Ár Smaointe, ár Bhfocail, ár Bhféiniúlacht:

On Irish as a Dying Language

In Ireland, Gaelic is in a tragic state of decline, and so is a sense of Irish national identity.

As of 2012, only 38.7% of Irish people above the age of three speak Gaelic, and of that

population, only 1.8% of those surveyed indicated that they speak Gaelic regularly. (Ceallaigh,

2015) According to Ann Devitt, only one in twenty people use Gaelic outside of school, and a

closer estimate indicates that only 16% of claimed speakers are able to speak Gaelic on a

conversational level. These numbers reflect a steady disinterest in learning and using the

language, particularly in favor of English, which has been best described as the modern ​lingua

franca​ of Europe (and, to a greater extent, the world). Although Gaelic is recognized as Ireland’s

official language, Irish children are taught Gaelic as a second language, and English is used by

the vast majority of Irish people in schools, businesses, and the home. Many fear that Gaelic is a

dying language; lack of interest from the majority of citizens in using Gaelic as an everyday

language and a favor towards using English as an alternative has made Gaelic less popular since

the 1980’s. Because of the presence of immigrant communities and increased globalization in the

United Kingdom as a whole, Ireland now has to account for the increase in diversity of both

languages and its people, making the process of preserving Gaelic even more difficult.

Given these statistics, the natural progression is to suggest a different approach to Gaelic

education. Irish citizens not using Gaelic does not mean that they do not want to learn it; in fact,

89% of Irish people have expressed an interest in learning Gaelic to a fluent level. (Devitt, 2016)

Instruction of Gaelic in schools is also the product of a decades-long effort to preserve Irish

nationalism through its language. Revitalization efforts towards Gaelic emerged in the

late-1970’s as a way of re-energizing Irish nationalism, and the language was seen as a key
aspect of retaining a coherent, unified identity among Irish people. Gaelic education has been

described as, “a central tool” in early efforts to revitalize the spread and use of Gaelic throughout

Ireland. Schools were seen as, “an obvious and quick mechanism for ‘Gaelicising’ the young.”

(McManus, 2016) The connection between schools and Gaelic education is obvious: teaching

children Gaelic as soon as possible, and integrating Gaelic in their schoolwork and activities,

might be the most effective way to make sure that Gaelic does not die. In order to preserve a

sense of national identity in light of centuries of linguistic imperialism, the Irish government

must strengthen efforts towards teaching Gaelic in schools, and provide students with a greater

incentive to learning it.

In order to better understand the necessity of reviving students’ interest in Gaelic, a brief

history of Gaelic education in Ireland is in order. The establishment of the Irish Free State in

1922, following the Irish War of Independence, set the course for radical linguistic change in

Ireland, beginning with the broadened teaching of Gaelic in Irish schools. (Coady and Laoire,

2006) The Irish Free State was created to combat the damage that Ireland suffered under colonial

rule by Great Britain, during which the teaching and use of Gaelic was discouraged at best, and

punished at worst. This practice was a common tactic for cultural imperialism that was (and

continues to be) seen throughout history. The French forced Vietnamese citizens to exclusively

learn French; the Japanese only permitted Koreans to speak Japanese during their occupation.

So, for many in the early 1920’s, the most logical way to reassert ownership of Ireland (and Irish

culture) was to revive its indigenous language of Gaelic. This revitalization effort would exist in

direct defiance to English colonial rule, and it had to begin primarily in schools so that young

Irish children would have a better understanding of their own language.

 The education system underwent radical change, and the national focus was to promote

Irish cultural identity through its language. The government aimed to foster an, “Irish-speaking

identity on behalf of the nation” and provided incentives to schools that promoted an

Irish-medium form of teaching in an English-speaking area in the form of funding. In other

words, schools that practiced Irish-medium classes and focused more on teaching Gaelic

received more funding than those that did not. This policy, and other policies like it, were

referred to as “positive discrimination.” (Coady and Laoire, 2002) By 1933, Gaelic became a

graduation requirement for students nationwide, and schools that taught exclusively speaking

Gaelic (or, using Gaelic for the majority of their classes) were prioritized for funding.

However, an unforseen aspect to compulsory Gaelic education was that, outside of the

classroom, students felt that there was very little real-life application that would make the

language itself truly relevant in their home and adult lives. By 1965, forty-three years after the

initial revitalization movement, it became obvious that schools could not perform the task of

revitalizing Gaelic; polls showed that the majority of Irish adults did not prefer the system.

(Romaine, 2005) Gaelic was also seen as a less useful language for “upward mobility” by the

1970’s. For young adults wanting to take part in the rapidly expanding global market, being able

to speak English fluently was the top priority. Gaelic education fell out of popularity steadily,

and few students took it seriously by the 1980’s. This leads us to the state of Gaelic in the

modern era.

The government of Ireland has had a Language Scheme in progress for the better part of

the new millennium, beginning at first in 2005 and being renewed into a twenty-year plan in

2010. Outlined in this plan are specific strategies for appealing to Irish youth, both domestically
and abroad, as well as plans to open up new schools outside of the Gaeltacht (or, an area in

Ireland in which the majority of people speak Gaelic). While Gaelic revitalizationists have

reacted positively to the program, whether or not it has been entirely useful is still debatable,

even after thirteen years of implementation. One aspect of the current policy is that using Gaelic

is only compulsory if one receives correspondence in Gaelic, but this only applies to government

figures. In other words, if one sends a government official an e-mail in Gaelic, that government

official is required by law to respond in Gaelic. However, these laws do not apply to casual,

individual interactions outside of professional or governmental settings. These regulations only

apply to specific styles of communication, particularly through the news and official government

correspondence and documents. The Language Scheme does not seem to provide any newer or

more creative methods for reaching out to Irish students other than trying to make learning

Gaelic seem more attractive. The only way to promote Gaelic is to simultaneously promote it as

a second language for its learners, which is not a consistently successful mode of promotion as

English is seen as a more universally applicable language.

Some of the strongest counter-arguments against these policy changes have been from

Irish people themselves, who simply do not see the use in learning Gaelic. Rónán Ó Muirthile, a

columnist for the Irish publication The Journal, says that the government has expressed little

interest in funding a national effort for its citizens to adopt Gaelic readily. Given their relaxed

policy reformations that do not apply to the social use of Gaelic, this claim seems substantiated.

There are also associations between Gaelic and backwardness and hardship, most likely

encouraged by imperialist thought promoting English as Ireland’s primary language. (Edwards,

2006) Although Irish citizens have expressed interest in more modern times towards learning
Gaelic to a fluent level, these associations remain present in the minds of Irish people

nationwide. However, as Muirthile writes, it is still essential for Irish people to learn Gaelic

despite these negative associations and a perceived lack of use. Reclaiming Gaelic is an essential

aspect of recovering from the national trauma of British imperialism.

The key change that is needed is that educators need to make in order to effect a more

significant change in Gaelic education and learning is to emphasize its importance to students not

only as crucial facet to the Irish identity, but also promoted simply as a second language. Since

the late 1970’s, engagement with Gaelic had been seen as “political symbolism,” and not an

effort to acquire the language. (Coady and Laoire, 2002) It was seen as more of a politicized

desire to reclaim Irish nationalism, which did not make it attractive to potential language

learners. According to Donal Flynn’s 1993 essay, “Irish in the School Curriculum,” learning a

language out of political desire is one of the least effective ways of ensuring it stays alive:

“Teaching a language as a matter of political symbolism is not the same thing as teaching a

language for social use, and the usual pedagogical assumptions relating to language learning will

therefore not hold true for both cases.” Essentially, the politicization of the effort to revive

Gaelic has only hurt its chances of being adopted as a more readily learned and spoken language,

because the associations between Gaelic and its political struggle are incredibly strong. Such

strong associations can negatively impact students’ desire to learn by treating Gaelic as a

compulsory act, and not a language that one can learn voluntarily at their own pace.

In order to bring about these changes, we must begin by promoting Gaelic for its social

use, not as a necessity to Irish national identity. The biggest mistake that the Irish government

has made has been promoting the idea of learning Gaelic as a national civic duty, which has done
nothing more than damage the view of Gaelic as an obligation rather than a voluntary act.

Obligating students to learn Gaelic and enforcing it without providing any means of support for

the language outside of school has given Irish students the same sense of second-language

learning as American students - that is, spending several years in immersive learning settings and

still being unable to form coherent sentences in said second language purely out of a lack of

interest. My proposal is that Gaelic should be promoted and practiced as a language that one

should learn outside of the spectrum of politics, and there should be a greater effort to

disassociate Gaelic from negative frames.

As George Lakoff says, reframing is social change. Reframing Gaelic is a definite

challenge, but not impossible. It could change how people in Ireland view Gaelic and respond to

it, but also international perceptions of Gaelic as a whole. If what Lakoff says of reframing is

true - that it involves, “bringing to consciousness the deepest of our beliefs and our modes of

understanding” - we must apply similar principles to reframing Gaelic not as a language of

political strife and moral obligation, but rather as a language that one takes on as a personal

choice to unlearn and deconstruct one’s own personal acceptance of imperialism. Irish students

must be taught the historical importance and relevance of learning and using Gaelic, and that the

questions regarding its usefulness are often from centuries of imperialist thought. I believe that

offering programs that focus on the history, culture, and language of Ireland might be a good

way to address the lack of interest in adopting Gaelic as a second language. By empowering Irish

students to take pride in their cultural history and tying in Gaelic as an important aspect of it, and

not the only key aspect of Irish identity, Ireland might see a revival in the interest of its

indigenous language. Heritage learning might be the best way to encourage students to foster an
interest in learning their own history, and as a result, their own language. Reframing Gaelic as a

language of power and history might give students the incentive necessary to take it more

seriously.

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