Irish language

The of this article is . Please see discussion on the talk page.

Irish (Gaeilge), a Goidelic language spoken in Ireland, Britain, and the USA, is constitutionally recognised as the first official language of the Republic of Ireland. On 13 June 2005, EU foreign ministers unanimously decided to make Irish an official working language of the European Union. The new arrangements will come into effect on 1 January 2007.

According to stastics released by the Government of Ireland in 2004, there are 1,570,894 speakers of Irish. Of these, 339,541 use Irish every day, 155,039 weekly, 585,300 less often, 459,657 never and 31,357 didn't state how often. However, these statistics are often disputed, by Irish language activists and their opponents. 65,000 people has been quoted as the amount of people in the Gaeltacht who use the language as their first, daily language¹.

Names of the language

In English

The language is sometimes referred to in English as Gaelic (IPA: /ˈgeɪlɪk/), or Irish Gaelic, but this has a derogatory ring, so it is more generally referred to, both among linguists and in the Constitution of Ireland, as the Irish language or simply Irish. Use of the term Irish also avoids confusion with Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig), the closely related language spoken in Scotland and often referred to in English as simply Gaelic (IPA: /ˈgeɪlɪk/ or /ˈgæːlɪk/). The archaic term Erse, originally a Scots form of the word Irish, is no longer used and in most contexts is also considered derogatory.

In Irish

In the Caighdeán Oifigiúil (the official written standard) the name of the language is Gaeilge, which reflects the southern Connacht pronunciation /ˈgeːlʲgʲə/. Before the spelling reform of 1948, this form was spelled Gaedhilge; originally this was the genitive of Gaedhealg, the form used in classical Modern Irish. Older spellings of this include Gaoidhealg in Middle Irish and Goídelc in Old Irish.

Other forms of the name found in the various modern Irish dialects, in addition to south Connacht Gaeilge mentioned above, include Gaedhilic/Gaeilic/Gaeilig (pronounced /ˈgeːlʲəkʲ/) in County Donegal and parts of County Mayo, Gaedhealaing/Gaoluinn/Gaelainn (pronounced /ˈgeːləŋʲ/) in Munster, and Gaedhlag (pronounced /ˈgeːləg/) in Omeath, County Louth.

Official status

Irish is given recognition by the Constitution of Ireland as the first official language of the Republic of Ireland (with English being a second official language), despite the limited distribution of fluency among the population of that country. Since the State was founded in the 1920s as the Irish Free State (see also History of the Republic of Ireland), the Irish Government required a degree of proficiency in Irish for all civil service positions, such as postal workers (note: proficiency in Irish for entrance to the public service ceased to be a compulsory requirement in 1974); and also the wider public service such as teaching and policing (the need for a pass in Leaving Certificate Irish for entry to the Gardaí was dropped in September 2005, although applicants are given lessons in the language during the two years of training) and required Irish be a required subject of study in all schools within the Republic which receive public money (see also Education in the Republic of Ireland). Most official documents of the Irish Government are published in both Irish and English.

As a treaty language of the European Union, the highest-level documents of the EU are translated into Irish; in addition, the language has also recently received a degree of formal recognition in Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, under the Good Friday Agreement.

Furthermore, Irish will become an official working language of the European Union beginning January 1, 2007.

Gaeltachtaí

There are pockets of Ireland where Irish is spoken as a traditional, native language. These regions are known as Gaeltachtaí (sing. Gaeltacht). These are in County Galway (Contae na Gaillimhe), including Connemara (Conamara) and the Aran Islands (na hOileáin Árann); on the west coast of County Donegal (Contae Dhún na nGall; in the part which is known as Tyrconnell/Tír Chonaill); and Corca Dhuibhne on the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry (Contae Chiarraí). Smaller ones also exist in Mayo (Contae Mhaigh Eo), Meath (Contae na Mí), Waterford (Contae Phort Láirge), and Cork (Contae Chorcaí). However, even within the Gaeltacht areas, the Irish-speaking populations have declined since the Gaeltacht boundaries were drawn up.

The numerically and socially strongest Gaeltachtaí are those of Conamara and Tír Chonaill, in which a significant proportion of residents use Irish as a community language and in which children often speak the language among each other. The highest concentrations of Irish speakers are found in Ros Muc, Connemara, and around Bloody Foreland (Cnoc na Fola) in Tír Chonaill.

Dialects

See main article Irish dialects.

There are a number of distinct dialects of Irish. Roughly speaking, the three major dialect areas coincide with the provinces of Munster (Cúige Mumhan), Connacht (Cúige Chonnacht) and Ulster (Cúige Uladh).

Munster dialects

Munster Irish is spoken in the Gaeltachtaí of Kerry (Contae Chiarraí), Muskerry (Múscraí), Cape Clear (Oileán Cléire) in the western part of County Cork (Contae Chorcaí), and the tiny pocket of Irish-speakers in An Rinn near Dungarvan (Dún Garbháin) in County Waterford (Contae Phort Láirge). The most important subdivision in Munster is that between Decies Irish (spoken in Waterford) and the rest of Munster Irish.

Some typical features of Munster Irish are:

1. The use of personal endings instead of pronouns with verbs, thus "I must" is in Munster caithfead, while other dialects prefer caithfidh mé (mé means "I"). "I was and you were" is Bhíos agus bhís in Munster but Bhí mé agus bhí tú in other dialects.
2. In front of nasals and "ll" some short vowels are lengthened while other are diphthongised.
3. A copula-construction involving is ea is frequently used.

Connacht dialects

The strongest dialect of Connacht Irish is to be found in Connemara and the Aran Islands. In some regards this dialect is quite different from general Connacht Irish but since most Connacht dialects have died out during the last century Connemara Irish is sometimes seen as Connacht Irish. Much closer to the traditional Connacht Irish is the very threatened dialect spoken in the region on the border between Galway (Gaillimh) and Mayo (Maigh Eo). The Irish of Tourmakeady (Tuar Mhic Éadaigh) in southern Mayo (Maigh Eo Theas) and Joyce Country (Dúthaigh Sheoige) are considered the living Irish dialects closest to Middle Irish. Also, the northern Mayo dialect of Erris (Iorras) and Achill (Acaill) is in grammar and word-building essentially a Connacht dialect; but shows an affinity in vocabulary with Ulster Irish, due to large-scale immigration of dispossessed people following the Plantation of Ulster.

Connemara Irish is very popular with learners, thanks to Mícheál Ó Siadhail's self-teaching textbook Learning Irish. However, there are features in Connemara Irish outside the official standard—notably the preference for verbal nouns ending in -achan, such as lagachan instead of lagú, "weakening". The non-standard pronunciation with lengthened vowels and heavily reduced endings give Connemara Irish its distinct sound.

Ulster dialects

The most important of the Ulster dialects today is that of the Rosses (na Rosa), which has been used extensively in literature by such authors as the brothers Séamus and Seosamh Mac Grianna, locally known as Jimí Fheilimí and Joe Fheilimí. This dialect is essentially the same as that in Gweedore (Gaoth Dobhair= Inlet of Streaming Water), the same dialect used by native speaker Enya (Eithne) and her siblings in Clannad (Clann as Dobhar = Family from the Water).

Ulster Irish sounds very different and shares several unusual features with Scottish Gaelic, as well as having lots of characteristic words and shades of meanings. However, since the demise of those Irish dialects spoken natively in what is today Northern Ireland, it is probably an exaggeration to see Ulster Irish as an intermediary form between Scottish Gaelic and the southern and western dialects of Irish. Indeed, Scottish Gaelic does have lots of non-Ulster features in common with Munster Irish, too.

One noticeable trait of Ulster Irish is the use of the negative participle cha(n), in place of the Munster and Connaught version ní. Even in Ulster, cha(n), most typical of Scottish Gaelic, has ousted the more common ní only in easternmost dialects (including the now defunct ones once spoken in what is now Northern Ireland). The practice seems to be that cha(n) is most usually used when answering to a statement, either confirming a negative statement (Níl aon mhaith ann - Chan fhuil, leoga = "It is no good" - "Indeed it isn't") or contesting an affirmative one (Tá sé go maith - Chan fhuil! = "It is good" - "No, it isn't!"), while ní is preferred in answering a question (An bhfuil aon mhaith ann? - Níl = "Is it any good?" - "No").

Other regions

The extant dialects of Irish native to Leinster, the fourth province of Ireland, became extinct during the 20th century, but records of some of these were made by the Irish Folklore Commission among other bodies prior to this.

The present-day Irish of Meath (in Leinster) is a special case. It belongs to the Connemara dialect, as the Irish-speaking community in Meath is simply a group of mostly Connemara speakers who moved there in the 1930s, after a land reform campaign spearheaded by Máirtín Ó Cadhain (subsequently one of the greatest modernist writers in the language).

In areas outside the traditional Gaeltacht, where standard Irish was learnt in schools, this has become the "dialect" of leaners of the language. What has been called "Dublin Irish" or "Gaelscoil Irish" has also arisen, that is Irish poorly learnt and heavily influenced by English. English idioms are translated directly, e.g. "Tabhair suas" for Give up when the verb "Lig" should be used. English grammar is sometimes used straight when not applicaple to Irish. Often, when the speaker doesn't know a word, the English will be substituted, sometimes with "áil" affixed. "áil" is generally an ending for the verbal noun of a verb, but when added to an english word, this becomes the stem, e.g. vótáil. Many "Béarlachas"(false Irish based on English) words and phrases are used, e.g. pioc, sórt, saghas, féar plé etc. Also, typical interjection words often used in English and especially English influenced by America are used, e.g. like, man, so, etc. are used un-translated in Irish.

Comparisons

The differences between dialects are considerable, and have led to recurrent difficulties in defining standard Irish. Even everyday phrases can show startling dialectal variation: the standard example is "How are you?":

• Ulster: cad é mar atá tú? ("what is it as you are?" Note: caidé or goidé and sometimes dé are alternative renderings of cad é)
• Connacht: cén chaoi a bhfuil tú? ("what way [is it] that you are?")
• Munster: conas taoí? ("how are you?")

In recent times, however, contacts between speakers of different dialects have become more common, and mixed dialects have originated. Nevertheless, many dialect speakers (especially Ulster) are still jealously trying to guard their own variety against influences from other dialects. Among non-native speakers, this can be seen as a quest for authenticity. Regional accents are commonly taught to non-natives and imitated: an urban non-native speaker of Irish in Cork City (Cathair Chorcaí) is very probably trying to emulate Coolea or Kerry dialect; one from Belfast (Béal Feirste) tends to speak an Irish modelled on the Rosses dialect of Donegal; and Galwegian Irish-speakers, living next door to Connemara, will do their best to sound like a Connemara native.

Shelta

There also exists a cant called Shelta, based partly on English and partly Irish, in use by the Irish Travellers.

Linguistic Structure

The most unfamiliar features of the language are the orthography, the initial consonant mutations, the Verb Subject Object word order, and the use of two different forms for "to be". However, initial mutations are found in other Celtic languages as well as in some Italian and Sardinian dialects, as an independent development. They are also found in some West African languages.

Syntax

See main article Irish syntax

One aspect of Irish syntax that is unfamiliar to speakers of other languages is the use of the copula (known in Irish as an chopail). The copula is used to describe what or who someone is, as opposed to how and where. This has been likened to the difference between the verbs ser and estar in Spanish and Portuguese, although this is only a rough approximation. The copula, which in the present tense is is, is usually demonstrative:

Is fear é. "It is a man."

Is Sasanaigh iad. "They're English."

When saying "this is", or "that is", seo and sin are used:

Seo í mo mháthair. "This is my mother."

Sin é an muinteoir. "That's the teacher."

One can also add "that is in him/her", especially when using an adjective, when it is desired to emphasise the quality:

Is fear láidir atá ann. "He's a strong man."

(Literally: "It is a strong man that is there.")

Is cailín álainn atá inti. "She's a beautiful girl."

(Literally: "It is a beautiful girl that is in her.")

This sometimes appears in Hiberno-English, either translated literally as "that is in it", or as "so it is".

Morphology

See main articles Irish morphology, Irish nominals, and Irish verbs.

Another feature of Irish grammar that is shared with other Celtic languages is the use of prepositional pronouns (forainmneacha réamhfhoclacha), which are essentially conjugated prepositions. For example, the word for "at" is ag, which in the first person singular becomes agam "at me". When used with the verb bi ("to be") ag indicates possession; this is the equivalent of the English verb "to have".

Compare with Breton:

Orthography and pronunciation

See main articles Irish orthography and Irish phonology.

The written language looks rather daunting to those unfamiliar with it. Once understood, the orthography is relatively straightforward. The acute accent, or síneadh fada (´), serves to lengthen the sound of the vowels and in some cases also changes their quality. For example, in Munster Irish (Kerry), a is /ʌ/ or /ɑ/ and á is /ɔ/ in "law" but in Ulster Irish (Donegal), á tends to be /ɑː/.

Around the time of World War II, Séamas Daltún, in charge of Rannóg an Aistriúcháin (the official translations department of the Irish government), issued his own guidelines about how to standardise Irish spelling and grammar. This de facto standard was subsequently approved of by the State and called the Official Standard or Caighdeán Oifigiúil. It simplified and standardized the orthography. Many words had silent letters removed and vowel combination brought closer to the spoken language. Where multiple versions existed in different dialects for the same word, one or more were selected.

Examples:

• Gaedhealg / Gaedhilg(e) / Gaedhealaing / Gaeilic / Gaelainn / Gaoidhealg / Gaolainn => Gaeilge, "Irish language" (Gaoluinn or Gaolainn is still used in books written in dialect by Munster authors, or as a facetious name for the Munster dialect)
• Lughbhaidh => Lú, "Louth"
• biadh => bia, "food" (The orthography biadh is still used by the speakers of those dialects that show a meaningful and audible difference between biadh - nominative case - and bídh - genitive case: "of food, food's". For example, in Munster Irish the latter ends in an audible -g sound, because final -idh, -igh regularly becomes -ig in Munster pronunciation.)

Modern Irish has only one diacritic sign, the acute (á é í ó ú), known in Irish as the síneadh fada 'long mark'; this is frequently referred to, especially by English speakers as simply the fada, using the adjective as a noun. The dot-above diacritic, called a ponc séimhithe or sí buailte (often shortened to buailte), derives from the punctum delens, which was used in medieval manuscripts to indicate deletion, similar to crossing out unwanted words in handwriting today. From this usage it was used to indicate the lenition of s (from /s/ to /h/) and f (from /f/ to zero) in Old Irish texts. Lenition of c, p, and t was indicated by placing the letter h after the affected consonant; lenition of other sounds was left unmarked. Later both methods were extended to be indicators of lenition of any sound except l and n, and two competing systems were used: lenition could be marked by a buailte or by a postposed h. Eventually, use of the buailte predominated when texts were writing using Gaelic letters, while the h predominated when writing using Roman letters. Today Gaelic letters and the buailte are rarely used except where a 'traditional' style is required, e.g. the motto on the University College Dublin coat-of-arms or the symbol of the Irish Defence Forces. Letters with the buailte are available in Unicode and Latin-8 character sets (see Latin Extended Additional chart PDF).

Mutations

See main article Irish initial mutations

In Irish, there are two classes of initial mutations:

• Lenition (in Irish, séimhiú "softening") describes the change of stops into fricatives. Indicated in old orthography by a dot (called a sí buailte) written above the changed consonant, this is now shown by adding an extra -h-:
  • caith! "throw!" - chaith mé "I threw" (this is an example of the lenition as a past-tense marker, which is caused by the use of do, although this is now usually omitted)
  • margadh "market", "market-place", "bargain" - Tadhg an mhargaidh "the man of the street" (word for word "Timothy of the market-place" (here we see the lenition marking the genitive case of a masculine noun)
  • Seán "Seán, John" - a Sheáin! "O John!" (here we see lenition as part of what is called the vocative case - in fact, the vocative lenition is triggered by the a or vocative marker before Sheáin)

• Nasalisation (in Irish, urú "eclipsis") covers the voicing of voiceless stops, as well as the true nasalisation of voiced stops.
  • athair "father" - ár nAthair "our Father"
  • tús "start", ar dtús "at the start"
  • Gaillimh "Galway" - i nGaillimh "in Galway"

History and politics

Stages of the Irish language

The earliest form of the language, Primitive Irish, is found in ogham inscriptions up to about the 4th century. After the conversion to Christianity, Old Irish begins to appear as glosses in the margins of Latin manuscripts, beginning in the 6th century, until it gives way in the 10th century to Middle Irish. Modern Irish dates from about the 16th century.

The Irish Language Movement

The Irish language was the most widely spoken language on the island of Ireland until the 19th century. The first Bible in Irish was translated by William Bedell, Church of Ireland Bishop of Kilmore, in the 17th century.

A combination of the introduction of a primary education system (the 'National Schools'), in which Irish was prohibited and only English taught by order of the British government, and the Great Famine (An Drochshaol) which hit a disportionately high number of Irish language speakers (who lived in the poorer areas heavily hit by famine deaths and emigration), hastened its rapid decline. Irish political leaders, such as Daniel O'Connell (Dónall Ó Conaill), too were critical of the language, seeing it as 'backward', with English the language of the future. Contemporary reports spoke of Irish-speaking parents actively discouraging their children from speaking the language, and encouraging the use of English instead. This practice continued long after independence, as the stigma of speaking Irish remained very strong.

Some, however, thought differently. The initial moves to save the language were championed by Irish Protestants, such as the linguist and clergyman William Neilson, in the end of the eighteenth century; the major push occurred with the foundation by Douglas Hyde, the son of a Church of Ireland rector, of the Gaelic League (known in Irish as Conradh na Gaeilge) which started the Gaelic Revival. Leading supporters of Conradh included Pádraig Mac Piarais and Éamon de Valera. The revival of interest in the language coincided with other cultural revivals, such as the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the growth in the performance of plays about Ireland in English, by such luminaries as William Butler Yeats, J.M. Synge, Sean O'Casey and Lady Gregory, with their launch of the Abbey Theatre.

Even though the Abbey Theatre playwrights wrote in English (and indeed some disliked Irish) the Irish language affected them, as it did all Irish English speakers. The version of English spoken in Ireland, known as Hiberno-English bears striking similarities in some grammatical idioms with Irish. Some have speculated that even after the vast majority of Irish people stopped speaking Irish, they perhaps subsconsciously used its grammatical flair in the manner in which they spoke English. This fluency is reflected in the writings of Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and more recently in the writings of Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan, Dermot Bolger and many others. (It may also in part explain the appeal in Britain of Irish-born broadcasters like Terry Wogan, Eamonn Andrews, Graham Norton, Desmond Lynam, etc.)

This national cultural revival of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century matched the growing Irish radicalism in Irish politics. Many of those, such as Pearse, de Valera, W.T. Cosgrave (Liam Mac Cosguir) and Ernest Blythe (Earnán de Blaghd), who fought to achieve Irish independence and came to govern the independent Irish state, first became politically aware through Conradh na Gaeilge, though Hyde himself resigned from its presidency in 1915 in protest at the movement's growing politicisation.

A Church of Ireland campaign to promote worship and religion in Irish was started in 1914 with the founding of Cumann Gaelach na hEaglaise (the Irish Guild of the Church). The Roman Catholic Church also replaced its liturgies in Latin with Irish and English for their liturgies following the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Independent Ireland and the language

The independent Irish state was established in 1922 (The Irish Free State 1922-37; Ireland (Éire) from 1937, also known since 1949 as the Republic of Ireland). Although some Republican leaders had been committed language enthusiasts, the new state continued to use English as the language of administration, even in areas where over 80% of the population spoke Irish. The government refused to implement the 1926 recommendations of the Gaeltacht Commission, which included restoring Irish as the language of administration in such areas. As the role of the state grew, it therefore exerted tremendous pressure on Irish-speakers to speak English. This was only partly offset by measures which were supposed to support the Irish language. For instance, the state was by far the largest employer. A qualification in Irish was required to apply for state jobs. However, this did not require a high level of fluency, and few public employees were ever required to use Irish in the course of their work. On the other hand, state employees had to have perfect command of English and had to use it constantly. Because most public employees had a poor command of Irish, it was impossible to deal with them in Irish. If an Irish-speaker wanted to apply for a grant, obtain electricity, or complain about being over-taxed, they had to do it in English. As late as 1986 a Bord na Gaeilge report noted "...the administrative agencies of the state have been among the strongest forces for anglicisation in Gaeltacht areas". (page 41 of “The Irish Language in a Changing Society: Shaping The Future”. Author: Advisory Planning Committee of Bord na Gaeilge. Published by Criterion in 1986).

The new state increased attempts to promote Irish through the school system. Some politicians claimed that the state would become predominantly Irish-speaking within a generation. However, it is generally agreed that this policy was clumsily implemented. From the mid-1940s onward the policy of teaching English-speaking children through Irish was abandoned. In the following decades, support for the language was progressively withdrawn.

Whereas the first three presidents of Ireland (Douglas Hyde/Dubhghlas de hÍde, Sean T. O'Kelly/Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh and Eamon de Valera) and the fifth (Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh) were all so fluent in Irish that it became the working language in their official residence, later presidents struggled with any degree of fluency, its use declining to such an extent that it is only used now (if at all) in occasional speeches. Similarly, where earlier generations of Irish government leaders were highly fluent, recent prime ministers (Albert Reynolds/Ailbhe Mag Raghnaill, John Bruton, Bertie Ahern) had little fluency, struggling to pronounce passages of their speeches in Irish to their Ard-Fheiseanna (party conference(s), IPA: /ˈɑːrd ˈeʃənə/).

It is, though, disputed to what extent such professed language revivalists as de Valera genuinely tried to Gaelicise political life. Ernest Blythe did little during his time as Minister of Finance to assist Irish language projects beyond the vested interests of already established organisations. Even in the first Dáil Éireann, few speeches were delivered as Gaeilge (in Irish), with the exception of formal proceedings. None of the recent taoisigh (plural of 'Taoiseach', meaning 'prime minister') have been fluent in Irish; however, the two most recent Presidents, Mary McAleese (Máire Mhic Ghiolla Íosa) and Mary Robinson (Máire Mhic Róíbín) are fluent, though the latter studied the language while in office to improve her fluency. Presidents of Ireland do take their inaugurational 'Declaration of Office' in the language, but that too is optional.

Even modern parliamentary legislation, though supposed to be issued in both Irish and English, is frequently only available in English. Much of publicly displayed Irish is ungrammatical, thus irritating both language activists and enemies of the language and contributing to the public image of the revival as phony and bogus.

Many public bodies have Irish language or bilingual names, but some have downgraded the language. For example, Eircom (formerly Telecom Éireann) effectively dropped Irish from its telephone directories in 1999. An Post, the Republic's postal service, continues to have place names in the language on its postmarks, as well as recognising addresses (as does the Royal Mail in Northern Ireland).

In an effort to address the half-committed attitude of Irish language use by the State, the Official Languages Act was passed in 2003. This act ensures that every publication made by a governmental body must be published in both official languages, Irish and English. In addition, the office of Language Commissioner has been set up to act as an ombudsman with regard to equal treatment in both languages.

Picture of a typical Irish road sign in Mullingar, County Westmeath, with placenames in English and Irish.

In 2002, at the launch of what was to be a new traffic management system for Dublin, it was revealed that the vast majority of signs would be in English only. The justification offered was that, in making the English lettering large enough to be easily read by motorists from a distance, there was no space to include Irish. The use of the single Irish words left, 'An Lár' (meaning city centre) was criticised on the basis that no-one would know what it meant, even though it was a term used widely for decades on street signs. Even the once common method in Ireland of beginning and ending letters - beginning 'A Chara' (meaning friend) and ending 'Is Mise le Meas' - is becoming rarer.

A major factor in the decline of spoken Irish has been the movement of English-speakers into the Gaeltacht (predominantly Irish speaking areas) and the return of native Irish-speakers who have acquired English-speaking families. This has been stimulated by government grants and infrastructure projects. "only about half Gaeltacht children learn Irish in the home... this is related to the high level of in-migration and return migration which has accompanied the economic restructuring of the Gaeltacht in recent decades" (page xxvi of The Irish Language in a Changing Society: Shaping The Future) . Many see this as a deliberate attempt by anti-nationalist politicians to wipe out the language. "That economic development of the kind undertaken was likely to have such consequences was readily predictable a decade ago" (p47). In a last-ditch effort to stop the complete collapse of Irish-speaking in Connemara in Galway, planning controls have been introduced on the building of new homes in Irish speaking areas. These are supposed to ensure that the proportion of English speakers in the local population does not increase. But even this may be too little, too late, as many of those areas have a majority of English speakers, with all Irish speakers being bilingual, using English as their everyday language except among themselves.

Attempts have been made to offer some support for the language through the media, notably the launch of Raidió na Gaeltachta (Gaeltacht radio) and Teilifís na Gaeilge (Irish language television, called initially 'TnaG', now renamed TG4); both have been relatively successful. TG4 has offered Irish-speaking young people a forum for youth culture as Gaeilge (in Irish) through rock and pop shows, travel shows, dating games, and even a controversial award-winning soap opera in Irish called Ros na Rún (featuring, among other characters, an Irish-speaking gay couple and their child). Most of TG4's viewership, however, tends to come from showing Gaelic football, hurling and rugby matches, and films in English.

There is also a daily Irish-language newspaper called Lá, a weekly called Foinse, and the Irish Times and Daily Ireland have pages in Irish, with articles appended with short lists giving the meaning of some of the words used in English.

In 1938, the founder of the Conradh na Gaeilge, Douglas Hyde, was inaugurated as the first President of Ireland. The record of his delivering his inauguration 'Declaration of Office' in his native Roscommon Irish remains almost the only surviving remnant of anyone speaking in that dialect, which in effect died out with him. Over sixty years later, the majority of the Gaeltacht and Irish-speaking areas in existence as he took that oath no longer exist.

There is a concerted effort to promote the language among recent immigrants. In 2003, the Qur'an was translated into Irish, following a collaboration between the Islamic Cultural Centre in Dublin and Foras na Gaeilge.

Northern Ireland

As in the Republic, the Irish language is a minority language in Northern Ireland , known in Irish as Tuaisceart na hÉireann/Tuaisceart Éireann or na sé chontae (the six counties).

Attitudes towards the language in Northern Ireland have traditionally reflected the political differences between its two divided communities. The language has been regarded with suspicion by unionists, who have associated it with the Catholic-dominated Republic, and more recently, with the republican movement. Many republicans in Northern Ireland, including Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, learnt Irish while in prison, a development known as the jailtacht. Although the language was taught in Catholic secondary schools (especially by the Christian Brothers), it was not taught at all in state (Protestant) schools and public signs in Irish were effectively banned under laws by the Parliament of Northern Ireland, which stated that only English could be used.

These laws were not repealed by the British government until the early 1990s. However, Irish-medium schools, known as gaelscoileanna, had already been founded in Belfast and Derry, and an Irish-language newspaper called Lá ('day') was established in Belfast. BBC Radio Ulster began broadcasting a nightly half-hour programme in Irish in the early 1980s called Blas ('taste', 'accent'), and BBC Northern Ireland also showed its first TV programme in the language in the early 1990s.

The Ultach Trust was also established, with a view to broadening the appeal of the language among Protestants, although hardline loyalists like Ian Paisley continued to ridicule it as a "leprechaun language". Ulster Scots, promoted by many loyalists, was, in turn, ridiculed by nationalists as "a DIY language for Orangemen" According to recent statistics, there is no significant difference between the number of Catholic and Protestant speakers of Ulster Scots in Ulster (see Ulster Scots language), although those involved in promoting Ulster-Scots are almost always unionist.

Irish received official recognition in Northern Ireland for the first time in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement. A cross-border body known as Foras na Gaeilge was established to promote the language in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, taking over the functions of the previous Republic-only Bord na Gaeilge.

The British government has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect to Irish in Northern Ireland.

It has been claimed that Belfast now represents the fastest growing centre of Irish language usage on the island - and the Good Friday Agreement's provisions on 'parity of esteem' have been used to give the language an official status there. In March 2005, the Irish language TV service TG4 began broadcasting from the Divis transmitter near Belfast, as a result of agreement between the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Northern Ireland Office, although so far this is the only transmitter to carry it.

The Irish Language Today

The number of native Irish-speakers in the Republic of Ireland today is a tiny fraction of what is was at independence. The main reason for the decline was the pressure the state put upon Irish-speakers to use English. The Official Languages Act of 2003 gave people the right to interact with state bodies in Irish. It is too early to assess how well this is working in practice. Other factors were outward migration of Irish speakers from the Gaeltacht and inward migration of English-speakers. The Planning and Development Act (2000) attempted to address the latter issue, but the response is almost certainly inadequate. Planning controls now require new housing in Gaeltacht areas to be allocated to English-speakers and Irish-speakers in the same ratio as the existing population of the area. This will not prevent houses allocated to Irish-speakers subsequently being sold on to English-speakers. Outward migration of Irish-speakers could be reduced if the state, which is the main employer in the Republic of Ireland, were to exercise its right to have certain jobs performed in Irish and relocated to the Gaeltacht. On 3rd December 2003 the Minister for Finance announced a new Decentralisation programme, moving over 10,000 civil and public service jobs to 53 locations in 25 other counties outside Dublin. The government explicitly said this was being done to boost the economy of outlying areas. None of these jobs were used to provide employment for native Irish-speakers in the Gaeltacht.

According to data compiled by the Irish Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, only one quarter of households in Gaeltacht areas possess a fluency in Irish. The author of a detailed analysis of the survey, Donncha Ó hÉallaithe, described the Irish language policy followed by Irish governments a 'complete and absolute disaster.' The Irish Times (January 6, 2002), referring to his analysis, which was initially published in the Irish language newspaper Foinse, quoted him as follows: 'It is an absolute indictment of successive Irish Governments that at the foundation of the Irish State there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi Irish-speaking areas, but the number now is between 20,000 and 30,000.'

According to the language survey, levels of fluency among families is 'very low', from 1% in Galway suburbs to a maximum of 8% parts of west Donegal. With such sharp decline, particularly among the young, the real danger exists that Irish will largely become extinct within two generations, possibly even one. While the language will continue to exist among English speakers who have learned fluency and are bilingual (though mainly English-speaking in their everyday lives) Gaeltachtaí embody more than just a language, but the cultural context in which it is spoken, through song, stories, social traditions, folklore and dance. The death of the Gaeltachtaí would make a break forever between Ireland's cultural past and identity, and its future. All sides, irrespective of their view on the methodology used by independent Ireland in its efforts to preserve the language, agree that such a loss would be a cultural tragedy of a monumental scale.

The U.S. English Foundation has published analyses of the United States Census 2000, and states that 25,870 US residents speak the Irish language at home (pdf file).

An interest in the Irish language is maintained throughout the English speaking world among the Irish diaspora and there are active Irish language groups in North American, British and Australian cities.

Microsoft has worked with the Irish government and various Irish education bodies to enable the use of the Irish language in their products. An Irish Language Interface Pack for Windows XP was released in June 2005, and an Irish spell checker is available for Microsoft Office XP.

Notes

¹Article in the Irish Independent.

See also

• Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish
• Irish dialects
• Irish initial mutations
• Irish name
• Irish morphology
• Irish orthography
• Irish phonology
• Irish syntax
• Irish words used in the English language
• Modern literature in Irish
• Place names in Irish
• List of Irish given names
• Common phrases in different languages
• Non-native pronunciations of English
• List of Ireland-related topics
• Céad míle fáilte
• Newfoundland Irish

External links

Irish language edition of Wikipedia

Wikibooks has more about this subject:

Irish

• Gaeilge ar an ghréasán Irish online recources
• Foras na Gaeilge
• Foinse - weekly newspaper
• Irish Language Information and Resources
• ISO 639 language code GLE
• Irish - English Dictionary
• Gaelic Dictionaries
• Braesicke's Gramadach na Gaeilge (Engl. translation)
• Kids.net.au Article

Northern Ireland

• Ultach Trust
• Lá
• BBC Northern Ireland Irish language