Irish-language Poets

Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century. Irish is still spoken as a first language in a small number of areas of certain counties such as Cork, Donegal, Galway, and Kerry, as well as smaller areas of counties Mayo, Meath, and Waterford. It is also spoken by a larger group of habitual but non-traditional speakers, mostly in urban areas where the majority are second-language speakers. Daily users in Ireland outside the education system number around 73,000 (1.5%), and the total number of persons (aged 3 and over) who claimed they could speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, representing 39.8% of respondents.

For most of recorded Irish history, Irish was the dominant language of the Irish people, who took it with them to other regions, such as Scotland and the Isle of Man, where Middle Irish gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx. It was also, for a period, spoken widely across Canada, with an estimated 200,000–250,000 daily Canadian speakers of Irish in 1890. On the island of Newfoundland, a unique dialect of Irish developed before falling out of use in the early 20th century.

With a writing system, Ogham, dating back to at least the 4th century AD, which was gradually replaced by Latin script since the 5th century AD, Irish has the oldest vernacular literature in Western Europe. On the island, the language has three major dialects: Munster, Connacht and Ulster. All three have distinctions in their speech and orthography. There is also a "standard written form" devised by a parliamentary commission in the 1950s. The traditional Irish alphabet, a variant of the Latin alphabet with 18 letters, has been succeeded by the standard Latin alphabet (albeit with 7–8 letters used primarily in loanwords).

Irish has constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland, and is also an official language of Northern Ireland and among the official languages of the European Union. The public body Foras na Gaeilge is responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island. Irish has no regulatory body but the standard modern written form is guided by a parliamentary service and new vocabulary by a voluntary committee with university input. The modern-day areas of Ireland where Irish is still spoken daily as a first language are collectively known as the .

Names

In Irish

In ("The Official ritten Standard") the name of the language is , from the South Connacht form, spelled prior the spelling reform of 1948, which was originally the genitive of , the form used in Classical Gaelic. The modern spelling results from the deletion of the silent in . Older spellings include in Classical Gaelic and in Old Irish. Goidelic, used to refer to the language family, is derived from the Old Irish term.

Endonyms of the language in the various modern Irish dialects include: in Galway, // in Mayo and Ulster, and / in Munster, as well as in Waterford to reflect local realisation of word final as .

also has a wider meaning, including the Gaelic of Scotland and the Isle of Man, as well as of Ireland. When required by the context, these are distinguished as , and respectively.

In English

In English (including Hiberno-English) the language is usually referred to as ''Irish'', as well as ''Gaelic'' and ''Irish Gaelic''. The term ''Irish Gaelic'' may be seen when English speakers discuss the relationship between the three Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx). ''Gaelic'' is a collective term for the Goidelic languages, and when the context is clear it may be used without qualification to refer to each language individually. When the context is specific but unclear, the term may be qualified, as Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic or Manx Gaelic. Historically the name "Erse" was also sometimes used in Scots and then in English to refer to Irish; as well as Scottish Gaelic.

''Goidelic'' is a synonym of Gaelic, used mainly in linguistic typology and historical linguistics. Goidelic and Brittonic together constitute the Insular Celtic languages.

History

Written Irish is first attested in inscriptions from the 4th century AD, a stage of the language known as Primitive Irish. These writings have been found throughout Ireland and the west coast of Great Britain. Primitive Irish underwent a change into Old Irish through the 5th century. Old Irish, dating from the 6th century, used the Latin alphabet and is attested primarily in marginalia to Latin manuscripts. During this time, the Irish language absorbed some Latin words, some via Old Welsh, including ecclesiastical terms: examples are (bishop) from , and (Sunday, from ).

By the 10th century, Old Irish had evolved into Middle Irish, which was spoken throughout Ireland, Isle of Man and parts of Scotland. It is the language of a large corpus of literature, including the Ulster Cycle. From the 12th century, Middle Irish began to evolve into modern Irish in Ireland, into Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, and into the Manx language in the Isle of Man.

Early Modern Irish, dating from the 13th century, was the basis of the literary language of both Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland. Modern Irish, as attested in the work of such writers as