Uploaded November 2018 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
As Ireland becomes more urbanised, we are losing language for our places and landscapes. Words are vanishing that refer to animals and birds, to fields and forests and to traditions of outdoor work. This diminishing of language and knowledge coincides with a disengagement from the natural world as lives are increasingly lived indoors and online. It also coincides with a dramatic vanishing of nature itself. In just a generation, Irish rivers running with salmon, the cry of barn owl or bog curlew have become all but folk memory.
But does language matter in this? Are names the root of our knowing and caring about something? Or if we're recording the words instead of using them, is it already too late? In the company of artists, botanists and writers and with an invocation of nature words as soundtrack, presenter Mary Brophy journeys through forest, cluain and wild place in search of answers.
Presenter: Mary Brophy
Producer: Neal Boyle
Producer for RTÉ: Eoin O Kelly
An IWR Media production for RTÉ lyric fm funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence fee
RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 18th November, 6pm-7pm
As Ireland becomes more urbanised, we are losing language for our places and landscapes. Words are vanishing that refer to animals and birds, to fields and forests and to traditions of outdoor work. This diminishing of language and knowledge coincides with a disengagement from the natural world as lives are increasingly lived indoors and online. It also coincides with a dramatic vanishing of nature itself. In just a generation, Irish rivers running with salmon, the cry of barn owl or bog curlew have become all but folk memory.
But does language matter in this? Are names the root of our knowing and caring about something? Or if we're recording the words instead of using them, is it already too late? In the company of artists, botanists and writers and with an invocation of nature words as soundtrack, presenter Mary Brophy journeys through forest, cluain and wild place in search of answers.
Presenter: Mary Brophy
Producer: Neal Boyle
Producer for RTÉ: Eoin O Kelly
An IWR Media production for RTÉ lyric fm funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence fee
RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 18th November, 6pm-7pm
