Mehrsprachigkeit in Europa: Plurilinguismo in Europa ... - EURAC

Barbara Siller
another tongue and we might need to consider many societal aspects in order to describe a
particular language situation.
2. English language vs. Irish language up to the early 20 th century: hierarchy
system/questioning active complicity
According to statistics released by the Government of Ireland in 2004, out of the Republic’s 4.1
million citizens there are approximately 1.6 million Irish speakers (39 %). Of these, 350.000 use
Irish every day, 155.000 weekly, 585.000 less often, 460.000 never, and 30.000 didn’t state how
often they use the language.
However, these statistics are often disputed by Irish language activists and their opponents.
100.000 people have been quoted as the number of people in the Gaeltacht 1 .
The recent 2006 Irish Census may provide a more accurate estimate of the total Irish-speaking
population in the Republic of Ireland, because of changes which include asking respondents
where they speak the language. According to the 2001 Northern Ireland Census, in Northern
Ireland a total 10.4 % of the population had “some knowledge of Irish”. The Northern Ireland
Census reveals that 2.25 % can understand spoken Irish but cannot read, write or speak it.
Another 1.52 % speaks but don’t read or write it. 89.65 % have no knowledge of Irish (Northern
Ireland Census 2001).
The history of the Irish language has shown it to have always been closely related to the
political, social, and economic interaction between the island of Ireland and England. Up to the
16 th century Irish was the most widely spoken language in Ireland. The repression through the
Tudor monarchs on the other hand, which dispossessed aristocratic Catholic families, ensured
that the language started to be seen as a language of poor people. Speaking Irish was connected
to having fewer career opportunities. With the introduction of the Penal Laws in the 18 th century
Irish Catholics lost all their civil rights on the basis of their religious affi liation. David Crystal
explains the consequences for languages of this cultural clash:
“When one culture assimilates to another, the sequence of events affecting the endangered
language seems to be the same everywhere. There are three broad stages. The fi rst is
immense pressure on the people to speak the dominant language – pressure that can come
from political, social, or economic sources. It might be “top down”, in the form of incentives,
recommendations, or laws introduced by a government or national body, or it might be
‘bottom up’ […] or again, it might have no direction […]. But wherever the pressure has
come from, the result – stage two – is a period of emerging bilingualism, as people become
increasingly effi cient in their new language while still retaining competence in their old.
Then, often quite quickly, this bilingualism starts to decline, with the old language giving
way to the new. This leads to the third stage, in which the younger generation becomes
increasingly profi cient in the new language, identifying more with it, and fi nding their fi rst
language less relevant to their new needs. This is often accompanied by a feeling of shame
about using the old language, on the part of the parents as well as their children” (Crystal
2000: 78).
1 Gaeltacht is the name for an Irish speaking community which uses the language as its fi rst and daily language. These
communities are scattered over seven counties and four provinces; Gaeltacht regions are situated mainly along the
western seaboard and cover extensive areas of counties Donegal, Mayo, Galway and Kerry and also parts of counties
Cork, Meath and Waterford (Ireland’s Gaeltacht Homepage).
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