It's a fairly well-known fact that the British empire all but obliterated the Irish language. But at some point in the 1560s, Queen Elizabeth I decided that having a few words of the Irish might come in handy with the whole let's-conquer-the-whole-damn-island-and-convert-all-the-heathens-to-Protestantism thing, and so she recruited an Anglo-Irish nobleman named Christopher Nugent to put together a basic guidebook for her to use when trying to speak with the savage inhabitants of the island. Some of the pages from this document (seen below) remain in the collection of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, and are one of the oldest known attempts at translation between Irish, English, and Latin.

Clearly, it's kind of weird to be talking about Great Britain on St. Padraig's Day, but I thought this was a fun way of sharing some basic Irish words and phrases with all 3 of my loyal website followers. 'Cause who knows — it might come in handy if you're, I don't know, trying to communicate in code in order to protect yourself from a corrupt government. So here you go!