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What is the Language of Ireland?

Irish belongs to the Celtic language family, and is closely related to Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, and still has many similarities. The early Irish history appeared in the form of literature, mainly in the form of “poetry” and “history”, and also heroic and legendary epics. Christianity was introduced to Ireland in the 5th century AD.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, Ireland was untouched by the war that destroyed the Roman Empire, and remained a secluded centre of Christian learning. From the 6th to the 11th century, when the European continent was still in the dark Middle Ages, Irish priests established religious study centers all over Europe, so Ireland was known as “the island of scholars and the island of scientists”.

Irish, belonging to the Celtic family of Indo-European languages, is also known as Irish, Gaelic, Irish Gaelic or Erse in English (this vocabulary is borrowed from Scots), so Irish also has “Gaedel” in Chinese, Other translations such as “Gaelic”, or “Irish Gaelic”. Irish is closely related to Breton, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic. Irish is the official language of Ireland and the official regional language of Northern Ireland.

Introduction

In discussions among linguists about the mother tongue movement, the two languages ​​most frequently mentioned are Hebrew and Irish. However, the former is usually regarded as one of the few successful mother tongue movements, while the latter’s mother tongue movement is regarded by many scholars as a failed example.

The Irish alphabet is divided into new and old orthography.

Overview

Irish is the first official language of Ireland. The Constitution recognizes that English is the second official language. As Ireland’s first official language, Irish belongs to the so-called “Celtic language family” and is closely related to Gaelic, Welsh and Breton.

The ancestors of the Irish were mainly Gaels belonging to the Celtic tribal group, with Iberian, Norman, and Anglo-Saxon elements. The Iberians were the earliest inhabitants of the island of Ireland and came from the Pyrenees peninsula.

In the 4th century BC, Gaels came to Ireland from southern France and northern Spain (some scholars believe that these Gaelics came from Scotland). They assimilated the Iberians who lived there and became the basis of the Irish nation (Mulli 2000). Most historians believe that the Irish began to settle on the island of Ireland around the 7th century BC, engaging in agricultural production and raising livestock.

Therefore, the Irish language has quite a long history.

After Ireland was annexed to the United Kingdom, English gradually became dominant. Before the 19th century, most Irish people spoke Irish, but by 1891 more than 85% spoke only English. After Ireland was incorporated into Britain in the 17th century, English gradually became dominant.

The Gaelic Alliance was established in 1893 to promote Gaelic language and culture. Ireland became independent in 1922, and Irish was again used in school education. The state actively encourages the use of Irish. There are a lot of people speaking Irish today in the Irish-speaking regions (mainly on the west coast).

Today, Irish is a core curriculum in primary and secondary schools, and an increasing number of schools teach only in Irish. Gaelic speakers are still a minority (about 500,000) among the millions of people in the country, but various Gaelic publications are growing. This language plays the role of reviving national consciousness. Modern Irish has 15 vowels. The five basic vowels i, e, a, o, and u have their own lengths; the first two pairs are fine sounds, and the last three pairs are loud sounds.

Irish, like other Celtic languages ​​in the British Isles, has a systematic “alternate head” sound change. The inflections in Irish are the most complex of the existing [Celtic] languages: verbs have inflections of person, number, tense, mode, and state (active, automatic), and nouns, adjectives, and definite articles also have gender, number , grid changes. Nouns have 4 cases. In addition to being used alone, personal pronouns also have special forms that are combined with verbs or prepositions.

The word order of a sentence is that the verb comes before the subject. Predicates are often compounded, such as táim tar éis ligean “I am after permission” (I have given permission). The oldest documents in Irish date from the 4th to 8th centuries, and are inscriptions written in the Ogham alphabet. After the 5th century, two Irish scripts appeared. The earlier one had special fonts such as d which was horizontal; the other was the same as normal letters. Both texts are used at the same time.

The Irish language has a long and rich history and is of particular value for the study of Celtic languages.