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Irish and Scots Gaelic are nearly the same. Welsh is a different language. But I think all these languages need to be saved. They are part of the country's history.
Irish, Gaelic and Manx are Goidelic while Welsh, Cornish and Breton are Brithonic...
Yes, I remember the first time I heard Irish spoken was in the Dingle Peninsula at a cafe, Sleahead Drive.
My ggg's headstone in the US says they were from Co Ciarrai or similar I think.
In NC on Ft. Bragg throughout the wooded areas are small cemetaries where are the headstones are in Scots-Gaelic because the whole area around Fayetteville, NC was originally a settlement of Gaelic speaking immigrants from Scotland and this also where the first Declaration of Independance was written and sent to England from here, it seems Thomas Jefferson plagerized his famous document...
I wonder if any diasporic communities or descendants of Irish immigrants are interested in learning the language? The population of Irish-speakers in places like the USA is really small now, but presumably was much higher during the peak immigration days when emigrants carried their language with them.
Isn't Irish spoken as the first language by almost everyone who lives on the Aran Islands? And what about other Gaeltacht areas?
To me, Irish, Welsh and Scots Gaelic sounds very similar but I know Welsh is very different from those other 2. I think Welsh is the most widely spoken and well estalished one with hundreds of thousends of native speakers, used as first language by about 20% of Wales. The Welsh even has their own tv shows and series in their language, like that new series Hinterland (Y Gwyn). Does Ireland also have such tv channels?
Yes. They have some name that I cannot even begin to pronounce.
1.2% of Scotland's population can speak Scottish Gaelic, but they are more or less entirely concentrated in the Hebrides, where a majority of people, in some cases, speak Scottish Gaelic as their primary language.
Good for them but I can't see that being a benefit in a country entirely english speaking.
Ireland is the total opposite of Finland when it comes to language, I saw a culture TV program once where they compared Ireland to Finland, and they mentioned that in Ireland the native language Irish is today only spoken by a minority while the invasive and foreign language English is spoken by the vast majority, while in Finland its the other way around, cause there the vast majority speaks the native language Finnish today and only a minority speaks the foreign and invasive language Swedish (which is not related to Finnish by the way, it was introduced in Finland by their former Swedish rulers, just like English was introduced in Ireland).
It certainly seems though that Welsh is the most widely spoken and established Celtic language in the British Isles, even though it's a part of the UK where English is the official language.
But english is our native language. Irish has not been the native language for hundreds of years.
So I guess there's hope for Ireland and Irish, although I feel English will be the dominant language for a long time to come simply because it is so much more global than Swedish.
In NC on Ft. Bragg throughout the wooded areas are small cemetaries where are the headstones are in Scots-Gaelic because the whole area around Fayetteville, NC was originally a settlement of Gaelic speaking immigrants from Scotland and this also where the first Declaration of Independance was written and sent to England from here, it seems Thomas Jefferson plagerized his famous document...
Yes, I've read a couple of books about all the Scots who migrated to NC, especially the Cape Fear area.
But english is our native language. Irish has not been the native language for hundreds of years.
No, it hasn't been hundreds of years. My gggrandparents still spoke it when they emigrated to the US and that was 160 years ago.
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