Meet 28-year-old Cian Ă“ GrĂofa who is a marketing professional from Wicklow. He is also known by his flamboyant online alter ego @gaylgeoiri.
Ă“ GrĂofa is queer. He’s a drag queen. He plays football with Ireland’s first LGBTQ+ GAA club, Na Gaeil Aeracha. And he doesn’t think he’d be who he is today were it not for Gaeilge.
It was spending time in the Connemara Gaeltacht as a teen that woke him up to the vitality of the language. Speaking to the Irish Examiner he said;
“I was suddenly immersed in it,” he says. “The history and culture were all around me. There were even toddlers speaking Irish! I realised it was far more than a school subject: it was a living thing.”Â
This experience inspired him to study the language at university and to host a show on the Irish language radio station, Raidió Rà Rá.
This deep-dive into the Irish-speaking world gave Ă“ GrĂofa an unexpected sense of freedom.
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