Dia Dhuit! (Hello!)

Failte. (Welcome)

Allow me to explain why I created this website.

I started using Duolingo in January of 2025 to learn Irish. Looking back to the early lessons there were a lot of vocabulary words, and I started using an Excel spreadsheet to keep track.

It seems like as the lessons continued those words never came up again and instead the lessons were more phrase based. 

I bought a family plan and shared it with my wife and few other people, my wife focusing on Spanish. 

Thus, our language learning journeys began.

It took a few months, but I started to notice that some of the phrases I was receiving weren’t your typical “Hello, My name is and I am from . . . ” or “Nice to meet you!” as compared to what my wife was learning.

The Irish phrases were a bit stranger, and I didn’t know if it was just me. Was I reading into them? Misinterpreting them? Taking them out of context? 

It got to the point where I thought, surely, someone is laughing to themselves as they train the model and supply the phrases used in the lessons. Yes, I know it’s mostly AI now, but still…

So, I started taking screenshots and texting stuff that made me laugh or raise an eyebrow to my wife. 

Now, being an ex-submarine sailor, I swear like sailor. My wife on the other hand is a bit demure and refined.  So when I texted her and she kept replying with WTF??? I knew I was on to something and that it was too good not to share.

And here we are – IrishDuolingo.com

As you may know, there has been a stunning resurgence of interest the Irish language. My initial goal here is to post the phrases that crack me up or make me think “Hmmm….”

Moving forward I will add some additional Irish language resources that I have found helpful or interesting as we all know Duolingo has its limitations and criticisms.

I truly look forward to your comments, translation corrections, ideas, suggestions, and insights. On the Contact Me page, you can even upload images of your own. 

I’ll give full credit to you for anything you send to me and I use.

In the off chance you want to follow me on Duolingo you can do so here. (You need an active account)

Sláinte