Monday, April 15, 2013

The changing Irish language demographic





The changing Irish language demographic

Summary of Article
While Irish is obviously losing ground in its traditional rural territories on the coast of Western Ireland, there is some evidence that reverse language shift is occurring in the towns and cities. The schoolroom Pidgin spoken by second-language speakers of Irish is gradually coming into community and family use as an urban Creole, and this may develop into a new dialect of Irish.
There has been a rise in competent L2 speakers of Irish, mostly because of Gaelscoileanna, and this community is having a huge influence on the language and issues surrounding it.
Ongoing government recognition of Irish-speaking areas ("An Ghaeltacht") has damaged Irish as a national language, as people living outside the Gaeltacht then consider themselves to be living in English-speaking areas. Furthermore, popular perceptions of the Gaeltacht follow an erroneous post-colonial script that portrays the Gaeltacht as noble, Celtic, rural, old-fashioned, and inevitably moribund, and the rest of Ireland as practical, urban, modern, and English-speaking.
Government action in recent years has greatly raised the status of the Irish language at national and European levels, most obviously in the establishment of a Language Commissioner and in giving Irish working-language status in the European Union. There has also been a significant improvement in Irish-language media services.

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