We had no choice when it came to our language. The English made the language illegal banned it . Even tortured imprisoned and killed those who refused to obey their will.
Dave Kenny was going to say that ! But it’s how the Irish use English that I find unique then there’s also Hiberno- English which has its roots in the gaeilge ( Irish language ) .
latxa what I find heartening is that the uachtaran ( President ) Michael Higgins is prompting its use across the country so not just ROI but also NI because let’s fact it NI is still Ireland !
Charlie Bubbles I knew about this because I have some experience with it my O’Brien ancestors ( my great grandmother Kennedy’s family ) who were from Cavan we couldn’t find them in records but because there were a lot of Irish Catholics in Australia at the time when they came ( 1860s ) so they changed their name briefly to mcbrien believing that would make it easier to get into Australia because my three times great grandmother her maiden name was McGovern . But they simply changed it back to O’Brien after they arrived and were accepted
Northern Spain is the most genetically similar to Ireland outside the British Isles. It's not really clear though whether the Irish settled Spain before moving to Ireland or whether both the Irish and the Galicians originated from the same place but split along the way.
brycly it’s mainly the Iberian peninsula and it’s where you have what’s known as the black celts who descend from Iberian Spanish moors intermarrying with the native Irish celts and this is where you find the more dark haired olive skinned Irish that exist is from this link think people like de Valera , and modern examples like Aidan turner , Colin odonoghue , Colin Farrell for looks
Ith Iasc correct Irish is simply the English term gaeilge is the Irish term for it same as the Scottish call their Gaelic gaidhlig and the welsh call theirs cymraeg.
I am currently relearning the language as it has been in my family for generations and it was one of my biggest regrets not being able to speak my native tongue. My mómo being from the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland only spoke Irish and only passed away this year knowing very little English phrases. Go ndéana Dia a mhaith uirthi. Beidh grá agam duit go deo Bhí an Ghaeilge i mo chlann ar feadh na mblianta agus tá a lán bróid agam mar gheall air seo. Tá aiféala orm nár fhoghlaim mé Gaeilge nuair a bhí mé nios óige.
Greetings from New York! May I ask how old was your grandmother? I thought all the people who only spoke Gaelic in Ireland were born in the mid 1800s & died by the 1980s? Are you from Dublin?
Wow, same man. My great-great-grandfather came to the USA from Ireland and married a Cherokee women. I’ve always wanted to learn Cherokee and Irish because I was raised hearing stories about how hard it was for both of them when they first got here. Inspirational my man 🙏. My grandpa stopped speaking Irish whenever his brothers died so I understand but I will teach my children about their history whether or not I’m sad about it.
This is pretty much bang on. Best summation by non Irish person I’ve heard. Also, although we speak English, it’s Hiberno-English. We have some unusual words, some old and middle English, some different meanings for common English words, some Norse, lots of loan words from Irish and some random bits of actual Irish thrown in. But probably more importantly, sentence structure can be very different from English as spoken elsewhere. It’s something I’ve only come to realise recently (when I had it pointed out to me). Eg. “I’m after coming back from the shop without milk” or “I’ve just come back from the shop without milk” in regular English. Both completely right in Hibernian English.
David Reynolds I grew up in Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada. We have a very strong accent, & over half of the people in our province came from Ireland. A lot of small communities were isolated for many years, & still a few today. As a result we maintained an Irish sounding accent while speaking English. We even use Irish words, for example "strel", meaning a poorly dress or unkept person. We also, say things like, "He's after fallin' down and hurtin' himself". Or, He or she is after doing this or that. I moved to Toronto, Ontario when I was 20, and I could not say two words without someone asking where I was from. A few other examples, are we don't generally pronounce the th, is more a D sound. We say me in the possessive instead of my, me mudder instead of my mother. I use to pronounce words with or in them with an ar sound, so, forty was pronounced farty, & I ate with a fark, & not a fork. So, it is very interesting for me to hear Irish people speaking English as it reminds me of home in eastern Canada. Cheer.
We really like to play around with sentence structure - that comes from being more oral than literate... and having time to learn structures.. never mind the 'tag' ... we never respond without leaving the response open for another query... in the hope of getting a response and starting a conversation
Manx, when I was young there was one man left on the island that still spoke the language, the museum spent some time recording him sing folk songs and talking in manx so it would not be lost, now its taught in schools and making a come back, I
Owen Williams it should be promoted then if possible RTE has its own radio and television channels for the gaeilge as RTE stands for ( Radio Telefis Eireann ) news is televised and broadcast in Irish as well as other programming . BBC Alba does the same for the gaidhlig in Scotland . The difference between these two is that Irish is a standard part of the school curriculum for Irish children and has been since 1950 . Scottish children are only now getting a chance to learn their Gaelic language due to some recent educational reforms by Scottish government who are providing resources and teachers for those wishing to learn it .
Wonderful video. Go raibh maith agat! As an Irishman, and proud Irish speaker living in the USA, I find many Americans do not know that we have our own native mother tongue, and also find a lot that do know we have our own language. However they do tend to call it “Gaelic”. While I think it’s better that they know that, than not know Irish at all, you are definitely correct that the preferred term is Irish, or Gaeilge
This is one of the best videos about the Gaelic languages (or even the Celtic languages in general) I've seen! Lots of facts, very accurate, no racist slurs. Well done!
@@preasail In the Schools I went to the subject was always called Gaeilge, regardless of what language the teachers were speaking when referring to it. Obviously if you were talking about it with other classmates you'd always call it Irish but teachers only ever referred to it as Gaeilge, which may have not been the case in every school. Just mentioned it because of all the names the video talks about it never mentions Gaeilge as an option for the name of the language.
Éireannach anso. Ní hí Gaelainn mo chéad teanga, ach déanaim staidéir uirthi ar aon nós. Go raibh maith agat as an físeán so. Tá a lán eolas agat ar an t-ábhar so, agus tá meas agam ar sin. Irishman here. Irish isn't my first language, but I do study it. Thank you for this video. You know a lot about this, and I respect that.
Lⲁıꞅꞃéⲁn there’s a brilliant TED talk you might like with a Irish man talking about the beauty of gaeilge just type in ted talk beauty of Irish language and it should come up it was done in Baile atha cliath I think
Good video, it'd clarify things for non-Irish people. 2 things though, "Seo linn" (here's/this is us) is pronounced 'shuh linn' not 'show linn' and at the end you say "go raibh maith agat" (thank you, one person) when the correct thing to say would be "go raibh maith agaibh" (thank you, multiple people)
Just to give a little bit of an insight, as someone who came through the education system in Ireland where the language is a mandatory subject. It's not uncommon for a student to leave school at 18 knowing only a handful of phrases, as the system tries to teach it as a literary language, rather than as a conversational language. Meaning you don't retain any of it, as you're not practicing it under real life scenarios and for those of us who suffered through Peig Sayers and Seamus Heaney, you kinda end up resenting it a bit. In my own school, I often sensed an elitist attitude from the teachers. Almost as if you didn't have a natural aptitude for the language, then you 'weren't good enough to learn it' as they would ignore those of us struggling and only focus on the students who didn't really need any help. There was a pretty funny Carlsberg ad from 10 years ago that sums it up pretty well: ua-cam.com/video/DTNBmFveq2U/v-deo.html A bunch of random phrases and the name of a newsreader, made to sound legible.
@bbonner422 That's kind of the intention of a Gaelscoil, but it's not the path the majority of Leaving Cert students end up taking, which is what I'm referring to.
That's all unfortunate but it's better for them to know just a tiny bit than none and for only a small number to adapt to it well than none, it sets a seed that will hopefully make it easier for the next generation.
It doesn't matter. A lot of the teachers don't pronounce the words well at all anyway, they completely anglicise everything like their students. Gaelscoils have the same problem because there simply aren't enough teachers with really high standards of Irish to fill the positions. This year some Gaelscoil teachers were even found to be teaching through English and this could become more common because the government insists on building more Gaelscoils to make themselves look good while the traditional Irish speaking areas continue to decline. The reason I say all of the above doesn't matter, is because it's not actually possible to teach a language in a classroom. A teacher can explain grammar and give you guidance, but the only way to really learn a language once you have worked through a solid introductory course is through lots of reading and listening to native speaker audio, i.e. Comprehensible input. (With a focus on phonetics from the very start. Even more important for minority languages like Irish because otherwise you end up with fluent learners butchering the pronounciation and not correcting it which is quite common with Irish.) The fact is that most people in Ireland don't actually care enough about the language to give it an hour a day for three years.
@@shakezist he didn't write in Irish, but he was also well known as a translator. Because of that he personally translated a fair few of his poems into Irish
Go hiontach chun roinnt gaeilge a fheicéail ar cainéal youtube mheiriceánach. Go raibh maith 'ad as a' bhfiséan thar barr Great to see some irish on an american channel. Thanks for the excellent video
I believe either pronunciation is correct. If I recall correctly, "Sell-tick" is a French influenced pronunciation that was common among pre-20th century scholars. I prefer the hard "C" because it's more common and is consistent with the pronunciation in the Celtic languages themselves.
Sell-tik was a now historical mispronunciation of Celtic that unfortunately stuck. As Fire said above, though more nicely... The French/Normans pronounced Celtic as "Sell-tik" incorrectly and continued to do so, this incorrect pronunciation is what caught on sadly and is why we have teams pronounced "Sell-tik" and is even why the Portuguese say it wrong, because they got the pronunciation from the French. The correct way based on Celtic languages is with the hard "C" sound... Which in my opinion should be the correct way seeing as it is Celtic. It is a good example though of how history is shaped by who wins, or who is the higher class / power at the time. Because the French had more influence in the world... Their mistake stuck and became the agreed standard.
The people who live in the Irish-speaking areas are immensely proud of their Irish and feel they are keeping it alive. There are at least double the amount of full native speakers now in Ireland than 100 years ago. Plus, nearly everyone has a least some knowledge of it with varying degrees of proficiency. The language is still on the road to making a comeback but progress is slow.
Yes, even English-born me has a bit of Irish! It's a wonderful language, so much older than English and so much more lyrical! What surprised me when I moved here was how some Irish people seem to have contempt for their native language and have the attitude of "Sure what would you need it for?". Thankfully,not everyone is so banal!
Well there's actually 4 dialects of Irish, Gaelige is the Munster dialect mostly. Historically speaking Irish was called Gaelic pronounced gaylick, scottish is gahlick. But call it whatever you want.
The narrator fails to mention the most compelling and historically significant reason Irish people switched to English: speaking Irish was made illegal by the British as part of the British ethnic cleansing campaign in Ireland (Irish-language place names were also Anglicized). Irish people were forced to abandon the Irish language. They did not abandon Irish for convenience, as the narrator of this video states.
Hi Zak, nice to see /read your comments on this very important topic.ESPECIALLY your reference to Irish Place Names were changed by the English Did you know about Brian Friel'sPlay. "TRANSLATIONS" A wonderful play about this very subject --- a culture clash masterpiece (TheGuardian ) currently running at Olivier Theatre in National Theatre. LONDON . P.S I don't know where you are from but me Birmingham U.K. Cheers. Liam
While French is one of the Romance languages, there is more Germanic influence than the others. In Francophone school, that is also what we were taught. I speak both English and French, and now I'm learning German. I've been surprised at how much speaking French has helped with genders, verbs and pronunciation.
My children speak Irish daily, they're being raised to speak as Gaelige to each other solely. In 2 generations English will be a dead language in our household
@bbonner422 ~ That's not true. They are a group of people who "claim" to be of different ethnicity. They are not. They are regular people in Ireland that choose to live as they see fit and claim to be of Romani Gypsy descent. The "discrimination" as you mention stems from criminality and anti social behaviour within these groups.
@@patrickryan7382 Make sure they can understand RnaG and pronounce the words the Irish way as opposed to the English way most Irish people pronounce them. I recommend chapter one of Micheál Ó Siadhails Learning Irish and the audio that comes with it for guidance in this regard. He makes the concept of broad/slender distinctions so easy to understand too.
Liam Tube This is just not true: www.google.ie/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/news/science/travellers-as-genetically-different-from-settled-irish-as-spanish-1.2969515%3fmode=amp and as for the community’s social issues, poverty is definitely a driving factor. Do native Americans have such high rates of substance abuse as a way of faking their identity? Regardless of genetic puritanism, they have had a distinct culture for centuries and culture is the defining factor in our identities.
Cornish wasn't "near death" - it died, in that for at least a century and probably almost three it had no known native speakers but had some people who still knew a bit of it for at least most of that time. It has been revived with the help of such people, much like Hebrew but not yet with the same degree of success, and will hopefully thrive again in the future.
So, it’s actually more difficult to say when Gaelic came to Scotland. Easy trade routs between Ireland and the Hebrides means that Gaelic likely started expanding into that region soon after the region now known as Ulster was settled. Furthermore, the existence of Gaelic in the Isles and Highland was likely more influential to the existence of Dál Riata than than visa versa, although the influence the kingdom eventually gained through alliances and consolidation of Pictish and Brythonic kingdoms did lead to the languages dominance in the new kingdom of Alba.
Tom Sanders Alba was a medieval kingdom and English did not exist at that point, although bilingualism would not have been uncommon. Most people in that region today do speak English, though bilingualism is common in the Western Isles and parts of the highlands.
Steve O' Connor Yes and even younger than that in their 40s according to my niece who was on placement in a gps practice in the gaeltacht before the christmas
Good video and sounds well researched I have two small gripes though. 1. You Used a Leinster flag rather than an Irish flag or Irish Coat of Arms @02:34 2. It's much more common to hear Gaeilge (the Irish word for the Irish language) in Ireland than the term Gaelic. Gaelic is typically what we call our GAA football.
Gaeilge = Celtic (language) Éireannach = Irish (nationality) Is Éireannach mé = I am Irish Labhraím Gaelige agus Béarla = I speak Irish/celtic and English Irish is a dying language but irish folk like myself are taking it back up, it's hard but attainable. Gaeilge is older than English. Labhraím Béarla gach lá ach táim ag déanamh staidéir as Gaeilge gach oíche. Great video 👍🏻
(Triggered Warning) A Dhuine Uasail, I thouth the video was excellent but for one tiiny, teeny thing. The mention of British Isles always triggers the timbers of many Irish people, myself included. It comes from the misunderstanding many British nationalists have and like to propogate(and have done so succesfully), wherein they point out that Ptolemy, in his atlas of the known world in 2AD wrote the island of Britain as Britannica and Ireland as Britannica Insula or something like that, something that can be seen when one looks at this map today. However Ptolemy's map included no such label for Ireland, the "Britannica Insula" was added by British cartographers in the 1500s. (problem solved, Jingoes) The reason some of us Irish object to being called part of the British Isles is that, apart from having no real need to ever refer to them collectively anymore, the term is a political one, designed to show England's dominance of the area, We dont refer to Austria as Lesser Germany, nor Canada or Mexico as U.S Minor, nor New Zealand as Little Australia. So when talking about Ireland and Britain please refer to the 2 countries from now on as simlpy Ireland and Britain, or Britain and Ireland, or Ireland and her too Insignificantly Small to Mention Neighboring Isles (IISMNI for short). Go raibh míle maith agat :)
So our islands are called the British Isles because of the English? That is simply weird. The fact is that we live on the British Isles and Ireland is an island and not a country.
@@Alan_Mac Yes Alan, Britain was the chosen political name of the island ruled by kings/queens in south east England (close to Germany) because it alluded to the inhabitants of the island who lived there before the new ruling class of Germanics(Angles, Jutes, Saxons etc.) arrived 1500 years ago. I dont know where you live but if it is in England, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, any of those north atlantic islands like st.Kilda(although I know its now uninhabited) or any of the channel islands or other crown dependencies dotted around the coast of Britain, then I agree with you and respect your wish to be aknowledged as being from the British isles. However I am from Ireland, which is absolutely not a British island or a British isle.
@@uvacasmweeniv7317 Yer arse. The name 'Britain' predates England. I, like you, live in Ireland and you have to be a crackpot to see it other than a geographic term and utterly innocuous.
@@Alan_Mac Of course it predates it, the first time Inglis was heard in Britain was in the 5th C, the Cruithne (Critony)(Britoni) had been in Britain for at least 1500 years previously(depending what archaeologists you like the most). What are you saying that I see as "other than a geographic term and utterly innoulous"? Ireland, or Britain?
@@Alan_Mac Why do you think the Irish govt. does not recognize or use the term? For a better explanantion than I can give here, check out the Irish Passport Podcast, episode The Knowledge Gap, you can fast forward to 40 mins for the bit about the british isles controversy. Its delivered by a University of Paris lecturer and very informative.
The entire nursing home population of any Gaeltacht (Irish speaking areas in the west coast) can’t really speak English anymore because it’s their second language and they start forgetting it! My sister in law was a trainee nurse and is from East Galway, where English is the first language but had to do here training in West Galway where Irish is still the first language and she’d be laughing about how the only word of English most them now remember is “lotto” because they’re obsessed with the lotto in nursing home haha
I’ve been to Ireland a couple of times and can attest that if you call the language Gaelic, the normally friendly Irish people will correct you emphatically that they speak Irish. During my last trip, I drove around the countryside (not as daunting as you may think, I got used to the reverse roads). Driving really is the best way to see the country. Like the map showed, in the west Irish is much more prevalent. Especially out on the Dingle peninsula that was actually the primary language over English. Even the road signs that normally have English and Irish either reversed to have Irish at the top instead of English, or at times didn’t even include English (makes navigating interesting). It is a very interesting language to sit and listen to a conversation in it.
Ots good to emphasise that the Irish language is spoken in the Gaeltacht regions because it is there that the language continued to be spoken natively (still passed down through the generations i.e. never died out) and not revived. Yes, the revival movement is the reason that it has become protected there but people there don't speak it because itbwas revived in those areas. The Gaeltacht areas are the last outposts of natively-spoken Irish as it was spoken before the decline.
Gaelic also refers to the language or the family of languages that originated from it, as well as meaning "of the gaels". Something you might know if you picked up a book after you left school. Shame you have to feel that your native tongue was forced on you. Suppose you are one of those hypocrites who has a picture of Michael Collins as your screensaver too.
Quick note; "Seo linn" is pronounced "shuh ling" (in my dialect, at least) and "Gaeltachtaí" is pronounced "Gwayl-TUHX-tee" with the "x" sound basically being like the "ch" in gàidhlig "loch" ar the "x" in Russian. a bit of random info on the word "gaeltacht", Gàidhealtachd is a word in Gàidhlig but instead of "Gàidhlig-speaking area" it means "The highlands"
Dia duit, conas atá tú? Tá mé I mo chónai sa Eire. Gaelige is Irish in Irish, and we DO call it irish, and nothing else, so this triggers me. I do speak fluently btw, so I know more about irish than an American does so I will tell you now
I assume that 'Kernowic' is related to Welsh. I've a friend who's a native speaker from Wales but I find that his language shares very few words with Irish. Manx, the language of Inis Manain Mac Lir, however, is based on Leinster Irish as far as I know. Scotch Gaelic is an off-shoot of Ulster Irish of course. I've read that the Gaeilge of Scotland didn't go through the modernisation phases that Irish went through and as a result it's closer to its original roots. Native-speaking fishermen from Donegal have told me that they can communicate pretty well in Gaelic with their counterparts from West Scotland. It's very difficult to revive a dead language so we should all cherish what languages are still around on these Islands off the coast of Mòr Roinn na hEorpa.
@@dukadarodear2176 ........ Hiya, I'm no expert. Welsh, Britton and Cornish are related to each other. Our Kernowic teacher taught us that Welsh is the mother, Cornish is the cousin of the mother and Britton is like a nephew of both (hope that makes sense.) The Welsh class had over a hundred students, the Cit Lit do various levels. When I attended, the Kernowic class had about 16. Manx wasn't taught there but at Christmas time we all got together. People sung in Welsh and Cornish, said poems they wrote, and a small group from the isle of man also were there to represent their language. Welsh, Cornish and Manx survive. Cumbric, is dead. People tried to revive but there aren't enough words that are known to work with. So, unless documents are found, it is unlikely to be revived. Irish does well but the Irish government are beginning to be a problem north and south. The scots have Alba tv (I think). Yes, it's good to help keep these languages alive. The last words to go in any language are the numbers. Maybe the fisherman can communicate because they may be similar.
Very interesting. Thank you for this informative video. I've always had a deep interest in linguistics. I would also like to learn more about the Germanic languages as well (subtle hint 😉).
The term British Isles is not used or recognized in anyway by the people or government of Ireland, it's a term which belongs in colonial times. The correct term is simply Britain and Ireland, or The British Isles and Ireland.
@@Fireoflearning I look forward to your video on the subject but being British is a nationality and as the people of Ireland are not British how can our island be. There is no direct translation of British Isles in Irish, it's always been Eire agus an Bhreatain Mhor (Ireland and Great Britain). It's a term with colonial origins and has been used since as a form of propaganda by the British state in its failed effort at colonizing the island of Ireland
Not to get Republican or anything, but he left out a lot of the English's involvement in our language dying out. Like speaking it carrying a death penalty and all that...
Gaelic is the Scottish variant. What is referred to as the Irish language today has more in common with Erse, a mixture of English and Irish that was spoken in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Gaeilge (pronounced gweil-ga). The languages spoken in Scotland and The Isle of Man are derived from Gaelige. The area were Irish is spoken is called the Gaeltacht (pronounced gweiltuckt)
Not exactly. There's 4 main dialects of Irish all originally were called Gaelic. Gaeilge is a bit of a modern invention Frankenstein together from mostly Connemara Irish and other bits. Gahlick is Scottish and gaylick is Irish.
That was as always great! But I think some might appreciate more in-depth information if it’s available, ovham perhaps, how Irish differs from Manx and Scottish, if any words link back to pre Roman roots etc
In the South east of Ireland they spoke Yola for centuries and it was only lost in the mid 1800’s. Yola or Yolough was an Anglo Saxon language not unlike Middle English. Even today, people in the South east still use words like ‘Ye’
1.7m may claim to speak irish but what they mean is they know a couple phrases from school the population that speaks irish as a main language and is fluent in it is truly around 20-30,000 people
Hey cool video, did you know that in America I can take my lunch to work with me, but in Ireland I'd be bringing my lunch to work, and if I said I was taking my lunch to work not bringing it, I'd effectively be saying I stole a lunch and took it to work with me, bring and take not being interchangeable as they are in American English.
Everyone in the comments is saying that the language was forced out of Ireland by the British, and that's the reason it isn't spoken today. That is true, but after independence, if the Irish government really wanted to keep it alive they could have introduced it as the primary language of education and law. This worked in Israel. When the state was established, nearly all of the population spoke German, Yiddish, Polish, Czech or Arabic as their first language, but the government forced Hebrew in everything, and two generations later it was the first language of nearly the entire population Irish people always complain about how the British took the language away from them, but if they really wanted to learn it they could easily do it by themselves. (I'm Irish btw)
Nope. It's only called Gaeilge in Connemara and in the standard Government language. In Mayo and Donegal it's called Gaeilig (which sounds exactly like Gaelic, and is actually a more accurate name for the overall language because 'Gaeilge' was the historic dative form which became fossilised in Connemara speech). And in Munster native speakers call it 'Gaelainn'.
cunur micgoof Because no-one but the Irish are surrounded by it for their whole lives, at least in school, and in other languages it's called other things that sound like "Gaelic". I've even heard of French people thinking that Irish and English were related languages. Made me gag.
Scottish Gàidhlig is spelled much differently from Irish Gaelige, throughout the languages. The vocabulary is nearly identical, ut Scottish spelling was normalized within the last 40 years.
I think another reason many people think that the Irish language is called Gaelic is because the Irish word for Irish (the language, at least) is Gaeilge (pronounced Gwal-guh). Even though it's pronounced differently, it;s spelled very similarly.
Gaelic is actually the original way to say the languages name in Irish and it's still said today in Ulster and Leinster, the only Gaeltacht that says 'Gaeilge' is south Connacht, Gaelic or Gaelig are more historically correct
Thank you for clearing this up! I was going to visit Scotland and Ireland and decided that I should know the difference between Scots, Scottish Gaelic, and Irish. But it turns out they speak English too. :D
What really interested me is the spelling of Irish. It uses a Latin alphabet, but why did the monks who first began making it a written language choose the pronunciations they did? Nothing like either Latin or English?
The monks, hopefully. used the pronunciation that already existed, English as we know it did not exist. Natives of Britain spoke their own Gaelic dialects, at least in the west, while raiders to the east spoke Germanic dialects that later became Anglo-Saxon. Some spoke Latin but after the Romans left Britain in the early 300s the language was pretty degraded. St. Patrick was one of these rather poor Latin/Gaelic dialect speakers and the converter teacher of these monks. I think there were also Latin speaking monks from Egypt who came to Ireland after the Vandals invaded in about the 400s, and who knows what kind of accents they added to the mix.
@@cathybaggott2873 I'm pretty sure the monks were still largely writing in Latin as it was part of the education system. Given that Irish wasn't written previously, if your tool is the alphabet, how do you get from Latin pronunciation (or other written language) to "Siobhan" or "Niamh"? Obviously the sound you give any symbol is arbitrary, but when you're starting with existing symbols and related sounds, how do you get to such a different result? I believe Latin doesn't have the English "v" sound, so it makes sense you'd have to come up with something new. But both "bh" and "mh"? Would be interesting to know how that happened.
@@thomashull7375 Initially mh and by didn't exist, they were just m and b and they were pronounced as such, a good example is the name Maedhbh which is usually spelled in old manuscripts as Medb, the reason mh, bh etc. changed pronunciation is because people started saying words differently, essentially slurring them and it became, over time, the proper way to pronounce things so the monks and other scholars decided to show that change by adding a dot above the letter, which in the 1940s became a h after the letter. Also to add, the monks also widely wrote in Irish alongside Latin unlike in other countries, that's the reason Ireland has the oldest vernacular literature in Western Europe.
I haven't had a chance to look at the video yet, but...most Irish refer to the language simply as "Irish," although some will call it Irish Gaelic, to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic. "Celtic" is a language family that includes these two languages, as well as Well and Breton. That said, they are now all "endangered languages"--with the possible exception of Welsh.
There's other names for the language. Gaeilge was only in Connemara before it was chosen to be the name of the government official language/school subject. Gaeilge, Gaelainn, Gaeilig... Most Irish people know nothing about the language outside of the school subject.
Not necessarily, we’re still irish people and that’s how we generally refer to ourselves as. And we refer to our language as Irish, no one says ‘oh I have gaelic class later on’ we say ‘Irish’ as a language too
The Magnificent Creep which is a misnomer as there are three languages that are referred to that way those being Irish Gaelic or gaeilge , Manx Gaelic gaelg and Scottish Gaelic or gaidhlig all fall into the goidelic group . The other group is the bythronic and includes Cornish , welsh and Breton
It's been about 10 years since I went, but the farmer who took care of the Beehive Huts barely spoke any English, and it took us 10 minutes to figure out that we owed him 2€ each for the visit.
They still speak Galacian in Galicia spain it's not dead And Gaels moved to Ireland around 500 or 600 BC from Spain , Hallstatt austria & Euskal Herria and Ireland had many other Inhabitants it is possible gaelic started in ireland or The other countries I mentioned it was so long ago not sure if there's any evidence of how gaelic was actually formed. And The Scoti or the Scoloti is'nt Gaels from Ireland but believed to be Scynthians who lived in Scotland spoken about A.D. 43 to 731, Bede claimed that the Picts originally sailed from Scythia. And Pictish can be A Brythonic language with Possible aryan language and possibly Picard Language And there's Old Irish & New Irish gaelic as well
Read history book of WWI Gallipoli ANZAC campaign. Remember as an excuse for defeats, British officers claimed swearing between Anglo & Turkish Celtic speakers in trenches was in reality 5th columnists sending battle info and demanded court martials 4 soldiers speaking language. Though court martials never happened (to my knowledge) it does pose 2 interesting questions. Did Turks train Irish speakers prior or during campaign? Or was Galatian was spoken more recently in Turkey then linguists realize or want to admit?
The Celts originated from Gaul they were driven out of Mainland Europe to the British Isles and eventually what remained of them in Ireland. The language Gaelic comes from Gaul which is the language of the Celts. The Irish had learned English from trade and occupation by the British and the English language originated from Anglo-Saxons which like all the Western European languages originated from Latin. The Irish speak English with an Irish dialect. But the Gaelic language is still a spoken language today.
There are many Irish in Southern Louisiana. Also French and Scottish. I didn’t realize there was an Auld Alliance. Green eyes here. Also blue and hazel. Same in Northern Italy. Eye color covers a lot of the planet. Interesting genetics.
Interesting video.I learned a bit about other Celtic languages i didn't know. However this does perhaps paint a prettier picture than reality. The Irish language was banned by the English for a time ( brehan law). Learning English wasn't really something anyone had a lot of choice in .
Wow Aoife, you really paid attention in history class.... Brehon Law was the Irish Celtic law of the land before we were invaded by the British Normans. You were referring to the Penal Laws of 1695 to 1829, which practically made it illegal to be Irish in Ireland.
@@thenextshenanigantownandth4393 Ireland is one of the British Isles, of course. Well it was when I took the dog for a walk earlier. Maybe they've moved it since then.
The narrator says the native language of Ireland is English ... My question is WHICH English? What is it called? In the United States, we speak 'American English'; our words are in Webster's Dictionary. In England/UK, they speak 'British English'; their words are in Oxford's Dictionary. For example, the definition of "chips" is the same; cultures project a different meaning though. We eat thin, crispy slices of corn, potato, and tortillas. They eat what we call "fries". Then there is the word "bloody" ... Lol ... Americans define it as something gory. The British use it to express anger! This brings me to my point ... What kind of of "English" do the Irish speak? What dictionary defines their words? Thanks.
Hiberno English, I've heard it that the reason we have so many expletives in it was that as it was forced upon us ( video doesn't mention that part at all ) we spoke it with contempt. I do t know how true this theory is as regards the several fucks and blinds you'll find in hiberno English is but I like it haha.
"Hello and welcome to fi*r*e of lea*r*ning, Im Justin" The way you say this, at least for a non native english speaker like me, sounds very "murica". Would love a video about the origins and the evolution of the american accent. Great video as always.
Good luck, Americans have different accents based on regions and ancestors. Someone from New England sounds vastly different from someone from Kentucky.
@Cormac Mac donnacha thanks, I'm trying to trace back my ancestry. My G-G-grandfather was born in Corcaigh around 1832 and emigrated to Australia in 1849. Aside from that we have no real information about him
We had no choice when it came to our language. The English made the language illegal banned it . Even tortured imprisoned and killed those who refused to obey their will.
Dave Kenny was going to say that ! But it’s how the Irish use English that I find unique then there’s also Hiberno- English which has its roots in the gaeilge ( Irish language ) .
latxa what I find heartening is that the uachtaran ( President ) Michael Higgins is prompting its use across the country so not just ROI but also NI because let’s fact it NI is still Ireland !
Dave Kenny ..don’t forget that they made our family names illegal too....arbitrarily changing them to the nearest English/Scots sounding names.
Charlie Bubbles I knew about this because I have some experience with it my O’Brien ancestors ( my great grandmother Kennedy’s family ) who were from Cavan we couldn’t find them in records but because there were a lot of Irish Catholics in Australia at the time when they came ( 1860s ) so they changed their name briefly to mcbrien believing that would make it easier to get into Australia because my three times great grandmother her maiden name was McGovern . But they simply changed it back to O’Brien after they arrived and were accepted
did it in scotland too
My great grandmother didn't speak a word of English, only Irish but moved to America, learned English then came back to Ireland and had my grandad
boo boo Yeah the Spanish and the Irish are cousins for sure, I can feel a tint of Irish in Spanish culture when I go to Spain
Northern Spain is the most genetically similar to Ireland outside the British Isles. It's not really clear though whether the Irish settled Spain before moving to Ireland or whether both the Irish and the Galicians originated from the same place but split along the way.
She seems very old for having grandads
brycly it’s mainly the Iberian peninsula and it’s where you have what’s known as the black celts who descend from Iberian Spanish moors intermarrying with the native Irish celts and this is where you find the more dark haired olive skinned Irish that exist is from this link think people like de Valera , and modern examples like Aidan turner , Colin odonoghue , Colin Farrell for looks
Finn MickCool not true there’s parts of Argentina where they still speak Scottish Gaelic that is simply a fact that can’t be disputed sorry
While we do call our language Irish in English, in Irish we call it Gaeilge. If that makes any sense
Ith Iasc correct Irish is simply the English term gaeilge is the Irish term for it same as the Scottish call their Gaelic gaidhlig and the welsh call theirs cymraeg.
@@michelleflood8220 There's actually 4 dialects of Irish ^^ Gaeilge is just one.
John McCassidy no it’s not gaeilge is the Irish word for the language don’t be daft !
Birdman I know that I used the welsh term for the language of cymraeg i know it’s a Brythonic language I have been learning it FYI
@@michelleflood8220 Historically it was Gaelic, also some Irish speakers do call it Gaelic, in donegal for example.
this video makes it sound like the irish had a choice when the english language took over
Truuuue
@@bbhybris terrible account of how it happened
rk evo Agreed.
Yeah I read a few essays about the beatings Irish people got in the late 19th and early 20th centuries if they spoke anything other than English.
They do have a choice now ... but they don’t seem to care that much now
I am currently relearning the language as it has been in my family for generations and it was one of my biggest regrets not being able to speak my native tongue. My mómo being from the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland only spoke Irish and only passed away this year knowing very little English phrases.
Go ndéana Dia a mhaith uirthi.
Beidh grá agam duit go deo
Bhí an Ghaeilge i mo chlann ar feadh na mblianta agus tá a lán bróid agam mar gheall air seo.
Tá aiféala orm nár fhoghlaim mé Gaeilge nuair a bhí mé nios óige.
Greetings from New York!
May I ask how old was your grandmother? I thought all the people who only spoke Gaelic in Ireland were born in the mid 1800s & died by the 1980s?
Are you from Dublin?
Wow, same man. My great-great-grandfather came to the USA from Ireland and married a Cherokee women. I’ve always wanted to learn Cherokee and Irish because I was raised hearing stories about how hard it was for both of them when they first got here. Inspirational my man 🙏. My grandpa stopped speaking Irish whenever his brothers died so I understand but I will teach my children about their history whether or not I’m sad about it.
Tá gaeilge agam. Tá sé sean galánta. Tá muid ag foghlaim ár teanga arís. Is fear gaeilge briste na bearla cliste. ERIN GO BRÁCH.
Beir bua a chara
clay cinnte mo dheartháir
Nice🍀
@Tomás Carey is fearr Gaeilge briste na Bearla briste, imigh leat.
@Tomás Carey A chara, ná bí ag spochadh astu, tá tréan grammarnazis againn sa domhan, mór a dhóthain againn.
This is pretty much bang on. Best summation by non Irish person I’ve heard.
Also, although we speak English, it’s Hiberno-English. We have some unusual words, some old and middle English, some different meanings for common English words, some Norse, lots of loan words from Irish and some random bits of actual Irish thrown in.
But probably more importantly, sentence structure can be very different from English as spoken elsewhere. It’s something I’ve only come to realise recently (when I had it pointed out to me). Eg. “I’m after coming back from the shop without milk” or “I’ve just come back from the shop without milk” in regular English. Both completely right in Hibernian English.
David Reynolds I grew up in Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada. We have a very strong accent, & over half of the people in our province came from Ireland. A lot of small communities were isolated for many years, & still a few today. As a result we maintained an Irish sounding accent while speaking English. We even use Irish words, for example "strel", meaning a poorly dress or unkept person. We also, say things like, "He's after fallin' down and hurtin' himself". Or, He or she is after doing this or that. I moved to Toronto, Ontario when I was 20, and I could not say two words without someone asking where I was from. A few other examples, are we don't generally pronounce the th, is more a D sound. We say me in the possessive instead of my, me mudder instead of my mother. I use to pronounce words with or in them with an ar sound, so, forty was pronounced farty, & I ate with a fark, & not a fork. So, it is very interesting for me to hear Irish people speaking English as it reminds me of home in eastern Canada. Cheer.
The first speech mode you mention is a pattern identical to the Irish spoken patterrn but translated to English. eg. I'm after ....etc
We really like to play around with sentence structure - that comes from being more oral than literate... and having time to learn structures.. never mind the 'tag' ... we never respond without leaving the response open for another query... in the hope of getting a response and starting a conversation
Manx, when I was young there was one man left on the island that still spoke the language, the museum spent some time recording him sing folk songs and talking in manx so it would not be lost, now its taught in schools and making a come back, I
Owen Williams as far as I’m aware Manx ( gaelg ) language has only 2000 native speakers but if that increasing all to the good
Owen Williams it should be promoted then if possible RTE has its own radio and television channels for the gaeilge as RTE stands for ( Radio Telefis Eireann ) news is televised and broadcast in Irish as well as other programming . BBC Alba does the same for the gaidhlig in Scotland . The difference between these two is that Irish is a standard part of the school curriculum for Irish children and has been since 1950 . Scottish children are only now getting a chance to learn their Gaelic language due to some recent educational reforms by Scottish government who are providing resources and teachers for those wishing to learn it .
I'm pretty sure he meant to say Cornish, which was indeed resurrected not too long ago.
Great to hear , go ionteach
Wonderful video. Go raibh maith agat! As an Irishman, and proud Irish speaker living in the USA, I find many Americans do not know that we have our own native mother tongue, and also find a lot that do know we have our own language. However they do tend to call it “Gaelic”. While I think it’s better that they know that, than not know Irish at all, you are definitely correct that the preferred term is Irish, or Gaeilge
This is one of the best videos about the Gaelic languages (or even the Celtic languages in general) I've seen! Lots of facts, very accurate, no racist slurs. Well done!
As a native speaker of Irish who grew up in the Gaeltacht, I must commend you on a well researched video.
Cén Gaeltacht?
I like how you just said English and pretend to end the video.
Yeah we saw it too lol..
I also liked it. And then I liked how he did the rest of the video too. And then I liked the ice cream I was eating.
Given what almost happened to the Irish Language it was appropriate.
@@davidsan9654 ...... What flavour?
@@modigbeowulf5482 People flavour
In schools Irish as a subject is called 'Gaeilge'. To say something "as gaeilge" means to say it "in Irish".
But of course "in" is normally "sa", because of course it is
In schools, when speaking Béarla, it's called Irish.
@@preasail In the Schools I went to the subject was always called Gaeilge, regardless of what language the teachers were speaking when referring to it. Obviously if you were talking about it with other classmates you'd always call it Irish but teachers only ever referred to it as Gaeilge, which may have not been the case in every school.
Just mentioned it because of all the names the video talks about it never mentions Gaeilge as an option for the name of the language.
@@ahennessy7998 Ok, don't see how that is relevant to what I said but thanks for letting people know!
@@ChiamamiFITZY Got it.
Nonetheless, I wish they would quit that habit and be proud to call it Irish.
You're spoiling us with this upload frequently 👌👌👌
Éireannach anso. Ní hí Gaelainn mo chéad teanga, ach déanaim staidéir uirthi ar aon nós. Go raibh maith agat as an físeán so. Tá a lán eolas agat ar an t-ábhar so, agus tá meas agam ar sin.
Irishman here. Irish isn't my first language, but I do study it. Thank you for this video. You know a lot about this, and I respect that.
Lⲁıꞅꞃéⲁn there’s a brilliant TED talk you might like with a Irish man talking about the beauty of gaeilge just type in ted talk beauty of Irish language and it should come up it was done in Baile atha cliath I think
No, it's not sad that the Irish speak the English language. It's a huge advantage in this world of international travel and in seeking work abroad.
@@noelhughes6589 west brit
Good video, it'd clarify things for non-Irish people. 2 things though,
"Seo linn" (here's/this is us) is pronounced 'shuh linn' not 'show linn' and at the end you say "go raibh maith agat" (thank you, one person) when the correct thing to say would be "go raibh maith agaibh" (thank you, multiple people)
Just to give a little bit of an insight, as someone who came through the education system in Ireland where the language is a mandatory subject.
It's not uncommon for a student to leave school at 18 knowing only a handful of phrases, as the system tries to teach it as a literary language, rather than as a conversational language.
Meaning you don't retain any of it, as you're not practicing it under real life scenarios and for those of us who suffered through Peig Sayers and Seamus Heaney, you kinda end up resenting it a bit.
In my own school, I often sensed an elitist attitude from the teachers. Almost as if you didn't have a natural aptitude for the language,
then you 'weren't good enough to learn it' as they would ignore those of us struggling and only focus on the students who didn't really need any help.
There was a pretty funny Carlsberg ad from 10 years ago that sums it up pretty well:
ua-cam.com/video/DTNBmFveq2U/v-deo.html
A bunch of random phrases and the name of a newsreader, made to sound legible.
@bbonner422 That's kind of the intention of a Gaelscoil, but it's not the path the majority of Leaving Cert students end up taking, which is what I'm referring to.
Seamus Heaney didn't write in irish
That's all unfortunate but it's better for them to know just a tiny bit than none and for only a small number to adapt to it well than none, it sets a seed that will hopefully make it easier for the next generation.
It doesn't matter. A lot of the teachers don't pronounce the words well at all anyway, they completely anglicise everything like their students. Gaelscoils have the same problem because there simply aren't enough teachers with really high standards of Irish to fill the positions. This year some Gaelscoil teachers were even found to be teaching through English and this could become more common because the government insists on building more Gaelscoils to make themselves look good while the traditional Irish speaking areas continue to decline.
The reason I say all of the above doesn't matter, is because it's not actually possible to teach a language in a classroom. A teacher can explain grammar and give you guidance, but the only way to really learn a language once you have worked through a solid introductory course is through lots of reading and listening to native speaker audio, i.e. Comprehensible input. (With a focus on phonetics from the very start. Even more important for minority languages like Irish because otherwise you end up with fluent learners butchering the pronounciation and not correcting it which is quite common with Irish.)
The fact is that most people in Ireland don't actually care enough about the language to give it an hour a day for three years.
@@shakezist he didn't write in Irish, but he was also well known as a translator. Because of that he personally translated a fair few of his poems into Irish
Go hiontach chun roinnt gaeilge a fheicéail ar cainéal youtube mheiriceánach. Go raibh maith 'ad as a' bhfiséan thar barr
Great to see some irish on an american channel. Thanks for the excellent video
that moment when you realise you pronounced celtic as ''sell-tick'' and you sounded as a total weirdo.
I believe either pronunciation is correct. If I recall correctly, "Sell-tick" is a French influenced pronunciation that was common among pre-20th century scholars. I prefer the hard "C" because it's more common and is consistent with the pronunciation in the Celtic languages themselves.
I prefer the pronunciation with [k], but then I'd like to see it spelt Keltic, too.
@@Sneed_formerly_chucks And the basketball team
We say "sell tick" in portuguese and I believe it's pronounced like that in most romance languages as well
Sell-tik was a now historical mispronunciation of Celtic that unfortunately stuck. As Fire said above, though more nicely... The French/Normans pronounced Celtic as "Sell-tik" incorrectly and continued to do so, this incorrect pronunciation is what caught on sadly and is why we have teams pronounced "Sell-tik" and is even why the Portuguese say it wrong, because they got the pronunciation from the French.
The correct way based on Celtic languages is with the hard "C" sound... Which in my opinion should be the correct way seeing as it is Celtic. It is a good example though of how history is shaped by who wins, or who is the higher class / power at the time. Because the French had more influence in the world... Their mistake stuck and became the agreed standard.
I approve of the thumbnail. I have that set of soldiers in 1/72 scale. Great video, my inner Irish was satisfied.
my grandfather spoke irish when i was a kid..ive only recently began learning 50 words of irish and some scot gael
The people who live in the Irish-speaking areas are immensely proud of their Irish and feel they are keeping it alive. There are at least double the amount of full native speakers now in Ireland than 100 years ago. Plus, nearly everyone has a least some knowledge of it with varying degrees of proficiency. The language is still on the road to making a comeback but progress is slow.
Yes, even English-born me has a bit of Irish! It's a wonderful language, so much older than English and so much more lyrical! What surprised me when I moved here was how some Irish people seem to have contempt for their native language and have the attitude of "Sure what would you need it for?". Thankfully,not everyone is so banal!
There are absolutely not more native speakers now than before lmao
If you really want to say “Gaelic” you can say “Gaelige” which is Irish in Irish!
Well there's actually 4 dialects of Irish, Gaelige is the Munster dialect mostly. Historically speaking Irish was called Gaelic pronounced gaylick, scottish is gahlick. But call it whatever you want.
Tá.
@@thenextshenanigantownandth4393 absolute bollocks that "gaeilge is munster dialect only". Where in the actual fuck did you get this nonsense from?
@@thenextshenanigantownandth4393 what the fuck are you saying
@@meepulp Not the sharpest tool in the shed are you?
0:16 Ah I see you Fire of Learning. We all know that the Doge video is really just cover for your next History of Venice documentary. Can't fool us.
The narrator fails to mention the most compelling and historically significant reason Irish people switched to English: speaking Irish was made illegal by the British as part of the British ethnic cleansing campaign in Ireland (Irish-language place names were also Anglicized). Irish people were forced to abandon the Irish language. They did not abandon Irish for convenience, as the narrator of this video states.
Hi Zak, nice to see /read your comments on this very important topic.ESPECIALLY your reference to Irish Place Names were changed by the English
Did you know about Brian Friel'sPlay. "TRANSLATIONS" A wonderful play about this very subject --- a culture clash masterpiece (TheGuardian ) currently running at Olivier Theatre in National Theatre. LONDON
. P.S I don't know where you are from but me Birmingham U.K.
Cheers. Liam
The irish language is called Gaeilge it is a gaelic language but when speaking irish u call it Gaeilge
Hearing people say that Irish is called Gaelic is horrifying.
While French is one of the Romance languages, there is more Germanic influence than the others. In Francophone school, that is also what we were taught. I speak both English and French, and now I'm learning German. I've been surprised at how much speaking French has helped with genders, verbs and pronunciation.
7:26 I met a family from the gaeltacht that had children about 5 or 6 years old that could not speak any English yet. If that counts
That is very interesting, thank you
My children speak Irish daily, they're being raised to speak as Gaelige to each other solely. In 2 generations English will be a dead language in our household
@bbonner422 ~ That's not true. They are a group of people who "claim" to be of different ethnicity. They are not. They are regular people in Ireland that choose to live as they see fit and claim to be of Romani Gypsy descent. The "discrimination" as you mention stems from criminality and anti social behaviour within these groups.
@@patrickryan7382 Make sure they can understand RnaG and pronounce the words the Irish way as opposed to the English way most Irish people pronounce them. I recommend chapter one of Micheál Ó Siadhails Learning Irish and the audio that comes with it for guidance in this regard. He makes the concept of broad/slender distinctions so easy to understand too.
Liam Tube This is just not true: www.google.ie/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/news/science/travellers-as-genetically-different-from-settled-irish-as-spanish-1.2969515%3fmode=amp and as for the community’s social issues, poverty is definitely a driving factor. Do native Americans have such high rates of substance abuse as a way of faking their identity? Regardless of genetic puritanism, they have had a distinct culture for centuries and culture is the defining factor in our identities.
Another excellent video! Thanks!
Now you need to do one on Pennsylvania Dietsch which I've learned in recent years is spoken in a lot of places from Canada to Bolivia.
You could also say we speak gaeilge. It's just Irish in Irish
true, and in the Munster dialect they often say Gaelainn :)
0:30
"hi, yes, 1 ticket to 'suck valley way', please. thanks..."
lol sorry
Suck is the name of a river, I live beside it
@@fergusearley2197 How is it pronounced? Sauk? Something else?
yeah, i was making a funneh...
@@Catubrannos nope, it's just pronounced 'suck'
@@fergusearley2197 C'mon the Ros!
Cornish wasn't "near death" - it died, in that for at least a century and probably almost three it had no known native speakers but had some people who still knew a bit of it for at least most of that time. It has been revived with the help of such people, much like Hebrew but not yet with the same degree of success, and will hopefully thrive again in the future.
So, it’s actually more difficult to say when Gaelic came to Scotland. Easy trade routs between Ireland and the Hebrides means that Gaelic likely started expanding into that region soon after the region now known as Ulster was settled. Furthermore, the existence of Gaelic in the Isles and Highland was likely more influential to the existence of Dál Riata than than visa versa, although the influence the kingdom eventually gained through alliances and consolidation of Pictish and Brythonic kingdoms did lead to the languages dominance in the new kingdom of Alba.
Tom Sanders Alba was a medieval kingdom and English did not exist at that point, although bilingualism would not have been uncommon. Most people in that region today do speak English, though bilingualism is common in the Western Isles and parts of the highlands.
There are still a few people around Ireland who don’t/won’t and perhaps never have spoken english, in their 70’s and older. Not many but a few.
Steve O' Connor Yes and even younger than that in their 40s according to my niece who was on placement in a gps practice in the gaeltacht before the christmas
As an Irish speaker, from Ireland, I believe it is Irish.
@7:03 Where do you find information about the revival movement? What is it called?
Can you do a history of wales?
he should do a video about the primary language in Wales :p :D
Is that a yes? :)
Good video and sounds well researched I have two small gripes though.
1. You Used a Leinster flag rather than an Irish flag or Irish Coat of Arms @02:34
2. It's much more common to hear Gaeilge (the Irish word for the Irish language) in Ireland than the term Gaelic. Gaelic is typically what we call our GAA football.
Not in all parts of the country though. I live in Clare and we call Gaelic football just football.
Gaelic is the English word for the Goidelic languages. It used to be used called Goidelic.
@@cigh7445 it'd be the same at home. Donegal. Just if differentiating it in a conversation comparing the two.
Gaeilge = Celtic (language)
Éireannach = Irish (nationality)
Is Éireannach mé = I am Irish
Labhraím Gaelige agus Béarla = I speak Irish/celtic and English
Irish is a dying language but irish folk like myself are taking it back up, it's hard but attainable. Gaeilge is older than English.
Labhraím Béarla gach lá ach táim ag déanamh staidéir as Gaeilge gach oíche.
Great video 👍🏻
Irish, Gaelig, Gaelic ect being older than English is a given.
Wow thanks I learned a lot from this video. I didn't know that Irish was spoken fluently during the famine, very interesting.
Irish is still spoken fluently today in many areas, in the Gaeltachts children learn Irish as their first language
(Triggered Warning)
A Dhuine Uasail, I thouth the video was excellent but for one tiiny, teeny thing. The mention of British Isles always triggers the timbers of many Irish people, myself included. It comes from the misunderstanding many British nationalists have and like to propogate(and have done so succesfully), wherein they point out that Ptolemy, in his atlas of the known world in 2AD wrote the island of Britain as Britannica and Ireland as Britannica Insula or something like that, something that can be seen when one looks at this map today. However Ptolemy's map included no such label for Ireland, the "Britannica Insula" was added by British cartographers in the 1500s. (problem solved, Jingoes)
The reason some of us Irish object to being called part of the British Isles is that, apart from having no real need to ever refer to them collectively anymore, the term is a political one, designed to show England's dominance of the area, We dont refer to Austria as Lesser Germany, nor Canada or Mexico as U.S Minor, nor New Zealand as Little Australia. So when talking about Ireland and Britain please refer to the 2 countries from now on as simlpy Ireland and Britain, or Britain and Ireland, or Ireland and her too Insignificantly Small to Mention Neighboring Isles (IISMNI for short). Go raibh míle maith agat :)
So our islands are called the British Isles because of the English? That is simply weird. The fact is that we live on the British Isles and Ireland is an island and not a country.
@@Alan_Mac Yes Alan, Britain was the chosen political name of the island ruled by kings/queens in south east England (close to Germany) because it alluded to the inhabitants of the island who lived there before the new ruling class of Germanics(Angles, Jutes, Saxons etc.) arrived 1500 years ago. I dont know where you live but if it is in England, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, any of those north atlantic islands like st.Kilda(although I know its now uninhabited) or any of the channel islands or other crown dependencies dotted around the coast of Britain, then I agree with you and respect your wish to be aknowledged as being from the British isles. However I am from Ireland, which is absolutely not a British island or a British isle.
@@uvacasmweeniv7317 Yer arse. The name 'Britain' predates England. I, like you, live in Ireland and you have to be a crackpot to see it other than a geographic term and utterly innocuous.
@@Alan_Mac Of course it predates it, the first time Inglis was heard in Britain was in the 5th C, the Cruithne (Critony)(Britoni) had been in Britain for at least 1500 years previously(depending what archaeologists you like the most). What are you saying that I see as "other than a geographic term and utterly innoulous"? Ireland, or Britain?
@@Alan_Mac Why do you think the Irish govt. does not recognize or use the term?
For a better explanantion than I can give here, check out the Irish Passport Podcast, episode The Knowledge Gap, you can fast forward to 40 mins for the bit about the british isles controversy. Its delivered by a University of Paris lecturer and very informative.
My grandfather could not speak a word of english only irish
Most Irish people are the same it's a cross between double Dutch and Blarney.
7:26 As far as I'm aware, there are still a few elderly people on the Aran Islands off the coast of the Conamara Gaeltacht who only speak Irish
There's one guy on one of the islands. He's a bit of a local celebrity because of it. Everybody else speaks English perfectly.
The entire nursing home population of any Gaeltacht (Irish speaking areas in the west coast) can’t really speak English anymore because it’s their second language and they start forgetting it! My sister in law was a trainee nurse and is from East Galway, where English is the first language but had to do here training in West Galway where Irish is still the first language and she’d be laughing about how the only word of English most them now remember is “lotto” because they’re obsessed with the lotto in nursing home haha
I’ve been to Ireland a couple of times and can attest that if you call the language Gaelic, the normally friendly Irish people will correct you emphatically that they speak Irish. During my last trip, I drove around the countryside (not as daunting as you may think, I got used to the reverse roads). Driving really is the best way to see the country. Like the map showed, in the west Irish is much more prevalent. Especially out on the Dingle peninsula that was actually the primary language over English. Even the road signs that normally have English and Irish either reversed to have Irish at the top instead of English, or at times didn’t even include English (makes navigating interesting). It is a very interesting language to sit and listen to a conversation in it.
Ots good to emphasise that the Irish language is spoken in the Gaeltacht regions because it is there that the language continued to be spoken natively (still passed down through the generations i.e. never died out) and not revived. Yes, the revival movement is the reason that it has become protected there but people there don't speak it because itbwas revived in those areas. The Gaeltacht areas are the last outposts of natively-spoken Irish as it was spoken before the decline.
Gaelic = Sport we play
Celtic = some auld part of history
Irish = Us
Gaeilge = what we are forced to learn in school
What you could be bothered learning coz ur a cynic ...fix that for you
Gaelic also refers to the language or the family of languages that originated from it, as well as meaning "of the gaels". Something you might know if you picked up a book after you left school. Shame you have to feel that your native tongue was forced on you. Suppose you are one of those hypocrites who has a picture of Michael Collins as your screensaver too.
How about video on Welsh we are the proudest of the celts and have really put a fight up to keep our language
You should read more about the so called famine. You would be surprised at the vast amounts of food exported from Ireland at that time by Britain.
I imagine it was not worse than when the USSR decided to starve its inhabitianst.
@@gunarsmiezis9321 Yeah, it's seems to be designed.
@@kinchabass6242 Starvation is a very good tool against seperatism. For if everyone is working to keep themselves barely alive they can not revolt.
Quick note; "Seo linn" is pronounced "shuh ling" (in my dialect, at least) and "Gaeltachtaí" is pronounced "Gwayl-TUHX-tee" with the "x" sound basically being like the "ch" in gàidhlig "loch" ar the "x" in Russian.
a bit of random info on the word "gaeltacht", Gàidhealtachd is a word in Gàidhlig but instead of "Gàidhlig-speaking area" it means "The highlands"
Where are you from? Interesting how different we'd say those same things
@@bbhybris I'm from Roscommon, but I study the Munster dialect. To be specific, probably Muskerry or something.
@@faelan1950 interesting!
@@faelan1950 Ros Comáin abú!
@@ranica47 Heh, díreach é a leaid. An as Ros Comáin tú?
Dia duit, conas atá tú? Tá mé I mo chónai sa Eire. Gaelige is Irish in Irish, and we DO call it irish, and nothing else, so this triggers me. I do speak fluently btw, so I know more about irish than an American does so I will tell you now
I subbed. You did much work here. (By chance I used to learn Kernowic (Cornish) at City Lit, Holborn London).
I assume that 'Kernowic' is related to Welsh.
I've a friend who's a native speaker from Wales but I find that his language shares very few words with Irish.
Manx, the language of Inis Manain Mac Lir, however, is based on Leinster Irish as far as I know.
Scotch Gaelic is an off-shoot of Ulster Irish of course.
I've read that the Gaeilge of Scotland didn't go through the modernisation phases that Irish went through and as a result it's closer to its original roots.
Native-speaking fishermen from Donegal have told me that they can communicate pretty well in Gaelic with their counterparts from West Scotland.
It's very difficult to revive a dead language so we should all cherish what languages are still around on these Islands off the coast of Mòr Roinn na hEorpa.
@@dukadarodear2176 ........ Hiya, I'm no expert. Welsh, Britton and Cornish are related to each other. Our Kernowic teacher taught us that Welsh is the mother, Cornish is the cousin of the mother and Britton is like a nephew of both (hope that makes sense.) The Welsh class had over a hundred students, the Cit Lit do various levels. When I attended, the Kernowic class had about 16. Manx wasn't taught there but at Christmas time we all got together. People sung in Welsh and Cornish, said poems they wrote, and a small group from the isle of man also were there to represent their language. Welsh, Cornish and Manx survive. Cumbric, is dead. People tried to revive but there aren't enough words that are known to work with. So, unless documents are found, it is unlikely to be revived. Irish does well but the Irish government are beginning to be a problem north and south. The scots have Alba tv (I think). Yes, it's good to help keep these languages alive. The last words to go in any language are the numbers. Maybe the fisherman can communicate because they may be similar.
Irish was a forbidden language which is why it only survived in the remotest areas.
Very interesting. Thank you for this informative video. I've always had a deep interest in linguistics. I would also like to learn more about the Germanic languages as well (subtle hint 😉).
The term British Isles is not used or recognized in anyway by the people or government of Ireland, it's a term which belongs in colonial times. The correct term is simply Britain and Ireland, or The British Isles and Ireland.
I will likely make a video on this subject exploring the debate, and I respect your input
@@Fireoflearning
I look forward to your video on the subject but being British is a nationality and as the people of Ireland are not British how can our island be.
There is no direct translation of British Isles in Irish, it's always been Eire agus an Bhreatain Mhor (Ireland and Great Britain).
It's a term with colonial origins and has been used since as a form of propaganda by the British state in its failed effort at colonizing the island of Ireland
As an Englishman I found this most interesting. Thank you.
Not to get Republican or anything, but he left out a lot of the English's involvement in our language dying out.
Like speaking it carrying a death penalty and all that...
@@RobbieDrumz I think that's just implied. Most history buffs who watch these videos know how tyrannical the English were for centuries.
@@RobbieDrumz >Not to get Republican
Mate you should always be Republican!
Gaelic is the Scottish variant. What is referred to as the Irish language today has more in common with Erse, a mixture of English and Irish that was spoken in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Gaeilge (pronounced gweil-ga). The languages spoken in Scotland and The Isle of Man are derived from Gaelige. The area were Irish is spoken is called the Gaeltacht (pronounced gweiltuckt)
Not exactly. There's 4 main dialects of Irish all originally were called Gaelic. Gaeilge is a bit of a modern invention Frankenstein together from mostly Connemara Irish and other bits. Gahlick is Scottish and gaylick is Irish.
That was as always great! But I think some might appreciate more in-depth information if it’s available, ovham perhaps, how Irish differs from Manx and Scottish, if any words link back to pre Roman roots etc
Keep up the great work. 🙂👍
Q: Do The Irish Speak Irish, Gaelic, or Celtic?
A: Yes.
And when they drink Guinness they speak all three.......at the same time.
In the South east of Ireland they spoke Yola for centuries and it was only lost in the mid 1800’s. Yola or Yolough was an Anglo Saxon language not unlike Middle English. Even today, people in the South east still use words like ‘Ye’
1.7m may claim to speak irish but what they mean is they know a couple phrases from school the population that speaks irish as a main language and is fluent in it is truly around 20-30,000 people
facts
Where’s part 2 of French history tho
But true French love to hear about Irish and scottish history and culture. Have your 10 minutes my good sir.
Sorry boys I’ve been waiting so long for French history it’s hard to wait any longer
Hey cool video, did you know that in America I can take my lunch to work with me, but in Ireland I'd be bringing my lunch to work, and if I said I was taking my lunch to work not bringing it, I'd effectively be saying I stole a lunch and took it to work with me, bring and take not being interchangeable as they are in American English.
The Basque consider themselves celts. Perhaps the basque language is a Celtic tongue.
Basque stands alone. It’s not related to any other language spoken and is preserved by those isolated peoples.. that’s fascinating.
They're dumb
ayush ranjan - you are
@@fullmetalalchemist9126 How?
Everyone in the comments is saying that the language was forced out of Ireland by the British, and that's the reason it isn't spoken today. That is true, but after independence, if the Irish government really wanted to keep it alive they could have introduced it as the primary language of education and law. This worked in Israel. When the state was established, nearly all of the population spoke German, Yiddish, Polish, Czech or Arabic as their first language, but the government forced Hebrew in everything, and two generations later it was the first language of nearly the entire population
Irish people always complain about how the British took the language away from them, but if they really wanted to learn it they could easily do it by themselves. (I'm Irish btw)
I agree. We should be able to speak Irish and English just like someone from France or Spain can speak Spanish or French and English.
0:30 I live 10 minutes away from that signpost
Gaeilge
conversation over
Nope. It's only called Gaeilge in Connemara and in the standard Government language.
In Mayo and Donegal it's called Gaeilig (which sounds exactly like Gaelic, and is actually a more accurate name for the overall language because 'Gaeilge' was the historic dative form which became fossilised in Connemara speech).
And in Munster native speakers call it 'Gaelainn'.
Agreed
I don't see why people don't understand this already. God people are stupid
cunur micgoof Because no-one but the Irish are surrounded by it for their whole lives, at least in school, and in other languages it's called other things that sound like "Gaelic". I've even heard of French people thinking that Irish and English were related languages. Made me gag.
@@jonfroswa working as a waitress I met a lot of foreigners who didn't even know we had a language :(
Scottish Gàidhlig is spelled much differently from Irish Gaelige, throughout the languages. The vocabulary is nearly identical, ut Scottish spelling was normalized within the last 40 years.
I think another reason many people think that the Irish language is called Gaelic is because the Irish word for Irish (the language, at least) is Gaeilge (pronounced Gwal-guh). Even though it's pronounced differently, it;s spelled very similarly.
Where do you think the word "Gaelic" comes from? It's an anglicisation
Gaelic is actually the original way to say the languages name in Irish and it's still said today in Ulster and Leinster, the only Gaeltacht that says 'Gaeilge' is south Connacht, Gaelic or Gaelig are more historically correct
Thank you for clearing this up! I was going to visit Scotland and Ireland and decided that I should know the difference between Scots, Scottish Gaelic, and Irish. But it turns out they speak English too. :D
Hehe, few of them would understand if you spoke a Gaelic language to them. English is the first and only language for most in those countries.
The language may have struggled but the wider Gaelic revival was very successful. The sports dancing music etc.
What really interested me is the spelling of Irish. It uses a Latin alphabet, but why did the monks who first began making it a written language choose the pronunciations they did? Nothing like either Latin or English?
The monks, hopefully. used the pronunciation that already existed, English as we know it did not exist. Natives of Britain spoke their own Gaelic dialects, at least in the west, while raiders to the east spoke Germanic dialects that later became
Anglo-Saxon. Some spoke Latin but after the Romans left Britain in the early 300s the language was pretty degraded. St. Patrick was one of these rather poor Latin/Gaelic dialect speakers and the converter teacher of these monks. I think there were also Latin speaking monks from Egypt who came to Ireland after the Vandals invaded in
about the 400s, and who knows what kind of accents they added to the mix.
@@cathybaggott2873 I'm pretty sure the monks were still largely writing in Latin as it was part of the education system. Given that Irish wasn't written previously, if your tool is the alphabet, how do you get from Latin pronunciation (or other written language) to "Siobhan" or "Niamh"? Obviously the sound you give any symbol is arbitrary, but when you're starting with existing symbols and related sounds, how do you get to such a different result? I believe Latin doesn't have the English "v" sound, so it makes sense you'd have to come up with something new. But both "bh" and "mh"? Would be interesting to know how that happened.
@@thomashull7375 Initially mh and by didn't exist, they were just m and b and they were pronounced as such, a good example is the name Maedhbh which is usually spelled in old manuscripts as Medb, the reason mh, bh etc. changed pronunciation is because people started saying words differently, essentially slurring them and it became, over time, the proper way to pronounce things so the monks and other scholars decided to show that change by adding a dot above the letter, which in the 1940s became a h after the letter.
Also to add, the monks also widely wrote in Irish alongside Latin unlike in other countries, that's the reason Ireland has the oldest vernacular literature in Western Europe.
I haven't had a chance to look at the video yet, but...most Irish refer to the language simply as "Irish," although some will call it Irish Gaelic, to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic. "Celtic" is a language family that includes these two languages, as well as Well and Breton. That said, they are now all "endangered languages"--with the possible exception of Welsh.
The People were Gaelic.
The language is Gaeilge.
There's other names for the language. Gaeilge was only in Connemara before it was chosen to be the name of the government official language/school subject.
Gaeilge, Gaelainn, Gaeilig...
Most Irish people know nothing about the language outside of the school subject.
Thanx for adding that - too many ppl don't know that. Am half Irish and get offended when that's stated the other way around.
Gaelic was what the language and culture was originally called before the rival.
Not necessarily, we’re still irish people and that’s how we generally refer to ourselves as. And we refer to our language as Irish, no one says ‘oh I have gaelic class later on’ we say ‘Irish’ as a language too
The Magnificent Creep which is a misnomer as there are three languages that are referred to that way those being Irish Gaelic or gaeilge , Manx Gaelic gaelg and Scottish Gaelic or gaidhlig all fall into the goidelic group . The other group is the bythronic and includes Cornish , welsh and Breton
They used to say that there is more Scots Gaelic spoken in Nova Scotia than Scotland. I don't know if this is still true.
It's been about 10 years since I went, but the farmer who took care of the Beehive Huts barely spoke any English, and it took us 10 minutes to figure out that we owed him 2€ each for the visit.
They still speak Galacian in Galicia spain it's not dead And Gaels moved to Ireland around 500 or 600 BC from Spain , Hallstatt austria & Euskal Herria and Ireland had many other Inhabitants it is possible gaelic started in ireland or The other countries I mentioned it was so long ago not sure if there's any evidence of how gaelic was actually formed. And The Scoti or the Scoloti is'nt Gaels from Ireland but believed to be Scynthians who lived in Scotland spoken about
A.D. 43 to 731, Bede claimed that the Picts originally sailed from Scythia. And Pictish can be A Brythonic language with
Possible aryan language and possibly Picard Language
And there's Old Irish & New Irish gaelic as well
There are communities in the Gaeltacht of Ireland that speak Irish. It is rare but there are people in the Gaeltacht that do not speak English.
excellent presentation. I have a Ukrainian name and was brought up Scots Gaelic. Thanks!
Read history book of WWI Gallipoli ANZAC campaign.
Remember as an excuse for defeats, British officers claimed swearing between Anglo & Turkish Celtic speakers in trenches was in reality 5th columnists sending battle info and demanded court martials 4 soldiers speaking language. Though court martials never happened (to my knowledge) it does pose 2 interesting questions.
Did Turks train Irish speakers prior or during campaign?
Or was Galatian was spoken more recently in Turkey then linguists realize or want to admit?
Please do a History Of Finland video
The Celts originated from Gaul they were driven out of Mainland Europe to the British Isles and eventually what remained of them in Ireland. The language Gaelic comes from Gaul which is the language of the Celts. The Irish had learned English from trade and occupation by the British and the English language originated from Anglo-Saxons which like all the Western European languages originated from Latin.
The Irish speak English with an Irish dialect. But the Gaelic language is still a spoken language today.
Is fearr Gaeilge bhriste ná Béarla cliste.
There are many Irish in Southern Louisiana. Also French and Scottish. I didn’t realize there was an Auld Alliance. Green eyes here. Also blue and hazel. Same in Northern Italy. Eye color covers a lot of the planet. Interesting genetics.
Same in Australia.
It's pronounced more like 'Gael Tukt'. And 'Gurra My Uggit'. Great vid.
Since ye mentioned Scots, how aboot a wee video on the topic noo, eh? >u>
Interesting video.I learned a bit about other Celtic languages i didn't know. However this does perhaps paint a prettier picture than reality. The Irish language was banned by the English for a time ( brehan law). Learning English wasn't really something anyone had a lot of choice in .
Wow Aoife, you really paid attention in history class.... Brehon Law was the Irish Celtic law of the land before we were invaded by the British Normans. You were referring to the Penal Laws of 1695 to 1829, which practically made it illegal to be Irish in Ireland.
How many people in the USA SAY THEY ARE Irish or half Irish, thank you so muchLove your Channel😍
Well done on pronouncing Scots Gaelic properly. Good, too, seeing items on the languages of the British Isles such as Irish.
What does the British isles have to do with Ireland?
@@thenextshenanigantownandth4393 Ireland is one of the British Isles, of course. Well it was when I took the dog for a walk earlier. Maybe they've moved it since then.
@@Alan_Mac Ireland is not one of the British isles. The term is disputed en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles_naming_dispute
@Finn MickCool Depends on whether you consider Iceland part of Europe or not.
@@thenextshenanigantownandth4393 Ireland is one of the British isles, I should know, I live here.
did the celtic gaelic survived in france in any form? if so, how, and in what form?
No
The narrator says the native language of Ireland is English ... My question is WHICH English? What is it called?
In the United States, we speak 'American English'; our words are in Webster's Dictionary.
In England/UK, they speak 'British English'; their words are in Oxford's Dictionary.
For example, the definition of "chips" is the same; cultures project a different meaning though. We eat thin, crispy slices of corn, potato, and tortillas. They eat what we call "fries".
Then there is the word "bloody" ... Lol ... Americans define it as something gory. The British use it to express anger! This brings me to my point ... What kind of of "English" do the Irish speak? What dictionary defines their words? Thanks.
The dialect of English spoken here is known as 'Hiberno-English'
Hiberno English, I've heard it that the reason we have so many expletives in it was that as it was forced upon us ( video doesn't mention that part at all ) we spoke it with contempt. I do t know how true this theory is as regards the several fucks and blinds you'll find in hiberno English is but I like it haha.
"Hello and welcome to fi*r*e of lea*r*ning, Im Justin"
The way you say this, at least for a non native english speaker like me, sounds very "murica". Would love a video about the origins and the evolution of the american accent.
Great video as always.
Yes right on, I've heard so many different stories I'd like to know what's real, how this American accent evolved
Good luck, Americans have different accents based on regions and ancestors. Someone from New England sounds vastly different from someone from Kentucky.
What is "murica"? Never heard of this until I was about 55 and I'm from Colorado.
There's a great BBC or PBS Documentary called the Story of English. It explains a lot of that.
It's on here I believe
@@jerryjonas8178 Tnx!
My Scottish great granny used to call kids, "little farkle". Do you know what this means? Thanks
Farkle means fart :)
@@firstname1152 Thanks
So how do you say Michael Flatley in Irish?
1:02 Isn't that Scottish Kilts?
Irish and Scottish only diverged about 200 years ago.
Actually no, Irish and gaidhlig have been separated from at least several centuries. Remember there are so many different Irish dialects and such.
Was (native) Irish still spoken in Cork in the early-mid 1800's?
@Cormac Mac donnacha thanks, I'm trying to trace back my ancestry. My G-G-grandfather was born in Corcaigh around 1832 and emigrated to Australia in 1849. Aside from that we have no real information about him