Encyclopedia
Irish , a language spoken in the
Republic of Ireland and
Northern Ireland, is
constitutionally recognised as the first official language of
Ireland. On 13 June 2005, EU foreign ministers unanimously decided to make Irish an
official language of the
European Union. The new arrangements will come into effect on 1 January 2007.
According to census figures released by the Central Statistics Office in 2004, out of the Republic's more than 4.3 million citizens there are approximately 1.6 million Irish speakers. These figures are, however, open to debate. Of these, 350,000 reported using Irish every day, 155,000 weekly, 585,000 less often, 460,000 never, and 30,000 didn't state how often. 70,000 people have been quoted as the number of people in the
Gaeltacht who use the language as their first and daily language .
It has been argued that previous censuses have overestimated the true number of Irish speakers, as those speaking it only in the schools are included. The recent 2006 Census may provide a more accurate estimate of the Irish-speaking population, because of changes to ask the respondents how often they speak the language and where. Other data state that 165,000 can speak Irish in
Northern Ireland. The results of the
United States Census, 2000 suggest that some 25,000 people use the language at home in the United States.
There also exists a cant called Shelta, based partly on
English and partly on Irish, in use by the Irish Travellers. For the English language as it is spoken in Ireland, see Hiberno-English.
Names of the language
In English
The language is usually referred to in
English as
Irish, and less often as
Gaelic or
Irish Gaelic, though the latter term is seldom used or preferred by the Irish themselves.
Gaelic or
Irish Gaelic is generally the common name for the language in the Irish diaspora . Within many parts of Ireland, the choice of name has inevitably on occasion acquired political significance. Some people believe that referring to the language as "Gaelic" suggests that the language is as distant and unrelated to modern Irish life as the civilization of the ancient Gaels. Calling it
Irish, on the other hand, is a more neutral indication of its aspirational status as the national language of the Irish people.
Irish is the term generally accepted among scholars; it is also the term used in the Republic of Ireland's Constitution. Some Irish people however, consider the use of the word
Irish to push the point of view that being Irish is synonymous with being Gaelic.
Use of the term
Irish also avoids confusion with
Scottish Gaelic , and
Manx Gaelic , the closely related languages spoken in
Scotland and the
Isle of Man, though the term
Irish Gaelic is often used when the three languages and their relationship to one another are being discussed. Scottish Gaelic is often referred to in English as simply
Gaelic .
The use of the term
Gaelic instead of
Irish Gaelic can be quite misleading for beginners in the diaspora. For example the 'Teach Yourself' series of books has 'Teach Yourself Gaelic' and 'Teach Yourself Irish' .
The archaic term
Erse , originally a
Scots form of the word
Irish, is no longer used and in most current contexts is considered derogatory.
In Irish
In the
Caighdeán Oifigiúil the name of the language is
Gaeilge , which reflects the southern
Connacht pronunciation.
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 or
Gaedhlag in
Ulster Irish and northern Connacht Irish and
Gaedhealaing/
Gaoluinn/
Gaelainn in
Munster Irish.
Official status
Irish is given recognition by the
Constitution of Ireland as the first official language of the Republic of Ireland , despite the limited distribution of fluency among the population of that country. Since the foundation of the
Irish Free State in 1922 , the
Irish Government required a degree of proficiency in Irish for all
civil service positions , as well as for employees of state companies . Proficiency in Irish for entrance to the public service ceased to be a compulsory requirement in 1974, in part through the actions of protest organizations like the Language Freedom Movement. While the requirement was also dropped for wider public service jobs, such as teaching, Irish remains a required subject of study in all schools within the Republic which receive public money . 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. Most official documents of the Irish Government are published in both Irish and English.
The
National University of Ireland, Galway is required to appoint a person who is competent in the Irish language, as long as they meet all other respects of the vacancy they are appointed to. This requirement is laid down by the and recently was subject of a High Court case on the matter - it is expected that the requirement may be repealed in due course.
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. Irish will become an official language of the European Union beginning January 1, 2007.
Gaeltacht
There are pockets of Ireland where Irish is spoken as a traditional, native language. These regions are known as the
Gaeltacht. These are in County Galway , including
Connemara , the
Aran Islands and An Spidéal; on the west coast of
County Donegal ; in the part which is known as Tyrconnell ; and
Dingle Peninsula in
County Kerry . Smaller ones also exist in Mayo ,
Meath , Waterford , and
Cork . However, even within the Gaeltacht areas, the Irish-speaking populations have declined since the Gaeltacht boundaries were drawn up.
Gweedore,
County Donegal is the largest
Gaeltacht parish in
Ireland.
The numerically and socially strongest Gaeltacht areas are those of South Connemara, the extreme west of Dingle and northwest Tyrconnell, in which a significant proportion of residents use Irish as a community language and in which children often speak the language with each other. These areas are often referred to as the
Fíor-Ghaeltacht and collectively have a population of just under 10,000, of which over 80% use the language daily. The highest proportions of daily Irish speakers in the community are found in Rosmuck, County Galway, , and around Bloody Foreland in Donegal .
Gaeltacht summer schools are attended by tens of thousands of Irish teenagers annually. Students live with Gaeltacht families, attend classes, participate in sports, go to
céilís and are obliged to speak Irish.
Dialects
There are a number of distinct dialects of Irish. Roughly speaking, the three major dialect areas coincide with the provinces of Munster , Connacht and Ulster .
Munster dialects
Munster Irish is spoken in the Gaeltachtaí of Kerry , Muskerry ,
Cape Clear in the western part of
County Cork , and the tiny pocket of Irish-speakers in An Rinn near Dungarvan in County Waterford . The most important subdivision in Munster is that between Decies Irish and the rest of Munster Irish.
Some typical features of Munster Irish are:
- The use of personal endings instead of pronouns with verbs, thus "I must" is in Munster caithfead, while other dialects prefer caithfidh mé . "I was and you were" is Bhíos agus bhís in Munster but Bhí mé agus bhí tú in other dialects.
- In front of nasals and "ll" some short vowels are lengthened while other are diphthongised.
- A copula-construction involving is ea is frequently used.
- Stress is often on the second syllable of a word, e.g. "bio-RÁN" , as opposed to "BIO-rán" in Connacht and Ulster.
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 and Mayo . The Irish of Tourmakeady in southern Mayo and Joyce Country are considered the living Irish dialects closest to Middle Irish. Also, the northern Mayo dialect of Erris and
Achill 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.
Distinguishing features of this dialect include the prounouncing of broad
bh as , rather than as in Munster. For example
mo bhád is pronounced in Connacht and Ulster as opposed to in the south. In addition Connacht and Ulster speakers tend to include the "we" pronoun rather than using the standard compound form used in Munster: for example
Bhí muid is used for 'we were' instead of
Bhíomar elsewhere.
Ulster dialects
The most important of the Ulster dialects today is that of the Rosses , which has been used extensively in literature by such authors as the brothers Séamus Ó Grianna and Seosamh Mac Grianna, locally known as Jimí Fheilimí and Joe Fheilimí. This dialect is essentially the same as that in
Gweedore , the same dialect used by native speaker
Enya and her siblings in
Clannad .
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, in place of the Munster and Connacht version
ní. Even in Ulster,
cha, most typical of Scottish Gaelic, has ousted the more common
ní only in easternmost dialects . The practice seems to be that
cha is most usually used when answering to a statement, either confirming a negative statement or contesting an affirmative one , while
ní is preferred in answering a question .
Other regions
The 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 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 .
In areas outside the traditional Gaeltacht, where standard Irish was learnt in schools, this has become the "dialect" of learners of the language. What has been called "
Dublin Irish" or "Gaelscoil Irish" has also arisen, that is Irish 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 applicable 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" 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.
Students in the Eastern part of Ireland tend to pronounce the Irish words in an English way rather than in a Gaelic way. This is possibly due to teaching inconsistency. The average Irish student could have twelve or thirteen different Irish teachers throughout their education, each with a varying dialect.
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?
- Connacht: Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú?
- Munster: Conas taoi? or Conas tánn tú?
- "standard Irish": Conas atá tú?
In recent times, however, contacts between speakers of different dialects have become more common, and mixed dialects have originated. Nevertheless, many dialect speakers are still zealously 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 is very probably trying to emulate Coolea or Kerry dialect; one from
Belfast 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.
Linguistic structure
The features most unfamiliar to English speakers 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
Word order in Irish is of the form VSO , so that, for example "He hit me" is
Bhuail [hit-past tense]
sé [he]
mé [me].
One aspect of Irish syntax that is unfamiliar to speakers of other languages is the use of the copula . 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/it", especially when using an adjective, when it is desired to emphasise the quality:
- Is fear láidir atá ann. "He's a strong man."
- Is cailín álainn atá inti. "She's a beautiful girl."
This sometimes appears in Hiberno-English, either translated literally as "that is in it", or as "so it is".
Morphology
Another feature of Irish grammar that is shared with other Celtic languages is the use of prepositional pronouns , 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
bí ag indicates possession; this is the equivalent of the English verb "to have".
| Tá leabhar agam. | "I have a book." | |
| Tá deoch agat. | "You have a drink." |
| Tá ríomhaire aige. | "He has a computer." |
| Tá páiste aici. | "She has a child." |
| Tá carr againn. | "We have a car." |
| Tá teach agaibh. | "You have a house." |
| Tá airgead acu. | "They have money." |
Compare with
Breton:
| Ul levr a zo ganin. | "I have a book." |
| Ur banne a zo ganit. | "You have a drink." | |
| Un urzhiataer a zo gantañ. | "He has a computer." |
| Ur bugel a zo ganti. | "She has a child." | |
| Ur c'harr a zo ganimp. | "We have a car." |
| Un ti a zo ganeoc'h. | "You have a house." |
| Arc'hant a zo ganto. | "They have money." |
Orthography and pronunciation
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 ,
a is or and
á is in "law" but in Ulster Irish ,
á tends to be .
Around the time of
World War II, Séamas Daltún, in charge of
Rannóg an Aistriúcháin , 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 standardised 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 / Gaedhealaing / Gaeilic / Gaelainn / Gaoidhealg / Gaolainn => Gaeilge, "Irish language"
- Lughbhaidh => Lú, "Louth"
- biadh => bia, "food"
Modern Irish has only one diacritic sign, the acute , known in Irish as the
síneadh fada 'long mark', plural
sínte fada. In English, this is frequently referred to as simply the
fada, where the adjective is used as a noun. The dot-above diacritic, called a
ponc séimhithe or
sí 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 and
f 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 the
Gaelic script 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, The
Irish Defence Forces cap badge '. Letters with the
buailte are available in
Unicode and Latin-8 character sets
Mutations
In Irish, there are two classes of initial mutations:
- Lenition describes the change of stops into fricatives. Indicated in old orthography by a dot written above the changed consonant, this is now shown by adding an extra -h-:
- caith! "throw!" - chaith mé "I threw"
- margadh "market", "market-place", "bargain" - Tadhg an mhargaidh "the man of the street" ** Seán "Seán, John" - a Sheáin! "O John!"
- Nasalisation 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 date of introduction of Celtic languages to Ireland is an open question, debated by linguists and archaeologists. The earliest form of the language, Primitive Irish, is found in
ogham inscriptions up to about the 4th century AD. 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 which was more Norse influenced. Modern Irish dates from about the 16th century.
Irish Language Movement
The Irish language was the most widely spoken language on the island of Ireland until the 19th century. Queen Elizabeth I encouraged the use of Irish even in the Pale with a view to promoting the reformed religon. She is reported to have expressed a desire to understand Irish and a primer was prepared on her behalf by Sir Christopher Nugent, ninth baron of Delvin.
The first book in Irish was printed in 1564 in Edinburgh a translation of John Knox's 'Liturgy' by John Carswell, Bishop of the Hebridies. He used a slightly modified form of the language shared by Ireland and Scotland at the time and also used the Roman script. In 1568 the first book in Irish to be printed in Ireland was a Protestant 'catechism', containing a guide to spelling and sounds in Irish. It was written by John Kearney, treasurer of St. Patrick's Cathedral. The type used was adopted to what has become known as the 'gaelic' script. This was published in 1602-3 by the printer Francke. The reformed
Church of Ireland undertook the first publication of Scripture in Irish. The first Irish translation of the New Testament was begun by Nicholas Walsh, Bishop of Ossory, who worked on it until his untimely death in 1585. The work was continued by John Kearny, his assistant, and Dr. Nehemiah Donellan, Archbishop of Tuam, and it was finally completed by William O'Domhnuill . Their work was printed in 1602. The work of translating the Old Testament was undertaken by William Bedel , Bishop of Kilmore, who completed his translation within the reign of
Charles the First, however it was not published until 1680, in a revised version by Narcissus Marsh , Archbishop of Dublin. William Bedell had undertaken a translation of the
Book of Common Prayer in 1606. An Irish translation of the revised prayer book of 1662 was effected by John Richardson and published in 1712.
Though its number of speakers has been in decline since the 19th century, it is an important part of Irish nationalist identity. A combination of the introduction of a primary education system , in which Irish was prohibited until 1871 and only English taught by order of the
British government, and the
Great Famine which hit a disportionately high number of Irish language speakers , hastened its rapid decline. Irish political leaders, such as
Daniel O'Connell , too were critical of the language, seeing it as 'backward', with English the language of the future. The National Schools run by the
Catholic Church discouraged its use until about 1890. This was because most economic opportunity for most Irish people arose at that time within the
United States of America and the
British Empire, which both used English. 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. Despite the policy of successive Irish governments to promote the language the decline in the number of native speakers within the Gaeltacht has accelerated although the number of those elsewhere in the country able to speak it has increased albeit not to the extent that many hoped. Many believe today that only the element of compulsion is objectionable.
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 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 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.
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 and
Ernest Blythe , who fought to achieve Irish independence and came to govern the independent Irish Free State, first became politically aware through Conradh na Gaeilge. Hyde himself resigned from its presidency in 1915 in protest when the movement voted to affiliate with the Nationalist cause.
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
Roman Catholic Church also replaced its liturgies in
Latin with Irish and English for their liturgies following the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. The hit song "
Theme From Harry's Game" by
County Donegal music group
Clannad, became the first song to appear on
Top Of The Pops with Irish lyrics in 1982.
Independent Ireland and the language
The independent Irish state was established in 1922 . 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".
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 compulsory policy was clumsily implemented . The principle ideologue was Professor Timothy Corcoran of
University College Dublin, who "did not trouble to acquire the language himself" 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 reduced.
Whereas the first three presidents of Ireland and the fifth 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 in occasional speeches. Similarly, where earlier generations of Irish government leaders were highly fluent, recent prime ministers had little fluency, struggling to pronounce passages of their speeches in Irish to their Ard-Fheiseanna .
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 , with the exception of formal proceedings. None of the recent taoisigh have been fluent in Irish; however, the two most recent
Presidents,
Mary McAleese and
Mary Robinson are fluent, though the latter studied the language while in office to improve her fluency. Every
President of Ireland has all so far taken their inaugurational 'Declaration of Office' in the language, but they have the option of taking the English declaration at
the inauguration.
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. The fact that the Dail uses Irish in less than 1% of its business has not helped.
Many public bodies have Irish language or bilingual names, but some have downgraded the language. For example,
Eircom 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 . Traditionally, the private sector has been less supportive, although support for the language has come from some private companies. For example, Irish
supermarket chain
Superquinn introduced bilingual signs in its stores in the 1980s, a move which was followed more recently by the
British chain
Tesco for its stores in the Republic.
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.
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' was criticised on the basis that no-one would know what it meant. Even the once common method in Ireland of beginning and ending letters - beginning 'A Chara' and ending 'Is Mise le Meas' - though still used in Irish, is becoming rarer in English.
A major factor in the decline of spoken Irish has been the movement of English-speakers into the Gaeltacht 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". 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". In a last-ditch effort to stop the demise 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 and Teilifís na Gaeilge ; both have been relatively successful. TG4 has offered Irish-speaking young people a forum for youth culture
as Gaeilge through rock and pop shows, travel shows, dating games, and even a controversial award-winning
soap opera in Irish called
Ros na Rún . Most of TG4's viewership, however, tends to come from showing
Gaelic football,
hurling and
rugby matches, and also films in English.
In 1996, Nuacht TG4 was getting only about 5,000 viewers daily. This figure has now risen to just under 50,000 . The government-sponsored channel's ratings has steadily risen since the foundation of the station.
There is also a daily Irish-language newspaper called
Lá, a weekly called
Foinse, and the
Irish Times is Ireland [i]'s "newspaper of record [i]", launched in the late 1850s [i]. ...
and
Daily Ireland was an Irish [i] daily newspaper which existed from January 2005 to September ...
have pages in Irish, with articles appended with short lists giving the meaning of some of the words used in English. Every month, another paper,
Saol, and about 5 magazines are published in the language also.
More controversially the Placenames Order /
An tOrdú Logainmneacha requires the original Irish placenames to be used in the Gaeltacht on all official documents, maps and roadsigns. This has removed the legal status of those placenames in English. Opposition to these measures comes from several quarters including some people within popular tourist destinations located within the Gaeltacht who claim that tourists may not recognise the Gaelic forms of the placenames.
However following a campaign in the 1960's and early 1970's, all roadsigns in Gaeltacht regions have been in Irish only. Though, maps and government documents did not change. Previously Ordnance Survey maps showed placenames bilingualy in the Gaeltacht . Unfortunately, most other map companies wrote only the English placenames, leading to significant confusion in the Gaeltacht since the 1970's. The act therefore updates government document and maps in line with what has been reality in the Gaeltacht for the past 30 years. Private map companies are expected to follow suit.
Beyond the Gaeltacht only English placenames were officially recognised . However, further placenames orders have been passed to enable both the English and the Irish placenames to be used. In Kildare, a village is named 'Straffan' in English; in Irish it is still marked variously as 'An Srafain', 'An Cluanini' and 'Teach Strafain', even though Irish has not been the demotic language there for two centuries. Homogenising these three into one may be convenient to government, but it would remove differing past identities and an element of Irish culture.
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 auguration '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. From 1964
The Bible was translated at Maynooth for Catholics under the supervision of Professor Padraig O Fiannachta and was finally published in 1981.
In June 2006, it was announced that
TG4 had dubbed
The Simpsons into Irish, and that they would be shown in August of the same year.
Northern Ireland
- Main article: Irish language in 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 .
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 , it was not taught at all in state 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 was established in Belfast. BBC
Radio Ulster began broadcasting a nightly half-hour programme in Irish in the early 1980s called
Blas , 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 , although those involved in promoting Ulster-Scots as a language are almost always unionist. Ulster-Scots is defined in legislation as:
the variety of the Scots language which has traditionally been used in parts of Northern Ireland and in Donegal in Ireland .
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.
Irish in North America
The Irish language emigrated to
North America along with the Irish people. Although Irish is one of the smaller European languages spoken in North America, it has cultural importance in the northeast
United States and in
Newfoundland, and according to the
2000 U.S. census, an estimated 25,000 Americans speak Irish fluently.
TG4's hit Irish-language soap opera,
Ros na Rún, is even televised in
Pennsylvania and other northern states.
Irish language today
The number of native Irish-speakers in the
Republic of Ireland today is a smaller fraction of what it was at independence. However, this number has risen significantly over the past two decades. 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 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 governme
