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

Barbara Siller
was very often simply a question of survival. The recent Irish-English co-production “The Wind
that shakes the Barley” directed by Ken Loach, when showing the British-Irish confl ict in the
past, acknowledges that the talking Irish was sometimes seen as an act of resistance and could
be a matter of life and death.
Nettle et al. mention the concepts of “language murder” and “language suicide”, as
formulated by some linguists. They observe that linguists are divided in their descriptions of
the fate of Irish, explaining that some of them consider it the former, some the latter (Nettle
et al. 2000: 7-8).
In 2005 in the Republic of Ireland Irish was announced as the 21 st offi cial language of the EU,
“but a derogation stipulates that not all documents have to be translated into Irish as is the
case with the other offi cial languages” (Confl ict Archive on the Internet).
However from 1 st January 2007, all key EU legislation will be translated into Irish. That is
signifi cant for the language, since “Irish citizens applying for jobs with EU institutions, where
two or more offi cial EU languages are required, will be able to put down Irish from January
2007” (ibid.).
In Northern Ireland the language history since 1922 is a different one. There Irish received
offi cial recognition for the fi rst time in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement. A cross-border
body known as Foras na Gaeilge (founded in 1999) was established to promote the language in
both Northern Ireland and the Republic, taking over the functions of Bord na Gaeilge 2 which
was set up in 1975. The British government has ratifi ed the European Charter for Regional or
Minority Languages in respect to Irish in Northern Ireland (ibid.).
3. Linguistic awareness
Living in a town such as Cork, a non-Irish citizen notices that beside English there are a large
number of other languages being used among the population. And this is now a feature of life
throughout the island, although – as to be expected – concentrated in towns. Economic growth
since the 1980s has created jobs and since the mid-nineties Ireland has become a destination
country for immigrants. According to the most recent fi gures from the Central Statistics Offi ce
(CSO) some 70.000 people migrated to Ireland between April 2004 and April 2005. The number
of non-nationals living in the State is estimated to be 350.000, accounting for 8-9 percent of the
population. “The Irish are one of the world’s great global diasporas; right up to a decade and a
half ago, Ireland was one of the greatest per capita suppliers of emigrants, and memorabilia of
Boston and New York are nearly everywhere. The past 15 years, have seen a stunning reversal,
with Ireland becoming one of the world’s fastest-growing immigrant nations, and those signs
are also everywhere to be seen […]”(Edelstein 2006). Furthermore “in 2004, Ireland was one
of only three countries that opted out of temporary restrictions on immigration from the EU-
10, and the results weren’t long in coming. [..] Given Ireland’s favourable economic climate
and the absence of restrictions on migration from within the EU, the infl ow shows no signs of
stopping – and given Ireland’s relatively small population, even moderate amounts of migration
can have a profound effect on the population”(ibid.).
2 “Bord na Gaeilge is a statutory agency whose task is to promote the Irish language and in particular to extend its use
by the public as a living language” (Tovey 1988: 53).
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