Two and a half thousand years ago, Celtic languages dominated Western and Central Europe. However, of the six living Celtic languages, only Welsh is not classified as “endangered” by UNESCO. My reasoning? TG4 seems to have no problem finding fluent Irish speakers at random to interview at car accidents.Today, only a few outposts of the Celtic languages group remain, including the Irish language. How likely is it that someone from Mars who learns Irish from books and tapes will run into someone on the street in Ireland with whom they can converse fluently in Irish? Ballparking it, I'd say 100% in the extreme west, but dropping off to 20% until you get to a big city (Dublin, Limerick, Cork), where it'll go back up to 50%. There is still the practical motivation of all this. Because of political issues and much less secondary education, Irish in Northern Ireland will be limited to an academic subject (similar to Provencal in southern France). My understanding of all this data (and commentary around it) is that native (family learned) Irish speaking is near or at least heading to extinction in the Gaeltaecht and rural areas, but that the language policies (secondary schooling) has been very successful in reviving and keeping fluency alive in the more educated bigger cities. I could not find the viewership numbers for the other stations to compare. In 2015 TG4 reported that overall it has an average share of 2% (650,000 daily viewers) of the national television market in the Republic of Ireland. I could not find its listenership numbers With respect to consuming mass media, there is the national Irish language radio station RTE. Unfortunately leaving out the counties of Northern Ireland. There's a very similar map showing the percentage of those who do speak Irish ( outside of the education system, presumably day to day). Self reporting has many social biases involved (desire to say yes out of pride, tendency to say no out of disparagement, etc) Note that the color range may be misleading the second darkest shade of green is 40-70%. The proportion who say they can speak Irish (as first or second language not specified). Yes, I realize that the nominal definition of 'the Gaeltaecht' is 'where people speak Irish all day', but that is vague and is changing but I take it to mean 'the far (including the extreme) west of Ireland where you're more likely to hear Irish in the streets. Linguistic maps of Ireland show only the areas in the extreme west of the Gaeltaecht as having native Irish speakers. But the following is what I found with and outside the wikipedia article. There's an easy answer which is to check out the wikipedia page on the status of the Irish language. Is there a better source to justify any a judgement than the wikipedia article on the Irish language? Are the TV people selecting the extremely small minority of Irish speakers to interview, are they all using dysfluent grade-school Irish, or are there lots and lots of fluent professionals and everyday people? Are the maps with Gaelic speakers only on the west coast out of date or labeled wrongly? These aren't necessarily facts, just a compilation of what I think I've read.Īs an outsider, it's hard to judge what's real. Roads and signs over the country are bilingual, there are newspapers, radio, and television produced in Irish, and what's more telling is that the radio and TV interview national leaders and people on the street in Irish. The other impression is that school teaching over the last hundred years has revived the language, not to the extent of Hebrew in Israel, but to a useful language that many people use. Almost everyone speaks English natively in Ireland (even the Gaeltacht Irish speakers), but few speak Irish natively. There has been nominal teaching of the subject in school since independence, but few (10%) use it in the home, and even fewer (1%) use it regularly outside the home. One is that the daily users of Irish are still only in this Gaeltacht area (on the western coast). There seems to be nowadays two versions of the prevalence of Irish Gaelic in Ireland. It was once a classic learned language during the Middle Ages, but declined in use during English colonization and was literally marginalized (to the western edges of the island) by the early 20th century. Irish Gaelic in Ireland has an interesting past. And every language/variety has its own particular social situation to deal with. In addition to all the usual phonology, grammar, and vocabulary one has to learn for a new language there is the social situation, among many things when is it appropriate to speak in one register or another.
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