A councillor from Blarney in Co Cork is behind a "cúpla focal" Irish phrase card to be distributed to thousands of "eurocrats", parliamentarians and visitors during Ireland's presidency of the EU.
"The Useful Irish Phrases: Cúpla focal úsáideach", produced by Fianna Fáil councillor Ms Annette McNamara, has 23 phrases including how to order a pint of Guinness and how to ask "how much?".
Cllr McNamara, a teacher, is a member of the South West Regional Authority.
She is also president of the European alliance group of the Committee of the Regions in Brussels and is set to become the first Irish president of the Education and Culture Commission in February.
She has campaigned for greater recognition for lesser-used languages, against sometimes fierce opposition from larger EU states.
In an opinion last week, accepted unanimously by the Committee of the Regions in Brussels, she set out an action plan to support minor languages for linguistic diversity.
The proposals include a language audit and an audit of language skills in all EU countries, as well as language exchange programmes as an integral part of town twinnings.
Programmes such as Socrates and Leonardo have been under-subscribed and need to be simplified, Cllr McNamara said.
"Our group has always promoted the use of lesser-used languages and now, with the Irish presidency of the EU, we have an opportunity to give Europeans a 'blas' or taste of the Irish language," she said.
The guide will give Europeans a chance to try out Irish on their visits here during the presidency, she added. In various parts of the EU there are indigenous groups who speak a language different from that of the majority of the population of the state.
It is estimated that as many as 40 million citizens of the EU regularly use a regional or minority language that has been passed on from generation to generation, in addition to the official language or languages of the state.
Catalan, for instance, is spoken by some seven million people in Spain, France and the town of Alghero in Sardinia, Cllr McNamara said.
Saami is a family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples in northern Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Kola peninsula of Russia.
In addition to the territorial languages, the EU definition of a minority language includes Yiddish and the languages of the Romani and Sinti people.