Product Code Database
Irish (Standard Irish: Gaeilge), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous to the island of Ireland. It was the majority of the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century, in what is sometimes characterised as a result of linguistic imperialism.
Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in Ireland's Gaeltacht regions, in which 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2022.
The total number of people (aged 3 and over) in Ireland who declared they could speak Irish in April 2022 was 1,873,997, representing 40% of respondents, but of these, 472,887 said they never spoke it and a further 551,993 said they only spoke it within the education system. Linguistic analyses of Irish speakers are therefore based primarily on the number of daily users in Ireland outside the education system, which in 2022 was 20,261 in the Gaeltacht and 51,707 outside it, totalling 71,968. In response to the 2021 census of Northern Ireland, 43,557 individuals stated they spoke Irish on a daily basis, 26,286 spoke it on a weekly basis, 47,153 spoke it less often than weekly, and 9,758 said they could speak Irish, but never spoke it. From 2006 to 2008, over 22,000 Irish Americans reported speaking Irish as their Native language, with several times that number claiming "some knowledge" of the language.
For most of recorded Irish history, Irish was the dominant language of the Irish people, who Irish diaspora, such as Scotland and the Isle of Man, where Middle Irish gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx language. It was also, for a period, spoken widely across Canada, with an estimated 200,000–250,000 daily Canadian speakers of Irish in 1890. (2025). 9780888876317, Borealis Press. ISBN 9780888876317 On the island of Newfoundland, a unique dialect of Irish developed before falling out of use in the early 20th century.
With a writing system, Ogham, dating back to at least the 4th century AD, which was gradually replaced by Latin script since the 5th century AD, Irish has one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Western Europe. On the island, the language has three major dialects: Connacht Irish, Munster Irish and Ulster Irish. All three have distinctions in their speech and orthography. There is also An Caighdeán Oifigiúil, a standardised written form devised by a parliamentary commission in the 1950s. The traditional Irish alphabet, a variant of the Latin alphabet with 18 letters, has been succeeded by the standard Latin alphabet (albeit with 7–8 letters used primarily in loanwords).
Irish has constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland, and is also an official language of Northern Ireland and among the official languages of the European Union. The public body Foras na Gaeilge is responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island. Irish has no regulatory body but An Caighdeán Oifigiúil, the standard written form, is guided by a parliamentary service and new vocabulary by a voluntary committee with university input.
Endonyms of the language in the various modern Irish dialects include: Gaeilge in Galway, Gaeilg/ Gaeilic/ Gaeilig in Mayo and Ulster Irish, Gaelainn/ Gaoluinn in West/Cork, Kerry Munster Irish, as well as Gaedhealaing in mid and East Kerry/Cork and Waterford Munster Irish to reflect local pronunciation. (2025). 9788373632752, Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. ISBN 9788373632752
Gaeilge as a term can apply to the very closely related languages Scottish Gaelic and Manx language as well as Irish Gaeilc. When context requires it, these three are distinguished as Gaeilge na hAlban, Gaeilge Mhanann and Gaeilge na hÉireann respectively.
Irish was not marginal to Ireland's modernisation in the 19th century, as is often assumed. In the first half of the century there were still around three million people for whom Irish was the primary language, and their numbers alone made them a cultural and social force. Irish speakers often insisted on using the language in law courts (even when they knew English), and Irish was also common in commercial transactions. The language was heavily implicated in the "devotional revolution" which marked the standardisation of Catholic religious practice and was also widely used in a political context. Down to the time of the Great Famine and even afterwards, the language was in use by all classes, Irish being an urban as well as a rural language.See the discussion in
This linguistic dynamism was reflected in the efforts of certain public intellectuals to counter the decline of the language. At the end of the 19th century, they launched the Gaelic revival in an attempt to encourage the learning and use of Irish, although few adult learners mastered the language.McMahon 2008, pp. 130–131. The vehicle of the revival was the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge), and particular emphasis was placed on the folk tradition, which in Irish is particularly rich. Efforts were also made to develop journalism and a modern literature.
Although it has been noted that the Catholic Church played a role in the decline of the Irish language before the Gaelic Revival, the Protestant Church of Ireland also made only minor efforts to encourage use of Irish in a religious context. An Irish translation of the Old Testament by Leinsterman italic=no, commissioned by William Bedell, was published after 1685 along with a translation of the New Testament. Otherwise, Anglicisation was seen as synonymous with 'civilising' the native Irish. Currently, modern day Irish speakers in the church are pushing for language revival.
It has been estimated that there were around 800,000 monoglot Irish speakers in 1800, which dropped to 320,000 by the end of the famine, and under 17,000 by 1911.
The Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) was established in 1893 by Eoin MacNeill and other enthusiasts of Gaelic language and culture. Its first president was Douglas Hyde. The objective of the league was to encourage the use of Irish in everyday life in order to counter the ongoing anglicisation of the country. It organised weekly gatherings to discuss Irish culture, hosted conversation meetings, edited and periodically published a newspaper named An Claidheamh Soluis, and successfully campaigned to have Irish included in the school curriculum. The league grew quickly, having more than 48 branches within four years of its foundation and 400 within 10. It had fraught relationships with other cultural movements of the time, such as the Pan-Celticism and the Irish Literary Revival.
Important writers of the Gaelic revival include Peadar Ua Laoghaire, Patrick Pearse (Pádraig Mac Piarais) and Pádraic Ó Conaire.
In 1938, the founder of italic=no (Gaelic League), Douglas Hyde, was inaugurated as the first President of Ireland. The record of his delivering his inaugural Declaration of Office in County Roscommon Irish is one of only a few recordings of that dialect.
In the 2016 census, 10.5% of respondents stated that they spoke Irish, either daily or weekly, while over 70,000 people (4.2%) speak it as a habitual daily means of communication.
From the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 (see History of the Republic of Ireland), new appointees to the Civil Service of the Republic of Ireland, including , , agricultural inspectors, Garda Síochána (police), etc., were required to have some proficiency in Irish. By law, a Garda who was addressed in Irish had to respond in Irish as well.
In 1974, in part through the actions of protest organisations like the Language Freedom Movement, the requirement for entrance to the public service was changed to proficiency in just one official language.
Nevertheless, Irish remains a required subject of study in all schools in the Republic of Ireland that receive public money (see Education in the Republic of Ireland). Teachers in primary schools must also pass a compulsory examination called Scrúdú Cáilíochta sa Ghaeilge. As of 2005, Garda Síochána recruits need a pass in Leaving Certificate Irish or English, and receive lessons in Irish during their two years of training. Official documents of the Irish government must be published in both Irish and English or Irish alone (in accordance with the Official Languages Act 2003, enforced by An Coimisinéir Teanga, the Irish language ombudsman).
The National University of Ireland requires all students wishing to embark on a degree course in the NUI federal system to pass the subject of Irish in the Leaving Certificate or GCE/GCSE examinations. Exemptions are made from this requirement for students who were born or completed primary education outside of Ireland, and students diagnosed with dyslexia.
NUI Galway is required to appoint people who are competent in the Irish language, as long as they are also competent in all other aspects of the vacancy to which they are appointed. This requirement is laid down by the University College Galway Act, 1929 (Section 3). In 2016, the university faced controversy when it announced the planned appointment of a president who did not speak Irish.Misneach staged protests against this decision. The following year the university announced that Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, a fluent Irish speaker, would be its 13th president. He assumed office in January 2018; in June 2024, he announced he would be stepping down as president at the beginning of the following academic year.
For a number of years there has been vigorous debate in political, academic and other circles about the failure of most students in English-medium schools to achieve competence in Irish, even after fourteen years of teaching as one of the three main subjects.Donncha Ó hÉallaithe: "Litir oscailte chuig Enda Kenny": BEO.ie The concomitant decline in the number of traditional native speakers has also been a cause of great concern.Nollaig Ó Gadhra, 'The Gaeltacht and the Future of Irish, Studies, Volume 90, Number 360Welsh Robert and Stewart, Bruce (1996). 'Gaeltacht,' The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford University Press.Hindley, Reg (1991). The Death of the Irish Language: A Qualified Obituary. Taylor & Francis.
In 2007, filmmaker Manchán Magan found few Irish speakers in Dublin, and faced incredulity when trying to get by speaking only Irish in Dublin. He was unable to accomplish some everyday tasks, as portrayed in his documentary No Béarla.
There is, however, a growing body of Irish speakers in urban areas, particularly in Dublin. Many have been educated in schools in which Irish is the language of instruction. Such schools are known as at primary level. These Irish-medium schools report some better outcomes for students than English-medium schools. In 2009, a paper suggested that within a generation, non-Gaeltacht habitual users of Irish might typically be members of an urban, middle class, and highly educated minority.See the discussion and the conclusions reached in 'Language and Occupational Status: Linguistic Elitism in the Irish Labour Market,' The Economic and Social Review, Vol. 40, No. 4, Winter, 2009, pp. 435–460: Ideas.repec.org
Parliamentary legislation is supposed to be available in both Irish and English but is frequently only available in English. This is notwithstanding that Article 25.4 of the Constitution of Ireland requires that an "official translation" of any law in one official language be provided immediately in the other official language, if not already passed in both official languages.
In November 2016, RTÉ reported that over 2.3 million people worldwide were learning Irish through the Duolingo app. Irish president Michael D. Higgins officially honoured several volunteer translators for developing the Irish edition, and said the push for Irish language rights remains an "unfinished project".
According to data compiled by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, only 1/4 of households in Gaeltacht areas are fluent in Irish. The author of a detailed analysis of the survey, Donncha Ó hÉallaithe of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, described the Irish language policy followed by Irish governments as a "complete and absolute disaster". The Irish Times, referring to his analysis published in the Irish language newspaper Foinse, quoted him as follows: "It is an absolute indictment of successive Irish Governments that at the foundation of the Irish State there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi Irish-speaking areas, but the number now is between 20,000 and 30,000."
In the 1920s, when the Irish Free State was founded, Irish was still a vernacular in some western coastal areas.Hindley 1991, Map 7: Irish speakers by towns and distinct electoral divisions, census 1926. In the 1930s, areas where more than 25% of the population spoke Irish were classified as Gaeltacht. Today, the strongest Gaeltacht areas, numerically and socially, are those of South Connemara, the west of the Dingle Peninsula, and northwest Donegal, where many residents still use Irish as their primary language. These areas are often referred to as the Fíor-Ghaeltacht (true Gaeltacht), a term originally officially applied to areas where over 50% of the population spoke Irish.
There are Gaeltacht regions in the following counties:
Gweedore (Gaoth Dobhair), County Donegal, is the largest Gaeltacht parish in Ireland. Irish language summer colleges in the Gaeltacht are attended by tens of thousands of teenagers annually. Students live with Gaeltacht families, attend classes, participate in sports, go to céilithe and are obliged to speak Irish. All aspects of Irish culture and tradition are encouraged.
The general goal for this strategy was to increase the number of daily speakers from 83,000 to 250,000 by the end of its run. By 2022, the number of such speakers had fallen to 71,968.
After the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, Irish in Northern Ireland gradually gained a degree of formal recognition from the United Kingdom. Then, in 2003, the British government ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages with respect to the use of Irish in Northern Ireland. In the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, the British government promised to enact legislation to promote the language and in 2022 it approved legislation to recognise Irish as an official language alongside English. The bill received royal assent on 6 December 2022.
The status of Irish has often been used as a bargaining chip during government formation in Northern Ireland, prompting protests from organisations and groups such as An Dream Dearg.
Although Irish was an official EU language, only co-decision regulations were available until 2022, due to a five-year derogation requested by the Irish government when negotiating the language's new official status. The Irish government had committed itself to train the necessary number of translators and interpreters and to bear the related costs. When the derogation ended on 1 January 2022, Irish became a fully recognised EU language for the first time in the Republic's history.
Before Irish became an official language, it was afforded the status of treaty language and only the highest-level documents of the EU were made available in Irish.
Relatively few of the emigrants were literate in Irish, but manuscripts in the language were brought to both Australia and the United States, and it was in the United States that the first newspaper to make significant use of Irish was established: An Gael]]. In Australia, too, the language found its way into print. The Gaelic revival, which started in Ireland in the 1890s, found a response abroad, with branches of Conradh na Gaeilge being established in all the countries to which Irish speakers had emigrated.
The decline of Irish in Ireland and a slowing of emigration helped to ensure a decline in the language abroad, along with natural attrition in the host countries. Despite this, small groups of enthusiasts continued to learn and cultivate Irish in diaspora countries and elsewhere, a trend which strengthened in the second half of the 20th century. Today the language is taught at tertiary level in North America, Australia and Europe, and Irish speakers outside Ireland contribute to journalism and literature in the language. There are significant Irish-speaking networks in the United States and Canada; figures released for the period 2006–2008 show that 22,279 Irish Americans claimed to speak Irish at home.
The Irish language is also one of the languages of the Celtic League, a non-governmental organisation that promotes self-determination, Celtic identity and culture in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man, known collectively as the Celtic nations.
Irish was spoken as a community language until the early 20th century on the island of Newfoundland, in a form known as Newfoundland Irish. Certain Irish vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features are still used in modern Newfoundland English.
The total number of people who answered 'yes' to being able to speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, a slight decrease (0.7 per cent) on the 2011 figure of 1,774,437. This represents 39.8 per cent of respondents compared with 41.4 in 2011... Of the 73,803 daily Irish speakers (outside the education system), 20,586 (27.9%) lived in Gaeltacht areas.
| County Cork | 982 | 872 | 847 | 135 | 13.7% | ||||
| County Donegal | 7,047 | 5,929 | 5,753 | 1,294 | 18.3% | ||||
| Galway City | 636 | 646 | 646 | 10 | 1.5% | ||||
| County Galway | 10,085 | 9,445 | 9,373 | 712 | 7.0% | ||||
| County Kerry | 2,501 | 2,049 | 2,131 | 370 | 14.7% | ||||
| County Mayo | 1,172 | 895 | 727 | 445 | 37.9% | ||||
| County Meath | 314 | 283 | 276 | 38 | 12.1% | ||||
| County Waterford | 438 | 467 | 508 | 70 | 15.9% | ||||
| All Gaeltacht Areas | 23,175 | 20,586 | 20,261 | 2,914 | 12.5% | ||||
On YouTube, channels such as Briathra - The Irish Language and TG Lurgan offer instructional videos ranging from pronunciation guides to grammar explanations. TG Lurgan is known for transforming popular songs into Irish versions, promoting the language and cultural pride through music.
Developments in artificial intelligence technology may affect the future of Irish language learning. Platforms incorporating AI can provide personalized learning experiences. Tools like Gaeilgeoir AI provide a way to use AI in the context of traditional language learning, which may increase the accessibility and appeal of the Irish language for new generations.
Roughly speaking, the three major dialect areas which survive coincide roughly with the provinces of Connacht (Cúige Chonnacht), Munster (Cúige Mumhan) and Ulster (Cúige Uladh). Records of some dialects of Leinster (Cúige Laighean) were made by the Irish Folklore Commission and others. Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, had a form of Irish derived from the Munster Irish of the later 18th century (see Newfoundland Irish).
Features in Connacht Irish differing from the official standard include a preference for verbal nouns ending in -achan, e.g. lagachan instead of lagú, "weakening". The non-standard pronunciation of Cois Fharraige with lengthened vowels and heavily reduced endings gives it a distinct sound. Distinguishing features of Connacht and Ulster dialect include the pronunciation of word-final as , rather than as in Munster. For example, sliabh ("mountain") is in Connacht and Ulster as opposed to in the south. In addition Connacht and Ulster speakers tend to include the "we" pronoun rather than use the standard compound form used in Munster, e.g. bhí muid is used for "we were" instead of bhíomar.
As in Munster Irish, some short vowels are lengthened and others diphthongised before , in monosyllabic words and in the stressed syllable of multisyllabic words where the syllable is followed by a consonant. This can be seen in ceann "head", cam "crooked", gearr "short", ord "sledgehammer", gall "foreigner, non-Gael", iontas "a wonder, a marvel", etc. The form , when occurring at the end of words like agaibh, tends to be pronounced as .
In South Connemara, for example, there is a tendency to replace word-final with , in word such as sibh, libh and dóibh (pronounced respectively as "shiv," "liv" and "dófa" in the other areas). This placing of the B-sound is also present at the end of words ending in vowels, such as acu () and 'leo (). There is also a tendency to omit in agam, agat and againn, a characteristic also of other Connacht dialects. All these pronunciations are distinctively regional.
The pronunciation prevalent in the Joyce Country (the area around Lough Corrib and Lough Mask) is quite similar to that of South Connemara, with a similar approach to the words agam, agat and againn and a similar approach to pronunciation of vowels and consonants but there are noticeable differences in vocabulary, with certain words such as doiligh (difficult) and foscailte being preferred to the more usual deacair and oscailte. Another interesting aspect of this sub-dialect is that almost all vowels at the end of words tend to be pronounced as : eile (other), cosa (feet) and déanta (done) tend to be pronounced as eilí, cosaí and déantaí respectively.
The northern Mayo dialect of Erris (Iorras) and Achill (Acaill) is in grammar and morphology essentially a Connacht dialect but shows some similarities to Ulster Irish due to large-scale immigration of dispossessed people following the Plantation of Ulster. For example, words ending - have a much softer sound, with a tendency to terminate words such as leo and dóibh with , giving leofa and dófa respectively. In addition to a vocabulary typical of other area of Connacht, one also finds Ulster words like amharc (meaning "to look"), nimhneach (painful or sore), druid (close), mothaigh (hear), doiligh (difficult), úr (new), and tig le (to be able to – i.e. a form similar to féidir).
Irish President Douglas Hyde was possibly one of the last speakers of the Roscommon dialect of Irish.
Some typical features of Munster Irish are:
Linguistically, the most important of the Ulster dialects today is that which is spoken, with slight differences, in both Gweedore (Gaoth Dobhair = Inlet of Streaming Water) and The Rosses (na Rossa).
Ulster Irish sounds quite different from the other two main dialects. It shares several features with southern dialects of Scottish Gaelic and Manx language, as well as having many characteristic words and shades of meanings. However, since the demise of those Irish dialects spoken natively in what is today Northern Ireland, it is probably an exaggeration to see present-day Ulster Irish as an intermediary form between Scottish Gaelic and the southern and western dialects of Irish. Northern Scottish Gaelic has many non-Ulster features in common with Munster Irish.
One noticeable trait of Ulster Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx is the use of the negative particle cha(n) in place of the Munster and Connacht ní. Though southern Donegal Irish tends to use ní more than cha(n), cha(n) has almost ousted ní in northernmost dialects (e.g. Rosguill and Tory Island), though even in these areas níl "is not" is more common than chan fhuil or cha bhfuil. Another noticeable trait is the pronunciation of the first person singular verb ending -(a)im as -(e)am, also common to the Isle of Man and Scotland (Munster/Connacht siúlaim "I walk", Ulster siúlam).
The main dialect had characteristics which survive today only in the Irish of Connacht. It typically placed the stress on the first syllable of a word, and showed a preference (found in placenames) for the pronunciation where the standard spelling is . The word cnoc (hill) would therefore be pronounced croc. Examples are the placenames Crooksling (Cnoc Slinne) in County Dublin and Crukeen (Cnoicín) in Carlow. East Leinster showed the same diphthongisation or vowel lengthening as in Munster and Connacht Irish in words like poll (hole), cill (monastery), coill (wood), ceann (head), cam (crooked) and dream (crowd). A feature of the dialect was the pronunciation of , which generally became in east Leinster (as in Munster), and in the west (as in Connacht).Williams 1994, pp. 467–478.
Early evidence regarding colloquial Irish in east Leinster is found in The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge (1547), by the English physician and traveller Andrew Borde. The illustrative phrases he uses include the following:
| Conas |
| Tá |
| Sir, agat?] |
| A |
| Gá seo go Port Láirge?] |
| Míle |
| Gathain |
With the strengthening of English cultural and political control, language change began to occur but this did not become clearly evident until the 18th century. Even then, in the decennial period 1771–81, the percentage of Irish speakers in Meath was at least 41%. By 1851 this had fallen to less than 3%.See Fitzgerald 1984.
The language saw its most rapid initial decline in counties Dublin, Kildare, Laois, Wexford, and Wicklow. In recent years, County Wicklow has been noted as having the lowest percentage of Irish speakers of any county in Ireland, with only 0.14% of its population claiming to have passable knowledge of the language. The proportion of Irish-speaking children in Leinster went down as follows: 17% in the 1700s, 11% in the 1800s, 3% in the 1830s, and virtually none in the 1860s.Cited in Ó Gráda 2013. The Irish census of 1851 showed that there were still a number of older speakers in County Dublin. Sound recordings were made between 1928 and 1931 of some of the last speakers in Omeath, County Louth (now available in digital form). The last known traditional native speaker in Omeath, and in Leinster as a whole, was Annie O'Hanlon (née Dobbin), who died in 1960. Her dialect was, in fact, a branch of the Irish of south-east Ulster.
The Irish of Dublin, situated as it was between the east Ulster dialect of Meath and Louth to the north and the Leinster-Connacht dialect further south, may have reflected the characteristics of both in phonology and grammar. In County Dublin itself the general rule was to place the stress on the initial vowel of words. With time it appears that the forms of the dative case took over the other case endings in the plural (a tendency found to a lesser extent in other dialects). In a letter written in Dublin in 1691 we find such examples as the following: gnóthuimh (accusative case, the standard form being gnóthaí), tíorthuibh (accusative case, the standard form being tíortha) and leithscéalaibh (genitive case, the standard form being leithscéalta).See Ó hÓgáin 2011.
English authorities of the Cromwellian period, aware that Irish was widely spoken in Dublin, arranged for its official use. In 1655 several local dignitaries were ordered to oversee a lecture in Irish to be given in Dublin. In March 1656 a converted Catholic priest, Séamas Corcy, was appointed to preach in Irish at Bride's parish every Sunday, and was also ordered to preach at Drogheda and Athy.Berresford Ellis, Peter (1975). Hell or Connnaught! The Cromwellian Colonisation of Ireland 1652–1660, p. 156. Hamish Hamilton. SBN 241-89071-3. In 1657 the English colonists in Dublin presented a petition to the Municipal Council complaining that in Dublin itself "there is Irish commonly and usually spoken".Berresford Ellis 1975, p. 193.
There is contemporary evidence of the use of Irish in other urban areas at the time. In 1657 it was found necessary to have an Oath of Abjuration (rejecting the authority of the Pope) read in Irish in Cork so that people could understand it.Berresford Ellis 1975, p. 190.
Irish was sufficiently strong in early 18th century Dublin to be the language of a coterie of poets and scribes led by Seán and Tadhg Ó Neachtain, both poets of note.Williams & Uí Mhuiríosa 1979, pp. 279 and 284. Scribal activity in Irish persisted in Dublin right through the 18th century. An outstanding example was Muiris Ó Gormáin (Maurice Gorman), a prolific producer of manuscripts who advertised his services (in English) in Faulkner's Dublin Journal.Ní Mhunghaile 2010, pp. 239–276. There were still an appreciable number of Irish speakers in County Dublin at the time of the 1851 census.See Fitzgerald, 1984.
In other urban centres the descendants of medieval Anglo-Norman settlers, the so-called Old English, were Irish-speaking or bilingual by the 16th century.McCabe, p.31 The English administrator and traveller Fynes Moryson, writing in the last years of the 16th century, said that "the English Irish and the very citizens (excepting those of Dublin where the lord deputy resides) though they could speak English as well as we, yet commonly speak Irish among themselves, and were hardly induced by our familiar conversation to speak English with us".Quoted in Graham Kew (ed.), The Irish Sections of Fynes Moryson's unpublished itinerary (IMC, Dublin, 1998), p. 50. In Galway, a city dominated by Old English merchants and loyal to the Crown up to the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1653), the use of the Irish language had already provoked the passing of an Act of Henry VIII (1536), ordaining as follows:
The demise of native cultural institutions in the seventeenth century saw the social prestige of Irish diminish, and the gradual Anglicisation of the middle classes followed.Ó Laoire 2007, p. 164. The census of 1851 showed, however, that the towns and cities of Munster still had significant Irish-speaking populations. Much earlier, in 1819, James McQuige, a veteran Methodist lay preacher in Irish, wrote: "In some of the largest southern towns, Cork, Kinsale and even the Protestant town of Bandon, provisions are sold in the markets, and cried in the streets, in Irish".Quoted in de Brún 2009, pp. 11–12. Irish speakers constituted over 40% of the population of Cork even in 1851.Fitzgerald, Garrett, 'Estimates for baronies of minimal level of Irish-speaking amongst successive decennial cohorts, 117-1781 to 1861–1871,' Volume 84, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 1984
Urban Irish has been the beneficiary, from the last decades of the 20th century, of a rapidly expanding system of , teaching entirely through Irish. As of 2019 there are 37 such primary schools in Dublin alone.
It has been suggested that Ireland's towns and cities are acquiring a critical mass of Irish speakers, reflected in the expansion of Irish language media. Many are younger speakers who, after encountering Irish at school, made an effort to acquire fluency, while others have been educated through Irish and some have been raised with Irish. Those from an English-speaking background are now often described as nuachainteoirí ("new speakers") and use whatever opportunities are available (festivals, "pop-up" events) to practise or improve their Irish.
It has been suggested that the comparative standard is still the Irish of the Gaeltacht, but other evidence suggests that young urban speakers take pride in having their own distinctive variety of the language. A comparison of traditional Irish and urban Irish shows that the distinction between broad and slender consonants, which is fundamental to Irish phonology and grammar, is not fully or consistently observed in urban Irish. This and other changes make it possible that urban Irish will become a new dialect or even, over a long period, develop into a creole (i.e. a new language) distinct from Gaeltacht Irish. It has also been argued that there is a certain elitism among Irish speakers, with most respect being given to the Irish of native Gaeltacht speakers and with "Dublin" (i.e. urban) Irish being under-represented in the media. This, however, is paralleled by a failure among some urban Irish speakers to acknowledge grammatical and phonological features essential to the structure of the language.
An Caighdeán Oifigiúil ("The Official Standard"), often shortened to An Caighdeán, is a standard for the spelling and grammar of written Irish, developed and used by the Irish government. Its rules are followed by most schools in Ireland, though schools in and near Irish-speaking regions also use the local dialect. It was published by the translation department of Dáil Éireann in 1953 and updated in 2012 and 2017.
| +Consonant phonemes !rowspan="2" colspan="2" | !colspan="2" Labial consonant !colspan="2" | Coronal !colspan="2" | Dorsal consonant !rowspan="2" | Glottal |
| +Vowel phonemes |
Nouns declension for 3 numbers: singular, dual (only in conjunction with the number dhá "two"), plural; 2 genders: masculine, feminine; and 4 grammatical case: nominative-accusative (ainmneach), vocative (gairmeach), genitive (ginideach), and prepositional-locative (tabharthach), with fossilised traces of the older accusative (cuspóireach). agree with nouns in number, gender, and grammatical case. Adjectives generally follow nouns, though some precede or prefix nouns. Demonstrative have proximal, medial, and distal forms. The prepositional-locative case is called the dative by convention, though it originates in the Proto-Celtic ablative.
Verbs conjugate for 3 tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense; 2 aspects: perfective, imperfective; 2 numbers: singular, plural; 4 grammatical mood: indicative, subjunctive, conditional mood, imperative mood; 2 relative forms, the present and future relative; and in some verbs, independent and dependent forms. Verbs conjugate for 3 persons and an impersonal form which is actor-free; the 3rd person singular acts as a person-free personal form that can be followed or otherwise refer to any person or number.
There are two verbs for "to be", one for essence with only two forms, is "present" and ba "past" and "conditional", and one for transient qualities, with a full complement of forms except for the verbal adjective. The two verbs share the one verbal noun.
Irish verb formation employs a mixed system during conjugation, with both analytic and synthetic methods employed depending on tense, number, mood and person. For example, in the official standard, present tense verbs have conjugated forms only in the 1st person and autonomous forms (i.e. molaim 'I praise', molaimid 'we praise', moltar 'is praised, one praises' ), whereas all other persons are conveyed analytically (i.e. molann sé 'he praises', molann sibh 'you praise'). The ratio of analytic to synthetic forms in a given verb paradigm varies between the various tenses and moods. The conditional, imperative and past habitual forms prefer synthetic forms in most persons and numbers, whereas the subjunctive, past, future and present forms prefer mostly analytical forms.
The meaning of the passive voice is largely conveyed through the autonomous verb form, however there also exist other structures analogous to the passival and resultative constructions. There are also a number of preverbal particles marking the negative, interrogative, subjunctive, , etc. There is a verbal noun and verbal adjective. Verb forms are highly regular, many grammars recognise only 11 irregular verbs.
Prepositions inflect for person and number. Different prepositions govern different grammatical case. In Old and Middle Irish, prepositions governed different cases depending on intended semantics; this has disappeared in Modern Irish except in fossilised form.
Irish has no verb to express having; instead, the word ag ("at", etc.) is used in conjunction with the transient "be" verb bheith:
Numerals have three forms: abstract, general and ordinal. The numbers from 2 to 10 (and these in combination with higher numbers) are rarely used for people, numeral nominals being used instead:
Irish has both decimal and vigesimal systems:
10: a deich
20: fiche
30: vigesimal – a deich is fiche; decimal – tríocha
40: v. daichead, dá fhichead; d. ceathracha
50: v. a deich is daichead; d. caoga (also: leathchéad "half-hundred")
60: v. trí fichid; d. seasca
70: v. a deich is trí fichid; d. seachtó
80: v. cheithre fichid; d. ochtó
90: v. a deich is cheithre fichid; d. nócha
100: v. cúig fichid; d. céad
A number such as 35 has various forms:
a cúigdéag is fichid "15 and 20"
a cúig is tríocha "5 and 30"
a cúigdéag ar fhichid "15 on 20"
a cúig ar thríochaid "5 on 30"
a cúigdéag fichead "15 of 20 (genitive)"
a cúig tríochad "5 of 30 (genitive)"
fiche 's a cúigdéag "20 and 15"
tríocha 's a cúig "30 and 5"
The latter is most commonly used in mathematics.
Mutations are often the only way to distinguish grammatical forms. For example, the only non-contextual way to distinguish possessive pronouns "her", "his" and "their", is through initial mutations since all meanings are represented by the same word a.
Due to initial mutation, , , , root inflection, ending morphology, elision, sandhi, epenthesis, and assimilation; the beginning, core, and end of words can each change radically and even simultaneously depending on context.
The traditional Irish alphabet (áibítir) consists of 18 letters: ; it does not contain . However, contemporary Irish uses the full Latin alphabet, with the previously unused letter used in modern ; occurs in a small number of (mainly onomatopoeic) native words and .
Vowels may be accented with an acute accent (; Irish and Hiberno-English: (síneadh) fada "long (sign)"), but it is ignored for purposes of alphabetisation. It is used, among other conventions, to mark , e.g. is and is .
The overdot (ponc séimhithe "dot of lenition") was used in traditional orthography to indicate lenition; An Caighdeán uses a following for this purpose, i.e. the dotted letters (litreacha buailte "struck letters") are equivalent to .
The use of Gaelic type and the overdot today is restricted to when a traditional style is consciously being used, e.g. Óglaiġ na h-Éireann on the Irish Defence Forces cap badge (see above). Extending the use of the overdot to Roman type would theoretically have the advantage of making Irish texts significantly shorter, e.g. gheobhaidh sibh "you (pl.) will get" would become ġeoḃaiḋ siḃ.
An Caighdeán does not reflect all dialects to the same degree, e.g. cruaidh "hard", leabaidh "bed", and tráigh "beach" were standardised as crua, leaba, and trá despite the reformed spellings only reflecting South Connacht realisations , failing to represent the other dialectal realisations (in Mayo and Ulster) or (in Munster), which were previously represented by the pre-reformed spellings. (2025). 9788373632752, Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. ISBN 9788373632752 For this reason, the pre-reform spellings are used by some speakers to reflect the dialectal pronunciations.
Other examples include the genitive of bia "food" (; pre-reform biadh) and saol "life, world" (; pre-reform saoghal), realised and in Munster, reflecting the pre-Caighdeán spellings bídh and saoghail, which were standardised as bia and saoil despite not representing the Munster pronunciations. (2025). 9788373632752, Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. ISBN 9788373632752 (2025). 9788373632752, Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. ISBN 9788373632752
|
|
