# Irish - Gaeilge: Why so few speakers?



## kralik

Hi everyone,

Recently I've started working in Ireland so I'm getting to know this country...
And I wonder why only some people in Ireland speak the original Gaelic language?

I know that in past England took the rule over Ireland in 17th century (Cromwell etc...)
There's a similar history of Czech republic where I am from. Czech was ruled by Hapsburg empire in past and Czech language almost died out by German language but then the National revival (rainessance?) came and Czech was restored...

Why hasn't Ireland restored Gaeilge after 1922?
It's imho a nice language, one of Gallic languages ...... It's a shame.


----------



## Setwale_Charm

There is a number of reasons for that. But I think, it is better to place this thread into the Cultural Discussions.


----------



## sokol

As Setwale Charm already has written, this thread would fit better into Cultural Discussions.

Main reason surely for the differencies between Ireland and Czechia:

- when in the 18th century Empress Maria Theresia ordered compulsory education, Slavic languages and Hungarian still were widely spoken and the teaching language in primary school (which for some time was about all the poorer population ever attended to) was the local language, so Czech at least in predominately Czech speaking regions (in mixed regions it probably did depend), and later even under the Austrian empire rule also higher education in Czech (and other languages) was provided for

- but when Ireland reached its independence there already were only a handful of Gaelic speakers left; had Ireland gained independence before the Great Famine in the 1840s it probably would have been different, but during that time many Gaelic speakers emigrated or died

The Irish indeed did try to revitalise Gaeilge (and still do), but this is very hard to achieve if not many native speakers are left.
In fact, I know of one very successfull revitalisation of a language, and that is the case of Hebrew which nowadays *is *the spoken language of Israel. But that's the only one I know.
In Ireland the circumstances were (and still are, of course) completely different.


----------



## Spectre scolaire

kralik said:


> Recently *I**'ve* I started working in Ireland so I'm getting to know this country...
> And I wonder why *only some* *so few* people in Ireland speak *the original Gaelic language* *Irish*? [...] Why hasn't Ireland restored Gaeilge after 1922?


 Perhaps your question should be asked a bit differently: “What happened to Irish language after Independence?”

This question is in turn linked to the whole history of Ireland. There are several good books on the subject, and I suggest you pay a visit to one of the many excellent book shops in Dublin. It is impossible to grasp the fate of Irish without some basic knowledge of Irish history. I don’t recommend the web for this purpose. One should sit down and read a book like you study a subject in school! 

If you would like to contribute to “the few people who speak Irish” by learning it yourself, here is an idea as to the predicament you might face:



Spectre scolaire said:


> Micheál Ó Siadhail, pronounced [shil], has written an excellent textbook of his language.


 It is definitely worth it, though!
 ​


----------



## palomnik

As Spectre Scolaire says, there are vaious reasons for it.  One of the most telling reasons is basically that before independence it was hard to get an education unless you learned English.  Families made a conscious determination to speak English at home, in many cases.

One should not underestimate the influence that the Catholic Church had in Ireland either.  As the major purveyor of education, it was not really interested in preserving the Irish language, and in general thought that the country's interests were better served with English.


----------



## Spectre scolaire

palomnik said:


> One should not underestimate the influence that the Catholic Church had in Ireland either. As the major purveyor of education, *it was not really interested in preserving the Irish language*, and in general thought that the country's interests were better served with English.


 You’re probably hitting the nail on the head. Only, the word “interest” may not be _le mot juste_. 

There are two reasons why this argument [about the influence of the Church] has not been openly professed:

*1*) The Catholic Church has always been almighty in Ireland. Any criticism of its conduct throughout the past has suffered from an efficient form of self-censureship. _This is now changing from top to bottom._

*2*) Christianity came from Rome, and the language of Christianity was Latin. The bible was never translated into Old Irish, and in the pre-modern society you didn’t need more than _one_ ‘holy language’, the hybrid version of which would be used for communication purposes among intellectuals.*) Any vernacular you’d find in the various dioceses ruled by the Church was of no interest whatsoever. The _de facto_ ‘holy language’ in Ireland (until ‘Second Vatican Council’) would see a heretic competition in a bible being translated into Irish. (Such a translation was eventually done by the Protestants). 

The facts in *2*) are well-known, but the combination of arguments is more recent. 

After ‘Second Vatican Council’, unfortunately there was practically no Irish language left. English took over (completely) as the language of the Church. In any case, English is declared - in Article 8 of the Irish Constitution - as *a second official language* – quite an ironic paragraph.

*) There are numerous and stunning parallels (in time and space) to this situation. The digging up and elaborating on any of these would be off-topic here.
 ​


----------



## palomnik

Spectre scolaire said:


> You’re probably hitting the nail on the head. Only, the word “interest” may not be _le mot juste_.
> 
> There are two reasons why this argument [about the influence of the Church] has not been openly professed:
> 
> *1*) The Catholic Church has always been almighty in Ireland. Any criticism of its conduct throughout the past has suffered from an efficient form of self-censureship. _This is now changing from top to bottom._
> 
> *2*) Christianity came from Rome, and the language of Christianity was Latin. The bible was never translated into Old Irish, and in the pre-modern society you didn’t need more than _one_ ‘holy language’, the hybrid version of which would be used for communication purposes among intellectuals.*) Any vernacular you’d find in the various dioceses ruled by the Church was of no interest whatsoever. The _de facto_ ‘holy language’ in Ireland (until ‘Second Vatican Council’) would see a heretic competition in a bible being translated into Irish. (Such a translation was eventually done by the Protestants).
> 
> The facts in *2*) are well-known, but the combination of arguments is more recent.
> 
> After ‘Second Vatican Council’, unfortunately there was practically no Irish language left. English took over (completely) as the language of the Church. In any case, English is declared - in Article 8 of the Irish Constitution - as *a second official language* – quite an ironic paragraph.
> 
> *) There are numerous and stunning parallels (in time and space) to this situation. The digging up and elaborating on any of these would be off-topic here.
> 
> ​


 
All of which is true, spectre, but it doesn't really explain why the Catholic Church favored English over Irish.

One explanation is that the Catholic Church never quite lost the hope - at least until the 1890's when they addressed the subject head on, more or less - that the Anglican Communion could be joined to Rome. With such an attitude, it would make sense to favor English over Irish.

I really don't want to introduce an element of religious polemic into this discussion, but the fact is that the Catholic Church did control most education in Ireland, at least after the educators emerged from the hedgerows. To be fair, I should point out that the first really thorough grammar of modern Irish was put together by the Irish Christian Brothers.


----------



## Spectre scolaire

palomnik said:


> All of which is true, spectre, but it doesn't really explain why the Catholic Church favored English over Irish.


 I don’t think this is quite correct, and I will try to show _why_ further down.

First, it is interesting that we are so afraid of letting a discussion degenerate into religious polemic. Such a development, however, will need two sides. If one of the sides has no connection whatsoever to any of the churches in question (or to any other church for that sake), there might be a religious monologue from the other side. But if the other side is (even more) reluctant to engage in religious polemic, I think religion in this case would just serve one purpose: that of explaining some points pertaining to this thread. 

Any Bible translation into Irish (that I am aware of) _appeared too late_, and as far as I know, some of the very first translations were not even intended for the Irish.

What I am talking about in the first place is a translation into Irish at the time of the Christianization of Ireland. In Eastern Christianity – among Bulgarians, Armenians, Georgians – the Bible became a national-linguistic identity symbol. Such a thing never happened in Ireland. Latin was firmly established as the ‘hieratic language’. 

There is a fundamental difference between a *liturgical* and a *catechistic* language – from now on *L* (language) and *C* (language). In Ireland *L* was Latin – formerly until _Second Vatican Council_. But St. Patrick went around evangelizing in *C* which was of course Irish. _Catechism_ meaning “by word of mouth”, you don’t use the ‘holy language’ for that purpose. Later, when Irish declined and English took over, *C* went from Irish to English. The priest still had to get his message through in the congregation’s own language. It is as simple as that. In the pre-modern society it was of no importance which language was the *C* language – as long as *L* remained! Changing *L* would require a “revolution” - which incidentally happened with the _Second Vatican Council_.

It is my contention that if the Bible had been translated into Irish at an early stage, making Irish a national symbol (which it never really was – except after 1922, with the formatioin of the _nation-state_), Irish would have survived. For ordinary Irish Catholics, abandoning _Latin_ as a *L *language – they did not understand a word of it anyway! – was no big deal. To abandon _Irish_ as *L* would have been like abandoning their faith and national identity. Today, many people don’t even care if Irish goes down the drain.

Seen in the light of what is said above --



palomnik said:


> One explanation is that the Catholic Church never quite lost the hope - at least until the 1890's when they addressed the subject head on, more or less - that the Anglican Communion could be joined to Rome. With such an attitude, it would make sense to favor English over Irish.


 –- this premise loses much of its value. Anyway, I think this was wishful thinking in the first place.

As I said in my previous posting, there are interesting parallels. Perhaps the most relevant one for Irish would be the case of Welsh. When was the Bible translated into Welsh?  Today, Welsh is alive and kicking. Irish is nearly moribund.
 ​


----------



## Sorcha

I think that image and attitude play a large part in this discussion also, the reason Irish was abandoned in the first place was that it signified lack of education , when formal education was in English, its signified poverty and underdevelopment-especially for those in places likes the U.S. and the U.K. Getting a job and being accepted in these countries was near impossible for the Irish, and word was quick to travel home that English was the language of money, jobs and security. This lead to the loss of the language in the latter half of the 19th century, most pronoucedly. 
By the time the war of independance came around, the working language was English and the goal was freedom. As for why it wasn't given more in the free state, I dont feel I can answer that question properly, but much focus of the time and in the early years of the state was on building an Ireland that could stand in the international community on its own two feet-in an economic and poltical sense. Speaking English was one way of achieving that faster. 

The attitude to Irish, that the irish have been given is that it is the language of the backward. The scor was enforced both by teachers initally and then by parents. (a piece of wood tied round a child neck, a mark was made for each time he or she was caught speaking Irish, when twenty was reached-scor is the Irish for twenty-the child was beaten) That it is not something to be proud of. Though we are given 14 years of instruction, very little of it is with an real passion. We are never taught to love the language and be proud of, just forced to learn it. And many people have, unsuprisingly, quite a negative approach to it. Fortunately in recent years, there has been a shift in attitude, when we look at other countries and see how they cherish their native languages and local cultures. We begin to see the importance of our own. 
Lack of confidence has often been noted among the Irish, and modesty was always thought to be a virtue (most certainly a religous thing). And so when you compliment an Irish person they will most often refute your compliment as best they can. The idea that we would have a language worth learning that we could be proud of, didnt occur to that many people. Speaking Irish was thought of as silly and something to be ashamed of, maybe not by all but many. With the economic depression of the 80s, people were focused of getting a job and feeding families, perhaps maintaining a language that had, for all intents and purposes, already been lost wasnt so important?
Of course this attitude has changed massively in the last ten years, as has Ireland itself. The celtic tiger has been great for the Irish economy but in many ways we are lose tough with who we are, and have always been.
I know this post is a bit meandering, but I'm writing off the top of my head, and there are many facades to this that have not yet been touched on. I wanted to introduce a few.

Sorcha

PS Think census figures put the native speakers at about 70-71k


----------



## sokol

Spectre scolaire said:


> (...) In Ireland *L* was Latin – formerly until _Second Vatican Council_. But St. Patrick went around evangelizing in *C* which was of course Irish. (..) Later, when Irish declined and English took over, *C* went from Irish to English. The priest still had to get his message through in the congregation’s own language. It is as simple as that. (...)



An afterthought: probably the Catholic Church did favour English over Irish (Gaelic) in later times for one simple reason: the Catholic Church tried to replace the old Irish (Celtic) Church (and eventually they succeeded, as you know), and it would only be logical to replace stubborn Irish monks through English speaking missionaries from Britannia.

The Irish of course didn't exactly need missionaries, they were Christians long before the Anglosaxons; but they had to be assimilated, as far as the Pope was concerned, under the Roman rule.
As for language, the Pope wasn't too concerned about that one as long as Latin stayed on top, but the Pope always was very concerned about power, and the Irish Church was much too independent for his likings.

By the way, there are many examples in other countries where the Catholic Church is considered one of the preservers of (minority or small) languages, e. g. in *Slovenia *(especially in ethnically mixed Carinthia): this just to illustrate my point.

So, it could very well be that the preference of English in the Catholic Church of Ireland is only due to tradition and has no special reason attached to it (except the one mentioned above, power).


----------



## palomnik

Sorcha said:


> Lack of confidence has often been noted among the Irish, and modesty was always thought to be a virtue (most certainly a religous thing). And so when you compliment an Irish person they will most often refute your compliment as best they can.


 
Sorcha, as an American that comes from an Irish background, I read your post and was amazed to see how some cultural values persist for generations.

But I digress. I don't think that we need to look to the culture wars of the Middle Ages, to say nothing of the time of the "Celtic Church", to explain the lack of interest among the Irish in maintaining their language. The Irish themselves saw it as a legacy to be spurned if they wanted to participate in the modern world, and the educators (including the Catholic Church) tended to agree with them.

It is interesting to note that a disproportionate number of the early champions of the Irish language renaissance at the turn of the twentieth century were not Catholic.


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

After the Great Famine most of the emigration was towards the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia, all English-speaking countries. Thus parents believed it was better for their children to learn English so they never spoke to them in Irish. Combined with the fact the education system was entirely in English as were those in power, the language never really had a chance.

It must also be remembered Irish is quite a hard language to learn, and with the dominance of English many don't really see the point in acquiring it. If Irish was as close to English as Catalan is to Spanish for example, I'm sure most would still be able to speak it.


----------



## 0stsee

sokol said:


> The Irish indeed did try to revitalise Gaeilge (and still do), but this is very hard to achieve if not many native speakers are left.
> In fact, I know of one very successfull revitalisation of a language, and that is the case of Hebrew which nowadays *is *the spoken language of Israel. But that's the only one I know.
> In Ireland the circumstances were (and still are, of course) completely different.


 
Indonesian is an example of a semi-artificial language made into a national language which resulted in the birth of native speakers. I'm one of them. 

I think another reason why it is so hard to revive Irish is because the "rival" is English, de facto _the_ world language (at least today).

Another thing occurred to me as to why it's hard to revive Irish:
The spelling.

Just as Spectre scolaire wrote, Siadhail is read as "shil". 

This makes it even harder to revive it if you don't have a substantial number of native speakers which are widespread enough to show others how to pronounce things naturally.

This might seem mundane, but I think there's some truth in it.


----------



## Sedulia

Actually the first Bible in the Irish language was published in 1685 (Bedell's Bible). I think the religious discussion here is a sidebar to the true story. The Irish language simply lost prestige after the flight of its native aristocracy and the imposition of English; the final blow was the Famine, which was almost exclusively confined to Irish-speaking areas. The language became synonymous with poverty for too many people.

Then when Ireland came to independence, the country made only a half-hearted effort to save it. The bottom line is that today, if you are an ambitious Irish speaker, you must speak English to make a good living. 

The sad thing is that the Israelis were able to revive Hebrew, even though no one spoke it as a native language at all, at the same time that Ireland had hundreds of thousands of native speakers of Irish, but allowed the language-- with the oldest written vernacular in Europe, and a wealth of literature--  to die out for lack of encouragement. It's a terrible shame.


----------



## Spectre scolaire

Sedulia said:
			
		

> The sad thing is that the Israelis were able to revive Hebrew, even though no one spoke it as a native language at all, at the same time that Ireland had hundreds of thousands of native speakers of Irish, but allowed the language-- with the oldest written vernacular in Europe, and a wealth of literature-- to die out for lack of encouragement. It's a terrible shame.


 But they all had it as their liturgical language! Without this premise, the revival of Hebrew would have been impossible.

We all know the “tragic” Irish history, and I think it is easy to blame, metaphorically speaking, this hecatomb of Irish speakers on *C*romwell and the *F*amine. Whatever else – f.ex. flight of the native aristocracy and emigration – would only be corollaries of these two capital letter disasters. In fact, I don’t think an _aristocracy_ has ever been a major language conservationist factor because it doesn’t favour grassroot things like a language spoken by farmers and other yokels – even if these people produce the food they eat. _*That* is a shame_ - I am referring to the last word of your posting. Look at the aristocracy in pre-revolutionary Russia... And compare them with early Jewish settlers in Palestine! Those were the people who effectively revived Hebrew.

There are many other countries which have suffered both “Cromwells” and “Famines”, and yet, their language has survived. 




			
				Sedulia said:
			
		

> Actually the first Bible in the Irish language was published in 1685 (Bedell's Bible). I think the religious discussion here is a sidebar to the true story.


 William Bedell was not an Irish Catholic! Just think of bibles produced by the Jesuites in φραγκοχιώτικα [frangoçótika], “Modern Greek [vernacular!] written with Latin characters”. The Orthodox Greeks considered such bibles as outright heretical.

I don’t think this is a “religious discussion”, but feel free to stop me if I engage in anything of the sort. 

Perhaps we need some new thinking on this subject. I see the same arguments churned over again and again _ad nauseam_. What I am suggesting is to some extent what _Sedulia_ is in fact implicitly mentioning:

Why did the Zionists succeed so well in reviving their liturgical language whereas the Irish had no interest in reviving Latin?

I leave this rather absurd rhetorical question without further comment – but I wouldn’t mind my post #8 to be reread. 
 ​


----------



## Frank06

*Hi,*



Spectre scolaire said:


> Why did the Zionists succeed so well in reviving their liturgical language whereas the Irish had no interest in reviving Latin?





Spectre scolaire said:


> I leave this rather absurd rhetorical question without further comment – but I wouldn’t mind my post #8 to be reread.



*I wouldn't mind post #1 (and the WR rules) to be reread.*




> And I wonder why only some people in Ireland speak the original Gaelic language?


*Let's stick to the topic of this thread.*

*Other situations involving other languages are interesting enough to get a thread of their own. If anybody feels like opening a new thread, please, by all means, do so. **But this one is about Irish in Ireland.*

*Groetjes,*

*Frank*
*Moderator EHL*


----------



## Spectre scolaire

kralik said:


> And I wonder why only some people in Ireland speak the original Gaelic language?


 My answer to this question is:

Irish was never a liturgical language.

Formulated in one sentence though, my answer would probably be meaningless. 

Sometimes you have to get out of your skin in order to explain something – especially an unusual argument.  _I am sorry, moderator, if I was transgressing._
 ​


----------

