Irish language

L Foran, 'Who’s Afraid of the Irish Language? The National-Philosophical Possibilities of a Lost Tongue' in C Fischer and A Mahon  (eds) "Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Ireland" (Routledge, 2019) pp.230-245

Ireland is an unusual post-colonial country in that few of its citizens speak its original language as their first tongue. On a daily basis just 1.7 percent of Irish residents speak Irish, whereas 12 % speak a language other than Irish or English.  What does this mean?  It would be crass to suggest that national or cultural identity rests only on the ability to speak one’s language, but it would be equally facile to pretend that the loss of a national language has no impact on one’s identity. Why did the (already small) number of Irish speakers rapidly decline with Irish independence from British rule? Why has a de jure bilingual state produced a de facto monolingual population?  And, more importantly what are the consequences of this situation: what does being Irish without Irish mean? 

Jacques Derrida describes nationalism as a ‘philosopheme’ and one that cannot be separated from questions of linguistic identity.  In this paper I draw on the work of Derrida and Barbara Cassin to describe the connection between nationalism, language and philosophy. I then go on to examine the role of the Irish language in imaginings of Irish identity and nationalism. I argue that Ireland’s strange and disjointed relationship to its own tongue provides hope for the most hospitable kind of nationalism and the most philosophical kind of identity.

Статья посвящена языковым аспектам тюдоро-стюартовского завоевания Ирландии, которые рассматриваются с точки зрения установления властных отношений в британской композитарной монархии и сквозь призму интеллектуального контекста. Автор подчеркивает, что осознание этнокультурного неравенства основывалось на средневековой этнографии, для которой было характерно неодностороннее восприятие инаковости, и обращает внимание на
то, что различия идеологизировались в рамках оформления властных отношений. Автор выделяет два этапа государственного строительства в Ирландии в XVI—XVII вв., предполагавших различные сценарии для ирландского языка. Если в начале английская корона демонстрировала определенную толерантность к ирландскому языку в обмен на лояльность своим действиям, то затем, во многом из-за противодействия туземных элит процессам продвижения центральной власти, возобладали более жесткие стратегии дисциплинирования и контроля над многообразием, в результате чего к 1640-м гг. установилась функциональная
иерархия, в рамках которой английский язык был языком социального доминирования, а ирландский использовался для повседневных нужд.

This presentation was developed initially as part of an Irish course for An Droichead Community Centre, Ormeau Road, and then further developed for a presentation at The Regent School, Newtownards.  It provides an introduction to Irish place-names: concepts, languages, examples, sources for study.  The material is suitable for teaching sixth-formers and adults.  The presentation is illustrated with examples mainly from Belfast and Newtownards, but is relevant to place-names throughout Ireland, North and South.

This essay examines evidence for the speaking of Irish as an historic community language into the twentieth century in the neighbouring townlands of Agha, Ballysallagh, Carrigeen, Feathallagh, Johnswell, Knockshanbally, Ossoryhill and Tullowbrin in the Rathcoole electoral division, barony of Gowran, Co. Kilkenny, the district sometimes referred to as the Johnswell hills. These are the more upland townlands of the district and reach a height of 300 metres above sea level. This was not an area which carried notable Irish-language associations: as far back as 1802 William Tighe remarked in his 'Statistical Observations' that ‘Irish is more prevalent around Kilkenny and near Munster, than near the county of Carlow’.
The essay employs as sources field work conducted in the district by scholars and linguists; newspaper sources – two letters written in connection with the subject by contemporary observers (one in the late nineteenth century, the other in the early twentieth) and a newspaper article; census figures and, perhaps surprisingly, relevant fiction from the late twentieth century. The process of language decline and death is  interpreted with reference to the work in sociolinguistics of a number of scholars, in particular to the pre-eminent work of Nancy Dorian on the decline of vernacular Scottish Gaelic. Given the developing subaltern social status of speakers of Irish from the eighteenth century onwards, the evidence adduced is necessarily spasmodic and occluded. The term ‘Irish-speaking district’ is considered to be more accurate than the term ‘Gaeltacht’: the latter originally meant ‘the speakers of Irish’ and only took on its present meaning following the establishment of the Gaelic League in 1893; in any event no district in County Kilkenny met the relatively indulgent threshold for ‘Breac-Ghaeltacht’ status determined by the Gaeltacht Commission of 1926, although areas of Cavan, Clare, Leitrim, Limerick, Louth, Roscommon, Sligo and Tipperary were so designated.

Those place-names which combine noun + noun (and, to a lesser extent, adjective + noun) in close compounds are regarded as among the most ancient Irish place-names.  It is widely held that they reflect a structure dating back to the Common Celtic period due to their similarity to Brittonic and Gaulish compounds in  terms of structure and vocabulary.
In this paper, the Gaulish, British and Irish names are compared, particularly in terms of the repertoire of elements found in each set and the semantic categories represented. It is found that there is surprisingly little overlap between the Gaulish and Irish repertoires, both in terms of generic and specific elements.  In general, the British names, especially the Romano-British ones, offer better parallels with the Continent.
The close compound structure, inherited from Indo-European, is taken up in Ireland, but gets heavily adapted in terms of the repertoire of elements and is steadily replaced by other structures. The strongest connections with Gaulish names are found in Ulster and North Leinster.  There are areas where noun + noun compounds are scarce or absent.
The early Irish elements with non-cognate Gaulish synonyms merit further study, as a proportion of them may have non-Celtic origins.

The theme of this lecture was inspired by remark at a public event a few years ago in Navan that Irish had not been spoken in Meath for more than 200 years. In actuality, at that time, the last generation of Irish-speakers in Meath and Westmeath had not even been born! Yet we are largely in the dark as to the real dynamic between English and Irish as used in everyday life in Meath and Westmeath in the period 1700–1900.

The presence of Irish speakers can be documented throughout the colonial history of the Americas to the present from Argentina through to Canada. Data on individual Irish speakers living in the Americas is more frequent than descriptions of immigrant communities of Irish speakers. However, much can be inferred from individual data when taking into consideration the general patterns of immigration from specific counties of Ireland.

Celtic Sociolinguistics Symposium 2018, NUI Galway

Proponents of the 'new speaker' concept have heralded a shift away from language learning ideologies that focus on emulation of native-speaker models, which they describe as 'essentialism' (O'Rourke and Pujolar 2013; O'Rourke and Walsh 2015), or 'native authenticism' (Hornsby and Quentel 2013). These ideologies are presented as potentially harmful and counter-productive both to native speakers (by romanticizing and museifying them) and to second-language learners and speakers (by stigmatizing hybridized new speaker varieties and focusing on language deficits rather than skills).

It is claimed by new speaker scholars that more 'social constructionist' ideologies are gaining ground among some L2 speaker communities, and that these offer a path away from more essentialist models. However, as these scholars also acknowledge, 'essentialist' deference to native-speaker models remains a prominent strand in the ideologies of new speakers. Focusing on the Celtic languages, this paper will argue that the case against 'essentialist' ideologies may be reductive and overstated, and that new speaker scholars have not adequately considered how a shift away from native-speaker models might play out in practice, e.g. in corpus planning and pedagogy.

'Essentialist' or 'native authenticist' ideologies may potentially have benefits in language learning, identity construction, and in some cases are clearly closely linked to deeply-held motivations for acquiring the second language. 'Native authenticists' are often among the most committed language activists and may play an out-sized role in development of resources and networks. Scholars should pay more attention to ways in which ideological clarification might take place, bringing actors with differing language ideologies and backgrounds together constructively.

""One of the key areas of international paremiological scholarship in modern times has been the analysis of proverbial markers and the concept of ‘proverbiality’ (Arora, 1984). Many scholars have directed their attention to questions of ‘proverbial style’ in order to identify which internal and external markers distinguish the proverb from its surrounding discourse, and to analyse how these devices operate in different world languages. Of these markers, it is universally agreed that proverbial ‘style’ incorporates, to varying degrees, poetic devices, such as parallelism, ellipsis, alliteration and rhyme, and also semantic devices such as metaphor, personification, paradox, and hyperbole (Mieder, 2004:7). The major works of the paremiological canon in the English language, including Taylor (1931), Whiting (1932), and Mieder (2004), have provided a synoptic overview of these devices, but language-specific studies have also contributed to our overall understanding of proverbial style through detailed examinations of structure and style in various languages throughout the world, including Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, (Cairene) Arabic, English, American English, Esperanto, French, Hebrew, Hungarian, Igbo, Italian, Latin, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Welsh, Yoruba, and numerous other African languages. Inevitably such studies of style, particularly those dealing with poetic features, have also featured in structuralist treatments of the illusive issue of proverb definition. In spite of such pioneering scholarship, the fact remains that, unfortunately, there has been no comprehensive examination of the style and structure of Irish-language proverbs, and while Robinson (1945) and De Bric (1976) have provided cursory examinations of Irish proverbs, and touched upon general questions of structure and proverbial formulas, there has been no thorough treatment of the material. This paper, being the first section of a more comprehensive, detailed analysis of proverbial style and structure in the Irish language, seeks to begin to readdress this imbalance by providing a linguistic description and analysis of the most salient aspects of syntax in
Irish-language proverbs.""

This PhD thesis examines strategies of resistance employed by IRA prisoners in opposition to criminalization processes in the post 1981 H-Blocks of Long Kesh.  It examines the nature and extent of state criminalization processes in the north of Ireland from the early to mid 1970s, and explores the perspective that its logic and intent persisted well beyond the post 1981 period.  It further considers the manner in which IRA prisoners reassessed the nature of their opposition to criminalization processes in the aftermath of the 1981 hunger strike.

The thesis looks at the environment of the post 1981 H-Blocks in some detail with a view to discussing the determining factors behind changes to the prison regime in the 1981 – 2000 period.  It further examines the precise strategies of resistance employed by IRA prisoners, looking at the nature of their organisation and structure, the emphasis placed on political education, the manner in which they organised political campaigns, and the development of escapes.  The discussion that emerges from this examination contributes to a clearer understanding of the nature and extent of IRA resistance strategies in the post 1981 H-Blocks, and highlights the contradictions that emerge between the existing academic and official literature in respect of this period, and the explanation offered by IRA prisoners themselves.

The thesis was accepted in May 2011

"The oldest records indicate that the performance of poetry in Gaelic Ireland was normally accompanied by music, providing a point of continuity with past tradition while bolstering a sense of community in the present. Music would also offer, particularly for poets writing in English from the eighteenth century onwards, a perceived authenticity, a connection with an older tradition perceived as being untarnished by linguistic and cultural division.

While providing an innovative analysis of theoretical work in music and literary studies, this book examines how traditional Irish music, including the related song tradition (primarily in Irish), has influenced, and is apparent in, the work of Irish poets. While looking generally at where this influence is evident historically and in contemporary Irish poetry, this work focuses primarily on the work of six poets, three who write in English and three who write primarily in the Irish language: Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Cathal Ó Searcaigh."

A number of different languages in the Indo-European family were analyzed based on how difficult it would be for a native English speaker to learn them. They were then rated on a purely impressionistic 1-6 scale of easiest to most difficult. English was also discussed in terms of the difficulties it might present to an English learner. Extensive phonological, morphological, syntactic and even semantic analysis was done for many of these tongues to highlight areas of difficulty for English learners. Very long: 99 pages.

Final (post-viva) research masters dissertation, Aberystwyth University, 2016. A published version with significant revisions and additions is envisaged.

The present thesis provides a linguistic overview of the revived variety of Manx Gaelic, the Celtic language of the Isle of Man currently spoken by a few hundred people who have learnt it as a second language, and a small number of children raised bilingually. The introductory chapter presents an overview of the recent history and current situation of Revived Manx; the academic literature on both varieties of Manx; the study of language revival in general; and the ideological issues surrounding the terminology of language ‘revival’ and of language ‘death’. In Chapter 2 an overview is given of the linguistic features of Revived Manx (RM) with comparisons to the traditional variety (Traditional Manx, TM), with sections on phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, and lexis, idiom and style. In Chapter 3 RM is placed in the wider context of the phenomenon of language variety, with particular focus on comparisons with Revived Hebrew (and the problems with such comparisons); the concept of interlanguage; language revival as language contact; and existing language ideologies prevalent in the RM community. Finally consideration is given to the future prospects of the language, and recommendations are made concerning ideological clarification and corpus planning.

This thesis elucidates some of the hitherto poorly understood aspects of the diachronic development of Manx phonology. By tracing phonological changes from earlier varieties of Gaelic, and within the attested period of written and recorded Manx, it frames these developments within the wider contexts of Gaelic dialectology and historical linguistics. Manx provides an important source for understanding the linguistic development of the Gaelic languages. A lack of systematic treatments and reliable datasets for the language, however, has obscured this fact and led to its neglect within Gaelic studies.

The thesis focuses, in particular, on the development of the language’s prosody, suprasegmental features, vowel system and sonorants, the latter having a particular bearing on vowels. Five principal methodologies are deployed to investigate these topics:

• Re-evaluation of existing descriptions and datasets provided by previous scholarship, especially those collected by Rhŷs in the 1880s and 1890s, and material from the last generation of speakers presented by Broderick in his Handbook of Late Spoken Manx.
• Interpretation of the evidence of the two main Manx orthographies and non-standard variations thereof.
• Analyses based, as far as possible, on the whole attested lexis of the language, making use of Cregeen’s and Kelly’s dictionaries.
• Quantitative approaches to all of these sources of data where appropriate.
• Instrumental phonetic analysis of recordings of the terminal speakers of Manx.

Chapter one places Manx in its historical and dialectological context, reviews previous scholarship, discusses the primary sources, and introduces the interpretative difficulties of the orthographies.

Chapter two examines developments in the short and long vowels, and the impact of the consonant system on vowel changes.

Chapter three examines the development of the vowels ao(i) /əː/ and ua(i) /uə̯/ in Manx. The written evidence, description and recorded data are complex, and some scholars have claimed that these vowels fell together with one another and with other vowels. It will be shown that these vowels in fact remained contrastive for the most part in Late Manx.

Chapter four investigates developments in the sonorant consonants, especially the R, L and N phones. Changes in vowels preceding historically tense sonorants are also examined, as well as the origins and spread of the phenomenon of preocclusion.

Chapter five examines suprasegmental and prosodic features including stress shift, unstressed long vowel shortening, and the conditioning factors for these.

Chapter six provides concluding remarks assessing the thesis’ contribution to current scholarship, and the prospects for future research.

[This doctoral thesis was completed in the University of Edinburgh with supervision from Dr William Lamb (Celtic and Scottish Studies) and Dr Pavel Iosad (Linguistics and English Language). I am grateful to the AHRC Centre for Doctoral Training in the Celtic Languages for funding the research.]
 

This bibliography aims to include all academic published works (books, articles, chapters, reviews) on the Manx Gaelic language and its literature and history to date, and also as many unpublished theses and dissertations as are known to the compiler. Works are included where the main focus is on Manx, or where Manx is one of the primary topics, or is named in the title. There is also a select list of publications which discuss or mention Manx in passing, with indication of the sections or pages in which the relevant passages may be found. Certain adjacent topics such as place-names, and the Gaelic language in the Isle of Man in the medieval period, are not as yet included in the bibliography.

This seminar will examine the development of the two principal orthographies used in Manx Gaelic writing from the seventeenth century onwards, that of Bishop John Phillip’s manuscript translation of the Book of Common Prayer (c. 1610), and that of the eighteenth-century printed texts, most notably the Manx translation of the Bible (completed 1772).

Although it has long been derided by Celtic scholars and Manx language activists alike as ‘an abominable system, neither historic nor phonetic’ (O’Rahilly 1932), ‘an English monstrosity’ (Jackson 1955), and ‘a historical abomination’ (Fargher 1979), quantitative linguistic research demonstrates that there is considerably more regularity in Manx spelling than has been previously assumed, as well as significant innovations to represent phonological contrasts and developments not found in English or, sometimes, the other Gaelic languages. The Manx orthographies are revealed to be a valuable resource for tracing historical sound changes, unparalleled in other Gaelic dialects where conservative literary standards tend to obscure developments in the vernacular language.

The presentation will focus on a case study of the Manx orthographic representation of reflexes of the Gaelic vowels ua(i) */ua/ and ao(i) */əː/, a particularly complex area of Manx phonology. It will be argued that a full and fair assessment of Manx orthography requires careful consideration of the historical sociolinguistic context in which it was created, and that apparent redundancies and ambiguities in its representation of the phonological system may be functional and intelligible within this context.

Journal of Celtic Linguistics (2016), 17, 147–239

While accounts of the syntax of the element usually called the 'verbal noun' are available for different periods of Irish and Scottish Gaelic, as well as the Brythonic languages, the details of verbal noun constructions in Manx have never been fully described. Thomson (1952: 285-89) deals cursorily with the topic, and touches on various aspects in his grammar of Early Manx (Thomson 1953: 51-4, 62-9), in two lectures (Thomson 1969, 1986) and in commentaries on Manx texts (Thomson 1981, 1998). The matter is also discussed briefly by Broderick (2010: 345-46). Many of their ideas and suggestions will be explored in depth here.

This paper focuses particularly on the way pronominal objects of verbal nouns are expressed (whether by means of a possessive proclitic or as an object personal pronoun), and how this is related to the changing analysis of the verbal noun in Manx (and to varying extents the other Celtic languages), from a noun to a non-finite verb. The shift is examined in terms of reanalysis and grammaticalization, with particular reference to the common cross-linguistic phenomenon of the development of verbal nouns into infinitives and other non-finite verbal elements.

https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/uwp/jcl/2016/00000017/00000001/art00005

The Irish Society was an Anglican foundation and was an aspect of the work of low church Calvinist-influenced evangelicals within the Established Church.  Bishops of the Church of Ireland, in particular, Robert Daly (bishop of Cashel, Emly, Waterford and Lismore 1843-72)  and Power le Poer Trench (archbishop of Tuam 1834-1839) , were among its leading members.  Non-episcopalian Protestantism had its own missionary organisation, the Home Mission, founded by the Synod of Ulster in 1836.  The Home Mission was particularly active in the northern half of the country, becoming involved in a major confrontation with the Catholic Church regarding the teaching of Irish in County Antrim in the 1840s.  Presbyterianism was less inhibited than the Church of Ireland in promoting ‘an Irish-speaking mission to the native Irish’ and the closeness of low church evangelical thinking to Presbyterianism ensured that the outlook of both organisations.

An illustrated talk, examining the evidence for Brittonic influence on the early Irish language and specifically on place-names, then discussing some early place-names from Co. Down whose origin cannot be adequately explained as Irish and where Brittonic may offer a solution.  The names discussed included Lambeg (cf. Welsh llan), Bangor, Saintfield (Tavenaghnewin in 1615, cf. W. newyn), Drummiller (3 instances in Co. Down, cf. W. moelfre, often anglicised as 'miller', 'mellor'), Tullycarnet (cf. W. carnedd), Ballymiscaw (cf. W. misgawn), Gortgrib (cf. W. crib), Castlereagh (cf. W. rhiw, Ir. rubha), Braniel (cf. W. broniallt), Galwally (in district Gallouche), Breda (Knockbreda, Newtownbreda, Ir. bréadach, cf. W. braint, 'Brent' names in England < Proto-Celtic *brigant-), Leveroge (cf. W. llifeiriog), Collin (cf. W. cwlen), Sketrick (cf. sgethrog), Dufferin (cf. W. dyffryn) and Drin (dring).  The conclusion is that, with a small percentage of early Irish place-names, a Brittonic origin provides a more satisfactory solution than previous interpretations, not only in terms of phonology but also in terms of the geographical context.  Most of these names involve prosaic topographical descriptions which correspond to the local landscape.

The Irish language is witnessing a revival in some parts of Ulster. This revival is most visible in Belfast where An Cheathrú Ghaeltachta was founded to promote the Irish language. While Irish was marginalized during the conflict in the North, Belfast, for example, had more Gaelscoileanna than any other city in Ireland except Dublin and Cork in 2013. One of the most important aspects for this development was the release of the Irish Republican prisoners following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In contrast to the North, although considered as the national language in the southern Republic of Ireland, the Irish language is further declining in the South. Thus, while the former Republican prisoners perform a pivotal role in the North, their role in re-vitalising the language in the Republic is marginalised. By comparing the role of the Irish language in Long Kesh/HMP Maze and Portlaoise Prison, I will discuss two aspects for this North-South divergence. These two differences are first the role of former prisoners within their community, and second the colonial/post-colonial framework of the two states.

This paper investigates the conceptualisation of minority languages as ‘long tail languages’ by new media entities. ‘Long tail languages’ is a term coined from the related concept of ‘long tail marketing’ from the business/marketing domain (Anderson, 2004, p. 3). The long tail market is a market which includes all commodities no matter how small or niche the audience (e.g., back catalogues, older albums, live tracks, B-sides, remixes, etc.). The key idea being that if a commercial entity has a number of niche/long tail markets, the result may be a market as large as a traditional mass market. Initial research found that new media entities, such as Facebook, classify Irish, Welsh and other minority languages as ‘long tail languages’ which in turn impacts how the entities treat these languages in their processes of internationalisation and localisation. Facebook, for example, classify many ‘long tail languages’ as ‘unsupported’ languages in their Translations application, the application they created to ‘crowdsource’ translated versions of their website. These ‘unsupported’ languages are languages open for translation whose quality is not assured by the Facebook internationalisation team or professional translators (Ellis, 2009). In these languages/apps the ‘finalization’ stage in the translation process comes down to percentages, ‘once a certain percentage of strings have been translated, Facebook publishes it’ (Ellis, 2009).
Given Facebook’s status as the largest social network site (Chaffey, 2016) with 1.13 billion active daily users on average (Alexa, 2016), its treatment of minority languages as ‘long tail languages’ and thus ‘unsupported’ languages in its internationalisation process raises the question as to whether this is also the case in other new media domains. Indeed, Facebook plans on opening ‘many more [languages] in the long tail’ (Ellis, 2009) for translation via its Translations app. In Facebook’s case, the availability of its website in a number of minority languages, including Irish, demonstrates the market value of such languages. As Coupland (2010) notes, the revaluation of minority languages by commercial entities comes with the risk that these languages may be seen simply as shortcuts to authenticity, goodwill and commercial gain, and not valued as important aspects of people’s culture. The notion of ‘long tail languages’ is evidence of the commercialisation of minority languages (cf. Heller, 2010) by new media entities as they identify languages directly with markets and with increasing user numbers. This paper aims to consider the revaluation of minority languages as ‘long tail languages’ in the new media context and examines the impact of this commercially-driven reality on the social value of minority languages.

References:
Alexa (2016). Top sites. Alexa. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from http://www.alexa.com/topsites.
Anderson, C. (October 1, 2004). The long tail. Wired. Retrieved October 25, 2010, from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html?pg=2&topic=tail&topic_set=.
Chaffey, D. (August 8, 2016). Global social media research summary 2016. Smart Insights. Retrieved November 11, 2016 from http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/.
Coupland, N. (2010) ‘Introduction: Sociolinguistics in the global era’ in Coupland, N., ed. The Handbook of Language and Globalization, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 1-27.
Ellis, D. (2009) ‘A case study in community-driven translation of a fast-changing website’ in Aykin, N., ed. Internationalization, Design and Global Development, Springer Berlin/Heidelberg, 236-244.
Heller, M. (2010a) ‘The commodification of language’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 101-114.

Pre-publication draft. Published version: https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/zcph/62/1/article-p45.xml

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Artikel umfasst eine Ausgabe und englische Übersetzung des zweitältesten bekannten manx-gälischen Prosatextes, einer handgeschriebenen Predigt aus dem Jahre 1696 von John Woods (von 1696 bis zu seinem Tod im Jahre 1739 Pfarrer von Malew im südlichen Teil der Insel Man), sowie eine historische und linguistische Einführung und Anmerkungen. Die Predigt ist vor allem deshalb von Interesse, da sie gewissermaßen als „fehlendes Glied‟, der Sprache und Orthographie bezüglich, zwischen dem Früh-Manx des von Bischof John Phillips übersetzten Book of Common Prayer der anglikanischen Kirche und dem klassischen Manx der gedruckten religiösen Texte des 18. Jahrhunderts gelten kann, und auch aufgrund der Einsicht, die sie zum Gebrauch und der Überlieferung des Phillips-Manuskripts und des Predigtkorpus gibt.

At the heart of the debates surrounding Irish and Welsh nationalism and national self-determination are essential questions on the respective Irish and Welsh national identities, on what really sets Ireland and Wales apart from their neighbours. These national identities have been irrevocably shaped by the colonial and postcolonial experiences of the Irish and Welsh people. In their search for a revitalised understanding of themselves in light of the modern world have brought the memories of their pasts together with the realities of their presents, forming two distinct national identities, each with their own language. While still minorities in their own countries, both the Irish and Welsh languages, and their speakers have made great progress in recent decades with the introduction of independence in the Republic of Ireland and devolution in Wales as distinct sociopolitical entities from the long shadow of the British Empire.

A talk on Irish surnames and other surnames used in Ireland: how they came into being, how they work, how they can be categorised and what they mean.  The talk focused mainly on Irish and Scottish Gaelic surnames, but mention was also made of English, Scots, Welsh and Manx names, as well as some from further afield.  This talk was given as part of "Discover the Irish Language", a day of talks and taster classes - 31st March 2018, organised by Gordon McCoy of Turas at the Skainos Centre, Newtownards Road, Belfast.

Paper presented at the Cambridge Endangered Languages and Cultures Group postgraduate workshop, June 2019.

Anti-prescriptivism has been axiomatic in most branches of linguistics since the inception of the discipline (Cameron [1995] 2012), which has largely stood aloof from the normative concerns and anxieties of lay-people. This has included many strands of language policy and planning-even though reflexive, subjective choices to speak a particular linguistic variety are often central to language revitalization. Linguists have nonetheless tended to view prescriptive ideological constructs such as 'purism' mostly as obstacles, to be minimized or tolerated at best (Dorian 1994).

More recently, scholars working with the 'new speaker' concept have heralded, and encouraged, a shift away from 'essentialist' understandings of language and identity among L2 speakers of minoritized languages, including weakening of the historical focus on the model of the L1 rural native dialect speaker.

Although the 'new speaker' framework is claimed to represent a departure from earlier assumptions within linguistics (O'Rourke and Pujolar 2013), this paper will contend that it faces similar problems to other iterations of anti-prescriptivism. It will be argued that linguists' efforts would be better spent on exploring paths towards ideological clarification among speakers, rather than denouncing particular ideologies with labels such as 'essentialism'.

The focus will be primarily on the Celtic languages.

Formulaic language and routines have been highlighted as providing a clear model to young
children for the use of new structures and vocabulary in a variety of contexts. Tabors says
that observers have noted that when young second-language learners begin to use their new
language, they use telegraphic speech and formulaic speech (2008, p. 55). According to
Wray (2002a, p. 4) “Words and word strings which appear to be processed without
recourse to their lowest level of composition are termed formulaic”. She considers that
formulaic language use is caused by the heavy mental demands of speaking. Speakers seem
to rely on ‘chunks’ of language that come ready made as they are easier to formulate than
sentences composed of fresh words and phrases. Vignettes referred to throughout the
paper are drawn from a study where three learners of English as an Additional Language
(EAL) and learners of Irish (Gaelic) as an additional language were closely observed over ten
sessions in a Junior Infant (KG) classroom in an Irish primary school. The use of formulaic
language when speaking is evident throughout the observation sessions and as early as
Observation 2 the teacher uses formulaic phrases consistently in the Irish lesson. Formulaic
language, providing a frame for sentence construction and environmental scaffolding appear
to be of particular assistance in developing the language skills of the children observed
throughout the study, both at the receptive level of Listening and as their productive
language skills begin to improve during later sessions observed. Therefore a consistent
approach should be borne in mind by teachers and every use should be made of stories with
repetition and language games to reinforce language in different contexts. This approach
may equally be applied in the Arabic-speaking context and is an area that warrants further
research.

As the prominence of the recent #WakingTheFeminists movement illustrates, the Irish theatre world is highly conscious of the ways in which theatre can foster social emancipation. This volume of essays uncovers a wide range of marginalised histories by reflecting on the emancipatory role that the Dublin Gate Theatre (est. 1928) has played in Irish culture and society, both historically and in more recent times. The Gate’s founders, Hilton Edwards and Michéal mac Liammóir, promoted the work of many female playwrights and created an explicitly cosmopolitan stage on which repressive ideas about gender, sexuality, class and language were questioned. During Selina Cartmell’s current tenure as director, cultural diversity and social emancipation have also featured prominently on the Gate’s agenda, with various productions exploring issues of ethnicity in contemporary Ireland. The Gate thus offers a unique model for studying the ways in which cosmopolitan theatres, as cultural institutions, give expression to and engage with the complexities of identity and diversity in changing, globalised societies.

A testament to the global dimensions of the Irish language is the fact that one of its most anthologized poems, ‘Ochón, a Dhonnchadh’ by Pádraig Ó hÉigeartaigh, was written not in Ireland, but in Springfield, Massachusetts. Although composed in the USA in 1905, Thomas Kinsella and Seán Ó Tuama note that the poet marries ‘his grief to traditional professional expertise in something of the manner of the distant masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ and Muiris Ó Droighneáin regards the poem as 'an caoineadh is deise agus is fileata san Nua-Ghaedhilg’ / ‘the finest and most poetical lament in Modern Irish’. Yet despite the wide publication of this lament, very little is known about Ó hÉigeartaigh and much of the information about the poet provided in certain poetry anthologies is inaccurate.

Not only has Ó hÉigeartaigh’s career as a poet and Gaelic Revivalist been overlooked, but the poem itself is in fact an edited version of the original lament Ó hÉigeartaigh wrote on the drowning of his five-year-old son, Donnchadh. This essay assesses Patrick Pearse’s editing of the lament and considers the ideological perspectives which may have informed Pearse’s editorial decisions. It is argued that Pearse intentionally repressed elements and characteristics singular to the poet in order to ascribe this lament to the oral tradition, and also to uphold the literary conventions of contemporary European poets such as Roden Noels and Robert Bridges. The paper thus questions the location of this poem within the Gaelic literary traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries and also demonstrates the need for a critical understanding of the editorial practices of this period.

Paper presented at the 16th International Congress of Celtic Studies, Bangor University, July 2019. It is hoped to develop this study further with a larger sample from the Bible corpus. Thanks to AHRC Centre for Doctoral Training in the Celtic Languages for funding.

ABSTRACT:

This paper will examine the genesis and development of the Manx Bible translation, and seek to evaluate the extent to which the text (or texts) can be taken as representative of spontaneous spoken usage and contemporary linguistic variation in eighteenth-century Manx.

The first installment of the Bible (the gospel of Matthew) was published in 1748 and the final section of the Old Testament appeared in 1772. The task of translation was shared among the island’s Anglican clergy, who were generally native speakers of Manx, with an editorial team overseeing the work and seeking to standardize orthography and terminology, but seemingly less so morphology and syntax.

Substantial sections of the manuscript drafts of the translation survive and are preserved in the Manx National Heritage Library in Douglas (MS 5690C). The present study will investigate two samples from this manuscript corpus, from both the Old and New Testaments, as well as an earlier printed edition of St Matthew's Gospel, examining the editorial emendations on four dimensions: grammatical conservatism, closeness to the English text, idiomaticity, and verbosity.

Especially when the manuscript corpus is taken into account, it will be concluded that the language of the Manx Bible translation provides reasonably reliable testimony to contemporary spoken usage, if analysed judiciously. Indeed, Manx texts may offer one of the best insights available into the linguistic development of a vernacular Gaelic variety in the Early Modern period, unobscured by the inherent conservatism of a long-established pre-existing literary tradition.

**N.B. - Tá feabhas mór déanta agam ó shin ar na hargóintí a rinne mé sa tráchtas MA seo. Más spéis leat an t-ábhar seo, bí cinntí go mbreathnaíonn tú ar mo chuid foilsiúchán eile chomh maith**

Achoimre

Sa tráchtas seo, déantar cíoradh ar an mbaint atá idir an córas eacnamaíochta agus cinniúint mionteangacha. Breathnaítear ar an gcaipitleachas nualiobrálach agus ar an domhandú a théann i bpáirt leis agus na himpleachtaí teangeolaíochta a bhaineann leis an múnla seo. Sa réamhrá tugtar léargas ar an ngéarchéim teangeolaíochta agus mínítear céard atá i gceist leis an gcaipitleachas, an nualiobrálachas agus an domhandú.

Tugtar stair an chórais caipitligh sa dara chaibidil agus breathnaítear ar an litríocht i réimse na pleanála teanga agus na sochtheangeaolaíochta mar a bhaineann sí leis an ngné seo. Léirítear go bhfuil comhthuiscint ann i measc go leor de na húdair is mó a phléann ceist na haisiompaithe teanga go gcuirtear brú ar dhaoine faoin gcóras caipitleach éirí as a dteangacha dúchais chun páirt a ghlacadh sa mhargadh. Pléitear teoiricí agus dearcthaí éagsúla i leith bhás teanga agus an nasc atá aige seo le fórsaí eacnamaíochta.

I gcaibidil a trí, úsáidtear cás na hÉireann mar chás staidéar ar an gcaoi a raibh tionchar ag na fórsaí seo ar an nGaeilge agus an meath atá tágtha uirthi ó 1600 ar aghaidh. Breathnaítear ar stair na tíre agus áitítear nach raibh sé go dtí gur thosaigh an caipitleachas nua-aimseartha ag teacht chun cinn gur thosaigh an t-iompú teanga go tréan sa tír seo. Tugtar dearcadh an tSaorstáit agus na Poblachta i leith na teanga agus an t-athrú a tháinig ar an dearcadh seo in imeacht ama mar fhianaise ar an gcaoi a bhfuil na polasaithe a bhaineann leis an nualiobrálachas ach go háirithe ag déanamh dochair don teanga.

Sa chonclúid, maítear gur gá do phleanálaithe teanga bheith feasach ar na ceisteanna seo chun dul i ngleic leis an ngéarchéim teangeolaíochta go héifeachtach. Ag tarraingt inspioráide ó shaothar Pierre Bourdieu agus eile, áitítear nach féidir é seo a dhéanamh mar phleanálaithe teanga amháin, áfach, ach gur gá nasc a dhéanamh le gluaiseacht níos leithne a fhéachann le dul i ngleic leis an gcaipitleachas agus le dúshlán an nualiobrálachais a thabhairt.

In this paper I argue that a subpattern of Irish plural allomorphy should be analyzed as output optimizing in character. Specifically, I claim that stress-sensitive alternations between the plural suffixes-(e)anna and-(e)acha are conditioned by constraints on metrical well-formedness. This analysis connects with independent facts about the the prosodic prominence of [ax] sequences in Irish phonology. I further argue that an explanatory analysis of these patterns must make use of the notion of surface optimization. Alternative frameworks that eschew surface-oriented optimization mechanisms fail to account for synchronic and diachronic properties of the Irish plural system.

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Irish literature. Her work, drawing on Irish mythology, folklore and orature has also attracted considerable international acclaim and has been widely translated. However,  Ní Dhomhnaill  has also indicated an awareness of the problematical relationship of women historically to Irish literature. Women have for centuries being portrayed, whether in the Gaelic aisling or in the literature of the literary revival, as representative of Ireland, often to the neglect of their real lived experiences. Equally, within the Irish literary tradition, as Seán Ó Tuama has noted, “attested works by women are quite rare”(Ó Tuama, 1995). Women’s ‘literature’, as Ní Dhomhnaill suggests, was found largely in the oral tradition much of which went unrecorded. Throughout her work, she regularly draws on aspects of this legacy of women’s performances, including the lament and song traditions, to inform her work. This obvious intertextual process at work in her poetry is examined in this essay with regard to the traditional process of composition of songs and laments by women in Ireland and in relation to its use in other contexts. This paper also explores how this process of reclaiming aspects of Ireland’s oral culture represents Ní Dhomhnaill’s rewriting and replacing of the female voice within her own work while asserting her own right of expression in literature.

Gné lárnach den bhéaloideas is ea an seanfhocal, agus le blianta beaga anuas tá an-spéis á fhorbairt ann mar ábhar taighde acadúil. Tháinig dhá réimse ar leith taighde chun tosaigh mar gheall ar an bhorradh suime sin: an phairéimeolaíocht (léann na seanfhocal) agus an phairéimeagrafaíocht (bailiú na seanfhocal). Is i ngort na pairéimeolaíochta idirnáisiúnta is mó atá dul chun cinn déanta le leathchéad bliain anuas, áfach, go háirithe i réimsí ar nós: an seanfhocal a shainmhíniú (Dundes 1975a); saintréithe an tseanfhocail (Klimenko 1946); comhthéacs úsáidte agus brí an tseanfhocail (Grzybek 1987); foinse agus forbairt an tseanfhocail (Taylor 1962); an bhaint idir seanfhocail agus seánraí eile béaloidis (Taylor 1962; Carnes 1988; Rölleke 1988); fealsúnacht na seanfhocal agus blason populaire (Dundes 1975b); ról na dtástálacha seanfhoclacha i scrúduithe diagnóiseacha leighis (Benjamin 1944; Gorham 1956, 1961; Rogers 1986; Mieder 1996); agus araile. Is de thairbhe nach leis an bhéaloideas amháin a bhaineann an phairéimeolaíocht atá an oiread sin taighde déanta ar an ábhar .i. gur ábhar idirdhisciplíneach é a mheallann scoláirí ó chúlraí acadúla éagsúla: teangeolaithe, béaloideasaithe, staraithe litríochta, staraithe cultúir, síceolaithe, socheolaithe, antraipeolaithe agus neart eile. In ainneoin na bhforbairtí suntasacha ar bhonn idirnáisiúnta, áfach, is beag an méid taighde a rinneadh i bpairéimeolaíocht na Gaeilge, agus níor cuireadh bunús na modheolaíochtaí idirnáisiúnta i bhfeidhm ar ábhar seanfhoclach na Gaeilge go fóill. Ar na cúiseanna atá leis seo, dar liom, tá easpa corpais náisiúnta seanfhocal a bhféadfaí an taighde a bhunú air sa teanga. Níor cuireadh na seanfhocail Ghaeilge le chéile in aon ollchnuasach amháin go dtí seo; tá a mbunús siúd a bhaineann le tréimhse na Nua-Ghaeilge le fáil i dtrí fhoinse chanúnacha a bailíodh sa chéad leath den fhichiú haois. Sa pháipéar seo, amharcfar ar chúlra na pairéimeagrafaíochta sa Ghaeilge, is é sin le rá, na bailiúcháin féin; déanfar scrúdú criticiúil ar na mórbhailiúcháin chanúnacha agus déanfar moltaí faoin tslí is éifeachtaí chun an t-ábhar seanfhoclach sa Ghaeilge a chur le chéile go cruinn amach anseo.

Каждый ирландский школьник изучает ирландский язык. Это - обязательный предмет. Кроме того, в стране есть специальные школы - gaelscoileanna - в которых всё преподавание ведётся на ирландском.

👉 Почему же так много ирландцев не знают свой родной язык?
👉 Что не так со школьной "обязаловкой"?
👉 Какими были самые первые ирландскоязычные школы?
Слайды к лекции.

ВГБИЛ, Москва, 25.10.2017.