If  you want to understand Irish history and culture you need to understand its language. The Irish language, a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, is hugely significant in Irish national identity and is the key to the most important distinguishing characteristics of Irish culture.

According to the Irish Constitution, Irish is the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland. It is an official language of the European Union and also an officially recognized minority language in Northern Ireland. The language is usually referred to as ‘Gaeilge’ in Irish and as ‘Irish’ in English. There are three main dialects in modern Irish, which roughly coincide with the provinces of Munster, Connacht and Ulster.

Estimates of native speakers of Irish range from 40,000 to 80,000 people. While Irish is the main spoken language of only 3% of the population, 41.9% of the total population (aged three years and over) regard themselves as competent Irish speakers. Of these 32.5% claim to speak Irish on a daily basis. Monolingualism of Irish is now restricted to a handful of elderly within more isolated regions and among those speakers of Irish under school age. In Northern Ireland 10.4% have ‘some knowledge of Irish’. Combined, this means that at least one in three people on the island of Ireland can understand Irish to some extent.

Currently a renaissance is taking place in the Irish language. Recent years have seen a significant increase in printed media in Irish – books, newspapers, magazines – and in non-print media. Irish is now easily accessible through various radio stations, the television channel TG4 and on the internet. It is becoming increasingly easy to learn to speak Irish!

??-- Máire Mhic Ruairí and Dónall Mac Ruairí