Consequences of the Irish Language surviving whilst under British Rule?

[Abdominalz]

If you think about the decline of the Irish Language and how the Country switched to English under British Rule, you realize just how strange such a transition was. After all, Finland was under Russian and Swedish Rule yet it never switched to Swedish or Russian. The non-German ethnicities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not abandon their native tongues and adopt German. Even in France and Spain, the demise of regional languages only really occurred in the twentieth century. Thus you can see, that the case of Ireland, with the indigenous catholic population switching to English, is spectacularly unusual for the period indeed.

But what if Ireland had been different? What if the indigenous catholic population of Ireland had retained the Irish Language just as the Slovenes and Czechs were doing under Hapsburg rule, and just as the Finns were doing under Swedish rule? In this scenario therefore, you have an English speaking plantation of Ulster but a totally (Gaelic) Irish speaking population inhabiting the rest of the country.
Questions:
Would Ireland be more Nationalistic in the period 1800-1922 or less Nationalistic?
How would the survival of the Irish Language effect relations between an English speaking Protestant Ulster and an Irish speaking Catholic Ireland given that there would be a language divide?

 

[Tanc49]

If you think about the decline of the Irish Language and how the Country switched to English under British Rule, you realize just how strange such a transition was. After all, Finland was under Russian and Swedish Rule yet it never switched to Swedish or Russian. The non-German ethnicities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not abandon their native tongues and adopt German. Even in France and Spain, the demise of regional languages only really occurred in the twentieth century. Thus you can see, that the case of Ireland, with the indigenous catholic population switching to English, is spectacularly unusual for the period indeed.

But what if Ireland had been different? What if the indigenous catholic population of Ireland had retained the Irish Language just as the Slovenes and Czechs were doing under Hapsburg rule, and just as the Finns were doing under Swedish rule? In this scenario therefore, you have an English speaking plantation of Ulster but a totally (Gaelic) Irish speaking population inhabiting the rest of the country.
Questions:
Would Ireland be more Nationalistic in the period 1800-1922 or less Nationalistic?
How would the survival of the Irish Language effect relations between an English speaking Protestant Ulster and an Irish speaking Catholic Ireland given that there would be a language divide?

Gaelic was widely spoken before the famine and even recently in the west.
When a quarter of your population dies or leaves in a couple years it doesn't help the survival of your culture

 

[The Professor]

Gaelic was widely spoken before the famine and even recently in the west.
When a quarter of your population dies or leaves in a couple years it doesn't help the survival of your culture

It's also worth pointing out that the famine overwhelming hit the lower classes exclusively who would have spoken Gaelic dialects. Compare this to the black death that took out the French-speaking elites and English-speaking peasants alike in the 1300s.