THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE
From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893
Page 65
THE INFLUENCE OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE
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on the western side of the line still understand Irish, and hundreds of thousands who do not understand it unconsciously employ many of its peculiarities in their English speech, and speak with an accent peculiarly adaptable to the rich, liquid flatamail enunciation of the Gael. According to the late census returns 307,000 persons still understand Irish in the province of Munster, and 119,000 in this county of Cork alone. In addition, a million at least of our Gaelic colonists in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland still speak the old mother-tongue with rather less difference of pronunciation than there is between the common speech of London and the common speech of Lancashire. That is to say, the Gaelic is still the living language of more people than speak any one of half-a dozen national languages in Europe, which are, nevertheless, flourishing, and likely to flourish—Romaic, Greek, and Servian, and Bulgarian and Norwegian, and Danish and Welsh. The truth is the Irish language is dying, not of inanition, but of the fashion, and as a fashion mutable is the decree for its extinction. Bitter things have been said of those who in the last fifty years were used to chide Irish schoolchildren caught lapsing into their own mother-tongue; and no doubt it was a sorry spectacle. But it was emigration, not the ferule of the old pedants, that drove the Irish language out of fashion. Once the eyes of the Irish peasants were directed to a career in the golden English-speaking continents beyond the setting sun, their own instincts of self-preservation, even more than the exhortation of those responsible for their future, pointed to the English language as no less essential than a ship to sail in and a passage ticket to enable them to embark on it, as a passport from their miserable surroundings to lands of plenty and independence beyond the billows. … continue reading »
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