Hacker Neue

Preferences
eamonnsullivan parent
I find it odd that the article makes almost zero mention of how Ireland is doing with its very closely related form of Gaelic. Ireland has arguably been at least slightly more successful.

Or Wales? Or other minority languages, such as Basque? Just nothing -- not a mention.

It's missing quite a lot of context.

macleginn
Ireland is awkward: there are state policies and all, but the language as taught in schools and universities is quite different from the varieties spoken inside Gaelic-speaking communities (gaeltachta) by a very small number of people. Scottish Gaelic is much better preserved in the communities, and Welsh is basically doing fine (hundreds of thousands of speakers), so it can be argued that the situation on the ground in the three communities is very different to touch upon in a smallish article.
piltdownman
// but the language as taught in schools and universities is quite different from the varieties spoken inside Gaelic-speaking communities (gaeltachta) by a very small number of people

There's only 3 regional dialects of Irish - Connacht, Munster and Ulster - and all three dialects are tested at Aural level in the School leavers Exam. There's very little difference between them bar pronunciation and some common phrases.

The vast vast majority of daily Irish speakers would speak Connacht Irish - i.e. Connemara Irish - due to spending time in the Colaiste Gaeilge during the summer holidays; effectively state-subsidised Irish language Summer Camps. It's also the predominant dialect on TG4 - the Irish language TV station.

Wales has a massively larger proportion of native speakers of Welsh daily, but this is due to the lack of colonial history attempting to wipe out the language, and the far more multi-cultural make-up of Ireland.

macleginn
Munster Irish has some noticeable differences in morphology and the use of grammatical particles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munster_Irish
piltdownman
The thing is that there's not really any Munster Gaeltachts outside of Corca Dhuibhne in 2025. The only time you'll hear anything close to the differentiated Munster Irish outside of a Leaving Cert textbook is someone like Jack O'Connor giving commentary on TG4 after a match.

I'd also disagree with a lot of the sentence structure formation and 'grammar' espoused as fact on that Wiki page. You'd be marked down on any Irish Higher Level Paper 2 marking scheme that I'm aware of - e.g.

https://www.examinations.ie/archive/markingschemes/2019/LC00...

More to the point, I'd emphasise the far larger impact of Gaeilge on the dialect of Hiberno-English spoken down there - e.g. 'What mood are you in', 'I've the hunger of the world on me', 'I'm after having a fierce supper there' etc...

musiciangames
I think my Mother would have disagreed with you about Welsh. She remembered the Welsh not:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not

JetSetWilly
Why? It’s not about ireland - it’s about scotland. Article makes complete sense in a scottish context.
eamonnsullivan OP
I absolutely understand that, but it seems concerned with the same things (preserving a minority language) and there are lots of initiatives in this area all over the U.K. Literally, right next door.
JetSetWilly
Really the article - despite the headline - spends a long time on the literary history of gaelic in scotland, with a short paragraph at the end on the current status. I doubt the author had time to expand to a review of minority language measures globally, and it didn’t seem to be the main point of it anyway.

And, the situation and standing of gaelic in Ireland and Scotland are quite different. In Ireland, gaelic is strongly associated with the primary, and successful ethnonationalist movement. In Scotland, at the end of the day gaelic is a remnant of a foreign invasion, and is also historically associated with catholicism, so is often seen as the “other”. This makes it more difficult to whip up enthusiasm to learn it, even among die hard Scottish nationalists. This whole situation is quite unlike Ireland and even Wales, it would be at best a distraction in the article.

Gupie
English and Scots are also of course remnants of a foreign invasion.
flir
So are the Gaelic languages. (It's turtles all the way down).
memsom
Gaelic arrived in Scotland within 100 years of English arriving in England. They are both attested to arrive in around the 4th - 5th AD century IIRC. Before that Scotland spoke Pictish (which is not known in the modern era and may/maynot have been a Brythonic language) and a language related to Welsh in the Lowlands. Gaelic is a very interesting language and should absolutely get championed and preserved, but it is not the ancient language of Scotland, and hasn't really been spoken there much longer than the English language was in the UK.
senda
You can't expect consistently accurate reporting on Ireland, I certainly wouldn't expect it from the BBC Eamonn growing up during the tail end of the Troubles. ;)
Macha
Honestly, while effort has been put in over a longer period of time in Ireland, from the outside looking in, Wales has been far more successful than Ireland. Despite being Irish and living in Ireland all my life, I know more people fluent in Welsh than in Irish. Maybe I just have severe sampling bias with my Welsh friends and colleagues?
fiftyacorn
They are different languages - i mean same roots but still different
argentier
The Irish spoken in the North West of Ireland (Tir Conaill) is pretty much indistinguishable from Scots Gaedhlig.

The real division is between Gaelic (Irish and Scottish) and Brythonic (Welsh, British and Cornish)

Asraelite
The existence of a dialect continuum doesn't make them the same language. By that logic, Dutch and German are the same.

Irish and Scottish are very similar, but they are not mutually intelligible. It's very annoying when people use the word "Gaelic" because I never know which language they're referring to. Just say "Scottish"/"Scottish Gaelic", "Irish", or "The Gaelic languages".

biorach
> Irish and Scottish are very similar, but they are not mutually intelligible

Not true.

They are mutually intelligible to a high degree. Native speakers, speaking slowly and clearly can understand most of what each other are saying.

I speak some Irish and have personal experience of this.

Asraelite
Yeah, to a degree, my dad speaks Irish and he says the same. But it's not quite enough to be considered the same language. It's comparable to Norwegian and Swedish, or Portuguese and Spanish.
2 More Comments →
Macha
> Irish and Scottish are very similar, but they are not mutually intelligible. It's very annoying when people use the word "Gaelic" because I never know which language they're referring to. Just say "Scottish"/"Scottish Gaelic", "Irish", or "The Gaelic languages".

Are they American? Then they mean Irish.

Are they Scottish? Then they mean Scottish Gaelic.

Are they Irish? Trick question, Irish people don't use the word.

macleginn
Northern (Donegal) Irish is to some extent mutually intelligible with Scottish, but it is very different from the eastern and southern varieties. The notion of the dialect "continuum" is a bit misleading here since the three varieties of Irish have been separated by English speaking regions for some time, and there are no intermediate forms.
nyeah
I've often heard "Irish" for Irish and "Gaelic" for the Scottish one. Is that not used systematically?
closewith
Yes, Irish in called Irish in English and never Gaelic, which is used as an adjective. For example, the Gaelic Athletic Association.

In Irish, Irish is Gaeilge.

Asraelite
A lot of people call Irish "Gaelic" colloquially. I hear it especially often from Americans. No idea how common it is in more formal settings.

This item has no comments currently.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Story Lists

j
Next story
k
Previous story
Shift+j
Last story
Shift+k
First story
o Enter
Go to story URL
c
Go to comments
u
Go to author

Navigation

Shift+t
Go to top stories
Shift+n
Go to new stories
Shift+b
Go to best stories
Shift+a
Go to Ask HN
Shift+s
Go to Show HN

Miscellaneous

?
Show this modal