Over the last four centuries Irish emigrants have left Ireland and travelled across the world, some compelled to go and many more unwilling or unable to stay.
Regardless of where they found themselves, most sought to maintain a connection with their homeland and families and wrote home often. They shared details about their experiences in their new environment. Enquired about the wellbeing of their family members or tried to convince potential emigrants to make the move and leave.
These letters offer valuable insights into the daily lives of our emigrants. Everyday people who formed the vast majority of those who left Ireland for a better life abroad. Telling their stories provides us with fascinating information about how they reached their destination, how they settled into their new societies and how they lived their lives outside Ireland afterwards.
DATE: 11th September 2024
TIME: 5.30pm – 6.30pm
WHERE: EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum
COST: €5
Speaker Profile
RAYMOND HICKEY is an Irish linguist who has worked for several decades on language in Ireland with special emphasis on English in Ireland, in the capital Dublin, and on the spread of the Irish population overseas during the past few centuries and how they carried their variety of English with them to the new locations they settled in.
He is presently Adjunct Professor at the University of Limerick having worked previously as Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Among his book publications are Irish English, History and Present-day Forms (2007); Dublin English. Evolution and Change (2005), Keeping in Touch. Familiar Letters across the English-speaking World (2023) and The Oxford Handbook of Irish English (2023).