Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0183/01838.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 29KB | 485 lines

$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