Christopher Culver has a post with some nice resources for those who love Old Irish (and it's one of those things, like Laphroaig, that you either love or hate): The Voyage of Bran and Aided Froích ('The Death of Fróech'), both in Gaelic and English, a timeline showing the development from ogham to Modern Irish and Scots Gaelic using the word for 'daughter' as an example, and a photographically reproduced text of Kuno Meyer's 1909 Irish Metrics.
Posted by languagehat at October 4, 2005 03:06 PMSometimes I wish I could speak more Irish (Modern Irish, that is). I'm jealous that my girlfriend is bilingual (English and Afrikaans, with a little bit of Zulu too), and part of me regrets not picking up what is supposed to be my mother tongue. I mean, even my name is 'as Gaeilge', but I don't speak the language! Alas, I hated it at school, and that was that...
Posted by: MacDara at October 4, 2005 05:11 PM"I hated it at school, and that was that..."
The shoot yourself in the foot approach to langugae revival, like managing to teach kids to hate parsnips. I think beating kids when they slip and speak the language is likelier to help a language survive.