In 1800, Irish was the mother tongue of around 2 million.

The population of Ireland at the time

was about 5 million. One and a half million spoke only english, while another one and a half

million were bilingual. Irish Gaelic, called the pagan speech, was still the language of the

majority, although not the most influential. In the next hundred years, this dominance was going

to be usurped. The english language in ireland was so naturalized that it seemed to be

indigenous. By 1901, english was the sole language of 85% of the population. Meanwhile, Irish

Gaelic culture had become almost completely snuffed out. Only 21K people, who lived in the

poorest and remotest parts of the country, spoke Irish. They were ignorant of the english

language. According to historians in the 1990s, Gaelic Irish was at risk of extinction. In modern

times, Ireland is attempting to keep the language alive by teaching it to school children.

After the act of union in 1803, without official backing, Irish Gaelic went into decline, owing its

continued survival to the Roman Catholic Church. Due to English administrators being in charge

of education, English was taught. It didn’t help that the leaders of independence movements also

supported learning English. They claimed that it was important to know the language of the

enemy.

The potato famine also had a part to play in the erosion of Irish. For several years, the crop failed

and they starved. Irish people began fleeing the country by the droves. Irish parents made their

children learn English. Ireland itself was seen as cursed and there was rejection of all things irish.

Schools also attempted to eradicate the Gaelic language. Children that spoke Gaelic were

punished and ostracized. This is in contrast to modern times, as schools are now being used to

revive the language.

The Irish Revival

When the irish left their homeland, it left the countryside devastated. In the west, the landscape is

comprised of ruined cottages and abandoned villages. In the far west is a small village called

Kilgalligan with a special place in the story of English in Ireland. It is believed that it is the true

setting of a famous irish play, the playboy of the western world by J.M Synge.

Synge, who could speak and read Irish Gaelic, was a leader of the remarkable resurgence in Irish

writing associated with the names of Sean O’Casey, James Joyce and W.B Yeats at the turn of

the century. It was probably Yeats who first began to see the extra-ordinary possibilities of the

new idiom at his disposal. The forced marriage between Irish and English had, after a century of

turmoil, produced a soft-spoken, lyrical kind of English that seemed to be made for literature.

According to Yeats, after meeting Synge in Paris, he urged his friend to rediscover the treasures

of Irish English. He told him to leave Paris and go to the Aran Islands.

Synge listened to him and decided to keep a record of his visit of his stay there, which he

published. The Aran Islanders provided Synge with inspiration for the playboy of the western

world. The play itself was a controversial success at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Synge

emphasized the authenticity of his work.

Synge would eventually be overshadowed by another Irish writer: James Joyce. In a portrait of

the artist as a young man, Joyce describes how, when his hero’s irish vocabulary is corrected by

the English dean of college, Stephen Dedalus remarks in frustration that “the language in which

we are speaking is his before it is mine”. From Dubliners to Ulysses, the writings of James Joyce

teem with the Irish English of his native Dublin. He once claimed that if the city was ever

destroyed, it could be recreated from the pages of his works.

The Land of Youth

As I mentioned earlier, there was an exodus of Irish people to America. The Irish accounted for a

large part of the population, numbering over 400k by 1970. By the 19th century, over 4.7 million

Irish people arrived in the United States. These newcomers had an effect on American English.

Some details of American speech were derived from the Irish, mainly in grammar, syntax and

pronunciation. Irish immigrants introduced the typical American I seen for I saw and also the use

of shall where will is the more usual form. In irish gaelic, there is no indefinite article: the irish

tended to use the definite article where earlier Americans would not. For example, they would

say “she is in the school”, not “she is in school”. When we hear an American say belave instead

of believe or applesass instead of apple sauce, we are hearing fragments of the irish retained in

American speech. These so called Irishisms can still be heard in America.