The Irish curriculum may be much better now than when I was a child. I know my nephews are now taught Irish. There isn't the political exclusion there was when I was a kid anymore I think. Every child learns Irish I think, in the Republic anyway. Another thing is that unfortunately for some of us learning languages comes easier than for others. Eoin O'Duffy (yes somewhat controversial figure in Irish history) is someone I've read about who was absolutely passionate about promoting the Irish language his whole life and he chose to take lessons as a child and young man, yet he could never actually master the language, he just lacked the skill. At the same time, in the early Free State some of the most famously brilliant speakers of the language were English actors who'd learnt it. I was never any good at French and other languages I was taught at school, so I fear I'm not a good language learner. But, for me, to understand some things in Irish history properly, I feel I need to try to keep trying to learn some bits, that would really benefit me. I'm also very into preservation of texts, so I'll seek to preserve Irish texts even if I never master them.

There are at least two common words for whore/prostitute in Irish

striapach - from Old French strupe, concubinage, Latin stuprum, dishonour (acc. to MacBain’s Etymol. Dictionary), I could add Latin stuprare, to have illicit sexual relations, Medieval Latin strupum, concubinage.
And so, it is related to English strumpet.

meirdreach - from Latin meretrix, whore

Thank you very much Labhrás. That's excellent info. I really appreciate your sharing your expertise.

Hi lucy, how are you gettin on?

This isn't exactly relevant to the original post, but I'm working on a project, a big part of which has to do with the decline and revitalisation of Irish, why it's failing, things that were done wrong, issues with education, social and political currents pertaining to the language etc... and I'd like to ask what you meant by the politics of the time? I'm very interested in collecting people's opinions and experiences with the Irish language.

Hi,
I'm doing ok progressing on my project, thank you. I've got a lot of useful help here.
By what I meant by politics of the time and learning Irish at school.
Myself and my siblings were born between 1975 and 1985. We were born in England but moved to Ireland (Republic of) in 1980s. We had one Irish parent and one English parent. We all went to school in Ireland, a few different schools, all in Republic. We were all excluded from studying Irish as we had been born in England, even though Irish was a compulsory subject at the time according to Department of Education. Every Irish class, we went and sat in the library with all the other children who were not born in Ireland. It wasn't a choice that any of us kids or our parents made. We were just told kids born in England don't study Irish, that was Department of Education policy. It was the same at every school each of us went to and applied to us all, i.e. even my youngest sibling who had never been to school in England as he was too young. I mention that, as I think, with older kids who had already done some schooling in England, I think you could say the exclusion may have been as they felt we would not be able to catch up as we'd missed vital early years of Irish teaching at primary school. I suppose I just feel this was a bit political. I remember at my secondary school there was a tannoy system and they used to actually make announcements like "Could all children born in England please report to the headmaster's office?" and it would be to tell us there was an Irish trip we couldn't go on or something.
I don't think it is like this now. I have two nephews currently going to school in Dublin who were not born in Ireland and they do Irish same as all the other kids. This is no excuse for me to not know Irish - many people who never learnt Irish at school have learnt since - but I felt like there was some politics going on and we were like unwanted, we weren't Irish enough to do anything involving the Irish language. It certainly didn't encourage us excluded kids to feel good about the Irish language.

Lucy

Just to add. It was wider than just the language. I remember one school made me dress up as a black and tan and hit the other kids with a truncheon as part of a drama exercise. I was a very much not interested in violent games as a child and had no desire to do this. A lot of the boys in my class complained that it was not fair that only I was allowed to be a black and tan, they wanted to be black and tans and could put on good English accents. But the teacher said no. I was the only one who could be an "authentic" black and tan. As a child you do what you are told but on reflection, I think that was mean of the teacher and reflective of an unpleasant bitterness that persisted about who was properly Irish and who wasn't. Incidentally nobody in my family history was ever a black and tan, not that I think grandchildren are responsible for what their grandparents did and it would have mattered if I did have some historical family connection to black and tans.

Have you made a thread for that? Might be worth doing so.