An American man taking the Irish Leaving Cert exam said proficiency in Irish makes it easier to buy a house in the Gaeltacht.
Tomorrow, thousands of students will take Irish Paper One, focused on reading comprehension and composition of the language.
At least two adult Americans will also take the exam tomorrow, including Rusty, who has been living in Galway for nine years.
He told The Hard Shoulder he expected to be “totally immersed” in the Irish language when moving to Galway and wasn’t disappointed.
When asked why he decided to take this exam usually reserved for teenagers, Rusty had a very adult-minded answer.
“Well rumour has it if you have an A2 level proficiency level in Irish, it just kind of helps grease the skids a bit with buying a house,” he said.
He said he had a very “naive” view of learning the language before he started studying for the Leaving Cert.
“I had some Italian and I have some French, so I thought, ‘Oh here’s just another Germanic language’,” he said.
“But you just have to dive into it, don’t you know.”
When asked if he regretted the journey, Rusty compared it to a time his boss asked if he would take a pill to immediately learn an instrument.
“I love the journey,” he said.
“There's nothing better than wanting to have a tune and you finally get to it and there’s a sense of accomplishment.
“Then he asked what about Irish and I said give me two pills right now.”
Americans doing the Leaving Cert
While Rusty won’t have far to travel to get to the exam centre, retired university professor David will be travelling from Minnesota to take the Irish Leaving Cert.
He said he retired some years ago and “didn’t have a lot going on”- so he decided to learn Irish.
“I planned a trip to Ireland, and I thought I'd learn a cupla focal before that,” he said.
“I kept on learning because I really enjoyed learning the language and I always wanted to learn a language to a level of fluency.”
Despite his connection to the Irish language, David later took a DNA test and only found a “little bit of Irish” at 20%.
The Irish paper one Leaving Cert exam will take place at 2pm tomorrow, followed by paper two at 9.30am on Tuesday.
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