Irish Language: Language native to Ireland
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.
| 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) |
Early forms | Primitive Irish
|
Standard forms | An Caighdeán Oifigiúil |
| 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 | |
| Regulated by | Foras na Gaeilge |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | ga |
| ISO 639-2 | gle |
| ISO 639-3 | gle |
| Glottolog | iris1253 |
| ELP | Irish |
| Linguasphere | 50-AAA |
 Proportion of respondents who said they could speak Irish in the Ireland and Northern Ireland censuses of 2011. | |
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. 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.
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.
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
References
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article Irish language, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
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