$Unique_ID{COW01838} $Pretitle{423} $Title{Ireland Culture and the Sciences} $Subtitle{} $Author{Embassy of Ireland, Washington DC} $Affiliation{Embassy of Ireland, Washington DC} $Subject{irish language english ireland century closed form old example gaeltacht} $Date{1990} $Log{Poster of St. Killian*0183801.scf } Country: Ireland Book: Facts About Ireland. 1990 Author: Embassy of Ireland, Washington DC Affiliation: Embassy of Ireland, Washington DC Date: 1990 Culture and the Sciences [See Poster of St. Killian: Courtesy Embassy of Ireland, Washington DC.] LANGUAGE The Irish Constitution states that the Irish language, as the national language, is the first official language. The Constitution recognises English as the second official language and English is the language of everyday usage for the vast majority of the population. History Irish is a Celtic language and, as such, a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Within the Celtic family it represents the Goidelic branch of insular Celtic, the other branch of which is Brittonic, or British, comprising Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Irish has evolved from the language introduced into Ireland during the great Celtic migrations of antiquity, possibly in the earliest period of Celtic expansion at the end of the second millenium BC, but hardly later than the last period of Celtic expansion in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. In any case, when Irish history first assumes a clear outline in the 6th century AD, Irish was the sole vernacular in Ireland and was being firmly established by Irish missionaries and settlers in Scotland and the Isle of Man. The language of that period, Old Irish, is the earliest variant of the Celtic languages, and indeed the earliest language north of the Alps, in which extensive writings are extant. The Norse settlements (800 onwards) and the Anglo-Norman colonization (1169 onwards) introduced periods of greater linguistic diversity into Ireland but Irish remained the dominant language, and other speech communities were gradually assimilated. By the early 16th century the population of Ireland was almost universally Irish-speaking. The exceptions were two rural Irish-English bilingual areas, one in the Fingal area north of Dublin and the other in south-east Co. Wexford, and the principal towns - Dublin, Waterford and Cork - which were also extensively Irish-speaking but retained English for the conduct of administrative and legal affairs. The events of the later 16th century and the 17th 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 old Irish-speaking ruling classes and destroying their cultural institutions. They were replaced by a new landowning and urban middle class introduced from England and southern Scotland who established a society in which English became the language of the upper classes and 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 18th century as the Penal Laws were relaxed, and a new social and economic mobility became possible, the more prosperous of the Irish-speaking community began to conform to the prevailing middle-class ethos and adopted English. Irish thus began to be associated with poverty and social disadvantage. This process accelerated after the Act of Union in 1801. Yet, because of the rapid growth of the rural population, the actual number of Irish speakers increased at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1835 the number was estimated at 4 million. This number consisted almost entirely of a deprived rural class which was decimated by the Great Famine (1847-8) and subsequent 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 only 3.5% of their age-group. When the position began to stabilize early in the 20th century, Irish remained as a community language only in small discontinuous regions, mainly around the western seaboard. These regions are termed collectively Gaeltacht. In practice Gaeltacht children are increasingly English-speaking and English has now become the language of the playground in many Gaeltacht schools. The proportion of the entire population aged 3 years and over who indicated that they could speak Irish fell slightly from 31.6 to 31.1 per cent between 1981 and 1986, although the actual number of Irish speakers increased over the period by 24,000 to just under 1,043,000. On an age basis the greatest change was for the 20-24 year group where the percentage of Irish speakers declined from 40.0 to 36.4 per cent. Of the total of 976,300 private households, about 400,600 (41 per cent) had one or more Irish speakers - an increase of about 18,000 such households since 1981. The population aged 3 years and over in Gaeltacht areas was just under 79,000 in 1986, an increase of 4,000 since 1981. The number of Irish speakers was almost unchanged at 58,500 with the result that the proportion of the Gaeltacht population who could speak Irish fell from 77.4 to 74.0 per cent. This proportion showed a decline for all age groups. On the other hand, there are many Irish-speaking families and individuals throughout the larger population, and particularly in Dublin. Towards the end of the 18th century the new ascendancy began to develop an academic interest in the Irish language and its literature, marked particularly by the publication in 1789 of Charlotte Brookes' Reliques of Irish Poetry. This was soon coupled with a concern for the welfare of the spoken language, the decline of which was increasingly evident. Interest grew throughout the 19th century and, following the founding in 1893 of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) by Douglas Hyde, Eoin Mac Neill, Father Eugene O'Growney, and others, the objective of maintaining and extending Irish as a vernacular became a significant motive in the renewed separatist movement which culminated in the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. The position of Irish was immediately strengthened by the new State. In the first Constitution it was designated as 'the national language', and in the 1937 Constitution, which is still in force, it is decreed that 'the Irish language as the national language is the first official language'. A knowledge of Irish was soon required for admission to the civil service, police, and army, though these requirements were modified in 1973; it was given a central place in the primary school curriculum, and it was made an obligatory subject in the secondary school curriculum where, however, it already had a strong position since it had in 1913 become a requirement for matriculation to the National University. The State makes various other provisions for the promotion and maintenance of the Irish language. A separate Department of State, Roinn na Gaeltachta, was established in 1956, whose function is to promote the cultural, social and economic welfare of the Gaeltacht and to encourage the preservation and extension of the use of Irish as a vernacular language. The Department has two statutory boards under its aegis - Udaras na Gaeltachta (Gaeltacht Authority), some of whose members are elected by popular vote by the people of the Gaeltacht, which is the industrial development authority for Gaeltacht areas and Bord na Gaeilge (the Irish Language Board) which is the statutory planning board for Irish language promotion throughout the country. In addition there is an advisory body, Bord na Leabhar Gaeilge, under the aegis of the Department which administers grants for the publication of books in the Irish language. The Department also administers directly a variety of schemes for the benefit of the Gaeltacht and of the Irish language and provides financial assistance for Voluntary Irish Language Organisations as well as for organisations which promote Irish music and drama in the Irishlanguage. Radio na Gaeltachta, a radio station serving especially the Gaeltacht, broadcasts solely in the Irish language. Varieties of Irish The earliest known form of Irish is that preserved in Ogam (later spelling Ogham) inscriptions which date mainly from the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The linguistic information preserved in Ogam is sparse, consisting for the most part of proper names, but it is sufficient to reveal a form of Irish whose relationship to Old Irish, the earliest well-documented variety, is comparable to that of Latin to Old French; for example, the Ogam word inigena, 'daughter', corresponds to ingen in Old Irish. Old Irish was the language of Ireland's 'Golden Age' and its classical period is generally assigned to the years 700-850 AD. Old Irish evolved into Middle Irish, the language of the late Viking and post-Viking period, a transitional form. In comparison with Old Irish, Middle Irish is characterised 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 the Old Irish, Norse, Norman, and Old English were largely assimilated into a new Irish-speaking society. It lasted from the 13th to the 17th century as the literary norm for the whole Gaelic world comprising Ireland, Gaelic Scotland, and the Isle of Man. Classical Modern spelling was retained as the norm until the middle of the 20th century and, insofar as there is in contemporary Irish a sense of correct literary usage, it still derives much of its authority from the Classical Modern model. During the 20th century, as the influence of the old literary schools and learned classes receded, the written forms of Irish became increasingly regional in character. It was during this period that autonomous forms of Modern Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx became established. Even so, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, as the Irish revival movement gathered momentum, there were many who felt that Classical Modern Irish was still the most appropriate norm for literary functions. Since the advocates of this view not only used the older grammatical forms but also imitated the ornate and frequently ponderous style of Early Modern prose, they brought a reaction from writers such as Peader O Laoghaire, Padraic O Conaire and Padraic Pearse who sought a more simple style and a literary diction based on contemporary speech. The 'speech of the people' faction won the argument but this meant that the written language for a time became quite diversified as writers went their divergent ways in representing contemporary speech. It became necessary to redefine norms. A new spelling norm was eventually published in 1945 and in amended form in 1947; a new grammatical norm was published in 1953 and in revised form in 1958. These are now codified in O Donaill's official Irish-English dictionary, Focloir Gaeilge-Bearla, which appeared in 1978. There is no standard pronunciation in Modern Irish. Some distinctive features of Irish The basic word order of the sentence in Irish is verb-subject-object. For example, the sentence 'John (subject) closed (verb) the door (object)' is expressed in Irish as 'dhun (verb) Sean (subject) an doras (object)'. This order may be transformed by inversion rules for the expression of contrast, as in is e Sean a dhun an doras ('it is John that closed the door'). Nouns and adjectives are inflected for number, and there are still in Modern Irish the vestiges of a system of case inflections. For example an cailin og 'the young girl' becomes in the plural na cailini oga, with the plural being marked by the form of the article, na, and of the adjective, oga, as well as by the noun form. Traces of case inflection are seen in, for example, athair an chailin oig 'the young girl's father' where, to mark the possessive meaning (genitive case), the form of the article changes c to ch in the noun initial and the form of the adjective is oig. The verb is inflected for tense (time) and mood (attitude) and there is a partial system of inflections for person: dunaim an doras 'I close the door' is distinguished from dhunas an doras 'I closed the door', or dhunfainn an doras 'I would close the door' by different inflections of the word dun 'close'. A full range of personal inflections is illustrated by: singular, 1. dhunas 'I closed'; 2. dhunais 'you closed': 3. dhun 'closed' plural, 1. dhunamar 'we closed'; 2. dhunabhair 'you closed': 3. dhunadar 'they closed'. The old third person singular forms have come to have a non-personal meaning and are thus used with all nouns, singular or plural, for example: dhun an fear 'the man closed' and dhun na fir 'the men closed'. This nonpersonal form is also used, instead of the inflected forms, with analytic forms of the personal pronouns, for example: dhun me 'I closed', dhun tu 'you closed' and these analytic formations are increasingly predominant in the contemporary language. Irish shares with other Celtic languages the unusual feature called initial mutation by which words may mark their grammatical relationships by change of their initials as well as of their endings. For example, dun 'close' has both d and dh as initial in the inflections listed above; similarly c and ch alternate in the initial of cailin. These are examples of the mutation called lenition. There is also a mutation called eclipsis as, for example, in leis an gcailin 'with the girl' where c is changed to g (spelt gc), or deirim go ndunaim 'I say that I close', where d is changed to n (spelt nd). A writing system based on the Latin model had been developed for Irish by the 6th century. The principal characteristics of the system then constructed remain unchanged to the present day. In Old Irish writing the letters were similar to the form which was customary throughout western Europe in the writing of Latin. The Irish scribal tradition then evolved divergently and was resistant to later European styles and, when in 1571 a special fount was cut for an Irish version of the Protestant cathechism, the distinctive Irish script was carried over into print. Subsequently, the greater part of Irish writing continued both in manuscript and print to be in Irish script until the 20th century, when gradually it began to be regarded as impractical. The new official spelling handbooks published in 1945 and 1947 abandoned it; by 1963-4 the use of Roman script for Irish had been introduced to all classes in primary schools and by 1970 to all classes in secondary schools. The use of Irish script is now rare. Irish and Other Languages Having dealt with some of the distinctive features of Irish, a word should be said on what Irish has in common with other languages. In pronunciation Irish shares with Russian and other Slavonic languages a systematic phonemic opposition of palatalised and velarised consonants, for instance: Palatal Velar Irish lea, 'to melt' la, 'day' Russian ugo 1' 'coal' ugol, 'corner' Irish fail, 'to get' fal, 'hedge' In each case the only difference in pronunciation between these word pairs is the 1 quality. The sounds represented by Irish ch have equivalents in German, Spanish, Russian and Greek, though not in standard English or French. The distinction between the two verbs for 'to be' in Irish, is and ta, largely corresponds to that between Spanish ser and ester. The Irish habitual present bionn (Hiberno English do be) corresponds to Russian buivat'. Irish does not have a verb 'to have' and Irish ta leabhar agam (is a book at me) corresponds exactly to Russian u menya yist knyiga. Besides the basic verb-subject-object word order already referred to Irish word order can sometimes resemble Germn: an doras a dhunadh (the door to close) - die Tur zu schliessen. The French device of stressing an element by placing it at the beginning of a sentence through the use of c'est has a parallel in an Irish use of is; is tus a dheanfaidh e (it is you who will do it) - c'est toi qui le feras. A special feature shared by Irish, the other Celtic languages and Hebrew and Arabic is the combination of preposition and pronoun as in ag (at) + me (I) = agam; Welsh gan + fi = gennyf i; Hebrew le + ani = li. Irish and Hungarian, alone in Europe, refer to 'one of two' as 'half': Irish a leath-chos (one of his legs, literally, 'his half leg') corresponds exactly to Hungarian fel laba. The Irish for 'you owe me a pound' is ta punt agam ort (literally 'is a pound at me on you'), an exact equivalent of Arabic alayka li dinar. The English distinction between 'I go' and 'I am going', not present in French, German, Russian or the Scandinavian languages, corresponds to Irish teim/taim ag dul. The interesting thing is that this construction was in use in Irish for over a thousand years before it developed in English, cf. the older 'The Iceman Cometh' where Modern English would say 'The Iceman is coming'. The English language in Ireland The Anglo-Norman aristocracy who established themselves in Ireland after 1169 spoke a variety of French, but they brought in their train, as retainers and traders, a substantial community of English speakers. English has been spoken continuously in Ireland since that time. It is now the first language of the vast majority of the population and most speakers of Irish speak it fluently as a second language. From the 13th to the 17th century, however , the Irish-speaking community was strongly assimilative of other groups and the continuity of English in Ireland was maintained only because the English-speaking element was being constantly renewed from England. By the early 16th century, the number of monoglot English-speaker s who were of Irish birth must have been extremely small. One obvious conse quence of this fact is the absence of any long-established distinctive Irish dialects of English. Apart from varieties spoken in the north-east of Ireland, which are closely affinitive to Scottish varieties, the English now spoken in Ireland is a quite uniform variant of Modern General English and its distinguishing features are consistent with its having been widely adopted in the later 18th century. The more distinctive features of Irish English are due, not to its being a long-established diverging variety, but to the fact that it has been influenced by the Irish which it replaced. This is especially true of the phonetics of vowels and the realization of some consonantal oppositions. The first generations who spoke English carried over many features from Irish, in grammar and idiom as well as phonetics. The resultant speech, though used as a basis for a literary diction by J. M. Synge (1871-1909), Douglas Hyde (1860-1949), and many others of their generation, was a transitional form. Its more exotic features have now almost completely disappeared. For example, the expression they're in it, meaning 'they exist', a direct translation of the Irish ta siad ann, would probably now be as bewildering to the majority of Irish people as it would to English or Americans. A few features of Irish provenance may, however, be more durable; for example, the aspectual use of after as in I'm after forgetting my purse is still widespread. All the same, Irish English is increasingly an unremarkable variant of General English. Like American English, though, it shows a degree of autonomy which is the more surprising, considering its physical and communicative proximity to the prestige varieties of British English. There is, for example, no obvious tendency to accept the social language values which obtain in Britain: although middle-class Dublin speech is distinguishable only by a few phonetic features from the most refined variety of British English termed RP (received pronunciation), to speak pure RP is regarded in Ireland as artificial, rather than sophisticated as it is in Britain. This slight autonomy delays rather than prevents the spread of change from English varieties to Irish English. It may well be that the present small measure of autonomy too is destined to disappear. FOLK WAYS The people who inhabited Ireland over the last five thousand years have left their imprint on the country in various ways. For instance, the physical landscape of Ireland is to a large extent the product of human endeavor. Much of it was produced over the centuries by people following their traditional methods of farming and building. Ireland has a temperate climate, with little excess of heat or cold, and this gives a long growing season, particularly suited to cattle-raising and certain forms of tillage. The importance of cattle-raising produced the characteristic bocage landscape of fields divided by large fences. Fields vary greatly in size, from very small areas up to ten hectares or more. This type of landscape covers almost the whole country. The familiar pattern of the Irish countryside is that of the single farmstead standing on its own land. This is characteristic of a society of independent landholders. The commonest form of farmstead was the courtyard with dwelling-house and farm-buildings on three sides of a rectangle. The farmhouse itself was usually a long, low rectangular building of one storey with thatched roof. The poorer farm-labourers lived mainly in small one-room cabins but this type of dwelling had largely disappeared by the 19th century. Examples of traditional Irish dwellings, authentically furnished, can be seen at the Bunratty Folk Park in Co. Clare, the Ulster American Folk Park in Co. Tyrone and the Ulster Folk Museum in Co. Down. The focal point of the various types of house was the hearth. As well as being the social centre of the house around which people gathered it was here also that the cooking was done. Food and cooking were simple. Fresh bread, roast and boiled meats, butter, milk, porridge, eggs and potatoes were the main foods. Diet varied with social status. Fuel for cooking and heating was found locally. Turf from the bogs, brushwood or dried cowdung were used and coal was available in certain areas. Traditionally, people mostly had to provide for their own needs. Trading was confined mainly to staples and luxury goods and so each locality had to possess a wide range of skills in a variety of crafts. In the mid-19th century it is estimated that about one in every ten adults were skilled in some trade or craft. There were spinners, weavers, tailors, potters, carvers, coopers and a vast array of other craftsmen producing goods for the local market. This type of craftwork has been recreated in its traditional context in craft centres such as those at Kilworth in Co. Cork and Marlay Park near Dublin. As in other places, the rites of passage - birth, marriage and death - were the subject of particular observances. The pregnant woman must not associate in any way with the dead: she must stay away from funerals and graveyards lest her child be born with some blemish. However, if she visited a workshop she brought good fortune to the craftsmen as well as to herself. In marriage the interest and participation of the whole community was clearly to be seen. In some areas there were processions to the church and back to the bride's home; in others bonfires were lit or shots fired in the air in honour of the newly-married couple. When a person died it was traditional to hold a wake in their house with drinking, singing and dancing. Irish wakes became famous for the revelry and even rowdiness they generated on an occasion otherwise associated with sadness and grief. Irish folk-custom divided the year into four equal parts each introduced by its own festival. St Brigid's Day (February 1) began the farmer's year with the ploughing season. May Day was when the cows were put out to pasture. On Lammas Day (August 1) the first of the harvest was reaped. November Day was when everything was made tight for the winter. This type of calendar was appropriate to a country like Ireland with a soft temperate climate. Irish folk-belief is remarkable for its lack of concentration on evil. There is no emphasis on the devil or werewolves or other evil prodigies. Instead, there are the fairies, or 'Good People" small elf-like creatures who live unseen in the hills and burial-mounds. Places associated with fairies have traditionally been held sacrosanct and it is not unusual even today to see an isolated mound stand untouched in the middle of a ploughed field. The fairies were believed to be neutral, neither good nor bad. Folk belief, in the sense of superstition (or piseoga), was also a striking feature of Irish life. Some of these customs have survived, even though the folk belief which gave rise to them has disappeared and most have long since fallen into disuse. Because Ireland was predominantly an agriculturally-based society almost all of the customs and beliefs were concerned with the securing of the harvest and the physical welfare of the cattle. Precautionary measures were taken to ward off diseases or against evil-minded neighbours who could try to steal one's milk by magic. For this purpose, crosses made of straw were hung in the cowhouse. Other traditional taboos were never to lend a milk vessel and never to give milk to a neighbour unless salt had been put in it. Superstition also applied to other trades, festivals and life in the community and particularly to healing the sick where faithhealers and knowledge of herbal remedies were important elements in the life of the community. Before the advent of printed books people had to provide their own entertainment. Conversation, music, singing, dancing and sports all played their part. Storytelling was also popular. The traditional storyteller (seanachi) had a large repertoire, often up to four hundred separate tales. The good storyteller, seated by his own fireside or in the house of a neighbour during the long winter nights, or at a wake or other occasion, was assured of an attentive audience. Traditional life in Ireland also offered other forms of pastime and recreation. Athletic events, Gaelic games, horse-racing and hare coursing with greyhounds drew large crowds. In the towns cockfighting and bull-baiting were popular until they were eventually outlawed. The playing of cards was popular among the Irish as early as the 16th century. In rural Ireland today card playing is still very common with organised competitions taking place in public houses and parish halls, especially at Christmas time. Fairs and the feast days of local saints were great social occasions. A feature of these was faction-fighting, when rival groups fought each other with cudgels. Irish folktales have much in common with their counterparts in other countries. They were passed on orally from one generation to the next and the more distinctive and colourful of the Irish Hero Tales concerned the exploits of the legendary figure of Fionn Mac Cumhail and his band of warriors, the Fianna. Relatively few of the heroic tales which had been told in Irish passed over into English when that language came into common use. The few that did were collected by the Irish Folklore Commission and reflect the former glory of Irish storytelling. Much Irish folk tradition has disappeared. Industrialisation and modernisation have affected the traditional ways and beliefs of the countryside and in many cases obliterated them or changed them dramatically. Nevertheless much of Irish folk tradition has been absorbed into the national consciousness of the people while a great deal of the folk heritage has been preserved through the efforts of the Irish Folklore Commission (1935-71), now incorporated into the Department of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin.