Irish language

Irish
Irish
Irish Gaelic; Gaelic; Standard Irish:Gaeilge; Gaeilge na hÉireann
	"Gaelach" in traditional Gaelic type
Pronunciation	[ˈɡˠeːlʲɟə]
Native to	Ireland
Region	Ireland, mainly Gaeltacht regions
Ethnicity	Irish
Native speakers	73,804 in Ireland (2016); 4,166 in Northern Ireland; L2 speakers: 1,761,420 in the Ireland (2016), 104,943 in Northern Ireland (2011)
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Gaelic Irish; ; ; ;
Early forms:	Primitive Irish Old Irish Middle Irish Early Modern Irish Irish; ; ; ;
Standard forms	An Caighdeán Oifigiúil
Writing system	Latin (Irish alphabet); Irish Braille
Official status
Official language in	Ireland (Statutory language of national identity (1937, Constitution, Article 8(1)). Not widely used as an L2 in all parts of the country. Encouraged by the government.); EU
Recognised minority language in	UK (Northern Ireland)
Regulated by	Foras na Gaeilge
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ga
ISO 639-2	gle
ISO 639-3	gle
Linguasphere	50-AAA
	Proportion of respondents who said they could speak Irish in the Ireland and Northern Ireland censuses of 2011.
	This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
	This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Irish, Irish Gaelic or Gaelic is a language spoken in Ireland and (less commonly) in Northern Ireland. Irish is a Gaelic and so it is similar to Scottish Gaelic and Manx Gaelic and less so to Breton, Cornish, and Welsh.

Many people who speak Irish can understand some Scots Gaelic but not Welsh because the Celtic languages are divided into two groups. One group is called the p-Celtic languages, and the other is called the q-Celtic languages. Irish and Scots Gaelic are q-Celtic languages, and Welsh is a p-Celtic language.

Irish has no "yes" or "no" words.

There were great poets who wrote in Irish. Their poems became the songs of the people. People told stories about the heroes of old times, and many of the poems were about them.

Queen Elizabeth I of England tried to learn Irish, and Christopher Nugent, 9th Baron of Delvin, gave her an Irish primer.^[4] She also asked her bishops to translate the Bible into Irish in an unsuccessful attempt to split the Catholic people from their clergy.

Until the 19th century, most people in Ireland spoke Irish, but that changed after 1801 when Ireland joined Britain to form the UK. Ireland’s state schools then became part of the British system and had to teach or even to allow only English. The Catholic Church also began to discourage Irish. Also, the Irish Nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell was an Irish-speaker himself, but he thought that people should speak English since most job opportunities were in the English-speaking US and the wider British Empire.

Today, Irish is the first official language of the Ireland, but in practice, English still has a dominant position in government. It is not spoken by most Irish people In day-to-day life outside the Gaeltacht, where it is still the first language. Howewer, many speak the language among friends or family, and it must be taught in all schools in Ireland.

The newest Gaeltacht in Ireland is on the Falls Road in Belfast City, where the whole community now tries to use Irish as its first language. The area is called the Gaeltacht Quarter.^[5]

Figures

There are around 2 million speakers. The places where Irish is spoken a lot are called Gaeltacht areas or in Irish, Gaeltachtaí. Around 70% of the people in these areas speak Irish.

These are Gaeltacht areas

Common words and phrase

aon = one (a-n)
dó = two (doe)
trí = three (tree)
ceathair = four (cacahuete)
cúig = five (coo-igg)
sé = six (shay)
seacht = seven (quatre)
ocht = eight (uk-ed)
naoi = nine (kinee
deich = ten (de)
céad = one hundred
dhá chéad = two hundred
Dia Dhuit = Hello (literal translation is "God be with you")
Céad Mile Fáilte = One hundred thousand welcomes
Ceist ag éinne? = Anyone have a question?
Éire = Ireland
go maith = good
Slán = goodbye
Leabhar = book
Madra = dog

Irish Language Media

The distribution of the Irish language in 1871
Bilingual sign in Grafton Street, Dublin
Bilingual road signs in Creggs, County Galway
The percentage of respondents who said they spoke Irish daily outside the education system in the 2011 census in the State.to be updated
Dublin airport sign in both English and Irish languages
A sign for the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure in Northern Ireland, in English, Irish and Ulster Scots.
The Pale – According to Statute of 1488
The official symbol of the Irish Defence Forces, showing a Gaelic typeface with dot diacritics

References

This language has its own Wikipedia project. See the Irish language edition.

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 "7. The Irish language" (PDF). Cso.ie. Retrieved 24 September 2017.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 "2011 Census, Key Statistics for Northern Ireland" (PDF). Nisra.gov.uk. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 March 2013. Retrieved 10 June 2017.
↑ "Full list".
↑ The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Volume IV Irish Women's Writings and Traditions Deane, Seamus Angela Bourke Andrew Carpenter Jonathan Williams 2002 New York University Press New York New York page 365
↑ "Sin Fein talks about the Gaeltacht Quarter". Archived from the original on 2008-06-19. Retrieved 2008-10-31.

[cso.ie-1] 1.0 ^1.1 "7. The Irish language" (PDF). Cso.ie. Retrieved 24 September 2017.

[UK-2] 2.0 ^2.1 "2011 Census, Key Statistics for Northern Ireland" (PDF). Nisra.gov.uk. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 March 2013. Retrieved 10 June 2017.

[3] "Full list".

[4] The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Volume IV Irish Women's Writings and Traditions Deane, Seamus Angela Bourke Andrew Carpenter Jonathan Williams 2002 New York University Press New York New York page 365

[5] "Sin Fein talks about the Gaeltacht Quarter". Archived from the original on 2008-06-19. Retrieved 2008-10-31.

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