It took moving 3,000 miles away from home for Vivienne Sayers O’Callaghan to realise just how much Ireland had shaped her.
Growing up on a farm in Carrignavar, Cork, surrounded by music and Irish culture, much of it felt ordinary. Irish was another school subject. Traditional music was part of family stories. The richness of Irish identity was simply part of everyday life.
It wasn’t until she landed in Boston as an exchange student and later built a life in New York that she understood just how unique that upbringing had been.
“I really didn’t understand it till I moved away.”
“Coming to the US, it was like I was a complete alien to people that I even knew what Gaelic was.”
Today, Vivienne has amassed an audience of more than 200,000 followers across social media by sharing snippets of the Irish language, explaining Irish traditions and challenging outdated stereotypes. But her journey began long before TikTok.
For someone now actively promoting the Irish language, Vivienne is very honest about her relationship with it growing up.
“Irish just wasn’t cool at all.”
“Even kids who were eight or nine would say, ‘Why are we learning that? It’s dead.'”
Her mother encouraged Irish at home, but like most of us, she resisted.
“Only because it was coming from my mum, then of course I never opened my mouth.”
Moving to a Gaelscoil completely transformed her perspective, but it wasn’t without its challenges.
“I didn’t understand a word for the first year.”
Later, she convinced her parents to let her attend Coláiste Íde, the Irish-language boarding school in Dingle where her grandmother had studied decades earlier.
Boarding school immersed her in Irish-speaking life. Every Supervalu, every conversation and every school day revolved around Gaeilge. Yet even then, she admits she didn’t fully appreciate it.
“I still didn’t understand what the whole hullabaloo was and why all this was so important.”
Everything shifted after moving to Massachusetts on an exchange programme before eventually settling in New York.
Rather than being asked about modern Ireland, Vivienne found herself constantly fielding questions about potatoes, drinking and the British monarchy.
“Everybody was like, ‘Vivienne, how do you feel about the Queen dying? You must be so delighted.'”
She laughs now, but at the time the stereotypes frustrated her.
“I was so sick of them. They were embarrassing more than anything else.”
Instead of perpetuating these negative stereotypes, she began talking about the Irish language.
“I’d say, ‘Do you know about the Irish language?’ Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they’d say, ‘Don’t you mean Gaelic?'”
Most Americans had no idea the language was still around.
“They didn’t know it was even still spoken. Didn’t know it was a thing. Didn’t know there were schools. Didn’t know the Gaeltachtaí existed.”
For Vivienne, that ignorance became a shining opportunity.
“I took that as an opportunity to expand the Irish narrative.”
Those conversations became the crux of her social media content.
“I never said I was the font of all knowledge when it comes to Gaeilge,” she says. “But what I did do was create accessibility and break down the barrier.”
Rather than teaching complex grammar, she focused on short, engaging videos explaining words, phrases and pieces of Irish culture.
“I gave really, really basic explanations of Irish language words and Irish culture and various Irish arts and sports.”
The response surprised even her.
“I got those quarter of a million followers in a year.”
More importantly, she watched an entire community of Irish-language creators emerge alongside her.
“When I started, it still was a niche,” she says. “Now we’re experiencing this whole green wave.”
“I don’t think it’s a trend. I think it will honestly continue for a long time to come.”
Away from social media, Vivienne now runs her own creative agency, Signature Socials, helping founders and executives build their online presence.
She credits America with teaching her how to communicate.
“America taught me how to sell myself, how to market myself and how to speak with tons of different personalities.”
Experiencing the American hustle taught her how to become a multi-hyphenate, balancing entrepreneur, musician, educator and content creator.
“Sometimes it can dilute your messaging.”
“People say, ‘Don’t you do this? Don’t you do that?'”
Yet every role ultimately comes back to the same goal: telling stories.
Vivienne believes Ireland is experiencing a language rebirth. Social media, she says, has finally made Irish feel relevant to younger generations in a way the classroom often failed to do.
“There wasn’t one book or story that made me say, ‘Wow, isn’t this class?’ It was purely a school subject.”
Now, platforms like TikTok are changing that.
“This is where the language is actually relevant to you and your identity.”
Her advice for anyone hoping to reconnect with Irish is simple: don’t wait until you’re fluent.
Use Irish every day.
Replace “goodbye” with slán. Add Le gach dea-ghuí to your email signature. For families, Vivienne recommends renaming a new object every week. Use sticky notes to remember all your new vocab.
“Let’s say milk, or the fridge. Never use the word milk ever again. From now on, it will be bainne, and from now on, the fridge will always be the cuisneoir”
“There’s such easy little ways to bring it into your life.”
Ultimately, she believes learning Irish is about much more than vocabulary, its a cultural reclamation.
“We’re of a new generation now,” she says. “It’s the very first generation that has the space and room to learn our language and the permission to even look into our heritage and our identity.”
For Vivienne, that’s what motivates every video she creates.
“It’s an opportunity to do what our ancestors couldn’t do, and to honour that.”
From a Cork farm to the streets of New York, it was distance that finally gave her perspective.
Sometimes, it takes leaving home to understand what home has given you.
Link to Vivienne’s website here.
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