Irish (Gaeilge) is a Celtic language
of the Goidelic branch spoken in Ireland. Although once
spoken across the whole of the island, it is presently
a minority language. It is constitutionally upheld as the
national and first official language of the Republic of
Ireland and is an official language of the European Union.
The number of people in the Gaeltacht regions of Ireland
who use the language as their daily mother tongue has
been variously cited as 70,000 and 83,000. However,
according to census figures released by the Central
Statistics Office in 2004, out of the Republic's 4.2
million residents, there are approximately 1.6 million
who regard themselves as competent in Irish. 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. Of the 350,000 who were reported to
use Irish every day, the majority are schoolchildren
who use it during their classes in Irish.
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 168,000 people in Northern
Ireland can speak Irish "with varying degrees
of ability." On 13 June 2005, EU foreign ministers
unanimously decided to make Irish an official language
of the European Union. The new arrangements came into
effect on 1 January 2007, and Irish was first used
at a meeting of the EU Council of Ministers, by Minister
Noel Treacy, T.D., on 22 January 2007. Since then,
it has been regularly used by Irish government ministers.
Names
of the language
The language is often referred to in English
as Gaelic, or Irish Gaelic. This has generally been
the common name for the language in the Irish Diaspora.
(The Irish diaspora consists of Irish emigrants and
their descendants in countries such as the United Kingdom,
the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa, and states of the Caribbean and continental
Europe) Within many parts of Ireland, it has inevitably
acquired political significance. Referring to the language
as "Gaelic" suggests that the language is
as distant and unrelated to modern Irish life as the
civilisation of the ancient Gaels. Calling it Irish,
on the other hand, indicates that it is and should
be the proper national language of the Irish people.
This is the generally accepted term among scholars
and in the Republic of Ireland's Constitution. 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 and often referred
to in English as simply Gaelic. In the Caighdeán
Oifigiúil (the official written standard), the
name of the language is Gaeilge, which reflects the
southern Connacht pronunciation
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 the country. 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
language of the European Union beginning 1 January
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, and the Aran Islands;
on the west coast of County Donegal; in the part that
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.
[back
to top]
Varieties
of Irish
The earliest known form of Irish is preserved
in Ogham (Old Irish spelling ogam) inscriptions which
date mainly from the fourth and fifth centuries of
our era. The linguistic information preserved in Ogham
is sparse, as the inscriptions contain little more
than personal names, but it is sufficient to reveal
a form of Goidelic much older than Old Irish, the earliest
well-documented variety of the language.
Old Irish was the language of Ireland’s ‘Golden
Age’, and its classical phase is generally assigned
to the period AD 700-850. Old Irish evolved into Middle
Irish, the language of the late Viking and post-Viking
period. In comparison with Old Irish, Middle Irish
is characterized by a simplification of the inflections
of noun and verb and of the system of pronouns.
By 1200 Early Modern Irish, or Classical
Modern Irish, had begun to emerge. This is the language
of the period of Gaelic resurgence when Old Irish,
Norse, Norman, and Old English were largely assimilated
into a new Irish-speaking society. This form of Irish
lasted from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth
as the literary norm for the whole Gaelic world, which
comprised Ireland, Gaelic Scotland, and the Isle of
Man. During the seventeenth century, as the influence
of the old literary schools and learned classes receded,
the forms of the written language became increasingly
regional in character. In this period the autonomous
forms of Modern Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx became
established. Even so, at the end of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth, as the
Irish revival gathered momentum, there were many who
felt that Classical Modern Irish was still the most
appropriate norm for literary purposes. Since the advocates
of this view not only used the older grammatical forms,
but imitated the ornate and sometimes ponderous style
of Early Modern prose, they brought a reaction from
writers such as Peadár Ó Laoghaire, Pádraic Ó Conaire,
and Patrick Pearse, who were developing a literary
diction based on contemporary speech.
The ‘speech of the people’ movement
triumphed but one, perhaps unforeseen, result was that
the written language for a time became quite diversified,
as writers went their divergent ways in representing
contemporary usage. It was necessary to redefine norms.
A new spelling norm was published in 1945 and, in emended
form, in 1947; a new grammatical norm was published
in 1953 and, in revised form, in 1958. These are now
codified in Ó Dónaill’s official Irish-English
dictionary, Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, which
appeared in 1978.
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 (spoken
in Waterford) 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 (mé means "I"). "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.
[back
to top]
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.
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.
The distinguishing features of this
dialect include the prounouncing of 'bh' as 'w', rather
than as 'v' in other parts of the country: for example
'Ní raibh' is pronounced "Ni raow" in
Connacht as opposed to "Ni rev" elsewhere.
In addition Connacht speakers tend to put the "we" pronoun
at the end of the verb rather than with the verb itself:
for example "Bhí muid" is used for
'we were' instead of "Bhíomar" elsewhere.
This has become a common teaching practice in schools
as it is a much easier construction of any verb in
the 'we' form.
Connacht Irish tends to be more widespread
than any other dialect, as most Irish teachers tend
to come from there, although, obviously, there are
many exceptions.
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 many 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 many 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").
[back
to top]
Other
Regional Dialects
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 (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 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 (to vote). 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.
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 would
have twelve or thirteen different Irish teachers, 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?
("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 taoi? or conas tánn tú?
("how are you?")
* "standard Irish": Conas a tá tú ("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
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 (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.
[back
to top]
Shelta
There also exists a cant called Shelta, based partly
on English and partly Irish, in use by the Irish Travellers.
History of
the Irish Language
Irish is a Celtic language and, as such, is a member
of the Indo-European family of languages. Within the
Celtic group, it belongs to the Goidelic branch of insular
Celtic. Irish has evolved from a form of Celtic which
was introduced into Ireland at some period during the
great Celtic migrations of antiquity between the end
of the second millennium and the fourth century BC. Old
Irish is the earliest variant of the Celtic languages,
and indeed the earliest of European vernaculars north
of the Alps, in which extensive writings are extant.
The Norse settlement (AD 800 onwards)
and the Anglo-Norman colonization (AD 1169 onwards)
introduced periods of new language diversity into Ireland,
but Irish remained dominant and other speech communities
were gradually assimilated. In the early sixteenth
century, almost all of the population was Irish-speaking.
The main towns, however, prescribed English for the
formal conduct of administrative and legal business.
The events of the later sixteenth
century and of the seventeenth century for the first
time undermined the status of Irish as a major language.
The Tudor and Stuart conquests and plantations (1534-1610),
the Cromwellian settlement (1654), and the Williamite
war (1689-91) followed by the enactment of the Penal
Laws (1695), had the cumulative effect of eliminating
the Irish-speaking ruling classes and of destroying
their cultural institutions. They were replaced by
a new ruling class, or Ascendancy, whose language was
English, and thereafter English was the sole language
of government and public institutions. Irish continued
as the language of the greater part of the rural population
and, for a time, of the servant classes in towns.
From the middle of the eighteenth
century, as the Penal Laws were relaxed and a greater
social and economic mobility became possible for the
native Irish, the more prosperous of the Irish-speaking
community began to conform to the prevailing middle-class
ethos by adopting English. Irish thus began to be associated
with poverty and economic deprivation. This tendency
increased after the Act of Union in 1800.
Yet because of the rapid growth of
the rural population, the actual number of Irish speakers
increased substantially during the first decades of
the nineteenth century. In 1835 their number was estimated
at four million. This number consisted almost entirely
of an impoverished rural population which was decimated
by the Great Famine and by resultant mass emigration.
By 1891, the number of Irish speakers had been reduced
to 680,000 and, according to that year’s census
of population, Irish speakers under the age of ten
represented no more than 3.5% of their age-group.
When the position began to stabilize
early in the twentieth century, Irish remained as a
community language only in small discontinuous regions,
mainly around the western seaboard. These regions are
collectively called the Gaeltacht. In
the 1991 census, the population of the officially-defined
Gaeltacht aged three years and over was 79,563, of
whom 56,469 or 71% were returned as Irish-speaking.
The number of Irish speakers is a decreasing proportion
of the total because, for a variety of complex reasons,
some of the indigenous population of the Gaeltacht
continue to shift to English, and because new English-speaking
households are settling there.
On the other hand, there are many
Irish-speaking individuals and families throughout
the rest of the country, particularly in Dublin. In
1991 just under 1.1 million people or 32.5% of the
total population aged three years or over, were returned
as Irish-speaking, but this figure does not distinguish
differing degrees of competence and use.
Towards the end of the eighteenth
century the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy had begun to develop
an academic interest in the Irish language and its
literature. Academic interest later merged with a concern
for the survival of spoken Irish as its decline became
increasingly evident. Language-related activity grew
throughout the nineteenth century and, following the
establishment in 1893 of the Gaelic League, or in Irish
Conradh na Gaeilge, the objective of maintaining and
extending the use of Irish as a vernacular fused with
the renewed separatist movement which culminated in
the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922.
The State has made various provisions
for the maintenance and promotion of the language.
Irish is an obligatory subject at primary and second
level schools. The Department of Arts, Culture and
the Gaeltacht has responsibility for promoting the
cultural, social, and economic welfare of the Gaeltacht,
and more generally for encouraging the use of Irish
as a vernacular. The Department has two statutory boards
under its aegis: Údarás
na Gaeltachta (Gaeltacht Authority), some
of whose members are elected by the people of the Gaeltacht,
is a development authority for Gaeltacht areas; Bord
na Gaeilge (Irish-language Board)
has responsibility for the promotion of Irish as a
vernacular throughout the country.
[back to top]
