Irish (
Gaeilge) is a
Goidelic language of the
Indo-European language family, originating in
Ireland and historically spoken by the
Irish people. Irish is now only spoken natively by a small minority of the Irish population but also plays an important symbolic role in the life of the Irish state, and is used across the country in a variety of media, personal contexts and social situations. It enjoys
constitutional status as the national and first official language of the
Republic of Ireland and it is an official
language of the European Union. Irish is also an officially recognised minority language in
Northern Ireland.
Irish is the main community and household language of 3% of the Republic's population[2] (which was estimated at 4,422,100 in 2008).[3] Estimates of fully native speakers range from 40,000 up to 80,000 people.[4][5][6][7] Areas in which the language remains the vernacular are referred to as Gaeltacht areas. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs estimated in 2007 that about 17,000 people lived in strongly Irish-speaking communities, about 10,000 people lived in areas where there was substantial use of the language, and 17,000 people lived in "weak" Gaeltacht communities; Irish was no longer the main community language in the remaining parts of the official Gaeltacht.[8] However, since Irish is an obligatory subject in schools, many more are reasonably fluent second-language speakers. Furthermore, a much larger number regard themselves as competent in the language to some degree 1,656,790 (41.9% of the total population aged three years and over) regard themselves as competent Irish speakers.[9] Of these, 538,283 (32.5%) speak Irish on a daily basis (taking into account both native speakers and those inside the education system), 97,089 (5.9%) weekly, 581,574 (35.1%) less often, and 412,846 (24.9%) never. 26,998 (1.6%) respondents did not state how often they spoke Irish. Complete or functional monolingualism of Irish is now restricted to a handful of elderly within more isolated Gaeltacht regions as well as among many mother-tongue speakers of Irish under school age.
14% of the population of the Republic of Ireland listen to Irish radio programming daily, 16% listen 2-5 times a week, while 24% listen to Irish programming once a week.
The number of inhabitants of the official-designated Gaeltacht regions of Ireland is 91,862, as of the 2006 census. Of these, 70.8% aged three and over speak Irish and approximately 60% speak Irish on a daily basis.[9]
