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Irish Language
Irish has always been the first official language of the Republic of Ireland and under the Good Friday Agreement (10 April 1998) it was also officially recognised in Northern Ireland. The majority of Irish speakers are found in Ireland (260,000) and the main minority outside the region is in the UK (95,000).History
Until the 19th century, Ireland pollulated of Irish-speakers. Unfortunately, Irish was started to be seen as a language in decline, as opposed to English, which was considered the language of the future. This attitude was supported also by political leaders, such as O'Connel, so that Irish was banned from National Schools. In addition to this, the great Famine which stroke the country hit a great number of Irish speakers. At the end of the 19th century, Irish Protestants (such as Neilson) were the leaders of the revival of interest in the language, which grew stronger when Ireland became an independent country in 1922. In order to create a united State with its own language, Irish became compulsory at school and to work in the civil service. The Official Language Act of 2003 established that any publication by governametal bodies should be in both Irish and English. Looking at the situation of the language today, it can be said that the strong promotion carried out in the 20th century by political and cultural elite did more harm than good to Irish. Indeed, the fact that Irish was imposed as a national language by law produced the opposite effect: people did not speak Irish because they felt obliged to do so. Nowadays, the majority of people are bilingual, but in everyday interactions they prefer to use English, leaving Irish only for communication between them.Dialects
Irish counts with several dialects, but if we consider the geographical distribution, three major dialects areas can be identified: the provinces of Munster (Cúige Mumhan), Connacht (Cúige Chonnacht) and Ulster (Cúige Uladh).The differences between dialects are considerable, and have led to recurrent difficulties in defining standard Irish. Even everyday phrases can show startling dialectal variation: the standard example is "How are you?":
Ulster: cad é mar atá tú? ("what is it as you are?" Note: caidé or goidé are alternative renderings of cad é)
Connacht: cén chaoi a bhfuil tú? ("what way [is it] that you are?")
Munster: conas taoí? ("how are you?").