Conversation with Dr Killian

This is an edited and shortened version of the transcript from my conversation with Dr Dian Killian.


Paola Bassanese (PB) (00:00:27):
I'm so sorry, I've lost my voice.

So for those of you who don't know me that are coming via Dr. Killian, my name is Paola.
I'm a freelance writer based in Ireland, and I'm very excited to be talking today with Dr Killian because I'm trying to become a bit more familiar with the Irish language and Irish culture.

Interest in the Irish language

(00:01:03):
So first of all, Diane, how did you become interested in Irish language and the Irish culture?

Dr Dian Killian (DK) (00:01:12):
Yeah, well, that is a whole long story, so I don't know if you want the long version or the short version, but the short version would be I first came to Ireland when I was 20 years old and I had a coup de foudre. I completely fell in love. And I wasn't expecting that, by the way, you know.
I'm a little bit of Irish descent, really small, according to my DNA test, like maybe three percent.
So I was not raised Irish American. I was not raised in Irish culture at all. And I had a Eurail pass.
I was studying in France for the summer and just really on a whim.
It was actually I had a week's holiday of a Bastille Day. And everyone in France was like, what?
You're leaving France for Bastille Day?
And I'm like, eh, national holidays. I've had enough of those in the U.S. And I have a week I'm going to go visit Ireland. And it just totally blew me away, like just the beauty of the landscape.
I so enjoyed meeting Irish people.
And in fact, the longer version of the story is when I was on the boat, coming from Le Havre to Rosslare.
An Irish couple sat down next to me on the boat and we started chatting. It was an overnight boat journey and when we arrived in Ireland the next morning, they said, well, we'll give you a lift to Dublin.
And I said, well, thanks very much, but I have a Eurail pass, you know?
And they sort of laughed at me because like, by the way, this was 1980s Ireland.
I mean, there's still not direct train.
There is still not a direct train line between Rosslare and Cork or Kerry.
You still need to go to Dublin, then back down. So they explained this to me.
And so we drove to Dublin together.
And on the way, we stopped at a pub, stopped and got ice cream and just really, you know,
enjoyed connecting.
And then when we got to Dublin, they were leaving me at a youth hostel.

And I said, well, wait outside, it's been great. We'll stay in touch. I loved meeting you.
Long story short, came out the hostel was full.
And they said, get back in the car.
You're going to stay at our house. And I just met these people on the boat the night before.

So that was my first introduction to céad míle fáilte (“one hundred thousand welcomes”),
the Irish... so welcoming.
And, you know, yeah, they're known for that, but it's true.
Oh, there's the madra (dog)!
That's the dog.
I love the photo, Paola, with your dog.

PB (00:03:40):
Because he was yawning and I was copying his facial expressions.
And, you know, it was one of those serendipitous moments.
I thought, you know, I'll just do that and take a selfie.
And I still love that picture.

DK (00:03:54):
Well, Paola, I know you want to interview me, but I am so curious about you.
What brought you from London?

PB (00:04:01):
There's the long story and the short story.
We will have to focus on short stories today.
But the main reason why I had to move was because of Brexit, because I had been living in London for many years, but the rules were going to change and I didn't want to be a C-citizen or B-class citizen. I just wanted to have the same rights as before (without restrictions).
I knew that by moving to Ireland, I would stay in the European Union. And I thought, you know, both countries speak English. It would be very straightforward, I can do it with my eyes closed. And then I realised that the culture is completely different and there may be a little bit of animosity between the two peoples.

So I managed to buy a house here, which is a bit of a miracle in itself because of the current housing crisis. So I've ticked all the boxes in terms of like my life goals and ambitions.
And now the next steps is just kind of like seeing life itself unravel in front of me and just grabbing opportunities. I'm living in a more serendipitous way compared to before.

DK (00:06:18):
Wow. That's great.

PB (00:06:23):
I love the way you're always using the Irish and the translation straight afterwards (in Substack posts) because I find the Irish language so confusing.

DK (00:06:35):
One thing I talk about on the blog, and I just did a podcast with Mollie, who does an Irish language program called Irish with Mollie. And I was saying like learning Irish, my Irish language journey has been a series of hitting walls where I kind of like, You have to be effing kidding. Like prepositions conjugate. The verbs come first. I taught English as a second language when I was younger.
So even though I only speak English and some French and I'm learning Irish, I'm familiar with other languages just teaching people English. You learn about their languages, interestingly enough, by teaching them English. But the point is, there are things about Irish that just don't exist in other languages.
It's an extremely unique language. But that's where the beauty is as well.
I get past my own judgments and my own internal limitations and like I can do this.
But what I learned is so much more than that, because there's so many things embedded in the Irish language that are unique and so radically different and not just different, but radical.

I always feel a little sad saying this because English is my first language. So I've had something of a
love affair with English just because it's how it's the way that I think and write and read literature in English.
Of course, you love your mother tongue.
But the more I learn Irish, the more I'm absolutely horrified.
There's things that we just take for granted about how we see the world as English language.
And this is so important, Paola, because as we all know, English is dominating the world.
So that world that is embedded in the English language is dominating the world as well.
It's so crucial, in my opinion, even if it's not Irish, although I encourage people to check out Irish because it is amazing.
Learning a second or third language, it really opens up another part of your mind and your soul.
There are things that I took for granted as a speaker of this language that other people don't see things that way and you lose that if you only speak one.

PB (00:09:04):
I'm actually drawing parallels in my head with Native American languages because similarly to Irish, they're more based on the environment and actions more than grammar and literature.

DK (00:09:39):
I'm not an expert in indigenous languages of Turtle Island, i.e. North America.
But from what I do know about Turtle Island indigenous languages, there's a lot of similarities to Gaeilge (Irish). Irish is one of the oldest spoken languages in the world.

And for a while, the Irish didn't have a written form of the language because of indigenous beliefs about that knowledge that's really important is so important you don't want to write it down because it becomes vulnerable.
But, you know, even with that, Irish is also one of the oldest written languages.
And there's such an amazing written literary tradition in the Irish language, in Old Irish and contemporary Irish.
And if you don't want to learn Irish or if your Irish isn't at that point, there are beautiful translations.
For example, The Táin, which is a heroic cycle of tales.
It's like the mythology of Ireland.
Thomas Kinsella, a poet, did a beautiful translation and there's beautiful artwork in that book as well.


Writing on Substack

PB (00:11:08):
So what made you join Substack in the first instance?

DK (00:11:17):
I got on Substack because two different people on two different consonants told me to do it.
I don't always do things when people tell me to do them, but I felt like I was getting a message in stereo from the universe.
So there's someone here in Ireland who I have huge respect for, Kathy Scott.
She runs a program called The Trailblazery and an Irish language cultural program called Scoil Scairte. I contacted Kathy, who I know from being in her course before, and I said, would you be willing to give subscribers to my publication a discount?
She said, absolutely, because she appreciates what I'm doing.
But the point is, I had done her course and was speaking with her about my observations about the Irish language and she said to me, Dian, you have to start a Substack about this because she said, I have a unique background that I bring to this because I have a background in applied linguistics and rhetorical theory, because I also was a trainer in nonviolent communication for so many years,
and I'm also a certified executive coach.
I look at the Irish language through both this linguistic lens and also through this lens.
Also, by the way, my PhD research and background, in addition to rhetorical theory, is in cultural studies and critical and narrative theory.
That's where my whole understanding of domination culture comes from, also from non-violent religion.
But I'm able to bring these different frameworks to how I'm looking at the Irish language.
So again, applied linguistics framework, critical studies or cultural studies framework and then a framework of personal development through non-violent communication and being an executive trained as an executive coach and that's where Irish really blows my mind, I write about this frequently in the blog but it is so consistent with non-violent communication and Marshall Rosenberg who created the NVC model actually spoke about this himself, that he had done some mediation with some indigenous groups, indigenous nations.
And when they were trying to translate certain things into their language, from English, there wasn't a translation for them, like judgment.
What does it mean to judge someone?
They actually didn't have that concept in their language.
So Marshall had this insight, like, wow, he believed that that compassion and empathy are our birthright.
Those are our natural languages as human beings, and we've been educated out of it.
That was an indication that this really is the original language of us as human beings.
So I see that in Irish. It blows my mind. And by the way, I am just learning Irish.
I am not fluent at all.
They say to be fluent, you need 8,000 words of the language.

PB (00:14:31):
How long have you been studying now the Irish language?

DK (00:14:34):
Well, about three years in a really focused way.

(00:15:18):
But then I was out in California at Esalen, which you, I don't know if you know about Esalen.
I was a professional trainer, now I do a few trainings a year mostly focused on writing (I'm working on a book), but I've been to many retreat centers all over the world because this is what I did for a living for 20 years, I lead retreats about non-violent communication. Esalen is really a special place and I'd never been there before either.
I was talking about the Irish language in that context, so many people came up to me.
There were like 50 people in the workshop and I would say like 15 came up during the break and said, wow, I want to learn Irish now based on what you said.
And then I was talking to another person over lunch who is also a writer, and he said, you have to write about this. You're uniquely positioned to write about this.
You're passionate about it, and you should do it on Substack.
And I was like, whoa, someone in Ireland is telling me this, someone in California is telling me this.
I said, okay, this is the universe giving me a message.
So I started it last June.

The Irish language (Gaelic) as a way to save the world

PB (00:17:12):
How do you think the Gaelic language can save the world?

DK (00:17:22):
How could any language save the world? But I do believe this because in my experience as an NVC teacher and as a coach, we first need to change our thinking.
We need to change how we're communicating with each other.
We need to shift how we're seeing the world.

Irish wakes us up in a way.

Irish is my greatest teacher.
There's aspects of the Irish language that are so different from English, and I think a lot of other European languages, that it wakes us up into new possibilities.
First of all, it gives me hope. And by the way,
given what's going on with the world right now, we definitely need hope.
What's happening in the U.S. is profoundly disturbing for me, and I know I'm not the only one.
So there's a lot going on in the world that's disheartening.
So for me, the Irish language, first of all, inspires me and gives me hope.
We're going to need that to get through these times, in my opinion.
But then it wakes me up like the blog I just published last, well, this morning, half four in the morning.


I was blogging last night about ‘should’.
I don't like the concept of should. I didn't get to mention this in the blog but if you try this on in your body, I don't think anyone likes hearing what you should do. As human beings we don't like being told what to do, we like choice we value community and interdependence and connection as well.
But we also value our choice and respect.
It never occurred to me that there'd be a language and a worldview that doesn't even have that concept. And that's the Irish language.
What's so sad for me is if you go to Google Translate and you put in a sentence in English and you want to translate into Irish, like “I should feed the cat”, it'll be a phrase in Irish.
And you would just think, OK, that's how you say should in Irish.
But there's no word for “should” in Irish.
The way you approximate that in Irish is to say “it would be right for me”.
It would be right for me to do this.
And right, not in a sense of moralistic right or wrong, right, like it's true, it's authentic.
It gives you the choice not the obligation yeah absolutely and for me it's more about discernment and to say i think it would be right for us to send this message that is again very different than we should do it, or you have to do it, ought to do it.
So what I do in the Gaelic effect is what I call linguistic archaeology.
So in a logical dig, they're going to find maybe bits, shards of pottery or the foundations of a house.
Based on that, they can learn a lot. How many people lived in that house?
What were they eating based on remnants in the bowls?
I do linguistic archaeology.
So I look at etymology, the structure of a language. What does that tell us about indigenous Irish culture? Because the Irish language is estimated to be as old as 3000 years old.
That is way before colonialism. It's older than Christianity, a thousand years older than Christianity.
How did we live together as human beings before we had all these power over structures?

About Non Violent Communication

PB (00:23:04):

Can you just explain to me, you became a trainer in this discipline (NVC), what it involves and how you're applying it in your teaching please.

DK (00:23:19):
If anyone is interested in nonviolent communication, I encourage you to visit cnvc.org, which is the website for the International Center for Nonviolent Communication.
I became a certified trainer in 1995.
So they changed it a little bit since then. But when I went through the process, you had to do a thousand hours of training with a certified trainer. And then there were some other steps like you keep a journal for a year.
You need to send a video of your teaching before you're certified.
And then there was a day long sort of interview or assessment by your assessor as the final step.


Robert Gonzalez was my assessor, very inspiring person for people in the NVC community.
He also had a PhD. And I said to him on my final assessment, I said, Robert, I'm curious what you think about this.
Having done both now, because I'm pretty close to finishing certification with CNVC, I think it's actually more work and more involved in getting a PhD.
And he said, yes, it is. That's coming from two people with PhDs.
It's a tremendous learning experience to go through that process.

PB (00:25:23):

I've got a question here from Carolyn. How would you recommend learning Irish?

DK (00:25:25):
Oh, that's a very good question. There's so many fabulous resources out there now.
And many of them are free also. I do highly recommend Irish with Mollie.
She has like a self-paced program, but there is an online community to practice.

The Scoil Scairte program is so beautiful and inspiring because it's really, they weave the Irish language in, but it's really about the Irish culture and the Irish land and wilding the mind.

(00:27:48):
And there's this online app called Memrise, it's free.

For me, there's a huge renaissance happening with the Irish language right now.
The beautiful film “An Cailín Ciúin” (Quiet Girl, 2023) that came out a few years ago.
There's the work of Manchán Magan, the work that Trailblazer is doing.

There's this huge revival going on.
But what warms my heart is, there is enough preserved of the Irish language online now that even if everyone stops speaking tomorrow, if someone wanted to start learning it a year from now, they would be able to do that, which is a beautiful thing.

Especially if you live in Ireland, even if you learn a few expressions and if you start reading the Gaelic effect, all the Irish words that I talk about in there, I hyperlink, so you can listen to the pronunciation and choose words.

Career highlights

PB (00:30:30):
Can you also tell me more about your biggest career achievement so far?

DK (00:30:57):
There's been so many different things to be grateful for.
It's hard for me to choose one. But in terms of something that stands out in my career as an NVC trainer, I feel very, very grateful that the UN Development Program hired me to do training with them for several years.
And that was very meaningful to support the work of the UN through the UN Development Program and to work with people.
I did trainings in New York, but they had people from all around the world participating.
Then I was in Thailand to do some work in that part of the world.
I think this is the apotheosis. I feel like what I'm doing now is, and I never would have seen it coming. If someone asked me three years ago, you'd be blogging about the Irish language, it's really amazing, like all these rivers coming or streams coming together.
And it's so meaningful for me because I love Irish culture and I love Ireland so much.
It's made such a huge difference.
I am so grateful that I happened to get on that boat when I was 20 years old and come here because my life has been completely changed because of coming to this country.
And I have such love and appreciation for Irish culture. And if you love Irish culture, the Irish language, of course, is the secret door. I think Irish is the best kept secret.
There's this fabulous community of learners around Irish.
It's almost like having like a secret handshake.

PB (00:34:35):
(My dog demands that I play fetch) He's always interrupting my lives.

DK (00:34:45):
I love it.
He wants to be part of it.
He wants to be included.
But I also want you to know there's another question.
As you may notice, I use different ways to learn Irish because I've a very full life, you know.
I mean, everyone's busy, right? So how do you fit this in? But there is a program called Irish Word of the Day.
I love it.
One thing that can be challenging about Irish but also very beautiful is that the spelling and pronunciation of the words change depending on how they're used in the sentence.
You can see from the Irish language is how important relationality is in indigenous Irish culture.
If you learn one word a day, that's 365 words a year.
That's a top tip, I would say.

Dr Killian’s books

PB (00:36:52):
Thank you so much.
Can I ask you about the books that you've published?

DK (00:37:24):
My MPhil at Trinity required a thesis and then my PhD, of course, required a thesis.
So those are books as well.
The book that's most well-known and is well-known and popular in the NVC community is the book that I co-wrote with Jane Connor called Connecting Across Differences: How to connect with anyone anywhere, anytime. I wrote that book, oh, I would say about 20 years ago with her.
She was a university professor at the time, and she was teaching NVC at third level.
And she wanted a book that would be accessible for students.
We first self-published it. But then, by the way, I want to say Puddle Dancer Press was interested in it from the get-go.
I was at the time working as an organizer for the National Writers Union.
So I can be very particular about book contracts.
So we just didn't agree about what to go in the contract. And then they agreed to make changes to the contract that I wanted.
I think it's the second or third edition now. And I'm very happy to say that it's been translated into German, into simple Chinese, traditional Chinese, and now it's being translated into Dutch.
And it's a combined book and workbook, and it's a very comprehensive book. People often go to Marshall Rosenberg's book, as their first book, because he's the one who created the NVC model.
But I consistently hear from people that the book that I wrote with Jane Connor,
it's actually twice the size of Marshall's book, and it just goes into a different depth about the practice of NVC.

And then the other book is called Urban Empathy, True Life Adventures of Compassion on the Streets of New York. And that book developed because I was living in New York City at the time and when I was traveling around the world teaching nonviolent communication, people often say, wow, how do you practice nonviolent communication in New York City?
As if New York City is the darkest, most dangerous, violent place in the world.
Which, by the way, it is not, as listeners may know, statistically, because of very strict laws in New York City about gun ownership and carrying.
New York City is actually one of the safest cities in the United States statistically.

I was really into reading graphic novels at the time.
So I'm going to do a graphic novel. It's like kind of a cartoon book for adults.
Not that there's adult content in it, but it's not like a book that I wrote for 10-year-olds in mind.
I wrote it with adults in mind, but it's illustrated and it's verbatim.
When I would have an interaction, I would immediately take notes down when I was working on the book so I could capture verbatim what the conversation was like using NVC skills in New York.
There are some moving stories in that book, but the most profound for me is the closing story, where I was in Union Square handing out flyers of a film about Gandhi.

I had the most amazing, moving, connecting conversation with this man in Union Square.
And you can read the story for the details.
I always say to people, about NVC, it's a little bit like Irish in the sense it's not easy or to learn.
It really works.
If you can practice it, I have seen, I get chills saying it's almost like miracles.

PB (00:42:59):
We need that right now.
You said earlier on about hope.
We need all the tools and techniques to be able to defuse any kind of conflict situation or any kind of friction.

I'm not able to do it 100% all the time either. And Marshall said this, the people that it's hardest to practice with are the ones that you're closest to.
But having said that, it's best to practice it.
By the way, that's the first step in NVC, coming up with a clear observation, you know.

(00:45:10):
I always like to talk about this at workshops I do. 97, nine, seven, not 19, not 17, 97% of our brains function on an unconscious level.

I'd also mention, and this is on my website, and I'm also giving a discount to this workshop for paying subscribers to the Gaelic Effect.

(00:46:06):
I'm learning animal communication now a little bit by working with an animal communicator.
And our bodies, we tend to, in my opinion, treat our bodies like dumb animals because our bodies don't speak a language, but our bodies do speak a language.
Our bodies communicate to us through sensation.
The body comes up with information and solutions that kind of bypasses what our cognitive function would tell us.

(00:47:32):
So I'm all about now learning the indigenous and minority languages and encouraging other people to learn indigenous minority languages, whether it's Irish or listening to the language of the body.

Future plans

PB (00:47:48):
Great hook, because my next question was going to be about your future plans.

DK (00:48:01):
I'm going to be in Madrid next week doing a training for an organization that I've worked with for.
So I do a few trainings each year.
I'll be in New York later this spring to do a training with an organization.
The only public workshop I have organized this year is the one in Germany.
That is in part because I'm really focused on writing right now.
I hope in June to get together a grant proposal so I can get some financial support to work on a book version of the Gaelic effect, of what I'm talking about in my Substack.
So that's my big, big plans and vision.

(00:50:10):
At this point, I think I'll be learning Irish for the rest of my life.

PB (00:50:26):
You see, you've inspired me to really take my learning more seriously about the Irish language because, I've struggled and I gave up because it all sounded too complicated for me and my brain was like, “I can’t do it”.

DK (00:51:24):
It has to be fun.
And it is.
And I would also say people do different things to keep their brains sharp as we age.
Learning a second language, and especially language is very different from your own language, is also a great way to exercise your brain.
So there's side benefits to learning Irish, exercising the brain.

Talking about pets and food

PB (00:53:21):
Because my dog made several appearances and interruptions, it just brought to mind the fact that he's my biggest teacher. He is teaching me the language of nonverbal communication because we communicate with our eyes. So he tells me when it's time to play. And when it's time to go outside, et cetera.
And he's teaching me to live in the moment.
Whereas before I was worrying about the future, worrying about what I said 20 years ago and so on and so forth.
And he's like, now we play or now we eat.
So it's all about the present moment.

DK (00:54:07):
I love it.
And Seamus, my beloved (cat), actually, I have another cat knocking at the door. I'm like, okay, Caden, I'll be there in a second.
But Seamus is napping now.
But usually when I'm writing or on a video call, he's right in my lap.
So I call him my familiar. And I also say that he's the editor-in-chief of the Gaelic Effect.
Because he reads over everything that I published.

(00:54:42):
Because I'm so curious about your book on foraging and what you think about living in Ireland.
And there's so many things I'd love to hear about.
Well, we'll just do a brief summary, maybe like a quick fire round.

PB (00:54:56):
So what was the first question?

DK (00:54:59):
The foraging stuff.

PB (00:55:04):
I've been fascinated by foraging for many years, even when I lived in Italy and then when I lived in London. My favorite food to forage is wild mushrooms, but you need to have a lot of knowledge for that. And then on a level to that would be wild garlic, which is in season right now.
So I had it yesterday for lunch.

Because every time I learn something, I want to share it with the world, I self-published a book about foraging with some recipes.

DK (00:55:41):
What's your experience been like in Ireland?
How do you like it?

PB (00:55:48):
I would say the most surprising and rewarding thing about Ireland that I discovered is the generosity of the people. Like the example you've made of your hosts that have been so kind to you when you first got here.
The generosity and the thoughtfulness of people here is incredible.
To give you an example, for Christmas, my neighbours give me a portion of their Christmas dinner because they make a lot of food and they've got a large family.

DK (00:56:45):
That is that interconnectedness that's part of Indigenous Irish culture, that even though, it's thousands of years old and modern Irish society has changed.
Ireland has radically changed since the 80s. But that thread, even if it's gotten a little bit weaker, it's still there.

(00:58:21):
It wasn't that long since the Republic. I mean, if you think about historical context, Ireland was colonized for 800 years.

DK (00:59:44):
My partner, who's actually of Asian descent, is also learning Irish.
I think it's worth learning about the culture because you're living here.
As you start to learn Irish, Paola, maybe you have a chance to learn some of the words for the things that you forage.

The last few summers, I've gone down to Ballyferriter, which is on the Dingle Peninsula, to learn Irish.
I'm interested in learning Munster Irish.
And they have someone there who does a program and she's a chef working with seaweed, she talks about all the different seaweeds in Irish and shows us recipes, it's just really moving and powerful.
I can see you out there doing that with your foraging because she's just doing the seaweed so you could be doing the mushrooms.

DK (01:03:04):
Last thing I'll say Irish, once you get into it, increases your happiness that's my sense it gives you joy and i think we need that we need that.
Yeah, so it's a little joy tablet.
So I think once you get into it, Paola, my guess is you're going to find it addictive.

PB (01:03:27):
So that's the prescription from Dr. Killian, and we have to take notes and take a prescription on a daily basis.

DK (01:03:36):
One word a day, learn one Irish word a day, and it'll increase your oxytocin.

PB: Well, thank you so much for this lovely conversation and of course for your time.

I'm delighted that we managed to have a chat, thank you so much.

Thank you everybody and I'll see you at the next one.

Bye.

PB (01:04:14):
Slán.

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