The Irish language in Ireland

The Irish languageFootnote ¹ is an Indo-European language brought to Ireland around 500 BC by the Celts (Ó Siadhail, Reference Ó Siadhail1989: 1; Ó Laoire, Reference Ó Laoire2005: 255). By the Middle Ages Irish was the primary means of communication between people on the island. However, from the period of the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland onwards there were significant linguistic and cultural shifts as speakers of Norman French and later Old English settled in Ireland (Cronin, Reference Cronin1996; Ó Laoire, Reference Ó Laoire2005: 255). Despite this initial interaction Gaelic maintained its status as the most commonly used vernacular on the island until the 1600s as British control strengthened, particularly during and after a series of plantations from Britain throughout the seventeenth century (Hindley, Reference Hindley1990). By the nineteenth century Irish was still commonly used, but was no longer a language of political, social or economic power, a role now held by English. This had in part been due to a series of imperialist policies implemented by the British government of the time which served to solidify the role of English as a dominant feature of Irish society. For instance, the ‘Anglicisation’ of Irish language place names, as dramatised by Brian Friel's play Translations (Reference Friel1981), was one approach that changed the cultural landscape of Irish society forever. Also, the National School system was established in 1831 as a means of offering education to the poor. The education was provided by the various church denominations, but such was the low status of Irish as a language of ‘opportunity’ that even in Catholic schools it was largely absent from the curriculum. Furthermore, children were physically punished when found speaking Irish rather than English.

These processes which attempted to Anglicise Ireland had parallels with many other colonial societies of the time. For instance, the Russian empire had introduced strident ‘Russification’ policies in the Baltic regions of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, with language often playing a pivotal role in these processes (Thaden & Haltzel, Reference Thaden and Haltzel1981). France too in its colonies had also promoted French language and culture, which often came at the expense of more ‘local’ or regional ways of life. Through official policies such as these, legacies were left for future generations which undermined aspects of their own identities. The philosopher Frantz Fanon, himself born into the French colonial system on the island of Martinique, commented that many colonial societies have often come to respect the culture of the coloniser more than its own (Fanon, Reference Fanon1967). In this regard many within the dominated society come to view the coloniser's culture as a means of empowerment and opportunity, while their own heritage, including language, is viewed as backward, inferior or a barrier to societal and economic progress. All of these factors were relevant to the Ireland of the mid 1800s, with poor economic conditions and the death and emigration caused by the Great Famine of 1845–1849 contributing to a dramatically weakened status for the Irish language.

However, in the late nineteenth century a cultural interest in Irish began to flourish among middle-class intellectuals whose initial aims were to raise the profile of a regional Irish culture within an overarching framework of British identity, and various revivalist movements were set up in both Dublin and Belfast. The largest of these organisations was Conradh na Gaeilge (The Gaelic League), founded in 1893 in Dublin by Douglas Hyde, a later president of Ireland. It promoted the language through cultural festivals, the arts, language classes and the publication of materials in Irish. In essence this was supposed to be a cultural movement separate from politics. However, the late 1800s and early 1900s were characterised by a rise in Irish political nationalism, advocating independence from Britain. Before long the Irish language was becoming an important symbol within the nationalist movement. This link between the Irish language and the nationalist movement is hardly surprising considering the wider European context at the time, which had seen a similar pattern emerging in many other colonised or dominated regions. From Norway to Bohemia and from Finland to the Balkans peasant languages, which had previously been regarded as inferior, were becoming integral in processes of national awakening, especially with regard to the politics of independence (Barbour and Carmichael, Reference Barbour and Carmichael2001). The difference in the Irish context during this period was that the number of native Irish speakers was continuing to decline, yet ironically the symbolic and to a degree the cultural status of the language was being enhanced. Therefore, Irish in this period was established as a symbol of identity, which emphasised the distinction between ‘Britishness’ and ‘Irishness’ and therefore the legitimacy of an independent Ireland. Despite the fact that some still felt the cultural movement should be kept separate from politics, the Irish language continued to play a central role for nationalists in the lead up to 1921 when only the southern half of the island gained independence from Britain.

Partitioned Ireland: A dichotomy in language planning?

The island of Ireland was partitioned in 1921 with the twenty-six counties in the south effectively splitting from Britain and being recognised by the international community as an independent nation (although it was not until 1949 that the south declared itself a republic). The six counties in the northern half of the island to this day remain part of the UK and have come to be referred to as Northern Ireland. This area was governed by a regional parliament in Belfast which upheld the needs of the majority unionist population, a Protestant community which supported this continued connection (or union) with the rest of Britain. However, there was (and still is) a large minority in Northern Ireland, primarily Catholic, who would predominantly identify themselves as Irish but whose cultural needs were rarely recognised or protected at an official level for the first fifty years of the new state's existence. Therefore, this schism of the island had a profound effect on the way in which the Irish language was viewed on either side of the border. In the southern Free State, Irish went from being marginalised and unrecognised at an official level, to almost immediately being accorded a primary role in civic society and in the establishment and legitimisation of the new nation. Here heavy emphasis was placed on undoing previous Anglicisation, removing English as the societal language and ultimately ensuring that independent Ireland would become Irish-speaking again. This was no easy task considering that census figures from 1926 showed that there were just over 0.5 million speakers in the Free State; that compared to 1.5 million in the 1851 census. Risteard Breathnach, writing in 1956, commented that when the Free State was established English had become so engrained in Irish life that it was as if “[a]n age old tradition had been cast off; a new tradition had taken firm root” (Breathnach, Reference Breathnach1956: 130).

It was the dramatic drop in native speakers that led the new Free State government to set out its revivalist policies under the three themes of Pressure, Preferment and Projection (ibid., 134). The application of pressure to learn the language was, in some respects, most evident in the education sector with Irish becoming a compulsory subject in schools, a situation which exists until this day, instigating numerous debates as to whether coercion as a catalyst for language acquisition creates the appropriate conditions for learners.

The Preferment approach was enshrined in the 1937 constitution, a document which stated that Irish was the first official language and the national language, while English, despite its dominant societal position, was termed a second official language. Therefore, those who had attained Irish language qualifications were given privileges in the search for civic occupations such as public administration, health, the judicial service or education. The preference of Irish-speaking candidates has in recent years been lessened but it is still a compulsory element for some civic occupations such as primary school teachers and a recent study commented that Irish speakers still had an advantage in obtaining professional occupations in the Republic of Ireland (Boorah et al., Reference Boorah, Dineen and Lynch2009: 457).

The final approach of Projection ensured that the language became a visible and normalised element of everyday life. After the establishment of the Irish Free State bilingual road and street signs in English and Irish were introduced to increase the profile of the language in the public space. Public bodies like the postal service became An Post while the lower house of the Irish parliament was called Dáil Éireann. Irish featured prominently on banknotes, postage stamps and official documents were translated into Irish in order to indicate that the idea of a Gaelic-speaking Ireland was, “becoming an objective reality” (Breathnach, Reference Breathnach1956: 142). Therefore, the language policy introduced at the formation of the state with the themes of pressure, preference and projection primarily relied on solidifying the role of the language within the civic administration of the state. However, this did not necessarily promote the revival of the language at the individual level, particularly in those areas which were solely English-speaking. Indeed many of the policies that favoured those who could speak Irish may have caused more resentment than support amongst potential learners.

Therefore, the overall success of the government's language policy is highly debatable, having at best succeeded in raising the numbers of Irish speakers in a primarily institutionalised setting, but having failed to increase the use of Irish on an everyday social basis. Results from the 2006 government census illustrate this perfectly, indicating that over 1.6 million, from a population of 4.2 million, had ability in Irish. Of those, 0.4 million used the language within the education system, but at no other time. An additional 0.67 million stated that they knew the language but used it only on a weekly basis or less. A further 0.4 million, despite knowledge, did not use the language at all, while 84,000 used the language daily, with approximately 31,000 of these being of school going age (Central Statistics Office, 2006).

Unquestionably, public recognition and the provision of jobs for speakers of a threatened language are components of revival, as advocated by Joshua Fishman (Reference Fishman1991). However, revival for Fishman starts at the family and community level, which he argues are often in a “better position to achieve breakthroughs than are ponderous, costly, centrally controlled, nationwide efforts” (Fishman, Reference Fishman1991: 142). This is not to say that language planners in Ireland have not concentrated on the promotion of the language at community level as exemplified by the special status awarded to those areas, primarily along the western seaboard, where Irish had survived as the daily language of communication. These form the Gaeltacht, the set of Irish-speaking areas, and they have been awarded special status by the state ensuring the allocation of grant aid programmes to promote business and employment opportunities for Irish speakers. Funding agencies, such as Údarás na Gaeltachta, argue that these approaches support ‘the existence of areas where Irish lives as a community language’ and help to provide ‘an environment where the language can evolve naturally in a modern setting’ (Údarás na Gaeltachta, 2010). The Gaeltacht has been particularly important for students of the language, allowing native English speakers to experience the use of Irish in a natural, community setting.

Although the preservation of Irish in the Gaeltacht is a cornerstone of the government's language policy, this approach suggests an emphasis on preservation as opposed to revival. While the establishment of the Gaeltacht areas has been an attempt to protect the use of the language at a societal level, in native-speaking areas this has, if at all, merely maintained the status quo, meaning that there has perhaps been a lack of focus on the promotion of using Irish in other locations, especially in urban areas. At the same period in which the government was pursuing a revivalist policy towards the Irish language in the 1920s and 1930s, the percentage of the population living in cities was rapidly increasing and by 1971 more than half of the Irish population lived in urban areas (Fitzgerald and Lambkin, Reference Fitzgerald and Lambkin2008: 233). However, this was not followed by initiatives which reflected these demographic changes, possibly a major faux pas when one considers that one of the most successful of language revival movements, that of Hebrew in Palestine and later Israel, had to a great extent concentrated on the use of language in urban areas such as Tel Aviv, which was founded in 1906 as the ‘first Hebrew city’ (Spolsky, Reference Spolsky1995: 187). Indeed, Seosamh Mac Grianna, one of the eminent writers of the Irish literary tradition in the early twentieth century, once commented that ‘the rebirth of the Irish language would not happen in the Gaeltacht, but in the streets of Belfast’ (cited in O'Callaghan, Reference O'Callaghan2004: 213).

The Irish language in the North

This leads us to Northern Ireland, where, rather than being a vehicle of officialdom, Irish was a symbolic marker of resistance to the Northern Ireland state and the continued union with the UK. The Northern Ireland government did not support any public measures for Irish in its first fifty years although the relative independence of Catholic schools in the region meant that Irish was taught as a subject in many of these institutions. Other more mobilised measures by supporters of the language included the establishment of a privately funded Irish-medium immersion primary school, Bunscoil Phobal Feirste in Belfast in 1971. Such movements, though, suffered from lack of state support meaning that their existence was often precarious. This position was often cemented by the fact that the majority unionist community also viewed Irish with great suspicion, seeing in it a clear marker of division, thus potentially threatening Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom. These suspicions were magnified between 1968 and 1994, when a period of prolonged violent conflict occurred in the region, fuelled by the political differences between the two largest communities, as well as by the lack of cultural recognition and discrimination felt by the Catholic minority. During this period Irish became particularly prominent in the politics of Irish Republicanism and the language became associated with the rhetoric of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), thus further fuelling the misgivings felt by the unionist community. The perception was often held that all Irish speakers supported the IRA, even though this was largely untrue.

It was only in the 1990s that the situation for the Irish language community in the North began to improve, as various lobbying groups were successful in raising the profile of the language vis à vis the British government. Increasing public service provision for other Celtic languages in Wales, and to a lesser extent Scotland, added impetus to calls for greater financial support in the development of services for the Irish language, such as in media and education. 1991, in particular, marked a major turning point. It was in this year that a question on the use of Irish was included in the Northern Ireland Census (Nic Craith & Shuttleworth, 1991). It stated that over 142,000, or over 9% of the population, had some knowledge of Irish. These figures may have been somewhat inflated with some indicating an ability in the language for political reasons. As Nic Craith notes, ‘[t]hough 9.4% classified themselves as Irish speakers in the Northern Ireland census, it cannot be assumed that all of them were competent in the language. The returns merely indicate that these respondents wished to portray themselves as Irish speakers’ (Nic Craith, Reference Nic Craith1999: 496). However, it was not so much the reliability of the data which was significant but that this was an acknowledgement by the British government of the existence of an Irish-speaking community in Northern Ireland and therefore within the UK. Furthermore, in 1991 the BBC broadcast its first ever television programme in Irish, yet another emblematic move towards official recognition of the language (Mac Póilin and Andrews, Reference Mac Póilin and Andrews1993, McDermott, Reference McDermott and Nic Craith2007: 114). Therefore, this period could be regarded as one of growing optimism for Irish speakers in the North.

Contemporary challenges for policy makers

Throughout the 1990s the recognition of minority languages has become a prominent feature in many European states, perhaps influenced by a growing uneasiness at the pervading authority of English at all levels of European society (Phillipson, Reference Phillipson2003). This has perhaps been best demonstrated by the drafting of the Council of Europe's European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 1992, which has served as a framework to assist European states in improving both public service provision and the public use of minority languages on a daily basis. The Republic of Ireland is not party to this charter because Irish is already the first official language of the state, constitutionally protected, and therefore not considered a minority language. However, in Northern Ireland the United Kingdom has both signed and ratified the charter with regard to both Irish and Ulster Scots (another minority vernacular brought to the region by Protestant settlers from Scotland in the 1600s). The signing and ratification of the Charter in 2001, along with commitments made during the Northern Ireland peace process, particularly in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, have greatly assisted the level of public support for both Irish and Ulster Scots (HMSO, 1998). Ulster Scots has benefited with the establishment of an agency which promotes awareness and develops support strategies for Ulster Scots culture. However, this language movement has continually struggled for large-scale support even within the Protestant community with which it is closely associated (NILT, 1999). This is perhaps due to its level of intelligibility for speakers of general Ulster English, causing many to question the validity of Ulster Scots as a separate language, an issue of some concern to other similar language movements in Europe such as Frisian in the Netherlands.

Irish in the North has also benefited from the charter and the onset of the Northern Ireland peace process, most evidently through the establishment of Foras na Gaeilge, which significantly operates on a cross-border basis with the aim of promoting the use of Irish throughout the Island. Also, in 2005, the UK government committed £12 million over a four-year period to assist in the production of 75 hours of Irish language television per year. 2000 also saw the introduction of an education council in the North to oversee the development of Irish-medium education. By 2010 over 4000 pupils were attending Irish immersion schools in the region (Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta, 2010). Nonetheless, such provision has not been enough for many within the Irish language community who advocate greater legal commitment in the form of an Irish Language Act. This would effectively offer Irish an official position within the workings of government departments and public bodies such as the judicial service and public administration, much as similar services are currently offered in the South. These proposals have faced considerable opposition, particularly from the unionist parties, indicating that the Irish language continues to be viewed with suspicion and mistrust, regarded as a symbol of division rather than commonality (Mac Póilin, Reference Mac Póilin and Mac Póilin1997).

Recent developments in the Republic of Ireland have included the introduction of the Official Languages Act in 2003 in order to ensure “better availability and a higher standard of public services through Irish” (Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs, 2010). In 2007 Irish became a working language of the European Union (EU), suggesting a degree of international recognition. Critics of these approaches may point to the fact that these developments are again engrained within institutions rather than endorsing the use of the language at a societal level. However, some positive developments at a more community level have occurred, such as the increasing number of Irish immersion schools (Gaelscoileanna) which have been more community- and parent-led than many other areas of the education sector in the Republic, thus mirroring the situation in the North. Currently there are over 170 Irish-medium schools in non-Gaeltacht areas in the Republic, educating over 36,000 pupils (Gaelscoileanna Teo, Reference Teo2010). Many of these Gaelscoileanna have appeared in cities such as Dublin, Cork and Limerick, perhaps creating a future basis on which to encourage communities of Irish speakers in those urban environments. However, the commitment to using the Irish language does not normally extend beyond the Irish-medium schools to the community at large, nor does it generally survive once pupils leave school.

The 1996 establishment of the Irish language television station TG4 has also given the language a more “all-Ireland” platform and has been important in providing a stage for programming in Irish, as well as creating jobs in creative industries and the broadcasting production sector (Watson, Reference Watson2003). A recent study has shown that the station has also proven important for creating positive perceptions of the language among non-native speakers, an issue which may help to encourage those already learning the language (Moriarty, Reference Moriarty2009).

Improving perceptions has also been noted as a major aim in a recent strategy prepared for the then Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs (now the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs). The report acknowledged that knowledge of the language ‘has not automatically been converted into actual everyday usage of Irish’ (Fiontar, 2009: 11). Reversing this trend has been described as “the single greatest challenge and opportunity for the nation's language planning” (ibid.) and the government strategy is now focusing on promoting the use of Irish in civil society, business and the economy in addition to traditional areas such as education. The ambitious aim is to raise the number of daily speakers of Irish from 75,000 to 250,000 by 2030. The strategy is due for discussion by the Irish government in late 2010, but it is important that if these ambitious goals are to be met then the promotion of Irish as a living language in areas outside the Gaeltacht must be dealt with.

Ireland has recently experienced significant immigration meaning that the country, despite the economic downturn, is now more multilingual than ever before. Therefore, other language policy objectives have appeared such as language acquisition for migrant children in schools, interpreting in public services or language schemes for adult learners of English. These are of course important policy objectives in a multicultural society but should not detract from the need to continue a drive towards the promotion of the Irish language not only as a ‘symbol’ of national identity, but also as a living community language in areas throughout the country.