The Gaelic Tongue

The native Irish language has likely been the most desperately pushed in modernity. Not only during the Gaelic revival proper, but without cessation during the early Irish Republic. In my mind, by the time Ireland became independent it was too late. While national languages were virtually built in Germany, Italy, and, to some degree, France, they we based around commonalities and these commonalities were widely spoken. Gaelic, as a language, on the other hand, is entirely different from English, the primary tongue, and thus, especially since immersion is impossible, becoming fluent is nearly unfeasible. This is reflected by recent studies showing that, despite instruction throughout schooling, most Irish students finish with no real understanding of their ancient tongue.

My question is this, barring the obvious "Britain never takes over," what does it take for Ireland to maintain a significant Gaelic speaking community? It doesn't have to be a majority, though potentially this is possible, but a significant enough minority could see a large-scale rebound in the 1920's. Psycho-linguistics and linguistic history has never been more then a non-academic interest of mine, but I was wondering what everyone else thought. What does it take for a British Ireland to maintain some sort of ties to Gaelic?
 

Delvestius

Banned
My question is this, barring the obvious "Britain never takes over," what does it take for Ireland to maintain a significant Gaelic speaking community? It doesn't have to be a majority, though potentially this is possible, but a significant enough minority could see a large-scale rebound in the 1920's. Psycho-linguistics and linguistic history has never been more then a non-academic interest of mine, but I was wondering what everyone else thought. What does it take for a British Ireland to maintain some sort of ties to Gaelic?

The best way to do this without keeping England away forever is keep England away for longer. If we don't have any real English incursion until the mid seventeenth century or so, then there would still be a significant amount of Gaeilge speakers in Ireland.
 
No plantation/colonization schemes? I think that probably really got the ball rolling for language conversion.
 
My understanding is that Irish remained viable until mass education came in during the late 1800's. The education was always in English, Irish was ridiculed as the language of the ignorant:mad:. I believe that the same happened in Wales and the Scottish Highlands and Western Isles.Then radio and movies clinched it.
Maybe if you have a willingness to teach in Gaelic? Although, you would need a big POD to achieve that in the 19 th Century.
 
My understanding is that Irish remained viable until mass education came in during the late 1800's. The education was always in English, Irish was ridiculed as the language of the ignorant:mad:. I believe that the same happened in Wales and the Scottish Highlands and Western Isles.Then radio and movies clinched it.
Maybe if you have a willingness to teach in Gaelic? Although, you would need a big POD to achieve that in the 19 th Century.

Maybe you could butterfly the Act of Union 1800? Keep the Kingdom of Ireland around and maybe it would be willing to teach in gaelic?
 
Maybe you could butterfly the Act of Union 1800? Keep the Kingdom of Ireland around and maybe it would be willing to teach in gaelic?

Well, I think a big question, is why the Welsh language was so much more successful in rebounding in the modern era than Irish, despire Gaelic, at least, having a nation of its own to incubate and grow in?

Although I doubt we'd see a majority Gaelic speaking nation in the modern era, things seem like that could have gone much better.

To keep with the pre-1900 forum; i agree that keeping the plantation system out of Ireland would be best, which means no Cromwell. Maybe we could also see Charles II fleeing to Ireland and seeing up an independent kingdom there? Not likely; but it would be interesting!
 

Thande

Donor
Probably the Gaelic language would be in a healthier state today if Ireland was still part of the UK, weirdly enough. The trend we've seen in the Celtic parts of the UK is that there have been revivals of the Celtic languages as part of the assertion of an identity against England. That gives people a visceral reason to learn them beyond just 'cultural heritage' stuff which sadly most people don't really care about. Whereas the people of the Republic of Ireland, no longer seeing England as the dominant power within a framework that also includes themselves and therefore not needing to push against it, now views English more neutrally and associates it with the United States and as a world language, and therefore there is no incentive to learn Gaelic.
 
I'd have to say altering the Famine and the resulting population changes in Ireland would go a long way towards changing the Irish usage. Taking that many of the population out of the country (through death/emigration) and particularly from the rural areas where Irish had remained far stronger than in the urban areas.

Change that population change and you alter the usage patterns throughout Ireland, or follow my grandfathers suggestion, ban it in schools and Irish being Irish we'll learn it and love it just because it's banned.
 

Thande

Donor
or follow my grandfathers suggestion, ban it in schools and Irish being Irish we'll learn it and love it just because it's banned.

That's not unlike what I was talking about, and it's probably true. Not just the Irish, either, just human nature. I actually used this in my TL where governments, rather than banning subversive literature, make it compulsory for kids to have to study it in schools--which guarantees they will never see anything worthwhile in it.
 
My understanding is that the Catholic Church itself promoted English over Irish during the 19th century, and that that arguably hurt the language most, since the Irish had more faith in the Church than their government. Whenever it made that decision should be the POD in a timeline. If the Catholic Church in Ireland had continued to use Irish, then Catholic schools would be conducted in Irish and the spread of English would be slowed considerably. By the time the Republic gained independence, most of the population was English-speaking and Irish was now effectively a foreign language. By that point it would have been tough to effect a language shift, especially given the prestige that the English language has.
 
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I'd have to say altering the Famine and the resulting population changes in Ireland would go a long way towards changing the Irish usage. Taking that many of the population out of the country (through death/emigration) and particularly from the rural areas where Irish had remained far stronger than in the urban areas.

Change that population change and you alter the usage patterns throughout Ireland, or follow my grandfathers suggestion, ban it in schools and Irish being Irish we'll learn it and love it just because it's banned.

You can change the dates and the details of the famine but Ireland in the 1830's-40's was on an unsustainable path. You simply can't have that many people doing mono-cultural subsistence farming that close to the edge without some kind of catastrophe happening. You can make it less severe either through better governmental action or by pushing it forward in time but sooner or later Potato blight is going to arrive. And when it does the Irish rural population is going to drop back to it's 1800 level. Even today the number of farmers has to be related to the fertility of the land and post 1820 Ireland had more farmers than the land could support.
Now the big difference you can make is rather than have the surplus rural population emigrate you could have them to go to the cities like their contemporaries in Great Britain.
 
I'll leave the preservation thing to the experts. One fallout from this I can see would be pockets of Gaelic language in the US. Here we have pockets of numerous languages used locally, with English used when dealing with the 'English'. Locally in the region I live in there were counties where German, French, Dutch... were used among the small town and farmers through the first half or the 20th Century. In the cities those pockets extended into the latter half and to the 21st Century. So, through the 1920s at least & perhaps after, we would see the common use of Gaelic in specfic areas of the US.
 
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