Ogham signs<\/a> the Irish used to write that survived to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe English language was first used sometime during the middle of the 5th<\/sup> century AD when the Anglo-Saxon settlers came with\ntheir Anglo-Frisian dialects. So at the very least,\nwe can say that we know who were the first peoples with a developed language in\nthe islands. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Irish language people use today is not as old as the Archaic Irish. Linguists place the starting point of use of Modern Irish, the type of Irish that\u2019s in use today, during the 18th<\/sup> century. That\u2019s also the time when the Irish language so its steepest declines in usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy and When Did the Irish Stop Speaking Irish?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Even though the first arrival of Germanic peoples into the\nislands of Ireland and Britain saw the Irish language lose some ground, it\ncontinued to flourish in Ireland and Scotland. It was the majority language in\nIreland for a long time, possibly as late\nas the beginning of the 19th<\/sup> century. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the 17th<\/sup> century, after much effort, the\nBritish Empire was able to include Ireland as its part. Irish began losing\nground in the parts of the county that were closer to Britain, but it wasn\u2019t\nuntil the 18th<\/sup> century when it the British administration, as well\nas the Catholic Church, started pushing for more usage of English.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, it was the 19th<\/sup> century that was the worse\nfor the Irish language. The British introduced a primary education system in\nwhich Irish was forbidden until much later in the century. But it was the Great Famine that really gave the Irish\nlanguage its final blow. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe people who were most likely to die during the famine \u2014\nthe poor \u2014 were also the people who spoke the Irish language. And those who\ndidn\u2019t die fled the country. By the end of the famine, Ireland lost around two\nmillion people, half of them to hunger, and the other half to immigration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Great Famine is one of the darker chapters of Irish history, and it\u2019s not a part of history the British are proud of, either. The famine was not the first or the last one that happened in that century, but it was the one that left the deepest consequences, and the loss of the Irish language was one of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Additional Questions <\/h2>\n\n\n\nIs Irish Hard to\nLearn?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWell, if you already speak fluent Scottish Gaelic, then no,\nIrish is not a hard language the learn. However, most English speakers will\nhave some troubles learning Irish. It\u2019s not a Germanic language and it doesn\u2019t\nhave the same connection to English as the Romance languages have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even though it doesn\u2019t share the same branch with them,\nIrish might be as hard for English speakers to learn as Slavic languages are.\nOr maybe even Finno-Ugric languages. Definitely,\nsomething you can\u2019t pick up in a couple dozens of hours of learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Are There Irish\nPeople Who Cannot Speak English?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s highly unlikely that you\u2019ll be able to find people in\nIreland who speak only Irish. Even if you wander\ninto the Gaeltacht, the best you can do is\nfind people who speak Irish better than they do English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It might be worth your while to visit some areas where Irish\nhas stronger roots than English. Connemara is such an area, and it\u2019s widely\nknown for its beauty. The Aran Islands are worth at least a day trip of your\ntime, if not more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Does\n\u2018Hiberno-English\u2019 Mean?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nHiberno-English is another way of saying Irish English. The\nphrase refers to all the dialects of the English language people use in\nIreland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u2018Hiberno\u2019 part of the phrase comes from Hibernia<\/em>, which is how they used to call the island of Ireland in ancient times using the Latin language. The modern Irish word for Ireland is \u00c9ire.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Learning a couple of words in local languages is one of the more fun parts of traveling. When it comes to Ireland, that means learning to say something in Gaelic. However, some people might wonder whether they need to, because most of the communication in Ireland happens in English. Plus, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/overinireland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/do-irish-people-speak-gaelic.jpg?fit=800%2C534&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pauohh-AK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2278"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2445,"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions\/2445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overinireland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}