Irish Speakers Research Articles

The Loss of the Impersonal in Bilingual Speakers of Irish

This article is a brief examination of a phenomenon attested in contemporary Irish, namely, the loss of the impersonal. This formal change in the grammar of the language is taking place in a context of wholesale restructuring of Irish due to the influence of English. The old impersonal of LMI is rapidly giving way to a new passive, one that reflects very faithfully the structure of English. This tendency is not an entirely new one, going back as it does to at least the 19th century. We have suggested that the motive for the change is two-fold: a desire to allow for the expression of agents with passives, and a need to imitate the information structure of English for an audience consisting almost entirely of L2 speakers of English. The first might be considered a motive which might arise language-internally, while the second can only be regarded as due to external pressure.

‘You Might All Be Speaking Swedish Today’: language change in 19th-century Finland and Ireland

In 1800, almost four times as many people spoke Irish as Finnish. That year the Act of Union joined Ireland to Great Britain; half of the population, over three million, were monoglot Irish speakers. Finland was then a part of the Kingdom of Sweden. An increasing number, perhaps 15%, spoke Swedish; the remainder, less than one million, spoke Finnish. A century later in 1900, however, as national agitation for independence grew in both countries, Ireland and Finland had become almost reverse mirror images linguistically. A tiny fraction of Irish people habitually spoke Irish, but Finnish had become the overwhelmingly dominant language in Finland. The present exploratory comparative study in language change points to three major conclusions: the importance of contingency, or chance, in such historical developments; the importance of individual agency; and the complexity and dynamic nature of the relationship between national identity and language.

Normalising language through television: the case of the Irish language television channel, TG4

This article addresses one of the major gaps in the existing research on the sociolinguistic effects of minority language media, namely the effect that such media have on actual language attitudes and language practices. One key notion addressed in the article is the role of minority media in supporting the revitalisation of minority languages, understood here as lesser-used languages. Drawing on the case of the Irish language television channel TG4, this article will provide evidence as to how the availability of such media has altered the position of the Irish language amongst a particular cohort of the Irish population, namely University students who are not first language Irish speakers. While a limited percentage of the participants reported a direct increase in their Irish language use as a direct result of watching TG4, there is a clear identifiable change in the way they perceive the language. It is argued that the impact the presence of minority languages on the media has on actual language practices is indirect and is mediated through language attitudes. On this basis the article concludes that the availability of media in minority languages is of benefit to the language revitalisation, particularly from the point of view of encouraging linguistic normalisation.

Is there an educational advantage to speaking Irish? An investigation of the relationship between education and ability to speak Irish

In this article new findings are outlined that show a relationship between ability to speak Irish and level of education. The authors' statistical analysis of International Social Survey Programme data from a survey in 2003 on national identity reveals that Irish speakers have been more likely than non Irish speakers to attend university (or equivalent). This likelihood is strongest amongst people who were born in the 1950s and 1960s, and more particularly amongst women rather than men of this age group. This is not the case amongst the youngest age group, perhaps because of developments in the education system and in the economy. The findings are placed in the context of the political use made of both the Irish language and the education system in Ireland historically and more recently. The effect on the Irish language of changes in education, as well as the role of the Irish language as cultural capital and symbolic capital are discussed.

A bilingual word superiority effect in Irish speakers

The present study employed a dual-language version of the Reicher-Wheeler task to examine the word superiority effect (WSE) in Irish-English bilinguals and L1 English speakers with some Irish language proficiency. Superior skills in written English would be expected in both groups. Forty-nine participants completed a word–letter WSE forced-choice task in both Irish and English. For both languages, and for both groups, an advantage was found for words over letters. The word–letter difference for English stimuli exceeded that for Irish stimuli, at 9% and 4% respectively; however this difference between the languages did not reach statistical significance. Performance did not differ significantly between the two groups, despite a trend suggesting a lower WSE in English for the bilingual group. The lack of difference based on proficiency may reflect the high frequency words employed or similar exposure to written Irish in the two groups, given the dominance of the English language.

An overcoat wrapped around an invisible man? Language legislation and language revitalisation in Ireland and Scotland

New legislation in Ireland and Scotland is expected to stimulate a significant increase in the provision of public services in Irish and Gaelic in coming years. This article considers the implications of these enactments for language revitalisation, by examining the measures which public bodies are expected to implement in order to increase their bilingual service provision. Drawing on Strubell’s ‹Catherine Wheel’ language planning framework, it identifies weaknesses in the measures and suggests way of overcoming them. It is argued that, for this legislation to have a significant linguistic impact, careful strategies are needed to equip speakers of Irish and Gaelic to use their languages in relation to public services, given the dominance of English in these domains. In particular, strategies are needed to recruit and deploy bilingual staff in an effective manner. Without careful planning, there is a risk that these enactments will not bring about meaningful changes in language practice and may become largely symbolic rather than functional.

Raising Children to be Bilingual in the Gaeltacht: Language Preference and Practice

The popular and official description of the Gaeltacht as Irish-speaking rather than bilingual areas reflects the historically dominant discourse on language ideology in Ireland. While there is little evidence that the Gaeltacht people want to learn English at the expense of their Irish, as may have been the case throughout Ireland in the past, there is no doubt that all do want their children to be highly skilled, literate bilinguals. There is uncertainty in the language community as to which language or combination of languages to use when raising children to achieve this aim. This paper focuses on two aspects of public policy that encourage Gaeltacht Irish speakers to use only Irish with their children: Scéim Labhairt na Gaeilge and the principle of Irish-medium only schooling in the Gaeltacht for all pupils. Fieldwork carried out among Irish speakers in the West Cork Gaeltacht region of Múscraí revealed significant divergence of opinion on how much Irish should be used with children at home and at school to achieve Irish-English bilingualism, and also exposed how many in the community believe that they may have made an error in language choice with the benefit of hindsight.

Minority-language Education in a Situation of Conflict: Irish in English-medium Schools in Northern Ireland

While Irish-medium education has developed strongly over the last 20 years, most Irish speakers in Northern Ireland learn the language in English-medium schools, which currently provide the majority of teachers in the bilingual Irish-medium sector. This paper discusses the background to Irish in Northern Ireland from the plantation of Ulster to the aftermath of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The Linguistic Atlas of Ireland and census returns provide demographic data. The position of Irish in the education system must be evaluated in the context of languages provision in the curriculum in general, not only in Northern Ireland, but in the UK as a whole. The lower status that Irish had in the European Union until recently has relegated it to a disadvantaged curricular position, where schools can only offer the subject after provision is guaranteed for major mainland continental languages. Examination entries figures are analysed to trace trends in uptake. Curriculum reviews in Britain and Northern Ireland that make languages optional from age 14 in a more crowded curriculum are discussed. While Irish should remain a reasonably popular choice for pupils, the future of the language in English-medium schools in Northern Ireland is not assured

Origins of Irish-medium Education: The Dynamic Core of Language Revitalisation in Northern Ireland

The establishment and growth of Irish-medium education has been central to the revitalisation of the language in Northern Ireland in recent years. Historically, the struggle by the minority of Irish speakers in the region to provide all-Irish schools has been both the goal and the engine of renewal and expansion during a period of community and political conflict. The present paper analyses the growth in the sector from the initial campaign for resources and official recognition of the first all-Irish school in Belfast's Shaw's Road Gaeltacht. It documents the range of sociolinguistic and educational challenges faced by the earliest immersion schools, and the manner in which the response served to mobilise individual speakers and contributed to the emergence of the small but unique urban community of Irish speakers. Among the issues discussed are the early internal conflicts about the merits of independent all-Irish schools (as in the Republic) versus all-Irish units within English-medium schools, and the manner in which an accommodation was gradually achieved between a reluctant Department of Education and the growing immersion sector. This paper deals with a number of other issues that help to define immersion education in Northern Ireland, including differences in the organisation of the sector compared to the Republic and the continuing challenges faced in areas of research, planning and teacher training.

‘An important obligation of citizenship’: language, citizenship and jury service

This paper considers whether there should be the power to summon bilingual juries in criminal trials in Ireland and Wales. It will examine the relationship between jury service as an obligation and privilege of citizenship, and the eligibility for jury service of Irish and Welsh speakers as a linguistic group. It will also demonstrate the relationship between the citizenship argument in its collective context and the rights and interests of individual speakers of these languages within the criminal jury trial process. In doing so, it seeks to emphasise that this is a multidimensional issue which requires an evaluation from a combination of perspectives, both collective and individual. It is this combination of perspectives, taken conjunctively, that supports the case for bilingual juries. Moreover, this particular debate has a particular relevance to the wider debate on European citizenship and how Europe views the concept of multilingual citizenship within its constitutional framework. Indeed, it raises fundamental questions about how Europe manages its diverse cultural and linguistic heritage and how speakers of minority languages are integrated on a basis of equality and respect towards their cultural and linguistic autonomy. The paper also addresses the objections to bilingual juries and will explore how the advent of bilingual juries could continue to preserve the random selection principle (the primary objection to bilingual juries) sufficiently to bring about fair, impartial and competent tribunals.

William Carleton between Irish and English: using literary dialect to study language contact and change

This study examines two features of the Irish English literary dialect of William Carleton, a bilingual writer of the period when Ireland shifted to English. It addresses the issue of the validity of literary dialect via empirical comparison of the use of plural verbal -s in Carleton and in personal letters written by a close contemporary from a similar background. The result suggests considerable accuracy in Carleton’s dialect representation: he uses plural verbal -snot only in agreement with the complex constraints of the Northern Subject Rule but also in line with usage in the letters. Then the study examines Carleton’s use of the be after V-ing construction, which is typically a perfect in present-day Irish English. The future uses found in older texts are sometimes cited as examples of inauthentic literary dialect. However, like others of his generation, Carleton uses be after V-ingin both future and perfect senses. Given his social and linguistic background, his place in relation to the language shift, and the apparent accuracy with which he portrays dialect features, Carleton provides crucial support for the view that future uses arose in a language contact situation in which speakers of British English interpreted be after V-ingas a future, while speakers of Irish acquiring English intended it as a calque on an Irish perfect. As more Irish shifted to English, perfect meanings came to dominate. Carleton and his contemporaries bear witness to the middle phase of this process.

A Swiss Soldier In Ireland, 1689–90

In 1714 Jean Francois De Morsier wrote an account in French of his early years of soldiering. This ‘Journal’, a detailed record of the several campaigns in which De Morsier participated, written wi...

Tearmann: Sanctuary

Dúchas. This word is frequently translated into English as "heritage." A word that is full of death and stasis. But to an Irish speaker, it means one's native place, a shared tradition, a collective soul, a kindred affection, a natural affinity. Filleadh ar do dhúchas. "To return home, to where one belongs, to revert to kind." It is something that is bidding me a prodigal's welcome after many years. For my father, Liam MacCarráin, Irish was a place of refuge. He was once interviewed for Radio Ulster's "Tearmann" program—where guests were asked what gave them sanctuary in their lives. He chose the Irish language itself. He hid within and took comfort from words. The language itself was another world, something parallel—and magical—to the mundane world. He arrived into this world as William Carson in the year 1916. He spent his childhood i dteach bheag i sráid bheag—"in a little house in a little street"—in the Clonard parish of the Falls Road. There was one room downstairs, two upstairs, and an outdoor toilet. His father was a boilermaker for Harland and Wolff, but lost his job in 1920, when he was forced out of the shipyard in an anti-Catholic pogrom. He was lucky to escape alive. Many of his co-workers were shot, or drowned in the River Lagan. He would never regain full-time employment, surviving on odd jobs, window-cleaning and the like. In 1930, at the age of fourteen, my Da started work as a telegraph messenger for the Post Office, earning twelve shillings and seven pence a week. He would give his mother ten shillings, which paid for rent and coal. The remainder covered his expenses: a packet of ten Woodbines at two pence; a tram journey out of town for a penny. In his book Is Cuimhin Liom an t-Am (I Remember the Time) he described his awakening to the beauty of Irish. In the post office, he met Ruairí Ó Maolchallan and Padaí Ó hÉigeartaigh. He found himself spellbound listening to their Irish—faoi dhraíocht acu ag comhrá le chéile i nGaeilge. Fired by his determination to master as much of the language as possible and as quickly as possible, he attended two classes a week. He practiced his Irish at socials in An Cumann Gaelach, where he would meet migrant mill workers, girls from the Donegal Gaeltacht. After two years, he went for the Fáinne test, where he was [End Page 9] examined by Domhnall Ó Grianna, brother of famed Donegal writers Seamus Ó Grianna and Seosamh Mac Grianna. His examination was short and sweet. Domhnall simply asked him if he was Liam MacCarráin. "Is mise," replied my father, whereupon the Fáinne was pinned to his lapel. He was already famous for his outstanding command of Irish. In May, 1934, my father went on his first visit to Rann na Feirste, birthplace of the Ó Grianna brothers, renowned for its many outstanding poets, singers, and storytellers. Among their number was Johnny Shéamaisín, with whom my father stayed. Johnny's house was nothing less than a treasure-store of language and literature, both oral and written. Johnny's family had a huge collection of books in Irish, as his brother Niall worked for the publishing house of An Gúm. My father would spend hours in the family library, thumbing through book after book. Every night after supper, they would decamp to the house of the seanchaí Micí Sheáin Néill, often listening to stories until three in the morning. My father learned much from these people. Theirs was a world where social contact was based on ag airneáil—"visiting"—and where storytelling was the prime form of entertainment. Beauty and precision in speech was profoundly valued. My father molded himself in their image to such an extent that in later years, he came to be praised by many as a wonderful folklorist...

"Who Needs Irish?" Reflections on the Importance of the Irish Language Today (review)

Reviewed by: “Who Needs Irish?” Reflections on the Importance of the Irish Language Today Brian Ó Conchubhair “Who Needs Irish?” Reflections on the Importance of the Irish Language Today, ed. Ciarán Mac Murchaidh ( Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2004), 192 pp. $21.95. Distributed by Irish Books and Media, Minneapolis, MN. The Irish language, it seems, provides endless disputes, ranging from the language's official status in the European Union, the construction of apartment complexes for English-speakers, the banning of Anglicized place-names in The Gaeltacht, the private schools doling out exemptions to opt out of Irish examinations, to the declining numbers studying higher-level Irish. If the language if not widely spoken, it is nonetheless widely debated. The arrival of 'Who Needs Irish?' Reflections on the Importance of the Irish Language Today, edited by Ciarán Mac Murchaidh, a lecturer at St. Patrick's College, Dublin, is both timely and welcome. Mac Murchaidh's introduction contends that two debates currently exist about the Irish language: a sporadic debate in English and a persistent debate in Irish. Who Needs Irish? focuses on the contemporary importance of Irish. The basic premise underpinning Who Needs Irish? is the "intrinsic worth in preserving the Irish language for ourselves, for our children and for all generations still to come—and that is the greatest challenge of all." Thirteen essayists explore what it means to be an Irish speaker, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland; several, notably Alan Titley and Breandán Ó Doibhlin, explain why there is a need for Irish. Titley candidly and uncompromisingly argues that language is central to identity. For Titley, "if 'Irish' identity is to mean anything at all, it must mean something in the first place." Titley's key essay is one that every aspiring Irish Studies student would do well to read and genuinely consider, before regurgitating the clichés of Ascroft et al. in the topic sentence of their opening paragraphs. The length style, and tone of the articles varies widely: some are brief and clear-cut, while others, such as Ó Doibhlinn, are somber and complex. Donncha Ó hÉallaithe provides an excellent, if brief, overview of efforts to revive Irish in the twentieth century. Recalling his youth as a native-speaker in Donegal, Lillis Ó Laoire suggests that for Ireland to exist as a postcolonial entity "we need to learn how to do it better; to improve teaching; to realize that teaching alone is not enough to build bilingual communities; to shed our myopic monolithic [End Page 156] attachment to 'English only' together with our fear and suspicion of the Irish other." One of the more successful articles is Pádraig Ó Mianáin's critique of what it means to be "an ordinary man with ordinary interest" in Northern Ireland, where Irish is often perceived as "the language of the bomb and bullet." Lorcán Mac Gabhann contributes a useful discussion of the bias against Gaelscoileanna (all-Irish "charter" schools) exhibited by the Teachers' Union and the Catholic Primary School Management Association, which see the dramatic growth in such schools as a threat to the status quo. Anna Heusaff describes the interaction of recent refugees into Ireland and the language, and, in doing so breathes a welcome note of inclusiveness into a book where the pronoun "we" is used extensively, but often without much consideration. The literary contributions are the strongest in the volume. Scholars will revel in frank and enlightening articles by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Gabriel Rosenstock. Ní Dhuibhne's "Why Would Anyone Write in Irish" represents a major scoop for the editor; this essay alone makes the collection worth purchasing. Rosenstock's essay, "How I Discovered Irish or How Irish Discovered Me" offers those unfamiliar with his work an insight into the most prolific poet in modern Irish, a man of wide and catholic literary taste. Máirín Nic Eoin reviews Cathal Ó Searcaigh's poetry to examine hybridity in Irish language culture. Her reading of "Idir Dhá Theanga" serves as a wonderful introduction for anyone unfamiliar with her literary scholarship in Irish. Given the polarized and stereotyped nature of debate surrounding the Irish language, Who Needs Irish? makes the case for Irish. The...

Irish-Language Textbooks in the United States, 1873-1904

A number of articles have been written about current Irish-language learning materials currently available from Ireland.1 Yet one may express concern regarding the dependence that the diaspora has on Ireland in regard to the production of language-learning materials.2 In the past forty years, only one textbook, Irish for Everyone, can be identified as written in America for Irish-language learners in America.3 The average American learner continues to rely on textbooks written for the self-taught language learner or adult learners living in Ireland. Such volumes often assume a knowledge of Hiberno-English, Irish-English, and of specific Irish terms used in Irish life—such as Áras an Uachtaráin and Garda. Some also expect the reader to be familiar with Irish television and radio personalities. Others assume that the student has been previously exposed to some Irish. Still others provide pronunciation guides assuming students know British or Irish English. None are designed for the traditional North American, fifteen-week academic semester. As a result, it is not uncommon to hear college instructors and adult education teachers express interest in developing and publishing textbooks exclusively for Americans taking courses at community colleges and senior colleges. [End Page 137] While such a goal is highly commendable, it is undoubtedly important to look first at past attempts to produce Irish-language textbooks in America. Although a description of Irish for Everyone has been included in the literature of textbook offerings, few references can be found to American textbooks of previous generations.4 In order to document Irish-language textbooks published in the United States from the late 1800s on, the following pages refer to the authors and publication history of each volume and, more important, provide an evaluation of the teaching texts in terms of language-teaching methodology. Such an historic account of this area of adult education will provide future textbook designers with an understanding of what past experiences of Irish-language textbook production in America entailed. Four series of Irish language textbooks were published after the Civil War, from 1873 to 1904, in the United States. These include: Bourke's Easy Lessons or Self-Instruction in Irish, published in New York; the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language books for three levels "for the use of the 'Irish classes' in America" also published in New York; John O'Daly's Key to the Study of Gaelic (1899), published in Boston; and O'Growney's Revised Simple Lessons in Irish published in New York. All of these were composed in the second half of the nineteenth century, even though O'Growney's text was published in New York in 1902 and 1904. Charles Davis's An Chéad Leabhar Gaedhilge published in Boston in 1912 will not be considered here.5 Three concerns should be noted before we look at the background information and actual texts. First, one may ask for what type of student were these textbooks actually published. Students of Irish in the late nineteenth century in the United States may be seen as fitting one of three general learner profiles. Immigrants from Ireland who were raised in English, and may or may not have been exposed to Irish were one group. Native Irish speakers emigrating from the West of Ireland who were for the most part illiterate in Irish were another group, though this group is hard to identify, because they usually had fluency and perhaps some literacy in their second language, English. The minority of learners initially were American-born Irish Americans. We can obtain a few clues as to who the learners of Irish were in the late-nineteenth century by looking at such publications as the monthly An Gaodhal/The Gael from Brooklyn. For example, in reference to a Philo-Celtic meeting reported in 1883, very few individuals are noted by identifiers such as place of birth, "Mr...

The relationship between the group and the individual and the acquisition of native speaker variation patterns: A preliminary study

The relationship between group and individual has been explored within the variationist paradigm. In L1, group patterns of variation are replicated by the individual. Second language acquisition research is concerned with the individual learner, but second language acquisition variationist researchers tend to group learners. Little empirical evidence exists that such grouping is valid, given the importance of individual variation. This article investigates whether it is meaningful to group learners. This is a longitudinal, quantitative study of the acquisition of variation by Irish speakers of French L2 over three years, of which one is a year abroad experience. Participants are five advanced learners, twenty years old, with five years of French classes at secondary school and two at university. A computer (Varbrul) analysis shows similar patterns in group and individual, in the deletion of ne. Theoretical implications are that it is legitimate to apply group standards to individual speakers and that native speaker variation acquisition is linked to a prolonged stay in the native speaker community.

The Poor Mouth: A Parody of (Post)Colonial Irish Manhood

W idely known in Ireland but not outside it, Brian O'Nolan's An Beal Bocht is a short comic gem in form of a mock autobiography published in Irish in 1941 and translated into English as The Poor Mouth in 1964.1 It follows its sad-sack narrator in an hyperbolically pathetic journey from typically Gaelic misery of his childhood to a tenuous, still miserable maturation, quickly capped off by a twenty-nine-year prison term for a murder he didn't commit. That Bonaparte O'Coonassa, an ass who is indeed far from good (or Napoleonic), should terminate his narrative in jail literalizes carceral logic of foregoing text, in which characters are trapped by inexorable march of cinniuiint Ghaelach (Gaelic fate; 73, 84) into squalid lives from which they cannot escape. The Poor Mouth uses this deterministic narrative to parody rigid expectations of what can and should be written in Irish. The Irish language (often called Gaelic) became a talisman of lost manly virtues of independence and fidelity, as well as much-needed proof of national distinctiveness in an increasingly anglophone and anglophilic society. Such idealized formulations in turn strongly impacted those who fought for independence, in part to recover that vitiated national manhood. Although Irish was mother tongue of a minority, it became first official language of new state, acquiring a symbolic significance inversely proportional to its linguistic currency.2 Because of importance of Irish to cultural nationalism, and impoverishment of remaining vestigial communities of Irish speakers, what counted as authentic literature in Irish overwhelmingly concerned harsh, traditional life of western, coastal poor, seen as unselfconscious, heroic and doomed. In a postcolonial riposte, The Poor Mouth lays bare servitude of Gael and his language to ideological demands of linguistic majority in new state-something arguably continuing to this day. The text thereby powerfully critiques a repressive and hypocritical nationalist discourse that replicated colonial attitudes and relations well after independence. This gendered, postcolonial reading of The Poor Mouth requires revisiting heritage of Irish nationalism to focus on its preoccupation with masculinity, which in turn strongly marked cultural ideology of new state. According to Nancy Curtin, the ideal of masculine patriotic self-immolation was relentlessly constructed in 1790s by United Irishmen, a radical, interdenominational constitutional-reformist organization that later embraced separatist, physical force nationalism (34). The

The Shock of the Old: Translating Early Irish Poetry into Modern Irish

THE SHOCK OF THE OLD: TRANSLATING EARLY IRISH POETRY INTO MODERN IRISH KAARINA HOLLO twentieth-century readers of English without a knowledge of Old Irish (ca. 600–900 a.d.) or Middle Irish (ca. 900–1200 a.d.) were given reasonably good access to early medieval Irish poetry through the medium of the translation anthology. Through the efforts of Kuno Meyer, Robin Flower, Gerard Murphy, Frank O’Connor, and others, a good amount of early Irish verse written between the seventh and twelfth centuries was made available to English-language audiences.1 But what of translation of this poetry into Modern Irish? Who undertook this task, for what reasons, and to what effect? From the very beginnings of the Gaelic Literary Revival, there had been calls for the translation of medieval Irish literature into Modern Irish. The ordinary reader of Modern Irish would not be able to make much sense of an early medieval Irish story or poem. Thus, at the time, in order to access a substantial portion of the medieval literary tradition, a Modern Irish speaker would generally turn to English translations provided in more or less scholarly editions or to the more literary reworkings provided, again in English, by the likes of Lady Gregory (1902, 1904) and Standish O’Grady (1878–80, 1894). Learning the earlier forms of the language was a daunting task, not one that the average reader of Irish with an interest in the earlier literature could be expected to undertake. This meant that the Irish reader’s experience of older Irish texts was essentially mediated by English. In 1900 the perceived need for translations directly from the ancestral language into Modern Irish was formally acknowledged by the OireachTRANSLATING EARLY IRISH POETRY INTO MODERN IRISH 54 1 See, for example, Meyer 1911; Flower 1926; Murphy 1956; Greene and O’Connor 1967. For a thorough discussion of the ideological and political dimensions of translation from Old and Middle Irish into English, see Tymoczko 1999. I wish to thank the joint editors of this volume for their thoughtful and constructive comments on several drafts of this paper. tas2 in the institution of a prize for “the best modernized version of a tale or episode from Old or Middle Irish” (O’Leary 1994:233). Philip O’Leary has identified three main rationales for such modernization: (1) an awareness of the linguistic, historical, and cultural value of the early literature; (2) ideological grounds; and (3) a view of medieval Irish literature as providing a model for modern writing in Irish (1994:268–70). It is hard to disentangle the three, and separating them risks reductionism: for example, there is certainly an ideological element to the belief that medieval Irish literature is intrinsically valuable and that it can provide a model for contemporary authors. Speaking of the period 1922–39, O’Leary writes that what Gaelic activists wanted was for native scholars to use their learning to enrich contemporary Irish reality by restoring to the nation an authentic and accessible sense of its own past. In practical terms one of the central features of this project would be the immediate provision of competent Modern Irish versions, translations, of the full range of earlier Irish literature. (1998:201) The translation efforts undertaken on this front were almost exclusively from the prose tradition. Until the mid-twentieth century, verse seems to have been more or less ignored. The great early Irish prose narratives such as Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cúailnge, modern “Cooley”) were seen as constitutive of and more essential to Irish national identity than were the religious, personal, and love poems from the same period. Therefore earlier translation efforts were centered on the prose, but by mid-century, with Irish political independence a reality, it was possible to turn to works that could not be so easily pressed into the mold of a heroic national ethos, such as lyric verse.3 We will focus here on the translations done by two men, both of them significant figures in the mid-twentieth-century Irish literary world. Tomás Ó Floinn published two collections of Modern Irish translations from Old and Middle Irish: Athbheo (Alive Again or...

“We Must Learn Where We Live”: Language, Identity, and the Colonial Condition in Brian Friel’s Translations

MILITARY imperialism is only first step establishing imperial hegemony--and an uneconomic one at that. (1) It is costly and, by itself, produces few long-term benefits for colonizer. Therefore, must followed by strategies to persuade colonized to accept their condition and transfer their allegiance to their conquerors to ensure an uninterrupted flow of benefits from colonized to colonizer without further military intervention. As early as 1596 (2) Edmund Spenser advocated linguistic imperialism as such a strategy. In A View of Present State of Ireland, he asserts that it hath ever been use of conqueror to despise language of conquered, and to force him by all means to learn (1970:67) because language equals identity and allegiance: the speech being Irish, heart must needs (1970:68). The obverse, he hoped, would equally true could Irish persuaded to abandon their aboriginal tongue for English. He avers that even reviving Edward IV's statute requiring Irish to abandon their sept names favor of surnames based on occupation, appearance, or locality would in a short time [lead them] quite to forger [their] Irish nation (1970:156). The implication is that abandoning Irish language--including Irish names--for would obliterate Irish identity and culture that he identifies as source of their resistance to colonization and would render them useful, loyal subjects. It is this implication that Brian Friel explores and, though he grants some validity, ultimately rejects Translations. Spenser's idea of effect of linguistic imperialism implies that language structures what R.D. Laing calls experience--i.e., how we perceive and comprehend world, including ourselves--and implies agreement with Laing that such experience conditions identity and what he calls behavior--i.e., how we act as a result of our experience. If so, one assumes, imposition of linguistic imperialism should result imperial control of experience and, hence, identity of colonized. However, effecting that control requires destruction of colonized's aboriginal language/experience/identity, and destroying another's experience, Laing says, is a violent exercise of the power to define reality (qtd. Levine 1975:4) that, turn, begets new violence. Laing says that if our experience is destroyed, our behaviour will (1967:12), which suggests that linguistic imperialism should also result destructive behavior on part of colonized. In Translations Friel assesses efficacy of linguistic imperialism by addressing its effects and those of concomitant cultural imperialism on culture, identity, and even continued physical existence of colonized. Although written primarily English, play is trilingually macaronic: English, Latin, and Greek. Significantly, there is not a word Irish, even though most of characters are monolingual Irish speakers whom presumably English-speaking audience are to accept as speaking Irish when they speak English. Friel's choice of languages implies much about his assessments of effects and efficacy of linguistic and cultural imperialism, about ways which colonized react to them, and about most effective way which they can combat imperial agenda, maintain their culture and identity, ensure their survival, and possibly secure their freedom. In play Friel portrays linguistic and cultural imperialism as more insidious than military imperialism they are adjuncts to and metaphors for; Irish cooperate with them as they do not cooperate with British military. A child spits at British soldiers, but Bridget and Biddy Hanna look forward to establishment of National School, where children will be taught to speak and every subject will taught through English (1984:396), and students will sing, every morning, a song thanking God that they are happy little boys. …

Irish-language broadcasting: history, ideology and identity

Irish-language broadcasting is discussed. The history of Irish-language broadcasting is outlined from the 1920s to the present. Irish-language broadcasting since the 1960s is placed in the context of two competing ideologies - a traditional and a modern ideology. These ideologies are the foundations on which contradictory demands placed on TG4 are built. The conflict between minority rights and market forces are discussed in relation to TG4. It is argued that although TG4 might be expected to offer Irish speakers a public sphere in which they can participate democratically as citizens, it is more likely that TG4 plays another important role of offering a mythic domain for the construction of identity.