Echo Focus: Learning to love Irish

Ihde is director of the CUNY Institute for Irish-American Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx and author of “Irish Language in the United States.” He is a fluent Irish speaker and never communicates with his children in English. Ihde’s grandfather was a native Irish speaker from Galway, but he himself was born in the U.S. to non-Irish speaking parents.
Ihde offers an example, though perhaps in the extreme, of how many Irish-Americans are rediscovering the most fundamental aspect of their heritage. He began learning Irish in 1992 while studying for an MA in linguistics at Trinity College, Dublin. His study consisted of 30 minutes each evening watching “Cursa