Language in Ireland

A unified view of diversity

1 Outline of proposal

The current proposal is aimed at producing a dedicated volume on Language in Ireland. There is a large bulk of work on Irish, but most of it is in specialised monograph form (frequently in Irish, see McCone et. al., 1994) or in journals on Celtic philology. Equally, there is much on English in Ireland, but again no one survey of Irish English (though the Cambridge History and volumes like Ó Muirithe (1977), Wells (1982), Cheshire (1991), Kallen (1997) have done much to remedy this and there are to be two separate volumes appearing shortly, see References below). But there is nothing on the history of languages in Ireland (although there are single volumes on literature and history in Ireland respectively). Specifically, there is no treatment of the parallel development of different forms of both Irish and English on the island. This is quite astounding seeing as how the two languages are intertwined historically and seeing as how they have had a considerable influence on each other. The reason probably lies in the institutionalisation of linguistics in Ireland. Irish is taught in departments of Irish, and English in those for English, without any significant contact between them. There are no scholars who straddle the divide sufficiently to write a book on Irish and English in their entireties. But what should be possible is to have a volume which encompasses contributions from scholars in both fields and which, by providing a unified framework, offer a holistic view of the development and current form of both languages. In addition there have been other languages in Ireland in history: the Scandinavian impact on Irish and the Anglo-Norman effect on both Irish and English has been considerable. These languages are part of the external history of Ireland and should be given their rightful place in a consideration of language in the country. Furthermore, the north of the country has a complex demographic and linguistic composition, determined not least by 17th century emigration from Scotland and northern England. Lastly, the varieties of English which developed in 17th and 18th century Ireland have been taken abroad and contributed significantly to the genesis of forms of English in regions of the world as far apart as eastern Canada and Australia.

1) Irish (Ogam; Old, Middle, Early Modern, Modern (dialects), c. 600 - present)

2) English (Medieval, Early Modern, Modern, c. 1200 - present)

3) Latin (continuous presence, particularly in the Old and Middle Irish periods)

4) Old Norse (c. 800 - 1000)

5) Anglo-Norman (c. 1200 - 1500)

6) Ulster Scots (c. 1700 - present)

7) The dialect of Forth and Bargy (c. 1200 - 1900)

8) Flemish, French, Welsh, Shelta (Romani)

Irish is one of the more significant Indo-European languages and the earliest attested vernacular language in northern Europe. It is typologically unusual in being a pre-specifying language with verb-initial word order, post-position of adjectives, etc. In the course of its history it has been considerably influenced by various languages it has been in contact with, notably Latin (due in its initial stages to Christianisation), Scandinavian due to the Viking presence in Ireland as of the late 8th century, Anglo-Norman after the invasion through the south-east of the country in the late 12th century and of course Irish has been in contact with forms of English taken to the island from the late 12th onwards. This contact has had a various effect on Irish and on English and resulted in a series of significant contact scenarios between the two languages in different parts of the country (in the north with varieties of Lowland Scots taken to Ulster as a consequence of the vigorous plantation policy of the early 17th century.

English on the island of Ireland is present in many contrasting forms. Apart from the forms in Ulster just referred to, there is a group of varieties in the south whose genesis and present-day manifestation offer unique insights into developments and forms of English not replicated at other locations of the Anglophone world. The history of English in Ireland is of interest to a wider circle of linguists / students because it has had a considerable influence on forms of English at locations outside of Europe as far removed as Newfoundland and Australia. For those scholars interested in the histories of English in key areas like the Caribbean, the United States and Canada reliable information about the history and structure of Irish English is essential to have in readily available form such as the proposed volume would offer. In practical terms this would mean that the volume would be of interest to university libraries and scholars throughout the entire Anglophone world representing a customer potential for the press which would render the volume a viable enterprise from a commercial point of view, apart from the scholarly merit of the project.

The organisation of the volume is to be chronological, with sections of the book covering the periods from pre-Old Irish to the present-day. There are in principle two other possible layouts for the book. One would be thematic, organising chapters according to the matters they deal with, such as language contact, split and shift (see below). However, such an organisation would hardly be satisfactory for a volume of a broad nature as readers are likely to look to it for general information. It would of course be possible and perhaps advisable to offer a thematic overview of the book, probably in the index, so that readers who have begun to consult the volume could see at a glance where certain linguistically relevant issues are dealt with. Another layout for the volume would be regional. There is in fact a good case to be made for this. For instance, one could have a section on Ulster, one on Dublin, one of the rural south, etc. This type of organisation might recommend itself to a large country such as Canada but in the case of Ireland, the regions have been in intense contact with each other during history and so do not represent instances of separate developments. The only exception to this is Ulster where this is actually true. Again there are arguments for and against a separate treatment of Ulster. In favour of this one can argue that Ulster was always a region separate from the south and the treatment of all forms of language there in a single section would reflect this fact. However, in the opinion of the present author a separate treatment of Ulster is inadvisable as it would appear to perpetuate a division of the country which scholars and the community at large are seeking to overcome today. One proposal to nonetheless do justice to Ulster as a region sui generis is to have a section on Ireland as a linguistic area in the introductory chapter. The present author has actually prepared this section and can incorporate it into the volume without any difficulty.

The simplest type of contribution is the grammatical sketch and this will be available for Old, Middle, Early Modern and Modern Irish because one cannot assume that readers of the volume would be au fait with the structure of Irish and indeed a central function of the volume would be to provide easily accessible overview information on the languages dealt with, notably Irish and Irish English. In addition further material is intended to be covered which would increase the inherent interest of the volume for a wider range of readers. The following gives an indication of what the subjects associated with such additional treatments.

1) The native grammarian tradition (in the Old Irish period)

2) Questions of attestation (especially for Old and Middle Irish)

3) Onomastic material (of relevance when working backwards for Irish and to some extent Irish English)

4) Irish-English cultural interaction (especially from the beginning of the early modern period onwards)

5) The transportation of dialects (of relevance when examining the spread of Irish English to both parts of Britain and outside of Europe (North America, the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand) from the early 17th century onwards).

On a broader level still the volume is intended to address questions which are of interest to virtually all linguists as they are perennial issues in their field. Touching on these matters is important to ensure that the volume is coherent in itself, that the chapters are justified from a linguistic point of view and that it is more or less in sync, to put it colloquially, with the other Language in XXX-volumes produced by Cambridge University Press. The following indicates some of these wider ranging issues to be covered.

1) Linguistic prehistory

The background of Irish

2) Language contact

Old Irish and Latin / Old Norse

3) Language split

Middle Irish and Scottish Gaelic

4) Koineisation, standardisation, dialect split

The decline of classical Irish and the rise of the modern dialects

5) Language shift

English to Irish as of the 17th century

6) Linguistic area

Ulster and, more generally, the island of Ireland

7) Language acquisition

Present-day Irish

8) Language planning

Present-day Irish

For a volume like the one being suggested, the potential readership must be considered: in order to have broad appeal to a large audience the presentation is to be general, data-driven and not to take facts concerning the languages for granted. Volumes such as the one envisaged are consulted most frequently by linguists from other fields who want to gain more information about an area they have heard of repeatedly but, for want of good overview literature, have never been able to become acquainted with. Given this situation, one must be especially careful not to deter other linguists by not giving enough attention to the insights of modern linguistics and their relevance to descriptions of Irish and English in Ireland.

It is important to stress that a volume of this kind be tightly knit and that there is cross-referencing between the contributions to achieve unity of effect. Such unity results from the external parallels and cross influences between the various languages but, importantly, should also result from the linguistic standard of the contributions and an awareness of contemporary developments and issues in the field.

In order to emphasise the unifying goal of the volume currently envisaged, a subtitle is suggested so that the book would be called: Language in Ireland. A unified view of diversity. This proposal would in fact also tie up with the Language in Australia and the Language in Canada volumes published recently by Cambridge University Press (and the Language in New Zealand volume in preparation) so again the ‘series effect’ would be an advantage in terms of perception by the reading public and sales to libraries.

The volume will open with an introduction and a short chapter on the possible ethnic composition of Ireland before an Indo-European language, i.e. Irish, arrived. In recent years there has been much debate on the linguistic affiliation of those peoples present throughout north-west Europe before the Indo-Europeans spread into this area. The view of Theo Vennemann, the most prominent scholar in this field of research, is that languages related to present-day Basque were spoken and in this connection he has researched the possible traces of a Vasconic, i.e. Basque-related, substratum for Irish. The more specifically pre-Old Irish, Celtic context is to be dealt with in another paper in which Jürgen Uhlich will examine the historical setting out of which Old Irish arose and will present the latter in relation to the remaining Celtic languages. There then follows a section on Old Irish with a grammatical sketch of the language. Next is a treatment of Latin which with the Christianisation of Ireland in the 4th century came to have an influence on Irish which led to many lexical borrowings and possible structural influence as well. Michael Richter, the foremost authority on Latin in Ireland, has agreed to submit a contribution on this subject.

1 Introduction

2 Ireland before the Indo-Europeans

3 The Celtic context

4 Old Irish

5 The Latin language in Ireland

This section is in fact the most diverse linguistically. It begins with the impact of the Scandinavians on Irish and the transition to the Middle Irish period. Old Norse had a considerable lexical influence on Irish which began with the coming of the Scandinavians in the late 8th century and ended at the beginning of the 11th century. The Middle Irish period is that of the great books, collections of material which were maintained at a certain location in Ireland and which contain fictional literature, legal and religious tracts and which document the typlogical shift from the complex grammatical and phonological system of Old Irish. The Middle Irish period is furthermore interesting because it shows the appearence of structural properties which have become typical of Irish since and are an integral part of its typological profile to this day, e.g. nominalising syntax. The section on Middle Irish is intended to offer a grammatical sketch of the language in this key transition period.

This section has a pivotal point in the middle with the invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans in the late 12th century. This marks the beginning of the history of English in Ireland and heralds a period of influence of Anglo-Norman and English on Irish, particularly in the lexicon of the language. The section on the Anglo-Norman invasion will address the relationships of the three main languages in late medieval Ireland, Irish, Anglo-Norman and English and deal with mutual influences. The section on medieval Irish English will deal with the early settlement of Dublin and the establishment of English there. It will also look at the language of the Kildare Poems, the chief literary document in English from the medieval period.

6 The Scandinavian impact

7 Middle Irish

8 The Anglo-Norman invasion

9 Medieval Irish English

Scholars are agreed that the end of the 16th century represents a watershed in the political fortunes of Ireland and, as a consequence of this, in the linguistic development of the country. The classical form of Irish which pertained up to then began to be abandoned with the decline in the system of patronage which supported the writers of the time. A relatively sudden increase in Anglicisation is also to be seen after the defeat of the Irish and the vigorous settlement of the north by Lowland Scots. For these reasons it would seem appropriate to have sections which deal first with early modern Irish and then with the development of English since the 17th century with special attention paid to the situation in Ulster.

10 Early Modern Irish

11 English since the 17th century

12 The linguistic situation in Ulster

In the early modern period a process began in earnest which was to lead in the course of the two centuries following the 17th to an almost complete shift in Ireland from a largely Irish-speaking to a largely English-speaking population. The section on the language shift is to begin with Cromwellian deportations and later plantations of the east and south-east of the country and carry through the 18th century to the mid 19th century with the exodus of huge numbers of Irish speakers from the country as a direct result of the Great Famine in the late 1840´s.

13 The language shift

The beginning of the modern era led, in the course of the 17th century, to a development which continued up to the early 20th century, the mass emigration of Irish, initially for the purpose of gaining religious freedom, or because of deportation, and later out of economic necessity. It would thus seem appropriate to begin the present section with a consideration of patterns of emigration and its linguistic consequences starting with deportations to the Caribbean in the early 17th century and the situation among the Ulster Scots in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and continuing up to the middle of the 19th century, dealing with the settlement of Newfoundland, the United States and Australia in the process.

14 Links abroad

The remainder of this section is about the contemporary situation for both Irish and Irish English. For Irish there will be descriptions of the three main dialect areas (by Diarmuid Ó Sé) to round off the presentation of factual data which begins with the sketch of Old Irish. Other aspects of present-day Irish will also be covered. The influence of English on Irish will be covered in a paper by Nancy Stenson on code-switching and borrowing. The acquisition of the language will be dealt with by Tina Hickey. Issues of language planning (an important consideration in a country with three major dialect areas) will be discussed by Dónall Ó Baoill. A possible section on the development and use of the written standard would complete the picture.

15 The Irish language today

The final section on present-day Irish English has been pruned back considerably in the revised proposal and envisages three sub-sections, one on Southern Irish English, one on Northern Irish English and one on Urban English in Ireland. The other matters mentioned in the original proposal, such as language and literature, pragmatics and the vocabulary of Irish English can be dealt with in one or more of the three main sub-sections just mentioned, though there is a possibility of putting vocabulary and the language of literature in a single chapter by Terence Dolan.

16 Contemporary Irish English

Language in Ireland (Revised proposal)

Sections

1 Introduction (10)

2 Ireland before the Indo-Europeans (15)

3 The Celtic context (15)

4 Old Irish (20)

5 The Latin language in Ireland (10) 70 pages

6 The Scandinavian impact (10)

7 Middle Irish (20)

8 The Anglo-Norman invasion (10)

9 Medieval Irish English (20) 60 pages

10 Early Modern Irish (20)

11 English since the 17th century (20)

12 The linguistic situation in Ulster (40)

13 The language shift (20) 100 pages

14 Links abroad (30)

15 The Irish language today (50)

16 Contemporary Irish English (50) 130 pages

360 pages

Bibliography, Maps, Index 40 pages

Total 400 pages

N.B. The figures in brackets after headings indicate the approximate number of pages for the contribution(s) concerned. The size of each contribution is to be controlled tightly to ensure that the volume does not exceed 400 pages in length with bibliography and index.

Raymond Hickey Essen, 8 February 2000