguistics, I suppose first I was interested in languages in general. So, I grew up in a town just outside of Dublin called Domhnach Bat, or Donabate, and English was very much the dominant language there. It was a dominant language at home, in the community, at school for me, but I learned Irish as a compulsory subject as part of the school curriculum. And I really loved it as a subject when I was in primary school, and I was really lucky because my parents really encouraged me to develop an interest in Irish outside of school as well. So, when I was 11, I started going to summer camps in Irish, first in Dublin and later on in the Gaeltacht area, or an area where Irish is spoken by a higher proportion of the population. And so I went to summer camp in the summers in Connemara. And then I started working there when I was older as well, when I was about 17. I worked as a camp counselor in the same summer camp I had attended as a student. So, I really was very passionate about Irish. And in secondary school, I started studying Spanish as well and became very interested in the histories and cultures in Spain and Latin America, particularly. So, when I was choosing university degrees, I decided to study languages, so I studied Spanish, Irish and German as well, and as part of that program, it was in University College Cork, it’s a program called World Languages. You study three languages and you also do modules in literature and linguistics. And I was particularly drawn to the modules in linguistics, so when I did my year abroad as part of the program, I chose to only study linguistics modules because we had a lot more flexibility in the modules that we could choose in the universities in other countries. So, especially when I was in Santiago de Compostela on Erasmus, an exchange program, I studied modules in Linguistic Anthropology and I found out what that was, so when I was applying for master’s, I knew that was the topic for me. It sort of brought together my interest in Irish and minoritized languages in general. In Santiago, I met a lot of speakers of Galician as well and become more interested in that. Plus, the modules I had done on like power and semiotics. So, it really brought together a lot of different interests I had within linguistics, and so I did my master’s in that and have continued in that line of research.
MTB: That’s awesome. So, you did your master’s in Linguistic Anthropology, is that right?
Alexandra Philbin: Yes, exactly. Yeah, at Maynooth University.
MTB: That’s cool. That’s really cool. Do you want to talk a bit about your work as a Language Revitalization Mentor at Endangered Languages Project?
Alexandra Philbin: Yes, absolutely. So, I started with ELP in November 2022 as a Language Revitalization Mentor, which basically means I’m there to help anyone who contacts ELP. They might be looking for resources, they might be looking to share ideas across different language communities, or they might want to talk about their work and get the emotional work and the encouragement that is often needed as well. So, it’s been an absolute pleasure doing that job. It’s all online, so people can book online appointments and talk to me, and I’ve met people from loads of countries around the world from different language communities. It’s been really an amazing learning opportunity for me, as well as being able to share about things I’ve seen in the Irish language community and the Catalan community. I’ve been able to learn so much from other people’s communities as well. So, that’s been great. And there’s four of us that are working there as mentors: Yulha, Yazmín, Pius and me. And we’re all from different contexts, we have different language backgrounds, different revitalization experiences. So, I think it’s a really nice service that people can use, and yeah, it’s been great so far.
MTB: That’s awesome. Yulha and Pius have both been on the podcast, so I’ll link to their episodes as well in the show notes. And this is not just for academics, right? Anybody can book an appointment.
Alexandra Philbin: Anybody, exactly. It’s for anyone who feels they want support in their language work.
MTB: That’s awesome. That’s really nice that there’s something that’s more accessible to people who maybe aren’t at an institution or aren’t doing like formal linguistic training or in a formal programme, but they’re just passionate about their language and revitalization.
Alexandra Philbin: Exactly, and that was something that ELP had recognized in speaking to people at different activities that the access to those resources is so unequal across the world, so being able to provide a free opportunity for people to learn more about what we’ve been exposed to, we’ve had the privilege to be exposed to.
MTB: Yeah, that’s awesome. So, I’m really curious if you could tell us more about what revitalization efforts look like for Irish. I feel like Irish is kind of this famous case. Like people love to talk about Irish. When I was studying language documentation and description at SOAS, Irish came up a lot for us just anecdotally or as a case study. So, what kind of revitalization efforts have taken place already? What’s ongoing? If you have thoughts about other efforts you would like to see in the future, I’d love to hear that.
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, absolutely. So, there’s so much going on with Irish. I definitely can’t do justice to all the amazing work happening in the community. It is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, which means it does have some state support, though it could go a lot further. So, it’s a compulsory subject as part of the primary and secondary curriculum, so most people in Ireland are at least exposed to the language in school and have the opportunity to learn some of it. It’s offered at third level as a subject as well. And again, a lot more could be done for third-level provision.
MTB: Is that like university, or…
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, exactly. So, universities, you can study it as a subject like I did. And there are some limited degrees that you can study through Irish in other areas, but very, very limited. And then there’s certain requirements from the state then to provide services in Irish to be able to serve Irish speakers who might go in contact with the tax office or any public service, really. There’s also so much coming from the community. So, one of the big successes, I suppose, has been the Irish-medium education movement, where people, Irish speakers pushed for schools in different areas around Ireland to provide education fully in Irish for children, and they’re very popular. Unfortunately, the demand greatly exceeds the availability.
MTB: Oh, really?
Alexandra Philbin: So, only the other day, actually, children were out campaigning in Dublin for more Irish-medium secondary schools, particularly for the Southside of Dublin city where there has been very little investment in Irish-medium education. So, only the other day, they were out protesting. They had a naughty list of politicians, now that we’re coming up to Christmas. They had a naughty list of politicians that they feel they needed to do more for Irish. So, there’s lots of Irish speakers that are very active and demanding more. And there are movements and other movements that come from the community, like the Pop-Up Gaeltacht, for example. I mentioned the Gaeltacht and working there when I was a teenager. But the Pop-Up Gaeltacht refers to a new phenomenon that came about in 2016. It came out of the idea that a lot of people don’t see Irish as being spoken outside of the Gaeltacht areas. They might not associate the language with Dublin city, for example, so the idea was to meet up in a place where usually English is spoken, so pubs, and to go in together as Irish speakers, come from different areas of Dublin, and show in front of everyone that we speak Irish and, yeah, really show that Irish is spoken in Dublin. And this has moved around the world now, and there’s these events around the world.
MTB: Oh, wow.
Alexandra Philbin: So, that’s been huge, I think, for getting the message out there that Irish can be found around Ireland, around the world. And there’s been lots of similar initiatives in that kind of line. There’s so many cultural events happening as well, poetry nights and theatrical performances as well, that are fantastic. And at the moment, there’s focus on the Gaeltacht and the challenges that Gaeltacht communities are facing, particularly around housing. This is a huge issue. There’s a housing crisis in Ireland in general. There’s huge pressure on Gaeltacht communities, and people are having to move out of the Gaeltacht because they may not be able to afford to buy a home or aren’t given permission to build a home, so that’s definitely a major issue, but attention is being drawn to it. More attention needs to be drawn to it in the wider public discussion. So, there’s a lot going on in terms of housing. At the moment, there’s talk about setting up an Irish language settlement in Dublin as well so that Irish speakers can live together, raise their children together, so that kids can play on the street with their friends and speak Irish.
MTB: Oh, wow.
Alexandra Philbin: Efforts have been made for that in the past, but this is sort of a renewed effort for that. So, hopefully that works out. It takes a lot of planning, a lot of funding, so…
MTB: Yeah, that’s really interesting. So, would you say that one of the biggest obstacles is just measures being passed in the government that would provide more funding to build these communities and provide funds for more schools and those kinds of things? Is that like the main obstacle?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, that’s definitely a major obstacle that, yeah, I suppose there’s the idea of Irish being the first official language, but that doesn’t necessarily…
MTB: Come with money.
Alexandra Philbin: …translate to the… Yeah, exactly. So, there is an element of, they need to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to Irish. Yeah.
MTB: Yeah. Can you tell us more about the language context of Irish? So, it’s Gaeilge in Irish, Irish in Irish, right?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, that’s how I say it. There’s a few different ways of saying it, but yeah, so Irish or Gaeilge is a Celtic language. It’s one of six Celtic languages that are currently spoken. So that’s Irish, Gaelic, Manx, Breton, Welsh, and Cornish. It’s closely related to Manx and Gaelic, and there’s some degree of intelligibility between them. The Celtic languages in general, there’s quite a network between them. So, I’m involved in the Association of Celtic Students, which brings together students who are interested in Celtic studies kind of more historically, and the Celtic languages and the study of the Celtic languages. So, there’s quite a network between the Celtic language communities.
MTB: That’s cool. That’s really cool. And are there any estimates on like numbers of speakers? I always ask about numbers of speakers, but I know it’s so hard to count what is a speaker, but I think there’s a lot of data about Irish knowledge and people who might have some Irish ability, right?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah. So, it’s a question on the census. So, we have those figures, for example. So, there’d be over a million people that would claim some competence in Irish, but the numbers fall drastically when we look at people who use the language on a daily basis, especially outside of the education system where it’s not compulsory. So, there’d be over 70,000 people who speak the language on a daily basis within the Republic of Ireland, but it’s also spoken in the north of Ireland and around the world in diaspora communities as well.
MTB: Are there large diaspora communities in certain pockets, or is it kind of more spread out?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, there are countries where Irish people have tended towards, in immigration terms, so North America, Australia, but really, you’ll find it in many different places. I, myself, emigrated to Valencia two years ago, and we have an Irish language group there, and we meet every few weeks to speak Irish, so…
MTB: That’s cool.
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, you’ll find it in a lot of places.
MTB: That’s really cool. Shall we move on to your PhD work and stuff you’re researching right now?
Alexandra Philbin: Right, yeah, absolutely.
MTB: Yeah, I’d love to hear more about that.
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, so, when I was doing the master’s in Linguistic Anthropology, I became particularly interested in Irish in Dublin. I grew up as someone interested in the language and a learner and then a speaker in Dublin, and I often felt quite insecure about my status as a speaker. I felt like, “Oh, Irish isn’t something that is connected to me in the same way it’s connected to other people in Ireland. I’m from a place where English is dominant,” and I had heard ideas about how Dublin Irish speakers don’t speak good Irish and those kinds of ideas, and I had thought about that a lot when I was a teenager and when I was studying Irish at university, and it was really during the master’s when I started to read more about language ideologies that I saw how much the kind of literature around language ideologies connected with my own experience. I found it a really useful way to sort of be able to detach myself from some of the negative feelings I had around my own speech and my own background. So I knew I wanted to focus on that, and when I moved to Valencia — well, when I met my partner who’s from Valencia and then moved to Valencia and learned more about the case of Valencian, the local dialect of Catalan, I saw that there was a lot in common in terms of the ideas that people had about the city as a place where the language is spoken less.
MTB: Or not well?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, or not well. All of these ideas that are very prevalent across the world in different language communities, so I saw that there was room to kind of compare notes in Dublin and Valencia, see how speakers who do use the language on a daily basis and in cases there, while the percentage of speakers is relatively low in Dublin and Valencia, the amount in numerical terms, there are thousands of speakers who speak the language on a daily basis in the cities. So to learn more about how those speakers navigate the city, how they relate to it, how their identity works in terms of the city, that’s what I was really interested in for the PhD.
MTB: That’s really cool. Can you share more about your interview methods, like your, what do you call them, walking tours, walking interviews?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, walking interviews I’ve been using. So because I was interested in the city, particularly kind of the use of space and language in the city, I thought a walking methodology would be really useful for gaining more of an understanding into that. So part of it is walking observation or observational walks myself through the city, looking at the linguistic landscape and looking out, hearing out for Irish in Dublin and Catalan in Valencia essentially. And then also bringing in walks to the interviews as well. So I do one initial interview with each participant where we talk about their background with the language, their experiences, their perspectives. And then the second interview that we do is a walking interview in a part of the city that they associate with the language or their use of the language. And that’s been a really amazing experience walking with speakers and learning more about their connection with the city and learning about places that I didn’t think of having a connection to the language. There are places that are more known as places associated with the language, but seeing how people have turned loads of places in these cities that might be associated more with the dominant language into places that they associate with the minoritized language for me is really inspiring.
MTB: That’s really cool. So it’ll be like you and a participant, a speaker, like guiding you through a part of Dublin.
Alexandra Philbin: Exactly.
MTB: And talking about like where they use Irish and their connection to it.
Alexandra Philbin: Exactly. So I did the first six months I was, of this year, I was doing fieldwork in Valencia, and now I’m in Dublin doing the same here. And the idea with the walking interviews is that people have more control over the interview, so it’s really about following their lead.
MTB: That’s cool. What kind of places do people take you to? Like, I’m envisioning pubs, but that’s probably like a very stereotypical image.
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, in both Valencia and in Dublin, there are pubs associated with the languages so that they have featured, for sure, and especially pubs in Dublin where this Pop-Up Gaeltacht event has taken place, because it’s at a different pub each month, so people have experiences around the city then with the language, which is cool. But there’s also places as well where people have taken me on walks along the river, as well along canals or rivers, in Dublin, because you know, somebody was part of a walking group, for example, in Irish. So for them, there was a connection between walking and Irish and this more…
MTB: Oh, it’s perfect.
Alexandra Philbin: … scenic walk, I suppose. And then walks kind of through more commercial centers where people know that they can use Irish in certain shops or have found places where they can use the language, which has been really great to see as well that people have found all these ways of incorporating the language into their daily life in places that people might think that impossible or at least extremely difficult, and they do it anyway. So that resistance, I think, is incredible. So for example, in some cases, I went for a walk with someone in Valencia, where they brought me to a local market, and we went along all the different stalls that she associated with the language. So she said, “That person speaks Catalan, and that person speaks Catalan,” and I was nearly having to run to catch up with her.
MTB: Oh, that’s cool.
Alexandra Philbin: And even chatted to some of them as well. So that’s really, really nice. And the same has happened in Dublin, where we popped in on different shops and spoken to different people. And that’s been really special.
MTB: That’s really nice. You also work with linguistic landscape, right?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah.
MTB: So how is that featured in your research?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, so it’s been quite interesting. When I do the observational walks, I take photos of aspects of the linguistic landscape that jump out to me. I’m not focused on everything in the linguistic landscape in the sense that I’m not kind of comparing how… the percentages of how much is in English versus how much is in Irish. I’m really only focusing on the Irish that I see.
MTB: Okay.
Alexandra Philbin: The idea with the whole method is to focus on presence rather than absence in the city. So many of the discourses around the use of these minoritized languages in the city has been focused on how they’re not there. So I’m trying to bring out the ways that they are there, whether that be in the linguistic landscape, through graffiti in the language or street signs, and then in the interviews through all the places that people have used the language.
MTB: That’s cool. That’s really cool. The idea of graffiti or street art in a minority language is so interesting to me, especially because to me that indicates that it’s something associated with the youth or youth culture, which often I see in the minority language context, like, the minority language is only associated with like elder generation. So I think it’s really interesting. Would you call it a reclaiming or anything like that? What do you see there?
Alexandra Philbin: Definitely. I’m definitely more drawn to those aspects of the linguistic landscapes. Stickers on poles as well, I’ve come across a lot of times.
MTB: Oh, yeah.
Alexandra Philbin: I’m very drawn to them because it’s very much coming from the community, coming from speakers themselves. As important as it is to also have official street signs that are in our languages, I think it’s great to see the community resistance in the area.
MTB: Yeah, that’s really cool. I love that. Is Irish something that people use as like an identity marker, or… Like even if they speak mainly English, are there certain phrases or certain words in Irish that people will still use in Ireland if they’re like maybe heritage speakers or community members? Is that something people do? Or is it more like you speak English or you speak Irish?
Alexandra Philbin: No, there’s definitely crossovers between them. Absolutely. So in the English spoken in Ireland, you can see the influence of the Irish. So for example, people might use “I do be going,” for example, rather than “I regularly go” or “I go” in the idea of it being regular, which comes from the Irish bíonn. So we have a difference between “I am doing something in the moment” and “I do something regularly.” There’s a difference with that with the “I am” verb.
MTB: You know what that reminds me of, actually, in African American Vernacular English, there’s the habitual be.
Alexandra Philbin: Yes, exactly.
MTB: So there was that famous experiment where they showed a picture of Elmo from Sesame Street and a picture of Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. I’m probably like misstating what actually happened, but they asked the kids who spoke African American Vernacular English, “Who eats cookies?” And they said, “Cookie Monster be eating cookies,” because Cookie Monster is known for eating cookies. He habitually eats cookies.
Alexandra Philbin: Exactly.
MTB: So it’s kind of like something you regularly do or you habitually do.
Alexandra Philbin: Exactly.
MTB: That’s really interesting.
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah. So we have this habitual tense. We have this “I do be doing something.” So you can hear that in English as well. And phrases as well, like “to scold somebody” for me in English would always be “to give out to somebody.” I would never say “scold.” That’s my only way of translating it to a non-Irish audience. And that comes from the Irish ag tabhairt amach, which is literally “giving out” to somebody. So, yeah, there are definitely phrases that have crossover structures in the language as well.
MTB: They’re speaking English, but they’re using the Irish grammar.
Alexandra Philbin: Exactly.
MTB: That’s really interesting. That’s really cool.
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah.
MTB: I think the example I gave you when we spoke before is, my English husband will say he’s a good craic. He’s like a good guy, like gives the news, right? “Craic” is like gossip. Is that right?
Alexandra Philbin: It’s fun, kind of. Good fun.
MTB: Good fun. Okay. Yeah. Like he’s a good time.
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
MTB: Yeah. And I never realized that that was an Irish word, like C-R-A-I-C, right?
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah. C-R-A-I-C, yeah.
MTB: Yeah. I just thought like it was like a crack in the sidewalk and a different use of it that I didn’t understand with my American English.
Alexandra Philbin: Yeah, no, there’s a lot of crossover between them, and I think it just highlights that, you know, Irish is the national language. It’s a language associated with Ireland. So, you know, that has a deep history in the country, and we’re all connected to it in some shape or form.
MTB: Yeah. That’s amazing. Well, thank you so much, Alexandra. Where can people find you if they want to either book an appointment with you as an ELP mentor or if they want to learn more about your work? Where are you online?
Alexandra Philbin: So, if anyone wants to book an appointment with ELP or wants to talk to me more about Irish, my research, anything at all, then they can contact me by email at alexandra@endangeredlanguages.com, and I’m pretty active on Twitter. So, that’s @Alexandra_Phil_, P-H-I-L for “Phil.” And then on Instagram as well, I have a public account under @irlandesaalavalenciana. The Valencianized Irish girl [unclear 27:19].
MTB: Awesome. Thank you so much.
Alexandra Philbin: No, thank you. Go raibh míle maith agat.
You’ve been listening to Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork. This podcast is hosted and produced by Martha Tsutsui Billins with production help from Laura Tsutsui. Claire Gawne is our editor, and Luca Dinu is our transcriptionist. Our music is by Lobo Loco, and our logo is by E.Vill Designs. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @lingfieldnotes. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening!
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