The leaking of an unpublished Government report last week revealed some startling linguistic trends in Gaeltacht areas. Most notably, it predicts that spoken Irish will die out as the primary language of the Gaeltacht within the next 20 years, writes Brian O'Connell.
The study, which was seen by the Irish language newspaper Foinse, reveals that only 24 per cent of school-goers in the Gaeltacht now use Irish among themselves, while a further 46 per cent of Gaeltacht students of all ages cannot speak Irish or speak very little Irish.
It's a bleak assessment and, unless radical measures are taken, the premise seems to be that Irish as a living language may soon be marbh. Yet, such dire predictions have been a feature of government reports and media commentary for the past half-century, with the Gaeltacht areas coming under particular scrutiny. Coupled with this, Irish-language policy has often been criticised for narrowly focusing on resuscitating the language in the Gaeltachts instead of imaginatively tackling the national reality.
For John Walsh, lecturer in sociolinguistics in the School of Irish, NUI Galway, the Gaeltacht should be considered as part of a national continuum of bilingualism, "ranging from the small number of strongly Irish-speaking communities to the rest of the country, where passive knowledge of Irish is relatively high but where levels of frequent usage are low".
Geographically, Gaeltachts retain importance as the only defined area where Irish is still used as a community language by native speakers. Their importance to the language is measured in terms not only of language maintenance but also in the inter-generational transmission of the language from parents to children.
"It has been clear from a long time that, while parts of the Gaeltacht remain strongly Irish-speaking communities, other areas are very mixed linguistically," says Walsh, "and large areas of official Gaeltacht territory are predominantly English-speaking."
One of those areas where spoken Irish is under increasing threat is Ballyvourney, the commercial heart of the Múscraí Gaeltacht, Co Cork. In the village of Ballymakeera, at the lower end of Ballyvourney, everyday use of Irish is being suffocated not by negative attitudes, but by economic necessity.
Planning notices on the roadside appear in English; the local Centra harbours a "deli counter", where workers queue for "spiced wedges" and "hot dinners"; and the sign outside McCarthy's Fuels announces it is "open".
Walking through the village last Tuesday afternoon, very little conversational Irish was audible, either between locals or in the shops. Among younger people, the level of Irish spoken was practically nil. One native speaker, Conor Ó Laighin (18), admits he doesn't speak Irish all that frequently, and anticipates doing so even less if he secures the points to study engineering in University College Cork next year.
Having just completed his schooling through Irish, he is critical of the manner in which certain subjects were taught. "For some subject the books could have been a lot better," he says. "For instance, with chemistry and physics we had to get the English book and then do our notes through Irish, which made it a lot harder and doubled the work, effectively. There should have been an Irish book in the first place."
Despite this, Conor is glad to have been brought up in the Gaeltacht: "The language is important to me. I'm proud to be from here and proud to be able to speak the language."
Shop worker Saorlaith Ní Suibhne (17) agrees that daily usage of Irish is decreasing in the area. "I work in a shop locally and there isn't that much speaking going on, to be honest," she says. "I would speak a bit, but it's hard to tell if people have Irish or not, so I usually stick with English." Saorlaith says that she and her friends rarely speak Irish among themselves: "I love the language but with my friends we only use it a bit. Mostly we talk in English. In school we would use Irish all the time, though, and I do have a few people whom I text in Irish."
PEADAR Ó CEALLAIGH and his daughter Meadhb come from a family of Irish speakers stretching back hundreds of years. Meadhb is a first-year arts student in UCC and finds attitudes towards the language among fellow students largely positive.
"I think the language is getting more popular again. In college when people learn I am a fluent speaker they are nearly always impressed. It used to be that people weren't really proud to speak it in bars in front of people, but now anyone I meet with a bit of Irish is mad keen to have a conversation."
Peadar acknowledges that attitudes have changed, yet says that the type of Irish that will remain in the Gaeltacht is destined to be a much thinner language than in previous generations. "The language has always been under pressure in this area," he says. "Ballyvourney is on the main road from Cork to Killarney and from Famine times onwards there was big pressure on Irish. It went through a revival with the Gaelic League, which lasted until the economic stagnation of the 1950s."
A teacher in Millstreet, Peadar says that the situation nowadays is comparably better than in his own school days. "When I was going to school, even though Irish was our first language, many of my colleagues wouldn't speak it. Now, you can speak to young people in Irish and if they have it they'll respond. Okay, so maybe the language is getting thinner, and perhaps not as rich as it was, but the attitude is good."
Despite the current concerns for the language, Peadar is generally optimistic about the survival of the language. "Irish is no longer seen as a language of immigration," he notes, "which is the first thing we should acknowledge. It has always been under pressure and indeed has been killed off several times over. But I think it's going to survive. I don't know in what form exactly, but I'd certainly be confident that Irish will survive in the Gaeltacht, albeit in a reduced form."
THE MINISTER FOR Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív, highlights the fact that the report contains nothing new statistically that isn't already available.
"The report contains more details about attitudes, but it's very much in line with what I know to be happening on the ground," he says. "The report says that you have a language in danger of surviving as the dominant language in certain communities. Unless proactive steps are taken to protect its position, it will no longer be the dominant language in those communities in 20 years' time. That in no way infers the death of the language."
On the issue of the quality of the language, Ó Cuív points out that dilution of language is not unique to Irish. "I accept the point that we may be left with a thinner language. But you also have to say that the English spoken on the streets of Dublin is not very Joycean. In fact, it's not even Behanesque. I think that's a reflection of society as a whole and not just limited to Irish."
Ó Cuív also points out how changes in the social demographic have affected the manner in which Irish is spoken in Gaeltachts. "We live in a very mobile world where people get partners from far and wide. In the old days relationships would have been drawn from within a five- or 10-mile radius. So that has obviously had an effect on the usage. On the whole, though, I'm not overly concerned. The language is probably healthier now than it has been since the 1950s. The core Gaeltachts are maybe not as strong, but the language as a whole is in better health."
Two miles outside Spiddal, located in the Minister's constituency, native speaker Padraic Breathnach shares many of the opinions voiced in Ballyvourney. While his family have always spoken Irish - his grandparents had little English - he feels that his will be the last generation of speakers with a high level of fluency.
"There's no doubt that Irish is in decline," he says. "It's spoken less often, especially by teenagers, who are exposed to more and more English media and cultural outlets."
Breathnach works locally in a factory where Irish is spoken daily among his co-workers, and he says that his own children spoke little English until they were in their early teens. "I notice that when children around here reach 13 or 14 they start using a lot more English. I think that exposure is the key, given that it is a complicated language to learn. We keep Irish students here and they do pick it up after three weeks. You can hear their Irish improving."
While there are challenges, Breathnach believes the language has a more secure future now than any time since the foundation of the State. "I'm not duly pessimistic for the future of the language. Ultimately it's up to people themselves to have the cop on to keep it alive."