Modern Irish: A Case Study in Language Revival Failure *

Abstract

Modern Irish is very different from the other languages discussed in this volume, in that it is not a language which suffers from poor support: questions on the Irish census about Irish language universally show a strong positive reaction to the revival movement. Nor does the language lack official status; it is, according to the constitution of the Republic of Ireland, the “first language” of the country. There is also widespread political and economic support for the revival effort. The numbers of its speakers is not as low as the number of speakers of many languages; the official estimate of native Irish speakers hovers around the 80,000 mark. It also cannot be said of Irish that there has been a lack of a revival effort. The Irish language revival movement dates back to the beginning of the home-rule movement in the middle of the last century. Finally, it is not a language that is lacking in linguistic description or dictionaries. It is, however, a language which is perhaps at the most critical stage in its history and may very well not survive more than another generation or two.