England

Ireland

Ireland

Among Welsh and Breton, Irish is one of the oldest languages in Europe. Irish belongs to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family. Within the Celtic branch it represents the Goidelic tradition.

Irish is only spoken by a small minority as their first language; the vast majority of speakers in Ireland, however, use Irish as a second language. There is no generally accepted and widely spoken standard form of the language and most speakers would identify their speech as part of one of the main dialect groups. The dialects of Irish are traditionally divided into three groups, Donegal, Connacht (Northern) and Muster (Southern). Within these dialect groups there are significant differences between northern and southern types.

The English language first arrived in Ireland with the Anglo-Norman invasions of the twelfth century. For several centuries it made little headway against the Irish Gaelic of the indigenous population. By 1800, English, however, was the first language of about half the population, with Irish becoming increasingly associated with poverty and disadvantage. In the 19th century many various factors contributed to the continuing rapid decline of Irish: the introduction of universal English-language education, the adoption of English, and the famine and large-scale immigration which hit the Irish speaking areas the hardest. Today Gaeltacht, the region where Irish is spoken, is restricted to a few areas at the west coast. Current estimates rank the number of native Irish speakers at around two per cent of the total population. The English spoken in Ireland has been greatly influenced by the interaction between English and the Irish languages.

In spite of not being officially recognised as the national language in the Republic, English is the medium of everyday communication for the vast majority of the population of Ireland. No fully independent Irish English vernacular exists. Instead, there is a continuum of varieties ranging from least to most standard-like. Hiberno English refers to vernacular varieties of English spoken in Ireland. Others include Anglo English and Irish English.

Rural scenery, Ireland © Christiane Meierkord, 2010

The syntax of Hiberno English is quite different from that of English. Various aspects of Irish syntax have influenced Hiberno English. The following is an example of Hiberno English. Tá Mícheál ag labhairt Gaeilge le Cáit anois. (‘Mícheál is speaking Irish with Cáit now.’)

Hiberno-English retains many phonemic differentiations, which have merged in other English accents. For example, /r/ occurs in postvocalic positions, making most Hiberno English dialects rhotic.

© Zahra Amirsad 2010