Maith An Fear! Astronaut Gives Shout Out From Space As Gaelige

If you've been looking for the motivation to brush up on your cúpla focal this is it!

Although most of us started learning our native tongue from the age of five, few of us take the opportunity to speak it and many of us can’t string a sentence together. But, for one Canadian man, tweeting out a few lines as Gaeilge proved to be no trouble at all!

The first Canadian to walk in space, Cmdr Chris Hadfield, last night tweeted a night-time photograph of Dublin taken from the International Space Station (ISS) with a message written partly in Irish.

The Ontario-born flight engineer posted his tweet with the message: “@Cmdr_Hadfield: Tá Éire fíorálainn! Land of green hills & dark beer. With Dublin glowing in the Irish night.”

Although he has never attended an Irish language class, Hadfield first began engaging with the Irish community on Twitter last month when he tweeted a daylight photograph of Dublin. 

In an “Ask me Anything” session on Reddit on Sunday, the former Canadian Royal Air Force pilot revealed that his daughter is living in Ireland so maybe she’s been helping her Dad with his translations.

We're starting to think he has an Irish/English dictionary up there...

The Canadian Space Agency astronaut responded to his many Irish followers with the tweet: “Wow, I can feel the warmth of the Irish all the way up here - go raibh maith agaibh! I'll do my best to photo more cities as clouds clear.”