The Irish Language

Irish is a Celtic language spoken in a number of small communities, mostly in the west of Ireland, and by larger numbers of people scattered across the country. It has been the spoken language of Ireland for over two thousand years, and has an extensive literature stretching back to the seventh century. While Irish speakers are very much a minority in the Ireland of today, they have an importance to the cultural life of the nation far out of proportion to their numbers. Irish is by constitutional law the first official language of the Irish Republic, and was recently awarded official status in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland as a central part of the Good Friday Agreement.

The links below lead to more extensive essays on various aspects of the language:

Click here to download a self-extracting zip file (128KB) of this set of pages concerning the Irish language to read them at your leisure off-line. The graphics are all included, but not the sound files, as there are nearly 6 MB of them.