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12 - Irish Gaelic

from Part II - Multilingualism in Britain and Ireland: The Celtic Languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2024

By
Aidan Doyle
Edited by
Susan Fox
Susan Fox
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
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Summary

A thousand years ago, Irish Gaelic was spoken by the entire population of Ireland. Today, it is spoken by a few thousand people. The first part of this chapter discusses how this language shift came about, focusing on historical changes in population due to various waves of colonisation. The second section describes a number of linguistic features which make Irish Gaelic distinctive. At the morphophonological level, these include consonant and vowel alternations and initial mutation, and at the syntactic level, (mainly) VSO word order and the two verbs to be: the copula and the substantive verb.

Keywords

Early Modern IrishLate Modern Irishlanguage revivalGaeltachtstandardisationnew speakerslinguistic features of Irish Gaelic
Type
Chapter
Information
Language in Britain and Ireland , pp. 314 - 332
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Irish Gaelic
  • Edited by Susan Fox, Universität Bern, Switzerland
  • Book: Language in Britain and Ireland
  • Online publication: 17 October 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769617.019
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Save book to Dropbox

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  • Irish Gaelic
  • Edited by Susan Fox, Universität Bern, Switzerland
  • Book: Language in Britain and Ireland
  • Online publication: 17 October 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769617.019
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Irish Gaelic
  • Edited by Susan Fox, Universität Bern, Switzerland
  • Book: Language in Britain and Ireland
  • Online publication: 17 October 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769617.019
Available formats
×