Irish ( ) is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in
Ireland
and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now only spoken
natively by a small minority of the Irish population but also plays
an important symbolic role in the life of the Irish state, and is
used across the country in a variety of media, personal contexts
and social situations.
It enjoys constitutional status as the
national and first official language of the Republic of
Ireland
and it is an official language of the European
Union. Irish is also an officially recognised
minority language in Northern Ireland
.
Irish is the main community and household language of 3% of the
Republic's population (which was estimated at 4,422,100 in 2008).
Estimates of fully native speakers range from 40,000 up to 80,000
people. Areas in which the language remains the vernacular are
referred to as
Gaeltacht areas.
The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs estimated
in 2007 that about 17,000 people lived in strongly Irish-speaking
communities, about 10,000 people lived in areas where there was
substantial use of the language, and 17,000 people lived in "weak"
Gaeltacht communities; Irish was no longer the main community
language in the remaining parts of the official Gaeltacht. However,
since Irish is an obligatory subject in schools, many more are
reasonably fluent second-language speakers. Furthermore, a much
larger number regard themselves as competent in the language to
some degree: 1,656,790 (41.9% of the total population aged three
years and over) regard themselves as competent Irish speakers. Of
these, 538,283 (32.5%) speak Irish on a daily basis (taking into
account both native speakers and those inside the education
system), 97,089 (5.9%) weekly, 581,574 (35.1%) less often, and
412,846 (24.9%) never. 26,998 (1.6%) respondents did not state how
often they spoke Irish. Complete or functional monolingualism of
Irish is now restricted to a handful of elderly within more
isolated Gaeltacht regions as well as among many mother-tongue
speakers of Irish under school age.
14% of the population of the Republic of Ireland listen to Irish
radio programming daily, 16% listen 2-5 times a week, while 24%
listen to Irish programming once a week.
The number of inhabitants of the official-designated Gaeltacht
regions of Ireland is 91,862, as of the 2006 census. Of these,
70.8% aged three and over speak Irish and approximately 60% speak
Irish on a daily basis.
The 2001 census in Northern Ireland showed that 167,487 (10.4%)
people "had some knowledge of Irish" (see
Irish language in Northern
Ireland). Combined, this means that at least one in three
people (~1.8 million) on the island of Ireland can understand Irish
to some extent.
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.
Names of the language
In Irish
In the (the official written standard) the name of the language is
( .
Before the spelling reform of 1948, this form was spelled ;
originally this was the
genitive of ,
the form used in
classical
Modern Irish. Older spellings of this include in
Middle Irish [ge:ʝəlg] and [goiðelg]
in
Old Irish. The modern spelling
results from the deletion of the silent
dh in the middle
of
Gaedhilge.
Other forms of the name found in the various modern Irish dialects,
in addition to south Connacht mentioned above, include ( ) or ( )
in
Ulster Irish and northern Connacht
Irish and ( ) in
Munster Irish.
In English
The language is usually referred to in English as
Irish.
The term
Irish Gaelic is often used when English speakers
discuss the relationship between the three Goidelic languages
(Irish,
Scottish Gaelic, and
Manx) or when discussion of Irish is
confused to mean
Hiberno-English,
the form of English as spoken in Ireland. Scottish Gaelic is often
referred to in English as simply
Gaelic. Outside Ireland
and often among native-speakers themselves, the term
Gaelic is still frequently used for the language. The
archaic term
Erse (from
Erische), originally a
Scots
form of the word
Irish applied in Scotland (by Lowlanders)
to all of the Goidelic languages, is no longer used for any
Goidelic language, and in most current contexts is considered
derogatory.
History
The earliest attested form of Irish is known as
Primitive Irish.
It is chiefly known
through fragments inscribed in the ogham
alphabet, which have been found throughout Ireland and the west
coast of Great
Britain
. Primitive Irish transitioned into
Old Irish through the 5th century. This is the
earliest form of Irish for which there are extensive written texts.
By the
10th century Old Irish evolved into Middle
Irish, which was spoken throughout Ireland and in Scotland
and the
Isle of
Man
. From the 12th century Middle Irish began to evolve
into modern Irish in Ireland, into Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, and into the
Manx language in the Isle of Man.
Modern Irish emerged from the literary language known as Early Modern Irish in Ireland and as
Classical Gaelic in Scotland; this
was used through the 18th century.
Official status
In the Republic of Ireland
Irish is given recognition by the
Constitution of Ireland as the
national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland
(with
English being a second
official language). Since the foundation of the
Irish Free State in 1922 (see also
History of the
Republic of Ireland), the
Irish Government required a degree of
proficiency in Irish for all those who became newly appointed to
civil
service positions (including postal workers, tax officials,
agricultural inspectors, etc.). Proficiency in just one official
language for entrance to the public service was introduced in 1974,
in part through the actions of protest organizations like the
Language Freedom
Movement.
While the First Official Language requirement was also dropped for
wider public service jobs, Irish remains a required subject of
study in all schools within the Republic which receive public money
(see also
Education in the Republic
of Ireland). Those wishing to teach in primary schools in
the State must also pass a compulsory examination called "Scrúdú
Cáilíochta sa Ghaeilge". The need for a pass in
Leaving Certificate Irish or English for
entry to the
Gardaí
(police) was introduced in September 2005, although applicants are
given lessons in the language during the two years of training. All
official documents of the Irish Government must be published in
both Irish and English or Irish alone (this is according to the
official languages act 2003, which is enforced by "an comisinéir
teanga", the language ombudsman).
The
National University
of Ireland requires all students wishing to embark on a degree
course in the NUI federal system to pass the subject of Irish in
the Leaving Certificate or GCE/GCSE Examinations. Exemptions are
made from this requirement for students born outside of the
Republic of Ireland, those who were born in the Republic but
completed primary education outside it, and students diagnosed with
dyslexia.
In 1938, the founder of
Conradh na
Gaeilge (The Gaelic League), Douglas Hyde, was inaugurated as
the first
President of Ireland.
The record
of his delivering his auguration Declaration of Office in
Roscommon
Irish
remains almost the only surviving remnant of anyone
speaking in that dialect.
The
National University of Ireland,
Galway
is required to appoint people who are 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 University College Galway Act, 1929 (Section 3). It is
expected that the requirement may be repealed in due course.
Even though modern parliamentary legislation is supposed to be
issued in both Irish and English, in practice it is frequently only
available in English. This is notwithstanding that Article 25.4 of
the Constitution of Ireland requires that an "official translation"
of any law in one official language be provided immediately in the
other official language—if not already passed in both official
languages.
In Northern Ireland
Prior to the establishment of the Northern Ireland state in 1921,
Irish was recognised as a school subject and as "Celtic" in some
third level institutions. Between 1921 and 1972, Northern Ireland
had a measure of devolved government. During those years the
political party holding power in the
Stormont Parliament, the
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP),
was hostile to the language. In broadcasting, there was an
exclusion on the reporting of minority cultural issues, and Irish
was excluded from radio and television for almost the first fifty
years of the Northern Ireland state. The language received a degree
of
formal recognition
in Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, under the 1998
Good Friday Agreement, and then,
in 2001, by the Government's ratification in respect of the
language of the
European
Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The British
government promised to create legislation encouraging the language
as part of the 2006
St Andrews
Agreement.
In the European Union
Irish became an official language of the EU on 1 January 2007
meaning that MEP's with Irish fluency can now speak the language in
the EU Parliament in Europe and at committees although in the case
of the latter they have to give prior notice to a simultaneous
interpreter in order to ensure that what they say can be
interpreted into other languages. While an official
language of the European
Union, only co-decision regulations must be available in Irish
for the moment, due to a renewable five-year derogation on what has
to be translated, requested by the Irish Government when
negotiating the language's new official status. Any expansion in
the range of documents to be translated will depend on the results
of the first five-year review and on whether the Irish authorities
decide to seek an extension. The Irish government has committed
itself to train the necessary number of translators and
interpreters and to bear the related costs.
Before Irish became an official language it was afforded the status
of treaty language and only the highest-level documents of the EU
had been made available in Irish.
Gaeltacht
There are parts of Ireland where Irish is still spoken as a
traditional,
native language used
daily. These regions are known collectively as
Gaeltachts, or in the plural Irish
Gaeltachtaí. While the Gaeltacht's fluent Irish speakers,
whose numbers have been estimated by scholar Donncha Ó hÉallaithe
at twenty or thirty thousand, are a minority of total Irish
speakers, they represent a higher concentration of Irish speakers
than other parts of the country and it is only in Gaeltacht areas
(in especial the more strongly Irish-speaking ones) that Irish
continues to be a natural vernacular of the general
population.
There are Gaeltacht regions in:
Smaller ones also exist in:
To summarise the extent of the survival: (See Hindley, 'The Death
of the Irish Language')Irish remains as a natural vernacular in the
following areas: south Connemara, from a point west of Spiddal,
covering Inverin, Carraroe, Rosmuck, and the islands; the Aran
Islands; northwest Donegal in the area around Gweedore, including
Rannafast, Gortahork, the surrounding townlands and Tory Island; in
the townland of Rathcarn, Co. Meath.
Gweedore
( ),County Donegal is the largest Gaeltacht parish
in Ireland.
The numerically and socially strongest Gaeltacht areas are those of
South Connemara, the west of the Dingle Peninsula and northwest
Donegal, in which the majority of residents use Irish as their
primary language. These areas are often referred to as the ("true
Gaeltacht") and collectively have a population just under
20,000.
"Caution Children"
Irish summer colleges are attended by tens of thousands of Irish
teenagers annually. Students live with Gaeltacht families, attend
classes, participate in sports, go to
céilithe and are obliged to speak Irish.
All aspects of Irish culture and tradition are encouraged.
According to data compiled by the Irish Department of Community,
Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, only one quarter of households in
officially Gaeltacht areas possess a fluency in Irish. The author
of a detailed analysis of the survey, Donncha Ó hÉallaithe of the
Galway-Mayo
Institute of Technology, described the Irish language policy
followed by Irish governments a "complete and absolute disaster".
The Irish Times, referring
to his analysis 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."
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 ( ).
Records of some dialects of
Leinster were
made by the
Irish Folklore
Commission among other bodies prior to their extinction.
Newfoundland
, in eastern Canada, is also seen to have a minor
dialect of Irish, closely resembling the Munster Irish spoken
during the 16th to 17th centuries (see Newfoundland Irish).
Munster dialects
Munster
Irish is mainly spoken in the Gaeltacht areas of Kerry ( ),
Ring
( ) near Dungarvan
( ) in County Waterford
( ) and Muskerry ( ) and Cape Clear
Island
( ) in the western part of County Cork
( ). The most important subdivision in
Munster is that between Decies Irish (
Na Déise) (spoken in
Waterford) and the rest of Munster Irish.
Some typical features of Munster Irish are:
- The use of endings to show person on verbs in parallel with a
pronominal subject system, thus "I must" is in Munster as well as ,
while other dialects prefer ( means "I"). "I was and you were" is
as well as in Munster, but more commonly in other dialects. Note
that these are strong tendencies, and the personal forms
Bhíos etc. are used in the West and North, particularly
when the words are last in the clause.
- Use of independent/dependent forms
of verbs that are not included in the Standard. For example, "I
see" in Munster is , which is the independent form – Northern Irish
also uses a similar form, tchím), whereas "I do not see"
is , feicim being the dependent form, which is used after
particles such as ní "not"). Chím is replaced by
feicim in the Standard. Similarly, the traditional form
preserved in Munster I give/ is / in the Standard; I get/ is /
.
- When before -nn, -m, -rr, -rd, -ll and so on, in monosyllabic
words and in the stressed syllable of multisyllabic words where the
syllable is followed by a consonant, some short vowels are
lengthened while others are diphthongised,
thus ceann [kʲaun] "head", cam [kɑum] "crooked",
gearr [gʲa:r] "short", ord [o:rd] "sledgehammer",
gall [gɑul] "foreigner, non-Gael", iontas
[u:ntəs] "a wonder, a marvel", compánach [kəum'pɑ:nəx]
"companion, mate", etc.
- A copula construction
involving "it" is frequently used. Thus "I am an Irish person" can
be said is Éireannach mé and Éireannach is ea mé
in Munster; there is a subtle difference in meaning, however, the
first choice being a simple statement of fact, while the second
brings emphasis onto the word Éireannach. In effect the
construction is a type of "fronting".
- Both masculine and feminine words are subject to lenition after
insan (sa/san) 'in the', den
'of the' and don 'to/for the' : sa tsiopa, "in
the shop", compared to the Standard sa siopa (the Standard
lenites only feminine nouns in the dative in these cases).
- Eclipsis of f after sa: sa bhfeirm, "in the
farm", instead of san fheirm.
- Eclipsis of t and d after the preposition+singular article with
all prepositions except after insan, den and
don: ar an dtigh "on the house", ag an
ndoras "at the door".
- Stress falls in general
found on the second syllable of a word when the first syllable
contains a sort vowel, and the second syllable contains a long
vowel, diphthong, or is -(e)ach, e.g. ("pin"), as opposed
to in Connacht and Ulster.
Connacht dialects
The
strongest dialect of Connacht Irish is to be found in Connemara and the Aran Islands
. Much closer to the larger Connacht
Gaeltacht is the dialect spoken in the smaller region on the border
between Galway ( ) and Mayo ( ).
The northern Mayo dialect of Erris ( )
and Achill
( ) is in
grammar and morphology
essentially a Connacht dialect, but shows some similarities to
Ulster Irish due to large-scale immigration of dispossessed people
following the Plantation of
Ulster.
There are features in Connemara Irish outside the official
standard—notably the preference for verbal nouns ending in , e.g.
instead of , "weakening". The non-standard pronunciation of the
Cois Fharraige area with lengthened vowels and heavily reduced
endings gives it a distinct sound. Distinguishing features of
Connacht and Ulster dialect include the pronunciation of word final
broad
bh and
mh as , rather than as in Munster.
For example ("mountain") 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 use the standard
compound form used in Munster e.g. is used for "we were" instead of
.
Like in Munster Irish, when before -nn, -m, -rr, -rd, -ll and so
on, in monosyllabic words and in the stressed syllable of
multisyllabic words where the syllable is followed by a consonant,
some short vowels are lengthened while others are diphthongised,
thus ceann [kʲaun] "head", cam [kɑum] "crooked", gearr [gʲɑ:r]
"short", ord [ourd] "sledgehammer", gall [gɑul] "foreigner,
non-Gael", iontas [i:ntəs] "a wonder, a marvel", etc.
The present-day Irish of Meath (in Leinster) is a special case. It
belongs mainly to the Connemara dialect. The Irish-speaking
community in Meath is mostly a group of Connemara speakers who
moved there in the 1930s after a land reform campaign spearheaded
by
Máirtín Ó
Cadhain (who subsequently became one of the greatest modernist
writers in the language).
Irish
President Douglas Hyde was one of the
last of speakers of the Roscommon
dialect of Irish.
Ulster dialects
Linguistically 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 ( = Inlet of Streaming Water), and used by native
singers Enya ( ) and Máire Brennan and their siblings in
Clannad ( = Family from the Dobhar[a section
of Gweedore]) Na Casaidigh, and
Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh
from another local band Altan.
Ulster Irish sounds very different and shares several 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. For instance, Northern
Scottish Gaelic has many non-Ulster features in common with Munster
Irish.
One noticeable trait of Ulster Irish and Scots Gaelic is the use of
the negative particle in place of the Munster and Connacht .
Southern Ulster irish retains most strongly, while
cha(n)
has ousted
ní in northernmost dialects (e.g.
Rosguill
and Tory
Island
), though even in these areas "is not" is more
common than chan fhuil or cha
bhfuil.
An Caighdeán Oifigiúil
An Caighdeán Oifigiúil ("The Official Standard"), often
shortened to
An Caighdeán, is the
standard language, which is taught in most
schools in Ireland, though with strong influences from local
dialects.
Its development had two purposes. One was to simplify Irish
spelling, which had retained its Classical spelling, by removing
many silent letters, and to give a standard written form that was
"dialect free". Though many aspects of the Caighdeán are
essentially those of Connacht Irish, this was simply because this
is the central dialect which forms a "bridge", as it were, between
the North and South. In reality, dialect speakers pronounce words
as in their own dialect, as the spelling simply reflects the
pronunciation of Classical Irish. For example, "head" in early
modern Irish was pronounced . The spelling has been retained, but
the word is variously pronounced in the South, in Connacht, and in
the North. "small" was in early modern Irish, and is now in
Waterford Irish, in Cork-Kerry Irish, varies between and in the
West, and is in the North.
The simplification, however, in some cases probably went too far in
simplifying the standard with only reference to the West. For
example, the early modern Irish "bed" is pronounced as well as in
Waterford Irish, in Cork-Kerry Irish, in Connacht Irish ( in Cois
Fharraige Irish), and in the North. Native speakers from the North
and South consider that
leabaidh should be the
representation in the Caighdeán rather than actual .
On the other hand, the Caighdeán arguably did not go far enough in
many cases. For example, it has retained the Classical Irish
spelling of "on, for, etc." and "at, by, of, etc.". The first is
pronounced throughout the Goidelic-speaking world (and is written
in Manx, and in Scottish Gaelic), and should be written either or
or in Irish. The second is pronounced in the South, and in the
North and West. Again, Manx and Scottish Gaelic reflect this
pronunciation much more clearly than Irish does (Manx , Scottish
).
In many cases, however, the Caighdeán can only refer to the
Classical language, in that every dialect is different, as happens
in the personal forms of "at, by, of, etc."
- Munster : agùm, agùt, igè,
icì, agùing/aguìng (West Cork/Kerry
agùin/aguìn), agùibh/aguìbh,
acù
- Connacht : am (agam), ad
(agad), aige [egɨ], aici [ekɨ],
ainn, aguí, acab
- Ulster : aigheam, aighead, aige
[egɨ], aicí [eki], aighinn, aighif,
acú
- Caighdeán :
Another purpose was to create a grammatically "simplified" standard
which would make the language easier to learn for the majority
English speaking school population. In part this is why the
Caighdeán is not universally respected by native speakers, in that
it makes simplified language an ideal, rather than the ideal that
native speakers traditionally had of their dialects (or of the
Classical dialect if they had knowledge of that). Of course, this
was not the original aim of the developers, who rather saw the
"school-version" Caighdeán as a means of easing second-language
learners into the task of learning "full" Irish. The Caighdeán verb
system is a prime example, with the reduction in irregular verb
forms and personal forms of the verb – except for the first
persons. However, once the word "standard" becomes used, the forms
represented as "standard" take on a power of their own, and
therefore the ultimate goal has become forgotten in many
circles.
The Caighdeán is in general spoken by non-native speakers, and as
many of such influential speakers are from the capital (and are
more often than not politicians), it is sometimes also called
"Dublin Irish". As it is taught in Irish-Language schools (where
Irish is the main, or sometimes only, medium of instruction), it is
also sometimes called "
Gaelscoil Irish".
It is also the basis of the so-called "Belfast Irish", which is the
Caighdeán heavily influenced by Ulster Irish.
Comparisons
The differences between dialects are considerable, and have led to
recurrent difficulties in defining standard Irish. A good example
is the greeting "How are you?". Just as this greeting varies from
region to region, and between social classes, among English
speakers, this greeting varies among Irish speakers:
- Ulster: ("What is it as you are?" Note: or and sometimes are
alternative renderings of )
- Connacht: ("What way [is it] that you are?")
- Munster: or ("How are you?" - conas was originally
cia nós "what custom/way")
- "Standard" Irish: ("How are you?")
In recent decades contacts between speakers of different dialects
have become more frequent and the differences between the dialects
are less noticeable.
Linguistic structure
The features most unfamiliar to English speakers of the language
are the
orthography, the
initial consonant mutation, the
Verb Subject Object word order,
and the use of two different forms for "to be". None of these
features are peculiar to Irish, however. All of them occur in other
Celtic languages as well as in non-Celtic languages:
morphosyntactically triggered initial
consonant mutations are found in
Fula, VSO word order is found in
Classical Arabic and
Biblical Hebrew, and
Portuguese,
Spanish, and
Italian have two different forms for "to
be".
Syntax
Word order in Irish is of the form VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) so
that, for example, "He hit me" is [hit-past tense] [he] [me].
One aspect of Irish syntax that is unfamiliar to speakers of other
languages is the use of the
copula (known in Irish as ). The copula
is used to describe the permanent identity or characteristic of a
person or thing (e.g. "who" or "what"), as opposed to temporary
aspects such as "how", "where", "why" and so on. This has been
likened to the difference between the verbs and in
Spanish and
Portuguese (see
Romance copula), although this is not an
exact match.
Examples are:
- "He is a man." (Spanish , Portuguese )
- "He is a cold(hearted) person." (Spanish , Portuguese )
- "He/Thomas is cold" (= feels cold). (Spanish – in this case
Spanish says "has", Portuguese )
- "He/Thomas is asleep." (Spanish and Portuguese )
- "He is good (a good person)." (Spanish , Portuguese )
- "He is well." (Spanish , Portuguese )
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 , which in the first person singular becomes "at me". When used
with the verb ("to be") indicates possession; this is the
equivalent of the English verb "to have".
- "I have a book." (Literally, "there is a book at me.")
- "You have a book."
- "He has a book."
- "She has a book."
- "We have a book."
- "You (plural) have a book."
- "They have a book."
Orthography and pronunciation
The alphabet which modern Irish typically uses is the similar to
English without the letters j,k,q,v,w,x,y,z, however some
anglicised words with no unique Irish meaning like 'Jeep' are
written as 'Jíp'. Some words take a letter(s) not traditionally
used and replace it with the closest phonetic sound, e.g.
'phone'>'Fón'. The written language looks rather daunting to
those unfamiliar with it. Once understood, the orthography is
relatively straightforward. The
acute
accent, or (´), serves to lengthen the sound of the vowels and
in some cases also changes their quality. For example, in Munster
Irish (Kerry),
a is or and
á is in "law" but in
Ulster Irish (Donegal),
á tends to be .
Around the time of World War II, Séamas Daltún, in charge of (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 . 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:
- → , "Irish language" ( or is still used in books written in
dialect by Munster authors, or as a facetious name for the Munster
dialect)
- → , "Louth"
- → , "food"
The standard spelling does not always reflect every dialect's
pronunciation. For example, in standard Irish,
bia,
"food", has the genitive
bia. But in Munster Irish, the
genitive is pronounced . For this reason, the spelling is still
used by the speakers of some dialects, in particular those that
show a meaningful and audible difference between (nominative case)
and (genitive case) "of food, food's". In Munster, the latter
spelling regularly produces the pronunciation because final
-idh, -igh regularly delenites to
-ig in Munster
pronunciation. Another example would be the word
crua,
meaning "hard". This pronounced in Munster, in line with the
pre-Caighdeán spelling,
cruaidh. In Munster,
ao
is pronounced and
aoi pronounced , but the new spellings
of
saoghal, "life, world", genitive:
saoghail,
have become
saol, genitive
saoil. This produces
irregularities in the matchup between the spelling and
pronunciation in Munster, because the word is pronounced , genitive
.
Modern Irish has only one
diacritic sign,
the acute (
á é í ó ú), known in Irish as the "long mark",
plural . In English, this is frequently referred to as simply the ,
where the adjective is used as a noun. The
dot-above diacritic, called a or (often
shortened to ), derives from the
punctum delens 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
to ) and
f (from 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 or by a postposed
h.
Eventually, use of the predominated when texts were writing using
Gaelic letters, while the
h predominated when writing
using Roman letters.
Today the
Gaelic script and the 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 are available in
Unicode and
Latin-8 character
sets (see Latin Extended Additional chart).
Mutations
In Irish, there are two classes of initial
consonant mutations:
- Lenition (in Irish, "softening")
describes the change of stops into fricatives. Indicated in old
orthography by a written above the changed consonant, this is now
shown in writing by adding an -h:
- "throw!" — "I threw" (this is an example of the lenition as a
past-tense marker, which is caused by the use of , although it is
now usually omitted)
- "market", "market-place", "bargain" — "the man of the street"
(word for word "Tadhg of the market-place"; here we see the
lenition marking the genitive case of a masculine noun)
- "Seán, John" — "O John!" (here we see lenition as part of what
is called the vocative case — in fact, the vocative lenition is
triggered by the or vocative marker before )
- Eclipsis (in Irish, ) covers the voicing of voiceless stops, as
well as the nasalisation of voiced
stops.
- "father" — "our Father"
- "start", "at the start"
- "Galway" — "in Galway"
History
Written Irish is first attested in
Ogham
inscriptions from the fourth century AD; this stage of the language
is known as
Primitive Irish.
Old Irish, dating from the sixth century,
used the
Latin alphabet and is
attested primarily in
marginalia to Latin
manuscripts.
Middle Irish, dating from
the tenth century, is the language of a large corpus of literature,
including the famous
Ulster Cycle.
Early Modern Irish, dating from the thirteenth century, was the
literary language of both Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland, and
is attested by such writers as
Geoffrey
Keating.
From the eighteenth century the language went into a decline,
rapidly losing ground to English due in part to restrictions
dictated by British rule - a conspicuous example of the process
known by linguists as
language shift.
In the mid-nineteenth century it lost a large portion of its
speakers to death and emigration resulting from poverty,
particularly in the wake of the
Great Famine (1845–1849).
At the end of the nineteenth century, members of the
Gaelic Revival movement made efforts to
encourage the learning and use of Irish in Ireland.
Current Status
Republic of Ireland
The number of native Irish-speakers in the Republic of Ireland
today is a smaller fraction of the population than it was at
independence. Many Irish speaking families encouraged their
children to speak English as it was the language of education and
employment; the Irish-speaking areas today were always relatively
poor and remote, and this remoteness caused the survival of the
language as a vernacular. 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
(see related issues at
Irish
diaspora) and inward migration of English-speakers. The
Planning and Development Act (2000) attempted to address the latter
issue, with varied levels of success. 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 is intended to prevent new houses allocated to
Irish-speakers being immediately sold on to English-speakers.
However, the restriction only lasts for a few years. Also, people
are not required to reach native speaker standards of fluency to
qualify as Irish-speakers.
On 19 December 2006 the government announced a 20-year strategy to
help Ireland become a fully
bilingual
country. This involved a 13 point plan and encouraging the use of
language in all aspects of life.
Percentage of Irish-Speakers by County
This is a
List of Irish
counties by the percentage of those professing some
ability in the Irish language in
Ireland in the
2006 Irish census. The
census did not record Irish speakers living outside of (the
Republic of) Ireland.
The census produced
[721875] a detailed breakdown of abilities as:
- Irish spoken inside or outside the education
- Native speakers in the Gaeltacht areas.
Daily life
Several computer software products have the option of an
Irish-language interface. Prominent examples include
KDE,
Mozilla
Firefox,
Mozilla
Thunderbird,
OpenOffice.org,and
Microsoft
Windows XP.
Many English-speaking Irish people use small and simple phrases
(known as
cúpla focal, "a
few words") in their everyday speech, e.g. ("goodbye"), ("get home
safely"), ("good health"; used when drinking like "bottoms up" or
"cheers"), ("thank you"), ("a hundred thousand welcomes", a tourist
board saying, also used by
President
Hillery to welcome
Pope John Paul
II to Ireland in 1979) and ("How are you?"). There are many
more small sayings that have crept into
Hiberno-English. The term
craic has been popularised outside
Ireland in this Gaelicized spelling: "How's the
craic?" or
"What's the craic'?" ("how's the fun?"/"how is it going?"), though
the word is not Irish in origin, and the expression "How's the
crack?" was widely used in Ireland since at least the 1960s before
the Irish-language spelling "craic" became the common journalistic
style.
Many public bodies have Irish language or bilingual names, but some
have downgraded the language.
An Post, the
Republic's postal service, displays Irish place names in both Irish
and English with equal prominence outside its offices and continues
to have
place names in Irish on
its postmarks as well as recognising addresses.
Royal Mail also recognises Irish language place
names in Northern Ireland. 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. Woodies DIY now also have bilingual
signs in their chain of stores. In contrast, the "100% Irish"
SuperValu has few if any Irish
signs, and the German retailers
Aldi and
Lidl have none at all.
In an effort to increase the use of the Irish language by the
State, the
Official
Languages Act was passed in 2003. This act ensures that most
publications 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 for both
languages.
A major factor in the decline of natively-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 returned with English-speaking partners. 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". 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.
Thanks in large part to Gael-Taca and Gaillimh Le Gaeilge and two
local groups a significant number of new residential developments
are named in Irish today in most of the Republic of Ireland. In
several counties there are a large number being named in
Irish.
In 2007 Irish television channel
TG4 aired
No Béarla, a series of programmes in
which the writer
Manchán Magan
travels around Ireland trying to speak only Irish, and encountering
mostly complete incomprehension as he does so.
Media
Support for the language has been made through the media, notably
with the launch of
RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta
(Gaeltacht radio) and
Teilifís
na Gaeilge (Irish language television, initially abbreviated to
'TnaG', now renamed
TG4) and Raidió na Life in
Dublin, and Raidió Fáilte in Belfast 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(with 160,000 viewers per
week) and comedy-drama
Rásaí na Gaillimhe with 223,000
viewers tuning in on its opening night. In 2007 TG4 reported that
overall it "has a share of 3%(800,000 daily viewers) of the
national television market". This market share is up from about
1.5% in the late 1990s. TG4 delivers 16 hours a day of television
from an annual budget of €35 million, which is widely judged to be
relatively efficient. The budget has the full support of all
political parties in parliament. TG4 is the most successful and
high-profile government initiative for the Irish language for the
past fifty years.
The Irish language daily newspaper
Lá
Nua published five days a week and had circulation of
several thousand, until it ceased publication in December 2008.
There is also a weekly paper,
Foinse
published as a supplement with the Irish Independent with a
circulation of 152,000 as of 18 November 2009. From 2010 on,
another weekly newspaper called
Gaelscéal will begin publication in
cooperation with the Connacht Tribune and EO Teilifís. These
require government sponsorship. The
Irish
News has two pages in Irish every day. The
Irish Times had up until recently one
article in Irish every week. Now it has several articles with some
articles appended with short lists giving the meaning of some of
the words used in English. Another paper,
Saol, and about 5 magazines are also published in
the language, as well as internet-only publications such as "Beo!".
The immigrants magazine
Metro
Éireann also has articles in Irish every issue, as do many
local papers throughout the country including university
publications. The
BBC offers a website for
beginners called
Blas ("a taste").
There are community radio stations broadcast in Irish in Dublin and
Belfast.
Raidió Na Life is based
in Dublin and broadcast in Dublin and to parts of some surrounding
counties and
Raidió Fáilte
is based and broadcast in Belfast. Raidió Fáilte has applied for a
license to broadcast throughout Northern Ireland. Community radio
stations in Ireland try to have at least one Irish language
programme per week depending on their number of
employees/volunteers who speak it. The community radio station for
North-East Dublin Near90fm's "Ar Muin na Muice" programme is
broadcast five days a week and occasionally one of their current
affairs programmes "Between The Lines" is also broadcast in
Irish.
Placenames
Information sign in Irish and
English.
The
Placenames
Order / (2004) 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
the Gaeltacht in English.
Opposition to these measures comes from
several quarters including some people within popular tourist
destinations located within the Gaeltacht (namely in Dingle
) who claim
that tourists may not recognise the Irish forms of the
placenames.
However following a campaign in the 1960s and early 1970s, most
roadsigns in Gaeltacht regions have been in Irish only. Maps and
government documents did not change, though. Previously Ordnance
Survey (government) maps showed placenames bilingually in the
Gaeltacht (and generally in English only elsewhere). Unfortunately,
most other map companies wrote only the English placenames, leading
to significant confusion in the Gaeltacht. The act therefore
updates government documents 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 (pre 2004). However,
further placenames orders have been passed to enable both the
English and the Irish placenames to be used.
The village of
Straffan
is still marked variously as and , even though
Irish has not been the spoken widely there for two
centuries. In the 1830s John O'Donovan listed it as
"Srufáin" The nearby village of Kilteel
was "Cill tSile" for centuries, meaning "The church
of Saint Síle", but since 2000 it is shown as "Cill Cheile" which
does not carry the same meaning. There are numerous other
examples.
Irish vehicle
registration plates are bilingual: the county of registration
is shown in Irish above the plate number as a kind of
surtitle, and is encoded from English within the
plate number. For example, a Dublin plate is surtitled
Baile
Átha Cliath and the plate number includes
D.
Conradh na Gaeilge has expressed
concern over the proposed introduction of
postcodes, which, similarly, may use abbreviations
based on
English language place
names, although people sending mail would still be able to use
addresses in
Irish. It has advocated that postcodes should either consist solely
of numbers, as in many other bilingual countries, or be based on
Irish language names
instead.
Religious texts
The Bible has been available in Irish
since the 17th century, and the four
Gospels
had been translated several times.
In 1964 the Bible was translated at
Maynooth
for Roman Catholics
for the first time under the supervision of Professor Pádraig Ó
Fiannachta and was finally published in 1981. The
Church of Ireland Book of Common Prayer of 2004 is
published in both Irish and English.
Education
The Irish language is a compulsory subject in government funded
schools in the Republic of Ireland and has been so since the early
days of the state. It is taught as a second language (L2) at second
level, to native (L1) speakers and learners (L2) alike. English is
offered as a first (L1) language only, even to those who speak it
as a second language.
The curriculum was reorganised in the 1930s
by Father Timothy Corcoran SJ of UCD, who could not speak the language himself.
The Irish Government has endeavoured to address the unpopularity of
the language by revamping the curriculum at primary school level to
focus on spoken Irish. However, at secondary school level, students
must analyse literature and poetry, and write lengthy essays,
debates and stories in Irish for the (L2)
Leaving Certificate examination. The
exemption from learning Irish on the grounds of time spent abroad,
or learning disability, is subject to Circular 12/96 (primary
education) and Circular M10/94 (secondary education) issued by the
Department
of Education and Science.
In March 2007, the Minister for Education,
Mary Hanafin, announced that more focus would
be devoted to the spoken language, and that from 2012, the
percentage of marks available in the Leaving Certificate Irish exam
would increase from 25% to 40% for the oral component. This
increased emphasis on the oral component of the Irish examinations
is likely to change the way Irish is examined.
Recently the abolition of compulsory Irish has been discussed. In
2005
Enda Kenny, leader of Ireland's main
opposition party,
Fine Gael, called for
the language to be made an optional subject in the last two years
of secondary school. Mr Kenny, despite being a fluent speaker
himself (and a teacher), stated that he believed that compulsory
Irish has done the language more harm than good. All Bank of
Ireland ATMs have an Irish interface option and can issue Irish
language cheque books while Permanent TSB can issue both Irish
language cards and cheque books.
Companies using Irish
Tesco Ireland and
Superquinn have in-store Irish signage. Several
companies (mostly current and ex-semistate bodies) publish their
yearly reports in both Irish and English. These include
Eircom,
An Post and the
ESB. Other companies have
Irish language options on their websites. Examples of these include
Bord Gáis,
Meteor, and
An
Post. People corresponding with bodies like the Revenue and the
ESB can also send and
receive correspondence in Irish or English. Some Irish banks
provide cheque books and ATM cards in both languages, and others -
notably Bank of Ireland - have introduced an Irish language
interface option on their ATM machines.
Gaelscoileanna
A relatively recent development is the proliferation of
gaelscoileanna (schools) in which
Irish is the medium of education. By September 2005 there were 168
gaelscoileanna at primary level and 43 at secondary level in the
Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland together (excluding the
Gaeltacht, whose schools are not considered gaelscoileanna). This
represents a significant increase from the less than 20 such
schools in operation in the early 1970s. These schools cover
approximately 31,000 students.
With the opening of Gaelscoil Liatroma in
County
Leitrim
in 2005 there is now at least one gaelscoil in each
of the 32 traditional counties of Ireland. In Gaeltacht
areas, the medium of education has been traditionally through
Irish, ever since the foundation of the State. The majority of
Gaeltacht students tend to be L1 Irish Gaelic speakers, but even in
the Gaeltacht areas the language is taught as an L2 language whilst
English is taught as an L1 language. Professor David Little has
commented:
- "..the needs of Irish as L1 at post-primary level have been
totally ignored, as at present there is no recognition in terms of
curriculum and syllabus of any linguistic difference between
learners of Irish as L1 and L2."
The Irish Equality Authority recently questioned the official State
practice of awarding 5-10% extra marks to students who take some of
their examinations through Irish.
The
Royal Irish Academy's 2006
conference on "Language Policy and Language Planning in Ireland"
found that the study of Irish and other languages is declining in
Ireland. The number of schoolchildren studying "higher level" Irish
for the
Leaving Certificate
dropped from 15,719 in 2001 to 14,358 in 2005. To reverse this
decline, it was recommended that training and living for a time in
a Gaeltacht area should be "compulsory" for teachers of
Irish.
Although the Gaeltacht is defined as an entirely Irish-language
speaking area, the Irish government also pays families living in
the Gaeltacht areas with school-age children to speak Irish. These
are inspected and graded according to ability. In the 2006-07
school year, 2,216 families received the full grant of €260 p.a.,
937 families received a reduced grant and 225 families did not meet
the criteria. This payment scheme is called
Scéim Labhairt na
Gaeilge, the first example in Europe where citizens are paid
to speak their first official language.
Irish colleges
There are 46 summer colleges in the country with approximately
26,000 students attending them each year. Supplementing the formal
curriculum, and after the end of the primary (usually from 4th
class onwards) and secondary school years, some pupils attend an
"Irish college". These programmes are residential Irish language
summer courses, and give students the opportunity to be immersed in
the language, usually for periods of three weeks over the summer
months. Some courses are college based while others are based with
host families in
Gaeltacht areas under the
guidance of a
bean an tí.
Students attend classes, participate in sports, art, drama, music,
go to
céilithe and other
summer camp activities through the
medium of Irish. As with the conventional school set-up The
Department of Education establishes the boundaries for class size
and qualifications required by teachers.
Northern Ireland
As in the Republic, the Irish language is a
minority language in Northern Ireland,
known in Irish as .
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 Roman Catholic-majority Republic, and more
recently, with the
Republican
movement in Northern Ireland itself. Erection of public street
signs in Irish were effectively banned under laws by the
Parliament of Northern
Ireland, which stated that only English could be used. Many
republicans in Northern Ireland, including
Sinn Féin President
Gerry Adams, learned 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 the controlled sector,
which is mostly attended by Protestant pupils.
Irish-medium schools,
however, known as gaelscoileanna,
were founded in Belfast
and Derry
, and an
Irish-language newspaper called Lá
Nua ("New 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
established with a view to broadening the appeal of the language
among Protestants, although
DUP politicians like
Sammy Wilson ridiculed it as a "
leprechaun language".
Ulster-Scots, promoted by many
loyalists, was, in turn, ridiculed
by nationalists (and even some
Unionists) 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 (The
North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland
Order 1999) 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 .
In 2001, the British government ratified the
European
Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect to Irish
in Northern Ireland.
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 an agreement between the
Department of Foreign
Affairs and the
Northern
Ireland Office, although so far this is the only transmitter to
carry it.
Belfast City
Council
has designated the Falls Road area (from
Milltown Cemetery to Divis Street) as the Gaeltacht Quarter of
Belfast, one of the four cultural quarters of the city.
There is a growing number of Irish-medium schools throughout
Northern Ireland (see picture above).
Under the
St Andrews Agreement,
the UK Government committed to introduce an Irish Language Act.
Although a consultation document on the matter was published in
2007, the restoration of devolved government by the
Northern Ireland Assembly later
that year meant that responsibility for language transferred from
London to Belfast. In October 2007, the then
Minister of Culture,
Arts and Leisure,
Edwin Poots MLA
announced to the Assembly that he did not intend to bring forward
an Irish language Bill.
Outside Ireland
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. In Australia, a network
of people have established special Irish schools around the country
teaching the language and music.
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 Census, approximately
26,000 people in the U.S. speak Irish at home.
The Irish language came to Newfoundland in the late 1600s and was
commonly spoken among the
Newfoundland Irish until the middle of
the 20th century. Today it remains the only place outside of Europe
that can claim a unique Irish name (
Talamh an Éisc,
meaning Land of the Fish).
In 2007 a number of Canadian speakers
founded the first officially designated "Gaeltacht" outside of
Ireland in an area near Kingston, Ontario
(see main article Permanent North American
Gaeltacht). Despite being called a Gaeltacht, the area
has no permanent inhabitants.
The site (named Gaeltacht Bhaile na
hÉireann) is located in Tamworth, Ontario
, and is to be a retreat centre for Irish-speaking
Canadians and Americans.
The Irish language reached Australia in 1788, along with English.
In the early colonial period, Irish was seen as an opposition
language used by convicts and repressed by the colonial
authorities. Although the Irish were a greater proportion of the
European population than in any other British colony, the use of
the language quickly declined. As legal barriers to the integration
of the Irish and their descendants into Australian life were
progressively removed, English became the language of social
advancement. The 2001 census revealed that there are 828 speakers
of the language in the country. The Department of Celtic Studies at
the
University of Sydney offers
courses in both
Modern Irish
linguistics as well as
Old Irish.
In May
2007, the University of Cambridge
in Great Britain started offering courses in
Modern Irish in addition to Medieval
Irish.
Many Australian
slang words are Irish-derived
and there are arguments that
Australian English is more influenced by
Irish than other varieties of English. There is a small movement to
re-establish the language in contemporary Australia. The
Special Broadcasting Service
transmits Irish language radio and television.
See also
Notes
- Government of Ireland, . Retrieved on 21 January 2008
- CSO Ireland - April 2008 Population
Estimates
- [1]
- Welcome to Ocean fm
- Ireland speaks up loudly for Gaelic, New York
Times, 29.3.05
- Door Raymond Hickey, 2002, A Source Book for Irish English,
John Benjamins Publishing Company: Netherlands
- Door Christopher Whyte, 2004, Modern Scottish Poetry, Edinburgh
University Press: Edinburgh
- NUI Entry Requirements - Ollscoil na hÉireann -
National University of Ireland
- Irish Statue Book, University College Galway Act, 1929. Retrieved on 13
October 2007.
- http://www.gppac.net/documents/pbp_f/part1/7_changi.htm
Changing History - Peace Building in Northern Ireland By Mari
Fitzduff
- Belfast Agreement - Full text - Section 6
(Equality) - "Economic, Social and Cultural issues"
- EU Directorate-General for Translation, Irish becomes the 21st official language of the
EU. Retrieved 11 September 2008.
- Unicode 5.0, . Retrieved on 13 October 2007.
- RTÉ News, 19 December 2006, Govt announces 20-year bilingual strategy. Retrieved
on 13 October 2007.
- Government of Ireland, . Retrieved on 13 October 2007.
- .
- Royal Mail reversal in Irish names row,
Irish
News, December 12, 1997
- The state has anglicised the Gaeltacht by encouraging the
immigration of English-speakers,
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/r.a.mccartney/baile_nua/migration.html
- The Irish Language in a Changing Society: Shaping The
Future, p. xxvi.
- Sunday Times article on Gael-Taca
- TG4 official website
- [2]
- Blas website URL
- Ordnance Survey Letters of County Kildare, co-authored by John
O'Donovan.
- IRISH POSTCODES SHOULD BE IRISH-BASED, SAYS CONRADH
NA GAEILGE, Conradh na Gaeilge, 11 November 2008
- An Bíobla Naofa (Maynooth 1981)
-
http://www.ncca.ie/uploadedfiles/Publications/Languagesdiscussionpaper.pdf
Language in the Post-Primary Curriculum, November 2003.
- Professor R. Comerford, Ireland (Hodder Books, London
2003) p145.
- Department of Education & Science, 11 March 2007, Minister Hanafin announces increase in marks for
Oral Irish to 40% in exams. Retrieved on 13 October 2007.
- Independent, 12 July 2007. Pupils lap up hi-tech learning of Irish.
Retrieved on 13 October 2007.
- Learnosity, National Council for Curriculum and Assessment:
Ireland. Retrieved on 13 October 2007.
- 2006 RIA language conference report
- Irish Independent, 20 November 2007, page 11
- Allen Feldman. Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the
Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland.U of Chicago P,
1991. Chapter 3.
- (internet archive copy as of 14 May 2005)
- MLA Language Map Data Center, Irish Gaelic. Retrieved on 22 July 2007
- Gaelport, Irish at home in Canada, 17 February 2007
- Gaelport, First Gaeltacht abroad planned for Canada, 23
January 2007
- Cumann Gaeilge na hAstráile. The Irish Language in Australia. Retrieved on 13
October 2007.
- "Languages Spoken At Home" from Australian
Governament Office of Multicultural Interests website.
Retrieved 27 December 2007
-
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/celticstudies/index.php?page=undergraduate_uos
- Transcript of Lingua Franca of 26 September 1998,
Why Learn Irish?. Retrieved on 13 October
2007.
External links
General
Grammar and pronunciation
Dictionaries
( ), including Connemara (
), the Aran
Islands
( ) and Spiddal
(
);
( ); in the part which is known as Tyrconnell ( );
( ) in County Kerry
( ).
by E. C. Quiggin, from 1906)
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