Actas da - Xunta de Galicia

Bernie O’Rourke
3. When language policy was put in place, Galician was still spoken by a
majority of speakers. Irish was spoken by a mere 18 per cent according to 1911
census results.
4. Galician speakers today are generally from a lower-social class, living in
rural areas and from the older generation (González /Rojo 1995) In the Irish
case, the majority of speakers are from a middle class background, from urban
areas and amongst the younger generation.
5. Galician exists as a community language. The existence of Irish as a
community language in however limited to peripheral 'Gaeltacht' (Irish
speaking) areas. Such areas constitute 2 per cent of the Irish population. The
remaining Irish speakers outside these 'Gaeltacht' areas exist as social networks.
6. Some 85% of Galicians can speak the minority language according to the
1991 census. Figures for the same year in the Irish case stand at 38%.
7. Over 60% of Galicians actively use the minority language. Only 5% of the
Irish population are active users (Ó'Riagáin 1997).
8. Language transmission in the Galician case is principally intergenerational
although there has been a decline in recent years. Apart from the traditional
Irish speaking areas of the 'Gaeltacht' and a number of isolated cases outside of
this, transmission is through the school system.
3. Fieldwork
Set against this overview of the socio-ecological environment of the Galician
and Irish language markets, I assessed the values attached to each minority
language by groups of students from the Galician and Irish cases. I looked
specifically at the motivations voiced by groups of third level students, within
the 18 to 22 age cohort, to ensuring the future maintenance of the minority
language in each case.
Though frequencies of responses are discussed here, my analysis relies
largely on qualitative accounts of open-ended answers provided by Galician and
Irish respondents.
In answer to the closed question 'In what language would you educate your
children?’ the majority of respondents from the Galician (88.6%) and Irish
(64%) samples favoured the inclusion of the minority language. A breakdown
of these figures (See Table 1) shows that in the Galician case, the majority
(84.8%) of this subgroup and indeed of the group as a whole favoured
bilingualism (75.2%). In the Irish case, while bilingualism received most
support from the entire group (49%) the number of respondents opting for
monolingualism (15%) in the minority language surpassed numbers in the
Galician case. At the other end of the spectrum, the number of respondents
opting for a monolingual education in the dominant language was higher in the
Irish case (36%), constituting a significant minority of the group.
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