Irish language

Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge) is a Goidelic language spoken in Ireland. The language is sometimes known simply as 'Gaelic' but more often it is described as the Irish language or merely Irish in colloqual expression. (Gaelic can sometimes be confused with a variant of the language spoken in Scotland.)

Irish is a Celtic language (Goidelic branch) spoken in the Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann) and to a lesser degree in Northern Ireland (Tuaisceart na hÉireann) and by some of the Irish diaspora around the world. Irish, or Gaeilge, is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, though its use by the Irish state has declined dramatically in recent decades.

Irish has recently received a degree of formal recognition in Northern Ireland, under the Good Friday Agreement alongside a small minority language called Ulster Scots (though some critics have questioned whether Ulster Scots is a language or merely a dialect of Lowland Scots).

Gaeltachtaí

There are pockets of Ireland where Irish is in theory the major language. These regions are known as Gaeltachtaí (sing. Gaeltacht). The most well known of these are in Connemara in County Galway (Contae na Gaillimhe) and the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry (Contae Chiarraí). Others exist in Donegal (Contae Dhún na nGall) and Meath (Contae na Midhe, also spelled Contae na Mí).

Linguistic Structure

The written language looks, to those unfamiliar with it, like a lot of unusual consonantal combinations and vowels everywhere! Once understood, the orthography is relatively straightforward. The acute accent, or fada (´), serves to lengthen the sound of the vowels and in some cases also changes their quality. For example, in Munster Irish (Kerry), "a" is /uh/ or /ah/ and "á" is /aw/ in "law" but in Ulster Irish (Donegal), "á" tends to be /ah/ lengthened.

About the time of World War II, the Government of Ireland issued "Caighdeán Oifigiúil" which simplified and standardized the orthography. Many words had silent letters removed and vowel combination brought closer to the spoken language.

Examples:

Gaedhilge / Gaolainn => Gaeilge, "Irish language"
Lughbhaidh => Lú, "Louth"
biadh => bia, "food"

Irish Words used in the English Language

Irish words used in generally in modern Ireland among English speakers include:

Uachtarán na hÉireann (President of Ireland)
- [pronounced 'Ook-tar-on na Hair-inn. The gaelic version is rarely used much]
Áras an Uachtaráin (Presidential Palace)
- [pronounced 'Or-as on Ook-tar-on]
Taoiseach (Prime Minister since 1937) [pronounced 'tee-shock'
- (the 'och' as in 'loch Ness]
Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister since 1937)
- [pronounced 'Taw-nish-ta']
Dáil Éireann (House of Representatives)
- [pronounced 'Dawl Air-inn']
Seanad Éireann (Irish Senate)
- [pronounced 'Sch-an-ad Air-inn']
Teachta Dála (Member of Parliament; used as 'TD'.)
- [pronounced 'Chock-ta dawla']
Príomh-Aire (Prime Minister 1919-21)
- [pronounced 'Pree-ve Arra']
Éire (Gaelic name for the Irish state since 1937)
- [pronounced 'Air-a']
Saorstát Éireann (Irish Free State's name in Irish)
- [pronounced 'Aare-stawt Air-inn']
Ard-Rí ('The High King' (of Ireland), name of the Irish overlord king in medieval times)
- [pronounced 'Ord Ree']
Raidió Teilifís Éireann (Irish national television service, RTÉ)
- [pronounced 'Radd-eo Tell-if-ish Air-inn']
Fianna Fáil (The largest Irish political party, translation: 'Soldiers of Destiny'.)
- [pronounced 'Fee na Fall']
Fine Gael (The second largest party, translation 'Family of the Gael'.)
- [pronounced 'Fin-a Gale']

The Irish Language Movement

The Irish language was the most widely spoken language on the island of Ireland until the 19th century. A combination of the introduction of a primary education system (the 'National Schools'), in which Irish was prohibited and only English taught by order of the British Government in Ireland, and the Great Famine which hit a disportionately high number of Irish language speakers (who lived in the poorer areas heavily hit by famine deaths and emigration), hastened its rapid decline. Irish political leaders, such as Daniel O'Connell, too were critical of the language, seeing it as 'backward', with English the language of the future. Contemporary reports spoke of Irish-speaking parents actively discouraging their children from speaking the language, and encouraging the use of English instead.

Some, however, thought differently. Through the initial moves to save the language were championed by Irish unionists, the major push occurred with the foundation by Douglas Hyde, the son of a Church of Ireland rector, of the Gaelic League (known in Irish as 'Conradh na Gaeilge'). Leading supporters of Conradh included Pádraig Pearse and Eamon de Valera. The revival of interest in the language coincided with with other cultural revivals, such as the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the growth in the preformance 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 they wrote in English (and indeed some too disliked Irish) the Irish language impacted on them. The version of English spoken in Irish, known as Hiberno-English bears striking similarities in some grammatical idioms with Irish. In contrast to English as spoken in England, Hiberno-English offers a greater range of expression. 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 Durkan, Dermot Bolger and many others. (It may also in part explain the appeal in Britain of Irish-born broadcasters like Terry Wogan, Eamonn Andrews, Graham Norton, Desmond Lynam, etc.)

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

Independent Ireland & the Language

The independent Irish state from 1922 (The Irish Free State 1922-37; Éire from 1937, also known since 1949 as the Republic of Ireland) launched a major push to promote the Irish language, with some of its leaders hoping that the state would become predominantly Irish-speaking within a generation. In fact, many of these initiatives, notably compulsory Irish at school and the requirement that one must know Irish to be employed in the civil service, proved counter-productive with generations of school-children alienated by what was often heavily-handed attempts at indoctrination, that created a cultural backlash. Demands that children learn seventeenth century Irish poetry, or study the life of Peig Sayers (a Gaelic speaker from the Blasket Islands) whose accounts of her life, as recounted in Irish language books, through fascinating, was taught in a poor manner, left a cultural legacy of negative reactions among generations, all too many of whom deliberately refused to use the language once they left school. (In the 1990s, a television advertisement by the MacDonalds fast food chain on RTÉ (the Irish national TV station) made fun of Peig Sayers. Though widely condemned by Conradh na Gaeilge and by its leader, Labhrás Ó Murchú, in the Irish senate, it provoked hysterics among Irish TV viewers, most of whom had come to dislike Peig and her stories through their school experiences of studying them, and who 'got the joke'. It proved a marketing success, while also indicating the negative impression most people had got of the Irish language through their school experiences, and how out of touch Irish language enthusiasts had become from non-Irish speakers!)

The retirement from public life of the first generation of Irish leaders after independence marked a cultural shift in attitudes to Irish. Whereas the first three presidents of Ireland (Douglas Hyde, Sean T. O'Kelly and Eamon de Valera) and the fifth (Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh) were all so fluent in Irish that it became the working language in their official residence, later presidents struggled with any degree of fluency, its use declining to such an extent that it is only used now (if at all) in occasional speeches. Similarly, where earlier generations of Irish government leaders were highly fluent, recent prime ministers (Albert Reynolds, John Bruton, Bertie Ahern) had little fluency, they struggling to pronounce passages of their speeches in Irish to their Ard-Fheiseanna (party conference(s), pronounced 'Ord Deis-ana') .

Whereas earlier governments named Irish organisations using gaelic names, (eg, Bord Fáilte, pronounced 'Board Fawl-cha' meaning the Irish Tourist Board, which is expected soon to be replaced by a new body, called 'Tourism Ireland'), in recent years Gaelic names have rarely been used for new state organisations (eg, 'IDA Ireland'). Few speeches are delivered as Gaeilge (in Irish) in parliament anymore (and where they are, are usually confined to dealing with Gaeltacht affairs), with most members of Dáil Éireann unable to speak the language fluently. None of the recent taoisigh (plural of 'Taoiseach', meaning 'prime minister') has been fluent in Irish, nor have recent Irish presidents (though both Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese studied the language to improve their fluency while in office; though the President of Ireland does take her inauguration 'Declaration of Office' in Gaelic, but that too is optional.

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

On balance, the overly enthusiastic promotion of Irish by the political and cultural elite from the 1920s did more harm than good to the language's longterm prospects. Instead of winning over people to the concept that they could speak Irish, they attempted to follow a process of saying they must speak Irish. That created a backlash that made many people more determined than ever not to. The language went into long-term decline, with Gaeltacht areas (exclusively Irish speaking areas) shrinking as the results of each national census returns were analysed. Today, most people even in what are officially Gaeltacht areas, no longer speak the language. In a last ditch effort to stop the complete collapse of Irish-speaking in Connemara in Galway, new planning controls have been introduced to ensure that only Irish speakers will be given permission to build homes in Irish speaking areas. But even this may be too little, too late, as many of those areas have a majority of English-speakers, with most Irish speakers being bilingual, using English as their everyday language except among themselves.

Attempts have been made to offer some support for the language through the media, notably the launch of Raidió na Gaeltachta (Gaeltacht radio) and Teilifís na Gaeilge (Irish language television, called initially 'TnaG', now completely renamed TG4). Both have had limited success. While TG4 has offered Irish-speaking young people a forum for youth culture in gaelic (through rock and pop shows, travel shows, dating games as Gaeilge (in Irish), and even a controversial award-winning 'soap opera' in Irish called 'Ros na Rún' (featuring among others an Irish-speaking gay couple and their child!) most of TG4's viewership comes from showing European soccer matches and films in English.

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

The Irish Language Today

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

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