Irish
Gaeilge
Pronunciation	[ˈɡeːlʲɟə]
Spoken in	Ireland, United Kingdom
Region	Gaeltachtaí
Native speakers	approx. 94,000  (2011)[1] 1.77 million overall
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Goidelic Irish
Standard forms	An Caighdeán Oifigiúil
Writing system	Latin (Irish alphabet)
Official status
Official language in	Ireland  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
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Irish (Gaeilge), also known as Irish Gaelic,^[2] is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of the population. Irish enjoys constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland. It is an official language of the European Union and an officially recognised minority language in Northern Ireland.

Irish was the predominant language of the Irish people for most of their recorded history, and they brought their Gaelic speech with them to other countries, notably Scotland and the Isle of Man, where it gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx.^[3][4][5] It has the oldest vernacular literature in Western Europe.^[6] It began to decline under English and British rule after the seventeenth century. The nineteenth century saw a dramatic decrease in the number of speakers especially after the Great Famine of 1845–1852 (where Ireland lost 20–25% of its population either to emigration or death). Irish-speaking areas were especially hard hit. By the end of British rule, the language was spoken by less than 15% of the national population.^[7] Since then, Irish speakers have been in the minority except in areas collectively known as the Gaeltacht. Ongoing efforts have been made to preserve, promote and revive the language, particularly the Gaelic Revival.

Around the turn of the 20th century, estimates of native speakers ranged from 20,000 to 80,000 people.^[8][9][10] In the 2006 census for the Republic, 85,000 people reported using Irish as a daily language outside of the education system, and 1.2 million reported using it at least occasionally in or out of school.^[11] In the 2011 Census, these numbers had increased to 94,000 and 1.3 million, respectively.^[12] There are also thousands of Irish speakers in Northern Ireland, and viable communities of native speakers in the United States and Canada.^[13]

Names of the language[link]

Irish[link]

In An Caighdeán Oifigiúil (the official written standard) the name of the language is Gaeilge (Irish pronunciation: [ˈɡeːlʲɟə]). Before the spelling reform of 1948, this form was spelled Gaedhilge; originally this was the genitive of Gaedhealg, the form used in classical Modern Irish.^[14] Older spellings of this include Gaoidhealg in Classical Irish [ge:ʝəlˠg] and Goídelc [goiðelˠg] in Old Irish. The modern spelling results from the deletion of the silent dh in the middle of Gaedhilge.

Other forms of the name found in the various modern Irish dialects, in addition to south Connacht Gaeilge mentioned above, include Gaedhilic/Gaeilic/Gaeilig ([ˈɡeːlʲɪc]) or Gaedhlag ([ˈɡeːl̪ˠəɡ]) in Ulster Irish and northern Connacht Irish and Gaedhealaing/Gaoluinn/Gaelainn ([ˈɡeːl̪ˠɪŋ/ˈɡeːl̪ˠɪn])^[15][16] in Munster Irish.

English[link]

In European English, the language is usually referred to as Irish. The term Irish Gaelic is often used when English speakers discuss the relationship among the three Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx) or when discussion of Irish is confused to mean Hiberno-English, the form of English as spoken in Ireland. Scottish Gaelic is often referred to in English as simply Gaelic. Outside Ireland, the term Gaelic or "Irish Gaelic" is also frequently used for the Irish language.^[17] The archaic term Erse (from Erische), originally a Scots form of the word Irish applied in Scotland (by Lowlanders) to all of the Goidelic languages, is no longer used for any Goidelic language.^[18][19]

History[link]

Written Irish is first attested in Ogham inscriptions from the fourth century AD; this stage of the language is known as Primitive Irish. These writings have been found throughout Ireland and the west coast of Great Britain. Primitive Irish transitioned into Old Irish through the 5th century. Old Irish, dating from the sixth century, used the Latin alphabet and is attested primarily in marginalia to Latin manuscripts. By the 10th century Old Irish evolved into Middle Irish, which was spoken throughout Ireland and in Scotland and the Isle of Man. It is the language of a large corpus of literature, including the famous Ulster Cycle. From the 12th century Middle Irish began to evolve into modern Irish in Ireland, into Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, and into the Manx language in the Isle of Man. Early Modern Irish, dating from the thirteenth century, was the literary language of both Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland, and is attested by such writers as Geoffrey Keating. Modern Irish emerged from the literary language known as Early Modern Irish in Ireland and as Classical Gaelic in Scotland; this was used through the 18th century.

From the eighteenth century the language went into a decline, rapidly losing ground to English due in part to restrictions dictated by British rule – a conspicuous example of the process known by linguists as language shift.^[20] In the mid-nineteenth century it lost a large portion of its speakers to death and emigration resulting from poverty, particularly in the wake of the Great Famine (1845–1849).

At the end of the nineteenth century, members of the Gaelic Revival movement made efforts to encourage the learning and use of Irish in Ireland. Particular emphasis was placed at that point on the folk tradition, which in Irish is particularly rich, but efforts were also made to develop journalism and a modern literature.

Phonology[link]

In pronunciation, Irish most closely resembles its nearest relatives, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. One notable feature is that consonants (except /h/) come in pairs, one "broad" (velarised, pronounced with the back of the tongue pulled back towards the soft palate) and one "slender" (palatalised, pronounced with the middle of the tongue pushed up towards the hard palate). While broad-slender pairs are not unique to Irish (Russian has something similar), they can pose a problem for English speakers.

Diphthongs: iə, uə, əi, əu.

Syntax and morphology[link]

The grammar of Irish shares with other Celtic languages a number of features which, while not unique, are unusual in an Indo-European context. The grammatical features most unfamiliar to English speakers of the language are the initial consonant mutations, the verb–subject–object word order, and the use of two different forms for "to be".

None of these features are peculiar to Irish, however. All of them occur in other Celtic languages as well as in non-Celtic languages: morphosyntactically triggered initial consonant mutations are found in Fula and Shoshoni; VSO word order is found in Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew; and Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Galician have two different forms for "to be". The use of prepositional pronouns recalls the Semitic languages, as well as some lesser-known European languages such as Venetian.

The situation is complicated by dialect variations, by a recommended standard and by what appears to be a colloquial simplification of both grammar and pronunciation by fluent speakers in the urban context.^[21]

Syntax[link]

Irish is a VSO (verb–subject–object) language, and uses two verbs "to be". One of these, the copula (known in Irish as an chopail), is used to describe the permanent identity or characteristic of a person or thing as opposed to temporary aspects.

The adjective normally follows the noun (the possessive adjectives are an exception), but there are a certain number of adjectives and particles which may function as prefixes.

Morphology[link]

Irish is an inflected language, having, in its standard form, the following cases: common (the old nominative and accusative), vocative and genitive. In Munster dialects a dative form persisted, though this has been largely discarded by younger speakers. The present inflectional system represents a radical simplification of the grammar of Old Irish.

Irish nouns may be masculine or feminine (the neuter having disappeared). To a certain degree the gender difference is indicated by specific word endings, -án and -ín being masculine and -óg feminine.

Another feature of Irish grammar that is shared with other Celtic languages is the use of prepositional pronouns (forainmneacha réamhfhoclacha), which are essentially conjugated prepositions. For example, the word for "at" is ag, which in the first person singular becomes agam "at me". When used with the verb bí ("to be") ag indicates possession; this is the equivalent of the English verb "to have".

• Tá leabhar agam. "I have a book." (Literally, "there is a book at me.")
• Tá leabhar agat. "You have a book."
• Tá leabhar aige. "He has a book."
• Tá leabhar aici. "She has a book."
• Tá leabhar againn. "We have a book."
• Tá leabhar agaibh. "You (plural) have a book."
• Tá leabhar acu. "They have a book."

Mutations[link]

Irish shares with other Celtic languages a feature known as mutation, whereby initial and final consonants may change to express nuances of grammatical relationship and meaning. Mutation affects verbs, nouns and adjectives. Certain consonants may be capable of changing in two ways, depending on the context.

In Irish, there are two classes of initial consonant mutations:

• Lenition (in Irish, séimhiú "softening") describes the change of stops into fricatives. Indicated in old orthography by a buailte (a dot) written above the changed consonant (as in the dot shown above the c in "Gaelac" below), this is now shown in writing by adding an -h:
  • caith! "throw!" – chaith mé "I threw" (this is an example of the lenition as a past-tense marker, which is caused by the use of do, although it is now usually omitted)
  • margadh "market", "market-place", "bargain" – Tadhg an mhargaidh "the man of the street" (word for word "Tadhg of the market-place"; here we see the lenition marking the genitive case of a masculine noun)
  • Seán "Seán, John" – a Sheáin! "O John!" (here we see lenition as part of what is called the vocative case – in fact, the vocative lenition is triggered by the a or vocative marker before Sheáin)
• Eclipsis (in Irish, urú) covers the voicing of voiceless stops, as well as the nasalisation of voiced stops.
  • athair "father" – ár nAthair "our Father"
  • tús "start", ar dtús "at the start"
  • Gaillimh "Galway" – i nGaillimh "in Galway"

Mutations are often the only way to distinguish similar grammatical forms. For example, the only way (apart from context) in which the possessive pronouns "her," "his" and "their" can be distinguished is through initial mutations, since all these meanings are represented by the same word a. It is seen here in apposition to the word bróg (shoe):

• their shoe – a mbróg (eclipsis)
• his shoe – a bhróg (lenition)
• her shoe – a bróg (unchanged)

Orthography[link]

"Gaelach" in traditional Gaelic type.

Modern Irish typically uses the ISO basic Latin alphabet without^[22] the letters j,k,q,w,x,y,z, but with the addition of one diacritic sign, the acute accent (á é í ó ú), known in Irish as the síneadh fada "long mark", plural sínte fada. In idiomatic English usage, this diacritic is frequently referred to simply as the fada, where the adjective is used as a noun. The fada serves to lengthen the sound of the vowels and in some cases also changes their quality. For example, in Munster Irish (Kerry), a is /a/ or /ɑ/ and á is /ɑː/ in "law" but in Ulster Irish (Donegal), á tends to be /æː/. (Traditional orthography had an additional diacritic – a dot over some consonants to indicate lenition. In modern Irish, the letter h suffixed to a consonant indicates that the consonant is lenited. Thus, for example, 'Gaelaċ' [see illustration] has become 'Gaelach').

Around the time of World War II, Séamas Daltún, in charge of Rannóg an Aistriúcháin (the official translations department of the Irish government), issued his own guidelines about how to standardise Irish spelling and grammar. This de facto standard was subsequently approved of by the State and called the Official Standard or Caighdeán Oifigiúil. It simplified and standardised the orthography. Many words had silent letters removed and vowel combination brought closer to the spoken language. Where multiple versions existed in different dialects for the same word, one or more were selected.

Examples:

• Gaedhealg / Gaedhilg(e) / Gaedhealaing / Gaeilic / Gaelainn / Gaoidhealg / Gaolainn → Gaeilge, "Irish language" (Gaoluinn or Gaolainn is still used in books written in dialect by Munster authors, or as a facetious name for the Munster dialect)^{[citation needed]}
• Lughbhaidh → Lú, "Louth"
• biadh → bia, "food"

The standard spelling does not always reflect every dialect's pronunciation. For example, in standard Irish, bia, "food", has the genitive bia. But in Munster Irish, the genitive is pronounced /bʲiːɟ/.^[23] For this reason, the spelling biadh is still used by the speakers of some dialects, in particular those that show a meaningful and audible difference between biadh (nominative case) and bídh (genitive case) "of food, food's". In Munster, the latter spelling regularly produces the pronunciation /bʲiːɟ/ because final -idh, -igh regularly delenites to -ig in Munster pronunciation. Another example would be the word crua, meaning "hard". This pronounced /kruəɟ/^[24] in Munster, in line with the pre-Caighdeán spelling, cruaidh. In Munster, ao is pronounced /eː/ and aoi pronounced /iː/,^[25] but the new spellings of saoghal, "life, world", genitive: saoghail, have become saol, genitive saoil. This produces irregularities in the matchup between the spelling and pronunciation in Munster, because the word is pronounced /sˠeːl̪ˠ/, genitive /sˠeːlʲ/.^[26]