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Irish

The Irish language (sometimes Gaelic Ireland, Irish Gaelic, Irish: / ge l g / ) is a Celtic language Indo-European group of languages Gaelic , spoken in Ireland.

This is the first official language of Ireland (before the English ), and is recognized as a regional language in Northern Ireland under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. She became an official working language of the European Union 13 June 2005 , and that decision came into force on 1 January 2007.

It is part of the Celtic family in Q , because instead of 'P' characteristic of the Brythonic languages is normally used phoneme / k / (according to tradition displayed: Q), c is written in Irish. For example, the word for Easter, Cisc, Pask cons in Breton. Ceann (Head) is for Penn Breton (example: Kennedy (Ceann + Eide, ugly head) would have called Penndu in Breton). In Ireland each (horse) and cig (five) are deposited in Britto-Gallic and pemp (Breton modern pemp).

In this family, are also Scottish Gaelic and Manx are related to it.

The few areas where Irish is still alive are traditionally called Gaeltachta.

Summary

/ / Recent History

Despite the invasion, Gaelic Irish remained the majority language in Ireland until the eighteenth century and was practiced even in Dublin and other cities, enclaves of English. Then the tongue began to decline, largely due to repressive measures by the British Government, following the expansion of bilingual Current status of the language

Place names

The road signs in Ireland is officially bilingual.

Knowledge of Language

Today, about 70,000 Irish (less than 2% of the population) use the official national language in their daily lives, 260,000 people have a "good knowledge" of language and, as the population count conducted in 2001 , 1.6 million people in the Republic of Ireland have some knowledge of Irish, and 200,000 people in Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom ). The Irish language is taught as a compulsory subject in all schools of the Republic of Ireland.

It usually divides people practicing Irish into two groups: one group who learned and spoke as their mother tongue in some rural areas (Gaeltacht), and another resident in urban areas, particularly in Dublin. The second group includes many people who speak English as their main language, but also a number of people who have Irish as their mother tongue and speaking on a daily basis. The "dialect" Urban is reportedly to follow his own evolution, making it difficult to discern between the two groups (speakers and speakers Gaeltacht areas). The urban group shows a tendency to simplify the grammatical structure and phonetic in current use within households, but despite this, writing rules remain formally the same, and that the urban group that provides most of the writers.

Another study suggests that people using Irish in town are often more educated than Anglophones around them, and that Irish language activists could establish relations of interest by a common language to get jobs and a more pleasant higher status. Some assumptions made in this study were severely criticized. ,

Despite the estimate in the censuses of a general level of language proficiency level, there is no sound basis for determining the number of speakers really competent in the Irish language. It is unlikely, for example, there were in 2006 1 656 790 people (41.9% of the population of the time) able to be fluent in Irish. However, one must consider the dramatic increase in the number of immersion schools in the Irish language, mainly in urban areas, which clearly marked the linguistic situation.

The government has prepared a strategy in twenty years to consolidate the language and increase the number of its speakers, for example by encouraging the establishment of Gaelic neighborhoods.

Contemporary literature

Although classified as a minority language, Irish has a contemporary literature significantly. We consider Mirtn Cadhain (1906-1970), author who has been compared to James Joyce , as the writer of prose the most important. Among the poets, we note Sen Rordin (1907-1977) and Mire MHAC year tSaoi (b.1922), but they number many more.

Today there is a preponderance of writers urban areas was used to writers from the so-called Gaeltacht regions were attributed as much recognition. They include the autobiographies of notable authors, such tOilenach Year ("Man of the Island") of Toms Criomhthain (1856-1937) and Fact Bliain ag Fs ("Twenty years growing") of Muiris Silleabhin (1904-1950).

Irish is a language capable of conveying academic knowledge, it is not usual in all areas.

Several publishing houses specializing in publishing books in Irish and publish in any of hundreds of pounds each year.

Dialects

There are a number of distinct dialects of Irish. The three major dialects are those of the provinces of Munster (Cige Mumhan), Connacht (Cige Chonnachta) and Ulster (Cige Uladh).

Comparison

The differences between dialects are some important points, and lifted recurrent difficulties in defining an Irish standard. As for French phrases used in daily dialects may vary: the example most often used is " How are you? "


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