[lg policy] Irish language policy: the end of the line

[Harold Schiffman]

 the end of the
line<http://corcaighist.blogspot.com/2010/10/future-irish-gaelic-language-gaeilge.html>
 There has to come a point when one hangs up their gloves and steps out of
the proverbial boxing-ring that is the classic 'debate' on the validity and
future of our national language, Irish. When one turns off the lights that
focus on the stage and tell everyone to go home, that the venue is now
closed.

I put the word *debate* in inverted commas for the reason that any 'debate'
with the Irish language as its topic shares much in common with children
fighting over a toy at playschool than any sort of reasoned, educated and
mature discussion of the issues at hand. (You might at this point think of
other 'debates' in political life, not just in Ireland but across the
Western World, that mirror this playschool example, such as: abortion,
gay-marriage, separation of Church and state etc.)

In my short 25 years I, like us all, have born almost weekly witness to the
sort of unprogressive and fact-void to-ing and fro-ing that has
characterised debates on the appropriate place of the Irish language in
society. And really, enough has to be enough. There has been far too much
banging of heads against brick walls.

<http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OhdU6N5hz2M/TMq6wxHL6FI/AAAAAAAABZ8/rDGiAezaaWg/s1600/Gaeltacht_1926.jpg>They
say that a picture paints a thousands words. Take a look at the two pictures
below. The first picture shows in green the areas of Ireland that were
recognised as *Gaeltachtaí* (Irish-speaking areas) by the first *Coimisiún
na Gaeltachta* (Gaeltacht Commission) in 1926. The second shows the areas
that were regonised as Gaeltachts in the 2007 study: *Staidéar Cuimsitheach
Teangeolaíoch ar Úsáid na Gaeilge sa Ghaeltacht* (A Comprehensive Linguistic
Study of the Usage of Irish in the Gaeltacht), a study that was undertaken
by the University of Galway [download study in
Irish<http://www.pobail.ie/ie/AnGhaeltacht/AnStaidearTeangeolaioch/>,
in English<http://www.pobail.ie/en/AnGhaeltacht/LinguisticStudyoftheGaeltacht/>].
The Gaeltacht areas are shaded for percentage of Irish speakers: dark blue =
>67% of residents Irish-speaking; light-blue = 44-67% of residents
Irish-speaking; turquoise = < 44% of residents Irish-speaking.





<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OhdU6N5hz2M/TMrT5jki7QI/AAAAAAAABaE/9qwGhqj0sVE/s1600/ireland.png>

<http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OhdU6N5hz2M/TMq61LEuBKI/AAAAAAAABaA/FvQSkcXMFWc/s1600/Gaeltacht_2007.jpg>
I personally believe that these 'debates' on the validity and future of the
language have been overtaken by extremists on both sides. There are those
who are militant in their support to the language, to the point of being
blind to reality. There are also those on the other side who openly hate the
language and attack it at every chance they get. The problem with this is
that these two groups continously hijack the discussion, driving away all
the people in the middle, the people who form the majority.

This middle group can be divided into two: those who love the Irish language
and want to see it prosper and survive *and* (the important point) who
actively do something in support of the language, such as: learning the
language, raising children with Irish, establishing Irish-medium schools,
taking-part in activities in Irish in the community, write in Irish, sing in
Irish, and basically do their part in preserving the language in their
everyday life, and that of their family and community.

The other part of the middle group (who form the majority of this middle
group, and well as making up the majority of the state) are positive and
warm towards the Irish language. They see it as important for the cultural
identity of the state and are somewhat supportive of official measures to
ensure that it remains as a symbol of the state and her people, measures
such as the provison of Irish-language services, the status of Irish as a
school-subject in the national curriculum. I say *somewhat* in the sense
that while they support the status of Irish as an official language of the
state and of the European Union, they are less sure about the how much
should be spent on these statuses and other measures to promote the use
ofthe language. In this economic climate, especially, people are sensitive
where the taxpayer's money is spent. I understand their concerns and they
are also my concerns. I am sure that we are all concerned that our monies
are spent in the more effective manner possible.

The only problem as concerns the future of the Irish language is that this
majority group, this group in the middle that is warm towards the language,
is not a group that is actively involved in promoting the laguage, either in
their own lives or that of their family and community. They are content to
have Irish as the national and first official language, content to have
their kids study the language at school, but when it comes to actually using
the language at home and in the community, this is a step too far.

And that is okay. It is their personal choice and decision as citizens of a
free and democratic country. I believe that I have been guilty of being
overly critical in the past to this majority's decision not to actively make
a place for the language in their lives. And while I don't like understand
their position and I do not like it, I have come to respect it. However,
respect is a two-way street and this majority group has to respect the
decision of the minority to raise their children in Irish, to demand,  as
citizens of the state and as speakers of the national and first official
language, Irish-medium education and Irish-languages services, and to live
their life as fully as possibly in Irish. Just as the majority's decision to
live their life in English has to be respected, so to must the decision of
this minority to live their life in Irish.

I think we as a people have to come to the sad realisation that the state is
incapable of ensuring the future of the Irish language. Just take a look at
the pictures above to see what has happened to the Irish-speaking areas in
the 80 years since the establishment of the Free State. What the state has
succeed in doing is giving every man woman and child of the state a minimal
proficiency in the language and some linguistic awareness. The state failed
to realise Mícheál Ó Coileáin's dream of an Irish-speaking state. Indeed,
historians and linguists who have studied the policies of the state have in
the recent few years come to the conclusion that the state never intented to
revert the state language to Irish, but were merely content continuing the
status quo, painting the state green but really not putting in place any
concrete measures to achieve real change and progress.

But with this realisation that the state can not ensure its future, we as
the people have understood that it is up to us to ensure that the language
survives. Contrary to popular misconception, the Irish language is one of
the healthiest languages in the world. It is a long way from dying. Studies
vary, but of the 6,912 language of the world
(Ethnologue<http://www.ethnologue.com/>)
some 50-90% will be extinct between 2050 and 2100. Irish is amongst that 10%
of language that will survive to see the 22nd century. It is up to see to
decide how the language will look at that time.

The growth of Irish-medium education (to the point that there is now at
least one in every county in Ireland, North and South) is one of the most
positive things to occur to the language in recent years. There are now more
Irish-speakers than there have ever been in the state in all of the previous
150 years. However, we have to be careful with numbers. The official
government reaction to census figures have done a great dis-service to the
language by inflating the number of speakers, thus making the language
appear stronger than it is. Of the recorded 1.66 m 'Irish-speakers' in the
state in 2006, 60% of them stated that they never or rarely use the language
(Census 2006<http://www.cso.ie/census/census2006results/volume_9/volume_9_press_release.pdf>),
and it is no secret that the majority of this almost 1 million figure has at
best very basic proficiency in the language.

Of the 485,000 people who use the language on a daily basis *within* the
education system, almost 30% of all recorded Irish speakers, only a tiny
minority of 32,000 also use the language outside the system.

Irish-speakers accounted for just under 71% of all people living in official
Irish-speaking areas. Only 36,500 of Irish speakers who living in the
Gaeltacht use the language on a daily basis, only 56.8% of the total number
of Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht. Furthermore, 14,000 of these used the
language only in the education system. Some 19,500 Irish speakers who live
in the Gaeltacht never or rarely use the language.

This means that just *22,500* in the whole state live in an *official
Irish-speaking area* and use the language on a *daily basis outside the
education system*. That is only 25% of all the people living in official
Irish-speaking areas. This means that, while 42% of the state claims some
knowledge of Irish, only *half a percent* (0.5%) of the state lives in a
Gaeltacht and uses the language on a daily basis outside the education
system.

The bleak prediction of the report mentioned above is that, unless radical
action is taken to prevent and reverse language-shift in the Gaeltacht,
Irish will be dead as a community language by 2027. The Government brouht
out its '20-year-plan<http://www.pobail.ie/en/IrishLanguage/file,10104,en.pdf>'
for the Irish language in response to this with the aim to strengthen the
place of the Irish language in the Gaeltacht as well as increase the number
of daily speakers of the language outside the education system across the
state from 72,000 to 250,000 in 20 years. Yes, no typo, 250,000.

As much as I hope and pray and I just can not see this happening, not with
all the research we have about language-shift, not only in Ireland but right
across the world.

Expert in the Yiddish langauge in the US, Fishmann's message is that without
Intergenerational transmission a language can not hope to survive. The sad
thing about numbers is that 160 years ago, Irish had about the same number
of speakers as it does now, as recorded by the 1851
census<http://www.cso.ie/census/census_1926_results/Volume8/C%201926%20VOL%208%20T1,2.pdf>(1.48
m). Back then there was no radio, no TV, no internet, no laws
protecting Irish and no place for the Irish language in the state and the
education system. Now we have all this but the difference is that back then
those people were native speakers and they were for the most part
monolingual in Irish. These people spoke Irish as their only language of
communication, it was the language of the family of the community. Today's
speakers have a poor command of the language and do not use it on a regular
basis. English is their mother and default language and Irish is a poor
second or third. (See the graph at the bottom of post for historical numbers
of speakers).

I am not pessimistic for the future of the Irish language as a language. It
will survive as it always had. It will be supported in some measure by the
official apparatus, it will be learned in schools. However, I am not
optimistic about the future of Irish as a community language. I am not
optimistic about the future of the Gaeltacht.

The government, upon the state achieving independence should have forumlated
a different language policy for the Gaeltacht areas than for the rest of the
state, something akin to what Belgium or Canada is like today. The primacy
of the Irish language should have been respected in the areas where Irish
was the community and majority language. This should have involved the
education system and economic activities as well as social and state
services. All this should have been monolingual Irish. In chasing the
irrealistic dream of a bilingual Ireland that stretched across the whole
island, and attempting to revive Irish in areas where it had then recently
died out or where it had never been spoken (Dublin), it lost what it already
had. Ireland was already bilingual. One part spoken only Irish, the rest
only English. It could and should have worked. The government failed, not
only in reviving Irish in English-speaking areas but in protecting Irish
where it was already spoken. The maps above document the amazing cock-up
that the governments of this state have made down through the decades. But
more than that, much worse in fact, is the amazing cock-up that the Irish
people allowed happen.

It was not the Brits and and it was not the Irish government and  it was not
the education system that failed the Irish language. It was the people
themselves that failed the language. In the 1926 census, the first one
post-independence, there were over 500,000 Irish speakers, some 17% of the
state, the vast majority native speakers, and most monolingual. Some 80
years later, 80 years of independence, all across the state, it is not
possible to get even 100,000 daily speakers.

It was the people of Ireland themselves that turned their back on the
language. Disenfranchised, lacking job-oppurtunities, living with the
reality of rural povery the prospect of economic (em)migration to
economically-progressive English-speaking areas at home and abroad they
turned their back on the language. Who could blame them? The majority did
not give the minority the freedom to control its own economic and linguistic
destiny.

We need to accept that fact if we are to move on. We need to accept that
disgrace and we need to learn from it. We need to work together, all those
non-extremists, those people who love and use the language, and those who
respect but don't use it. We need to work together for the language so that
it survives and grows, to recover that ground that has been lost through
neglect and indifference.

And we do that by respecting each other's decisions. We do that by allowing
all the schools of the Gaeltacht to teach in Irish, by allowing Irish-medium
outside the Gaeltacht to grow, for people to raise their kids in Irish and
get services in Irish, both in state bodies and in private businesses. It is
a personal decision, not something that is forced from above.

And we allow those who wish not to use Irish to do what they see fit. And if
we are to be a bilingual nation we have to realise that that means you
should be able to live all (or the majority of) your life in one language
alone, should you chose, be it Irish or English. Irish-speakers shouldn't
feel wrong for speaking the language in the presence of non-speakers. A
compromise has to be found so that the Irish language has its own space and
the English language has its own space. Right now only one of those two has
its own space.

The state has to recognise both language as having the same status. Both
languages should be a 'national and first' language. I am tired by theis
confusion over Irish being the naional and first language and yet being
absent in so many domains. Not even the two versions of the consitution
agree on the place of the two official languages. It seems that
idealistically the language has great status but in practice has none. What
the language needs is legislation that allows Irish-speakers the right to
use Irish in their everyday life and in those domains that matter to them.
So far, official bilingualism has not been kind at all to the language.
Road-signs, declarations, status and Irish as a subject in schools has done
nothing to stop the language-shift on the ground in the Gaeltacht. How does
the government re-act? By making road-signs Irish-only in the Gaeltacht. It
misses the point by so much that it would be terribly funny but for the fact
that it's terribly depressing.

Irish needs to claim domains of use, and it needs to be allowed to do so and
encouraged even. We need to see more street presence for the language. But,
the only way that will happen is if people (that 42% of the state) really
take the trouble to (re-)learn it and use it, and make a place for it in
their everyday life, be it in the shops, at work, at the gym, or at home
with the kids. We need to hear it and we need to see it and only then will
we start to see some positive change for the language. If the 42% actually
did more than tick a census box every 4 to 6 years then things might
improve. I hope but right now all these official declarations and plans look
like a load of hot air. They would power a million balloons but they are not
going to power a million people to speak the language.

We have to realise that no law will preserve the language. Only the mouths
of the children yet unborn can do that.

*Please consider this my last post on the sociolinguistics of the Irish
language*.

<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OhdU6N5hz2M/TMrrxkC1dqI/AAAAAAAABaI/ifNYyhJg57s/s1600/fullspeakersir.png>
Number of Irish speakers throughout history based on census returns,
post-1850, and on other historical account previous to that. The green line
indicates number of natives pre-independence and approx. number of native
and fluent speakers togther post-independence. The blue line indicates total
number of returned speakers (natives and larger second-language speakers).

-- 
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