Statistics on the Gaeltacht and the Irish Language
Facts about the Origin(s) of Irish
The Irish language, also known as Irish Gaelic, or simply “Irish” in Ireland, is a member of the Goidelic group of the Celtic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. The history of Irish as a literary language falls into three periods: Old Irish (7th–9th century A.D.), Middle Irish (10th–16th century), and Modern Irish (since the 16th century). (Lehman, An Introduction to Old Irish, 1975)
Irish and her sister languages, Welsh and Breton, are among the oldest living languages in Europe. Written records go back to the early Christian period.
The Celtic language we now know as Irish came to Ireland before 300 BC. The first evidence of writing in Irish can be found in the markings on commemorative stones known as Ogham. Ogham was a way of writing names using notches or strokes. Only when Christianity was well established in the 5th Century did true literacy in Irish begin. Using Roman lettering, Irish monks wrote little poems or phrases in the margins of manuscripts. Many of those manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells, still exist today. The coming of Christianity and, with it, Latin brought many new terms to Irish, especially those concerning literacy and religious life. (BBC Website)
The Life of the Language
Around the 6th century AD the Irish people strengthened their political, military and economic position. It was therefore not surprising that the Irish language also gained strength and was spreading eastwards and northwards across Scotland. Three centuries later the language conquered most of Scotland, Northern Britain and the Isle of Man. When the Vikings (mainly from the modern-day areas of Denmark and Norway) started invading the area where Irish had been spoken they hit a cultural obstacle more powerful than the swords. It’s also a fact that they weren’t very kind to the native inhabitants (including the monks with their sought-after possessions). And it should not be overlooked that the Normans were the people who played a major political, military and cultural role in the northern and Mediterranean parts of medieval Europe for centuries and whose origins were in Scandinavia.
By the time of the Norman invasion of England, most Normans derived from the indigenous populations of eastern Brittany and western Flanders, but their lords retained a memory of their own Viking origins. The Hiberno-Normanswere the Norman lords who settled in Ireland. They weren’t very loyal to the Normans in England. They spoke Norman-French or English, but were small in numbers and had friendly relations with the Irish natives. In fact, it should be noted that the Normans of Ireland quickly assimilated into the Irish-speaking world and left a notable mark on Irish language, culture and everyday life. Many modern-day words in Irish originate from Norman influence. The integration of Normans also influenced the development of different dialects.
From the time of the Norman invasion in Ireland, the English language was spoken only in the area around Dublin. Outside this area, which was known as The Pale, the native culture and society blossomed until the Tudor period.
Map of the Gaeltacht: The official Irish speaking areas of Ireland.
Image source: “Angr” on Wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License.
The Sore Point
The history of relations between Ireland and England is complex and mostly biased, like the history of every nation, to be honest. However it has to be mentioned that the Irish language never had the status it deserved. Like most of the peoples of Europe, who throughout the history didn’t get the chance to create their own nation states, the Irish lived under the rule of a sovereign who did not share the same traditions, norms, religion, culture or language. To make the empires more stable, the sovereigns tried to unify them. What better way to do that than prohibit the far most crucial factor of ethnical identity – the language.
The use of the Irish language was prohibited until 1871, while the English language was being enforced. It’s a long time of repression that even the languages of stronger nations wouldn’t survive. Ireland was also struck by several natural and, consequently, economic misfortunes that led to social collapse and extensive migration. Of most note is the Great Famine of 1845-1848.
However, the past is in the past and one should not dwell on it. The fact is that the Irish held their faith in their own hands, but somehow, they let the language slipthrough their fingers. But not completely.
The Irish Language Today – Facts and Figures
Percentage of Irish speakers in Ireland.
Today, Irish is the first official language in the Republic of Ireland. Since 1 January 2007 it is also an official language of the European Union. Notably, it’s the only official language of the EU that is not the most widely spoken language in any member state.
According to census figures from 2002, released by Central Statistics Office of Ireland (CSO, cso.ie), on the night of Sunday, 28 April 2002, there was 1,570,894 Irish speakers in the country as opposed to 2,180,101 Non-Irish speakers. An Irish speaker is defined as a person who claims that they can speak Irish, but who do not necessarily use it in their daily life. The largest number of Irish speakers live in Leinster (511,639), followed by Munster (352,177), Connacht (162,680) and the three counties of Ulster which are in the Republic (69,334). However the percentage of Irish speakers is the lowest in Leinster (38.2%), the highest in Connacht and Munster (48.5% and 46.8% respectively).
Number of Irish speakers in Ireland.
Surprisingly the largest percentage of people with ability to speak Irish is in the age groups between 10 and 24 years of age (10-14 years: 68.7%; 15- 19 years: 66.3%; 20-24 years: 51.2%), probably because of the obligatory teaching of Irish in schools.
Number of Irish Speakers in the Gaeltacht
More interesting are percentages of Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht regions. In all Gaeltachtaí 72.6% are fluent in Irish (62,157 people).
County Cork’s Gaeltacht represents 2,809 people with ability to speak Irish, is 83.1% of population there.
16,964 Irish speakers live in the Gaeltacht of County Donegal (74.9% of people living the official Irish-speaking areas).
County Galway’s Gaeltacht (mainly Conamara) gives home to 21,171 Irish speakers, 78.3% of the total Gaeltacht population.
County Kerry’s rugged weather hasn’t swept away 6,243 people in the Gaeltacht, who insist on speaking Irish, 76.7% of all of Kerry Gaeltacht weather warriors.
7,050 Irish speakers have settled in the Gaeltacht of County Mayo and live in peace with 32.9% of population that doesn’t have the ability to speak Irish.
There’s only 906 people able to speak Irish in the Gaeltacht of County Meath, still a share of 60.6% of An Ghaeltacht population.
County Waterford has only 100 more Irish speakers (1006) in the Gaeltacht, which is 77.7% of the population of the Irish speaking area.
Will Gaeltachtaí rescue the Irish language and bring it back from oblivion? If we compare the figures to those of Limerick City, where only 42.1% of the population over 3 years of age is able to speak Irish, or look at disgraceful figures of Dublin City (34.6%). Realistically one would say it’s too late. But not everybody has given up on the language and not everybody prefers English, because (like) everybody in the world (like) understands you (like).
The future of the language may in fact rely on the urban communities of Irish speakers in the larger cities. The past decade has brought a new vibrancy to the Irish speaking community. Of special note is Belfast in Northern Ireland, where there are strong efforts to create Irish-speaking communities there.
Even our attempt here to grasp the history of the Irish language is unfortunately written in a language officially subordinate to Irish in Ireland. However, it is also an attempt to reach further and, facing facts, English has the ability to do so, if you have read this far.
Irish has an advantage that it is popular abroad, however it has a major disadvantage: it’s not very popular on its native soil. It still lives, despite the fact that it has a status of endangered language in the Republic of Ireland, and officially extinct in Northern Ireland.
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The statistics given above are rubbish! I think that most people say that they can speak Irish for reasons of loyality. According to these figures I would have been able to speak Irish in all shops and offices during my travel if every second or third can speak it. For there are usually more than one or two employees so that at least one would statistically be able to speak it.
The figures of regular users of Irish and these of fluent speakers give a far more realistic image. So there are perhaps 300.000 – 400.000 competent speakers all over the island and around 100.000 native or near native speakers, living not only in the Gaeltacht.
I have forgotten to say that pessimistic statements of only 10.000 or 20.000 speakers are rubbish either. These relay on native speakers in the Gaeltacht only which do not give a realistic image either.
Thank You, This Website has help me alot with my school project, do you know where i could get information on the gaeltacht
It is good to see this website – but as with some of the other commentators, how many folk actually speak the language and how many say they do in the census has to be taken with a big pinch of salt. My family moved from Mayo during the famine. I do not as yet speak any Irish Gaelic (but intend to start learning soon) but do Scottish Gaelic. So I was a bit disappointed that you did not mention Scottish Gaelic when you said that Breton and Welsh are sister languages. In fact it is more correct to say that Breton and Welsh are like cousins and Scottish Gaelic is like a sister language; I can not understand anything when a Welsh speaker speaks to me in Welsh but I can understand a fair amount when an Irish Speaker speaks to me – especially if they are from Donegall ( Dùn Nan Gall: fort of the foreigners / strangers ).
Suas leis nan Cànain!!
I am very glad about the development of Gaeilge in the North of Ireland, especially Belfast.What they need are very good teachers for the kids and young people there. I hope and pray that them stupid Ulster unionist idiots won’t destroy the language because they call it a weapon.
I am currently researching the importance of Gaeilge in today’s society as I am a degree student in Irish and i am appalled to read such a comment about the Irish language being about “loyalty,” the Irish language is a recognised language of the EU and as such the official langauge of Ireland, therefore one does have the legal right to request an civil or public service in Irish at any time. I personally do not live in a Gaelteacht area but I am fluent. Maybe those persons who are claiming that your websites statistics are incorrect should research further before commenting as a major part of the problem with individuals accepting Irish as a language and not a political weapon is lack of knowledge.
This website is fantastic and has really helped with my research.
Go raibh cead míle maith agaibh.
One data point is highly suspect.
According to the bar chart, the ‘Percentage of Irish Speakers in Ireland (State) increased by one-third: from 30% to 40% (10 percentage points) in a five-year period between 1991 and 1996.
That is truly hard to believe and suggests that the definition of ‘Irish Speaker’ changed between the surveys.
What is the source of the data. The Census?
“According to census figures from 2002, released by Central Statistics Office of Ireland (CSO, cso.ie), on the night of Sunday, 28 April 2002, there was 1,570,894 Irish speakers in the country as opposed to 2,180,101 Non-Irish speakers.”
Is the answers as to the source of data.
“An Irish speaker is defined as a person who claims that they can speak Irish, but who do not necessarily use it in their daily life.”
Is the definition of the Irish speakers from the same source.
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 Bord na Gaeilge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language_in_Northern_Ireland
Why not try to teach Irish to young kids in a way that they will actually want to use the language? Try to mimic what kids and young adults are actually interested in (pop culture, Internet, world news from a kid’s slant, the most popular music groups, etc.) and teach Irish through those media. The same would go for teaching it to adults for that matter – for the adults, perhaps teach a practical skill (such as science, economics, electronics, computer science) through Irish. And don’t just always focus on traditional Irish culture as the subject matter for the language – Irish must become internationalized, and transcend national borders, and become a language of interest and perhaps even prestige for foreign people. If the language manages to attract a critical mass of international people interested in learning and using it, then this will cause Ireland’s people to want to learn and use it too. In this world of globalization, use of Irish cannot be limited to Ireland’s borders.
I speak Irish on an almost fluent level and i am sad to see the dwindling amount of people who can actually be bothered to learn the language we should all be speaking… I know some people would disagree with me, but it is the mother tongue of our country and we must work together as a people to preserve it.
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Your facts are interesting up until you start talking about Irish Anglo history! You are obviously English. This is the only possible explanation for someone saying that the history between Ireland and England is “complex and biased”. You WISH you could deny the murderous and brutal history of the ENglish in Ireland decimating the population by two thirds. We “let the Irish language slip through our hands”! Right! Go look up a history book and see how the Irish really lost their language. It was either speak English or die because they wanted to kill the Irish culture traditions and heritage. The Irish were a gentle people and when the Normans invaded as you said yourself they were on friendly terms with the natives. Pity you have to sully your whole webpage with this typical English “we did nothing” attitude. It’s disgusting.
First, relax!
Second, the person who wrote this is Slovene – me. The nation oppressed in one way or the other, in one part or all, by the Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, the Austro-Hungary and a nation voluntarily submitting to the melting pot of the ex-Yugoslavia and recently the EU and that’s just in the living history. Yet we kept our language and everything that comes with it. It was from this perspective that I wrote that post and it is from this perspective, being a Slovenian, not English as you so sadly presuppose, that I perceive the Irish let the language slip through their hands.
I will always believe that any history is complex as well as biased. It is an illusion to believe it is not. Simple example is one’s own opinion of a certain country or peoples, but once you travel there or live there you see it’s not all as it says in the books.
If I am biased I am always Irish oriented. I would like to be impartial in this case, but I can’t. However, at the same time as I’m feeling anger with the English for forcing their rule wherever they went I also feel angry for the Irish inability to sustain (whatever cause caused that inability – political strength, foreign rule, famine, you name it. I guess it’s a vicious circle.)
So lastly, I wish this blog could be in Irish and that I spoke more Irish than I do, maybe one day I will, but until then I hope this clears up your misinterpretation of my post.
I’m very happy to have these statistics. I’ve been looking for them. Go raibh maith agat.
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I can’t back up what I am about to say with verified facts. You the reader will just have to take it as a truthful statement.
Anyone who believes the figures provided by the Irish census regarding the amount of Irish speakers is simply being mislead.
I am Irish, 34 and lived here all my life. My Irish comes from secondary school teaching and watching TG4, the irish language tv station. i did honours irish in juniour cert and got a B3,studied to honours level until final year and dropped to pass for leaving cert and got a b1. yes, i remember peig.
So, out of all my close friends and family that i can count right now (16) only one person has better irish than i have. he went to a gaelscoil. i can understand him but cannot give proper replys. i would consider that possibly two have a similar level to myself. the rest have a few words and would fail to put a sentence together. it should be noted that many of these are of a young age as i recently returned to college.
when people have a question about irish they will ask me.
i once did a test to see what level of irish class i would need to attend.
the test had i think 40 questions of which i got half right.
they figured from that test and talking to me that i should be in class 2 of 5 classes, 5 being the most proficent. i went to the first class and the teacher couldnt understand why they selected me for that class. he reckoned i should be in the next level. i did not go anymore after that.
for what it was worth for the irish people reading this, i was met throughout the experience with that gaelgoir attitude of superiority and little in the way of encoragement apart from the teacher of that class. and dont even start to tell me it doesnt exist.
anyone who wants to know about the real levels of irish fluency should look at the “no bearla” series that is on youtube. manchan put that pipe dream to sleep rather well
oh, and i did not claim to be an irish speaker on the last census. it hurt but i didn’t:) i cannot remember the exact wording of the question but i felt that i was lying if i said that i could speak irish.
Is í an Ghaeilge mo theanga dhuchais agus labraíonn mé í gach lá mar níl mé ag iarraidh Béarla an Rí a labhairt. Ba cheart go mbeadh Éireannachaí brodúil as a dteanga agus in ann í a labhairt mar gheall marbhaíodh na mílte daoine le haghaidh an tír seo a fháil ar ais agus anois tá muid ag másla na daoine sin ag labhairt Béarla. Tá siúl agam nár scríobh Éireannach an píosa seo faoi nGaeltacht agus faoin teanga mar níl sé fíor.
Eileanóir, faraor, tá na figiúirí ón daonáireamh. Ach cinnte tá scéalta dearfacha ar fáil chomh maith.
I speak Irish daily to my son, I am not fluent but I dont care. Sometimes he anwsers me in English and sometimes in Irish. I was inspired by the storey told to me by a Wlesh friend of how everyone tries to pass it on to the next generation as best they can.
I don’t understand the contempt the Irish have for their own language. Ok, it will never be the language of business on the Emerald Isle but there’s no reason why both English and Irish can’t live together.
Yet kids receive more than TEN YEARS compulsory tuition in the language and many leave school without being able to string a sentence together. Something is way wrong here. I spent a few years in Germany and after 12 months I was conversant in German at a simple level, after 4 years I was almost fluent.
Cén faith go bhfuil sé seo ar fad i mBéarla? nar cheart go mbeach sé i nGaeilge nuir atá sé faoi an Ghaeilge
Ní hea. Scríobhadh an t-alt i gcóir daoine nach bhfuil in Éirinn, agus iad ag smaoineamh ar cuairt a thabhairt ar an nGaeltacht.
a thuigim,brón othram faoin litrú anois ta ceist agma dhuit? an gCeapann tú go bhfuil morán thábhacht ag baint le Mionteanga ar nós Gaeilge nuiar atá an Domhain ag failt chomh beag agus go bhfuil Béarla uchtaigh ag an chuid is mó do dhaonra an domhain?
Ceist shuimiúil í sin go cinnte. Mar shampla sa Fhrainc, cailleadh an chuid is mó de teangacha sular thánaigh an Laidin. Ach anois tá teanga na Fraincíse acu mar thoradh ar seo. Chuirfinn féin an cheist chéanna maidir leis an Béarla i gcoinne na Sínise!
sé fhocal béag “Tír gan Teanga, Tír gan Anam” le Brí ollmhór
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One must never overlook the role that language plays in the shaping of a person’s psychology.
Neuro linguistinc programming and similar disciplines rely on the role of language to shape behaviour.
Germans are Germans in large part because they speak German.
French are French in large part because they speak French.
Irish people become more Irish when they speak Irish.
There are parts of the brain that are activated by sound.
Cellular d.n.a. is activated by sound.
As Irish people continue to recover the Irish language they will be able to recover lost talents and lost knowledge that, for now, rermains embedded in their d.n.a. waiting to be awakened.
Early English governments in Ireland understood the power the Irish language had in shaping and sustaining the Irish people and it was for this reason that the Irish language was suppressed.
Make no mistake about it, the sounds that vibrate in one’s head, as a result of one’s peculiar language and way of speaking, have a profound influence on every aspect of one’s health, well being and other parts of one’s physiology and psychology.
To paraphrase Jesus, the Master, the Teacher,
It is what comes out of a man’s mouth that defiles him “or elevates him”.
Just another way to promote sectarian bigotry. English is a mixture of languages around the world, from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe. Irish Gaelic is just a symbol of genocidal Fenian racism. People can speak what they want as long as they don’t alienate and isolate others. Pride comes before a fall. Nation associated languages are just barriers that promote racism. Unite the world. Slan!
In response to Ethan, GROW Up !!!! You used the words fenian genocide are you not been racist using these words in connection to the Irish language! Tír gan teanga tír gan anam!!!! Tá se an deacair an teanga a labhairt mar i mo thuairim níl a lán áiteanna ann chun dul le bualadh le daoine a labhraíonn an teanga. Comh maith leis sin cuirim mileán ar an gCóras Oideachais sa tír seo, ta sé ró sean fhaiseanta ó thaobh m úineadh na Gaeilge de! Cuir é sin i do phíopa Ethan !!!!!!!
To those who believe we hate the Irish language, i am sorry to say that you are right. It is badly taught in schools, with no coherent system, it is hardly used outside of school, so there is no need to practice/learn it unless you are to become a teacher or a document translator. If it wasn’t a compulsory subject for the JCT or the LCT, then the people who didn’t want to learn it at all could just not learn it, and those who do, would learn it well, without the negative influence of their peers.
Hi from Russia.
I really want to see the number of native speakers of Irish rise to the point when this beautiful language is no longer in danger. That’s what I wanted to say.
The language we should all be speaking?? This all reminds me of how beautiful the plumage of a Norwegian Blue Parrot is when it rests.