Ireland. Eire. Part III. Фомина И.В. - 5 стр.

                               LANGUAGE IN IRELAND

        Irish is the State’s first official language. It is one of the Celtic family of
languages and is closely related to Scots Gaelic, Welsh and Breton. Most spoke
Irish until the early nineteenth century. Until about 1850, most of the population
of the island spoke Irish as their everyday language. But by 1891 over 85 per
cent spoke English only. So, the day-to-day language of people in Ireland is
English.
        In recent decades, The State actively encourages the use of Irish, and
much state money has been spent on trying to revive the Irish language, but its
inexorable decline has continued. The latest figures available show that 43 per
cent of adults say they have a knowledge of Irish.
        Today, Irish is used as a daily language only in certain areas of the west,
particularly in counties Donegal and Galway, which make up the Gaeltacht. The
Gaeltacht also includes small areas in counties Cork, Kerry, Meath and Water-
ford. Perhaps the most energetic attempts at reviving Irish are to be found in the
North, mainly in Belfast and Derry, where much progress has been made in re-
cent years. Altogether, about 50 000 people in Ireland use Irish regularly. About
one million people claim some knowledge of Irish.
        Irish is a language of great antiquity and literary importance. One of the
Celtic languages, it is similar in structure to Manx and Scottish Gaelic and is
more loosely related to Breton, Cornish and welsh. The earliest written records
of Irish date back to AD 300, on Ogham stones. By the sixth century, many texts
were being written in Irish, which quickly became a standardized language. The
Vikings invasions, which began around AD 800, helped encourage the change
into Middle Irish, superseded between the thirteenth centuries by Early Modern
Irish.
        The Cromwellian invasions of Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century
brought about the destruction of the old Gaelic social order. The Irish language be-
gan to be transmuted into its three main modern dialects, Connacht, Munster and
Ulster. However, throughout the nineteenth century, the growing anglicisation of
Ireland forced the Irish language into retreat; the industrialization of Belfast a cen-
tury ago was a major factor in the decline of Irish in the North of Ireland.
        Douglas Hyde, later to be a president of the Irish Free State, founded the
Gaelic League in 1893 to try to reverse the decline. After the establishment of
the Irish Free State in 1922, Irish was made the first official language and it be-
came compulsory in the state education system. The state compulsion in Irish
had little long-term effect on the well-being of the language.
        The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs has respon-
sibility for promoting the cultural, social and economic welfare of the Gaeltacht
through Údarás na Gaeltachta (Gaeltacht Authority), a statutory board under its
aegis, which serves as a development authority for Gaeltacht areas with some
of its members being elected by the people of the Gaeltacht. The Irish Lan-
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