About Rí-Rá

Welcome to Rí - Rá, the fun way to learn Irish online

As Rí-Rá is a completely Irish website, here is a bit of information to get those of you who are just beginning with Irish started.

Rí - Rá offers fully interactive tutorials and games for learning the Irish language. Rí - Rá is simple enough for young children to use but can still be used by people of all ages who just want to learn a few basic Irish words and phrases.

Rí - Rá currently consists on seven topics but is continuously growing. Typically each topic has one lesson, containing roughly ten words, which is followed by a game to test what you have learned. Each lesson is lead by to friendly characters: Donal Dog and Bertie Bear.

Enjoy learning Irish with Rí - Rá. Comments and feedback are always welcome and should be directed to info@ri-ra.ie.

About Irish

Irish is now spoken natively by only a small number of the Irish population (mostly in parts of officially designated Gaeltachtaí) but still has an important role in the life of the Irish state. It enjoys constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland and it is an official language of the European Union. Irish is also an officially recognized minority language in Northern Ireland.

Estimates of fully native speakers range from 20,000 to 50,000 people. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs estimated in 2007 that 17,000 people lived in areas where Irish was the community language, and a further 10,000 in areas where it is partly the community language. But since Irish is an compulsory subject in schools, many more are reasonably fluent second-language speakers. Furthermore, a much larger number regularly regard themselves as competent to some degree in the language.