Third International Conference on Minority Languages: Celtic papers

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Third International Conference On Minority Languages : Celtic Papers Multilingual Matters (Series) ; 32 Mac Eoin, Gearóid. Multilingual Matters 0905028643 9780905028644 9780585175881 English Celtic languages--Congresses, Linguistic minorities--Great Britain--Congresses, Linguistic minorities--Ireland-Congresses. 1987 PB1001.I49 1986eb 491.6 Celtic languages--Congresses, Linguistic minorities--Great Britain--Congresses, Linguistic minorities--Ireland-Congresses. cover Page i

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS 32 Series Editor: Derrick Sharp

Third International Conference on Minority Languages: Celtic Papers Edited by GearÓid Mac Eoin, Anders Ahlqvist and Donncha Ó hAodha MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon Philadelphia page_i Page ii Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

International Conference on Minority Languages (3rd 1986 : University College, Galway) Third International Conference on Minority Languages. (Multilingual matters; 32) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Celtic languages Congresses. 2. Linguistic minorities Great Britain Congresses. 3. Linguistic minorities Ireland Congresses. I. Mac Eoin, Gearóid, II. Ahlqvist, Anders. III. Ó hAodha, Donncha. IV. Title. V. Series. PB1001.149 1986 491.6 87-20402 ISBN 0-905028-64-3 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data International Conference on Minority Languages (3rd : 1986 : Galway) Third International Conference on Minority languages: Celtic papers. (Multilingual matters; 32). 1. Celtic languages I. Title II. Ahlqvist, Anders III. Mac Eoin Gearóid IV. O'hAodha, Donncha V. Series 491.6 PB1014 ISBN 0-905028-64-3 Multilingual Matters Ltd. Bank House, 8a Hill Road, Clevedon, Avon BS21 7HH, England.

& 242 Cherry Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106-1906, U.S.A.

Copyright © 1987 G.M. Awbery, B. Thomas, W. Gillies, K. MacKinnon, G. Maguire, D.P. Ó Baoill, J. Harris, L. Murtagh, M. Akutagawa. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means d without permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Photographics, Honiton, Devon. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Short Run Press Ltd, Exeter EX2 7LW. page_ii Page iii

Contents The Position of the Welsh Language in Wales: G.M. Awbery

1

Accounting for Language Maintenance and Shift: Socio-historical Evidence from a Mining Community in Wales: Beth Thomas

13

Scottish Gaelic The Present Situation: William Gillies

27

Gender, Occupational and Educational Factors in Gaelic Language-Shift and Regeneration: Kenneth MacKinnon

47

Language Revival in an Urban Neo-Gaeltacht: Gabrielle Maguire

72

Phonological Borrowing in Irish and Problems of Orthographical Representation: DÓnall P. Ó Baoill

89

Irish and English in Gaeltacht Primary Schools:: John Harris & Lelia Murtagh

104

A Linguistic Minority under the Protection of its own Ethnic State: A Case Study in an Irish Gaeltacht: Michie Akutagawa

125

Index

147 page_iii Page 1

1 The Position of the Welsh Language in Wales G.M. Awbery Abstract. This paper presents a brief survey of the current position of the Welsh language, dealing with the demographic situation and the use of the language in the media, education and official documents. My intention in this chapter is to provide a brief introduction to the language situation in Wales for those who are unfamiliar with its complexities. I have tried to show what it is like to live in this bilingual community, rather than to offer a systematic analysis of how the current situation has developed. 1 The Historical Background When Wales was formally incorporated into the English state in the sixteenth century by the Act of Union, one of its provisions was to explicitly rule out the use of Welsh in official contexts. Any Welshman wishing to get on in the world from then on needed to become fluent in English and to use that language in his dealings with the law, commerce and the wider world in general. The only exception was the church, where the use of Welsh in services was permitted, and a translation of the Bible into Welsh was officially encouraged. Presumably the desire to propagate the Protestant Reformation carried greater weight than the need for administrative tidiness. The eventual result of this was that over the next few centuries a split developed between the common people, still overwhelmingly Welsh page_1 Page 2 in speech, and the upper orders who became increasingly anglicised. Geographically, however, the area over which the language was spoken changed very little until the middle of the last century. Apart from some mediaeval plantations which survived as English-speaking enclaves, and some slow erosion along the border with England, it is fair to say that Wales remained almost completely Welsh-speaking until the mid-nineteenth century. Since then the situation has changed quite drastically in two ways. In the first place, the proportion of the population able to speak Welsh has fallen dramatically. I do not wish to go into a detailed discussion here of what caused this development. Clearly many different factors played a part: massive immigration into the newly industrialised areas of south Wales; the increasing influence of the state, especially in the field of education; the break-up of traditional communities under the pressure of industrial depression and war; and more recently the impact of the mass media, and the influx of outsiders moving into previously remote Welsh-speaking areas.

The figures speak for themselves. In 1901 just under half the population of Wales claimed to be Welshspeaking, in their response to the official Census survey. Since then the figures have dropped steadily, falling to an all-time low of 18.9% at the last count in 1981. The second change, which is crucial to an understanding of the present situation in Wales, is in some sense a reaction to this numerical decline, and its inverse. Beginning slowly in the last century, and gaining strength and confidence in more recent times, there has been a movement to demand official status and recognition for the Welsh language. In response to pressures from a wide range of groups, which used tactics ranging from the constitutional to the militant, the use of Welsh in many official contexts has now been widely conceded, and the language has a higher profile today, perhaps, than it ever had when it was numerically in the ascendant. The irony of this is not lost on those of us who live with it day by day. Geographical Variation One of the reasons it is so difficult to give a simple account of the situation is that different parts of Wales differ widely in their lingustic character. If we look at the percentage of the population recorded as Welsh-speaking at the last census in 1981, we find a reasonably clear split page_2 Page 3 between the north and west, where a high proportion of the population is Welsh-speaking, and the south-east, where Welsh speakers form a very small minority. In the case of the north and west a great deal of normal social interaction happens quite naturally through the medium of Welsh, on an informal level shopping, dealing with the gasman, going to the garage, and passing the time of day with neighbours and also in more formal contexts chapel services, locally organised concerts and so on. It is only in quite recent times that monoglot, English-speaking incomers have disturbed this community consensus, and it seems likely that a great deal of the anger and bitterness associated with language issues in these areas arises from this. Suddenly, people who have been able to take for granted that Welsh was the language of everyday life in their village find that things have changed. A couple from Birmingham buy the village shop; the actual business of shopping shifts overnight from Welsh to English, and if as is often the case the incomers object to hearing Welsh conversations which they cannot understand, then people feel constrained to chat in English to neighbours they meet in the shop while waiting their turn. Such an abrupt change in the habits of a lifetime is, of course, quite traumatic, and is particularly likely to create resentment when it is seen as arising from the intrusion of strangers with no local roots. I do not wish to exaggerate the suddenness of this development. There has been a gradual erosion of the language in these heartland areas in the past, with towns, for instance, being noticeably more anglicised than the surrounding countryside. But there does seem to have been something of a qualitative leap in the nature of the English penetration in recent times, and perhaps more importantly, in the way it is perceived. The position of Welsh speakers in the anglicised areas is very different, and once again I must of necessity oversimplify the situation, in order to make the general point. Here, too, the immigration of English-speaking outsiders has played a role, but the main force of this immigration took place a long time ago, during the extensive industrialisation of the last century. Its initial impact has by now been dissipated, and there is not usually an obvious distinction between those who come from old-established local families and those whose grandparents were incomers. In these areas the linguistic shift has gone further, and appears to be accepted in the community. Some people retain the traditional vernacular, but others have shifted over to English and have only a slight, residual knowledge of Welsh. Typically, such people will tell you that they are as page_3 Page 4 Welsh as the next man, and will bitterly resent any definition of Welshness that gives priority to the language. Those who do still speak Welsh in such areas then appear to me to fall into three categories. First, we have older people who have simply held on to the language that was normal in their community in their youth. Often their children and grandchildren speak only English. Such a picture is typical, for instance, of the mining valleys of Mid-Glamorgan, and is clearly a stage in the ultimate loss of the language, if no other factors intervene.

Secondly, we have a highly articulate Welsh-speaking middle class, often incomers from other parts of Wales, who have moved into the area because of the demands of their jobs. Such people are typical of the Welshspeaking community in Cardiff for instance, where jobs in the media, the civil service and education are numerous and often explicitly require fluency in Welsh. Such people, of course, normally bring up their children Welsh-speaking, as might be expected from the high stress they place on Welshness generally. Thirdly, there are those children who come from English-speaking homes, but who themselves have attended Welsh-medium schools and have become more or less fluent in the language as a result. On the whole what we have here is a form of `third generation return', where families which had originally dropped the language have second thoughts. The grandparents may well speak Welsh, but they will have brought up their children Englishspeaking. These now feel, for a mixture of reasons, that they wish their own children to be bilingual. The census figures of recent times do in fact show a slight upturn in the numbers of Welsh speakers in the anglicised areas, particularly among school-age children, so this third group is clearly having an effect on the overall picture. Whether all these children remain within the Welsh-speaking community when they leave school is, however, not clear. Without active Welsh in the home, and working in an English environment, they may effectively drop out. The problem in these anglicised areas is that the Welsh speakers do not form a natural community, living as they do, scattered around, in a largely English-speaking environment. Those who wish to live at least some proportion of their lives through the medium of Welsh must invest some time and effort in establishing a network of Welsh speakers with whom they know they can interact in that language. Chance encounters are not enough here; Welsh speakers are thin on the ground, and there is no way of telling if someone met for the first time is able to speak Welsh or not. It is in fact quite a common experience to find that someone page_4 Page 5 met in a neutral, that is English-speaking, environment turns out on closer acquaintance to be a Welsh speaker. But often by then the habit of using English with that person has been set and is difficult to break, or perhaps the situation where the interaction takes place, whether social or professional, involves too many other people for a language switch to be a realistic move. There is as a result quite a thriving Welsh-medium social network whose main raison d'être is to allow Welsh speakers to meet and interact with each other, a sort of alternative community structure, which is based on cultural common ground rather than straightforward geographical proximity. The Welsh-language chapels are an obvious instance of this. Most nonconformist denominations in Wales are organised in two parallel structures, with the Welsh Methodists, for instance, being semi-independent of the English Methodists. Membership of a Welsh Methodist chapel, then, guarantees access to a linguistically compatible group, as does attendance at a Welsh service of the Church in Wales. I do not think that I am being unreasonably cynical when I suggest that the very high rate of chapel attendance among this section of the population is due not just to religious fervour but also to the need for a social network which operates in Welsh. Other nodes in this Welsh network are the Welsh medium schools, for those with school-age children, such voluntary organisations as Merched Y Wawr (a Welsh-medium equivalent of the Women's Institutes), and the Welsh clubs which have sprung up over the last few years to cater for those who prefer to do their socialising over a pint. Informal friendships grow out of these organisations, but those who have difficulty manipulating this type of scattered network can often become isolated and effectively lost to the rest of the Welsh-speaking community. This way of life is sometimes condemned by those from the north and west as artificial, and it is of course painful for people to find that they must behave as a linguistic minority in what they perceive as their own country. It does, however, appear to be a vigorous and effective response to the demands of the environment in these areas. This split between the Welsh-speaking north and west and the anglicised south-east is not the full story. The situation is further complicated by the fact that those areas with high proportions of Welsh speakers are often rural and sparsely inhabited. The actual numbers of Welsh speakers living in such areas is quite small, though they dominate the communities in which they live. Conversely, there are large numbers of Welsh speakers living in the anglicised urban areas, though they form only a small propage_5 Page 6 portion of the population as a whole in such centres as Cardiff and Swansea, which are by Welsh standards large conurbations.

Ironically, then, it is only a minority of Welsh speakers who can enjoy what is fast becoming the luxury of being in the majority in their own community. The Media Having looked briefly at the constraints arising from the demographic situation of the language, I should now like to change direction and consider other dimensions. What provision exists to serve the needs of a Welsh man or woman wishing to live as far as possible through the medium of Welsh? Let us start with television, where the greatest progress has come in recent years. After a long, and at times bitter, campaign the decision was made to use the new fourth television channel, when it was opened, as a Welsh-language channel in Wales. All Welsh language material would be broadcast on this channel, with programmes being contributed by the BBC, HTV and independent producers. The other channels would broadcast only English programmes. This new channel, Sianel Pedwar Cymru (Channel Four Wales) began transmitting in November, 1982, for a trial period of three years. When the three year period ended a review was held and the general conclusion was that this pattern of broadcasting should continue, so that S4C, as it is usually referred to, seems to be safe for the immediate future. What sort of programmes does it broadcast? About 20 hours a week, or slightly more, are transmitted, with a wide range of coverage: news, of course, current events, sport, soap operas, films, satire, rock and classical music, documentaries, chat shows and quiz shows the full range. There are programmes for young children at lunch time and for older children at tea time, both traditional slots in Britain. And when there is a major event, such as a rugby international or the national Eisteddfod, S4C gives the expected saturation coverage. The television service is satisfactory, and so too is radio. Radio Cymru, the Welsh-language BBC station, has been broadcasting since 1977, with English-language programmes transmitted on another station, Radio Wales. Here again the range of programmes is quite wide, with substantial amounts of news and current affairs, chat shows, phone-ins, quizzes and music, a total of about 80 hours a week. page_6 Page 7 Welsh radio and television provision are actually interlocked in a quite deliberate fashion, so that those who want to listen and watch continuously can keep going for most of the day between the two of them. Radio Cymru starts at about 6.30am and keeps going until 6 pm, with a break in mid afternoon. S4C puts out children's programmes at midday and teatime, then comes back for most of the evening. It is perhaps worth making the point that when Radio Cymru and S4C are not broadcasting in Welsh, they do not close down completely, but rather broadcast English language programmes from other sources, BBC Radio 4 or the English Fourth Channel. What about other aspects of the entertainment industry? Films in Welsh are thin on the ground, with most effort of this kind going into television work. But there are several theatre companies, which tour and give performances in different parts of Wales. Their repertoire varies from major Welsh plays to specially written satirical reviews, and there is usually a travelling pantomime for children around Christmas. As for popular music, the scene here is very lively and active, with an apparently endless stream of groups and individuals breaking into the big time, and then fading as someone else comes along. Rock music concerts and discos are quite common, and popular music is given a prominent place on radio and television. Sain is the company which dominates the recording field, producing records and cassettes of everything from pop and rock music, through modern and traditional folk, to male voice choirs. Interestingly their studio, with its fully up-to-date, 24 track recording facilities, is in the heart of the most strongly Welsh-speaking area, just outside Caernarfon. It is worth noting, too, that they have begun to diversify, and now produce Welsh language video cassettes and home computer games. The provision of reading material is also reasonably good, though one would find it rather difficult to exist solely on a diet of Welsh-language materials. No daily paper is published in Welsh, but there are several weeklies. Of these, Y Cymro is perhaps the most popular with an attempt at coverage of local and national news and articles of general interest. The others are either more locally based or more intellectual in approach, comment rather than straight news. More popular however are the Papurau Bro, monthlies run on a voluntary basis, with a stress on news of the immediate local area and an astonishingly high readership. They tend to come and go, but one estimate I have seen is that about 49 of these are in existence. As for other periodicals, there is a reasonable spread: children's page_7

Page 8 comics such as Sboncyn, magazines for special interest groups Pais for women, Cynefin for those interested in wildlife, Y Gwyddonydd for the scientifically minded, Llafar Gwlad for those interested in folklore. And, of course, academic journals, and those produced by religious denominations and a wide range of societies. It must be said that most of these receive some form of financial subsidy. The Government provides quite a large sum as a subsidy for Welsh-language publishing, channelled mainly through the Welsh Books Council, in recognition of the fact that making ends meet with the inevitably small sales is almost impossible. There is concern that this reliance on Government money leaves us very vulnerable to a change in policy and financial cutbacks, but no other simple answer seems available at present. The normal range of books is produced novels, poetry, plays, biography and autobiography, local history and hobbies. Perhaps the most interesting developments have been in books for children, where it has been realised that unless children are offered a wide range of interesting and attractive books to read in Welsh, then they will early form the habit of turning to English for their reading material. As a result of co-operation between the Welsh Joint Education Committee, the Books Council and the Arts Council, and substantial subsidies, a great deal of reading material for children has therefore been produced over recent years, both original and translated from other languages, everything from colourful picture books to solid novels for the older child. Education Let us turn now to the field of education. For those who have children and wish to have them educated through the medium of Welsh, what options are available? At the level of pre-school education one must turn to the nursery groups run by Mudiad Ysgolion Meithrin, who run an extensive network of nearly 450 groups throughout Wales. They have some Government funding to run the central office and pay local organisers, but the groups themselves are self-supporting, running jumble sales and so on to pay the teachers. For school-age children the position is rather different, as here the state recognises an obligation to provide education through the medium of the Welsh language where there is a demand. In the north and west we find, therefore, that a high proportion of primary schools are Welsh-medium; in Gwynedd, for instance, 67% of primary schools operate solely in Welsh, and in none of the county's schools is Welsh ignored. 2 This page_8 Page 9 county has in fact a very positive policy for integrating children who move into the area. They attend a centre in Caernarfon for one term for intensive tuition in the language, so that they may then fit into their local school without disrupting the normal language of the classroom. At the other end of the spectrum, Gwent in the south-east is highly anglicised, and here only 1.5% of the schools operate in Welsh. In 98% of the county's schools no Welsh at all is taught. In other counties, where districts vary in their linguistic composition, some attempt is made to match local needs. The exception to this predictable pattern is that parents who live in anglicised areas do have the right to demand Welsh-medium education for their children, against, as it were, the local trend. Provision is then made for what are referred to as `designated bilingual schools', and on the latest Welsh Office figures there are 63 such schools, with nearly 11,000 pupils. At the primary level it is in principle possible for any child to be educated in Welsh if the parents so choose. At secondary level, however, the picture is less clear cut. We find a similar pattern of geographical variation to the one I have described for primary schools. In Gwynedd, for instance, 19 secondary schools teach at least five subjects through the medium of Welsh for the first five years, while in Gwent, predictably, there is no such provision whatsoever. Here again, superimposed on the general picture, is the right to Welsh-medium education in anglicised areas. There are at present 14 `designated bilingual secondary schools', with a total of 9,500 pupils. It would be misleading, however, to imply that secondary education is as thoroughly Welsh-orientated as primary education can be. Statistics issued by the Welsh Office suggest that there is a tendency to use Welsh for such subjects as history and geography, while retaining English for the sciences. There are good reasons for this. It is only gradually that the need for Welsh-language textbooks for the full range of subjects is being met, and teachers often find that they are obliged to prepare their own teaching materials, a heavy addition to their normal work load, especially when the syllabus changes regularly. Textbooks have been commissioned by the Welsh Joint Education Committee for a wide range of different subjects maths, biology, history and geography, for instance but there are still serious gaps in coverage. Another problem is that it is not, on the whole, possible to continue studying most of these subjects at the level of higher education in Welsh, and there is inevitably some hesitation about creating too much of a break

page_9 Page 10 between school and college. For those who study technical subjects and go straight to work on leaving school, again there will be little Welsh in their working environment if they live in an anglicised area. The additional load involved in having to relearn technical terminology in a second language will again cause difficulties. Added to these considerations is the fact that the teachers have often themselves been trained to teach their subject through the medium of English, and they are put in the position of having to adapt and develop completely new strategies, using a register in Welsh which they may never have used before. It is possible to sit both O level examinations, at 16, and A level examinations, at 18, in Welsh. Welsh Office statistics show that 31 subjects were examined at O level in Welsh in 1983, and 15 at A level. To put this in perspective, however, I should add that these entries formed only around 2% of the total entries in Wales, a very small percentage. In the University of Wales there is some provision for teaching through the medium of Welsh, though it is limited in scope. In University College, Aberystwyth, for instance, it is possible to follow the entire degree course through the medium of Welsh in Welsh, History or Drama, and joint honours courses in Education and Welsh History. Part 1 can be followed in whole or in part through the medium of Welsh in a number of other subjects, including, for instance, philosophy and politics, geography and French. Other departments are able to arrange seminars and tutorials in Welsh if there is a demand. There is a similar level of provision in the university colleges at Bangor, Cardiff and Lampeter, but not apparently in Swansea, UWIST or the School of Medicine. It is furthermore possible to sit the University's exams in Welsh even if the course was taught in English, though this does not seem to be a very practical proposition. One reaction to the fragmented state of Welsh language provision in education has been the demand for a body with specific responsibility for Welsh-medium education at all levels, but there is not as yet very much progress in this direction. Bureaucracy There is, finally, the world of bureaucracy. What happens when one comes up against the official machine? Here again it is difficult to generalise. The Welsh Language Act of 1967 established the principle of Equal Validity, namely that any document written in Welsh should have the page_10 Page 11 same legal force as it would in English. It therefore legalises the use of Welsh for official purposes, but does not make its use alongside English obligatory in any way. There is no central policy on this, and departments of government vary in their practice, as do public services generally, local authorities and private businesses. It is, for instance, quite common to have to ask specifically for the Welsh version of a form, which is supposed to be freely available, or to find a shop reluctant to accept a cheque written in Welsh. Quite a wide selection of official documents, however, are available, ranging from driving licences and cheque books to electricity bills and rates demands. This unsatisfactory state of affairs has recently given rise to demands for a new, improved Welsh Language Act, to strengthen the position of the language in public life generally. Gwynedd County Council have in fact recently run into difficulties over their extremely positive policy on bilingualism. One of the points felt strongly in this area is that it should be possible to use either language when dealing with public servants, and so the county has for some time adopted the practice of advertising such posts, particularly where people are to deal with children, old people and the sick, as requiring fluent Welsh. Last year two women, turned down for posts in the Gwynedd social services, took legal action, alleging that they had been refused these jobs solely because they could not speak Welsh, and that the county was consequently guilty of racial discrimination, as defined under the Race Discrimination Act. They won the case, causing considerable surprise and anger in Wales, and the legal implications of this judgement are not yet clear. Conclusions There are many aspects of the language situation in Wales which cannot be adequately covered here. Some of these are hopeful, such as the substantial work being carried out in the field of teaching Welsh to adult learners. Others are very depressing, indications, for instance, that some areas suffer from a very high rate of illiteracy in Welsh and are almost certainly on the verge of a massive shift to English. The balance between optimism and gloom is very fine, the pattern of the future unclear.

Notes to Chapter 1 1. For a general introduction to the history of the language situation in Wales, see page_11 Page 12 Stephens (1976) and Price (1984). A detailed discussion of recent demographic trends may be found in Aitchison & Carter (1985). 2. The figures quoted in this section are derived from Statistics of Education in Wales, No. 9. References AITCHISON, J. & CARTER, H. 1985, The Welsh Language 1961-1981, An Interpretative Atlas. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. PRICE, G. 1984, The Languages of Britain. London: Edward Arnold. STEPHENS, M. 1976, The Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe. Llandysul: Gomer Press. WELSH OFFICE 1985, Statistics of Education in Wales, No.9. Cardiff: Welsh Office. page_12 Page 13

2 Accounting for Language Maintenance and Shift: Socio-historical Evidence from a Mining Community in Wales Beth Thomas Abstract. This chapter is based on recent sociolinguistic research in a former mining community in Wales, namely Pont-rhyd-y-fen in West Glamorgan. In the years prior to the Second World War, this village survived as a Welsh language enclave in an area of Wales that was increasingly characterised by language shift to English. However, in the post-war period, there has been a dramatic shift to English in this community. At the regional level, the change in the sociolinguistic fortunes of the community can, to some extent, be accounted for in terms of demographic, political, economic and social factors: the changing economic structure of this region of Wales and the decline of the mining industry; a steady decrease in population and the decline of minority institutions such as the local chapels which served vital social and educational functions. The aim of this chapter is to show how changing social and historical conditions can affect local social networks and in turn, patterns of language use. Work on language shift in Wales has tended to take the form of macro-scale studies based on aggregate data, usually census statistics. The latest of these, namely Aitchison & Carter's (1985), The Welsh Language page_13 Page 14 1961-1981: An Interpretative Atlas, underlines the effects on the Welsh language of the socio-economic transformations which have affected Wales and other peripheral regions of Europe since the Second World War. They emphasise, however, the need to substantiate the explanations given in large-scale studies through field enquiries on other scales. Regional statistics need to be interpreted in the light of closer qualitative insights gained at the community level. This chapter is an account of language shift in a small industrial community in South East Wales, and is an attempt to show how changing social and historical conditions can affect local social networks, and in turn, patterns of language use.

Pont-rhyd-y-fen, the community in question, has a population of about 700, and is situated in the parish of Michaelston Higher, in the Afan valley in West Glamorgan. It is roughly equidistant from the urban centres of Neath and Port Talbot. In the period prior to the Second World War, Pont-rhyd-y-fen survived as a Welsh language enclave in an area increasingly characterised by language shift to English. However, the linguistic situation since the war has changed considerably, with the proportion of Welsh speakers falling from 76% in 1951 to less than a third in 1981. 1 Two things, therefore, need to be accounted for: firstly, the maintenance of Welsh in Pont-rhyd-y-fen in a period when surrounding areas were already being anglicised; secondly, the rapid decline in the number and proportion of Welsh speakers in the post-war period. The village of Pont-rhyd-y-fen came into being as a result of the development of the iron industry in the lower Afan valley in the early nineteenth century. Though industrialisation is generally blamed for having anglicised south-east Wales, by bringing in `a large non-Welsh population which has never been assimilated' (Williams, 1950: 269), this does not seem to have happened in Pont-rhyd-y-fen. The census enumerators' schedules up until 18812 show that most migrants into the community came from Welsh-speaking areas, mainly from the south-west. Therefore, by the time the development of the local coal industry led to a further population increase at the turn of the century, Pont-rhyd-y-fen was already a well-established industrial community, Welsh in both language and culture. Even at the height of in-migration, monoglot English speakers did not come into the community in sufficient numbers to anglicise Pont-rhyd-y-fen as they did other parts of the coalfield. As can be seen in Figure 1, as late as 1931, 85% of the community's population could speak Welsh. According to oral testimony,3 many English immigrants were assimilated into the Welsh-speaking community single men married local girls and raised Welsh-speaking families, while younger immigrants page_14 Page 15

Figure 1. Percentage of population of Michaelston Higher able to speak Welsh, 1921-1981 attended school with Welsh-speaking children, who would not accommodate them by switching languages. From an early period in its history, however, the community was bilingual. This was largely due to the educational system, which had endeavoured from the mid-nineteenth century onwards to make the children of the community literate in English. By 1921, only 12% of the population were recorded as being monolingual Welsh speakers. By 1931, this figure had dropped to 3%. But because of the existence of a diglossic situation, bilingualism in Pont-rhyd-y-fen remained stable for several decades before leading to language shift. While English was the language of education and officialdom, Welsh was predominant in the domains of family, friendship, employment and religion. In the school log book 4 after the summer holidays of 1874, the headmaster complains: `The children seem a trifle rougher than when I parted with them a month ago, and judging from their pronunciation, had not heard one word of English since.' According to oral testimony, this contrast between the Welshness of community life and the language of the school lasted until well into the page_15

Page 16 1930s. The Englishness of nearby urban areas did not encroach upon Pont-rhyd-y-fen, as the social and working lives of its inhabitants were very much community-based. Because of in-migration and a high birth rate, Pont-rhyd-y-fen's population was at its height in the early decades of this century. It was a young population. Families were large and the village school was full to overflowing. In the words of one elderly informant, children `were like gnats about the place'. Villagers brought up during this period thus tended to have intensely local social lives in their youth, as there was no need to venture further than their own street for company, let alone the next village or town. Most villagers of this generation also received the whole of their education within the community, staying on in the village school until they reached the age of fourteen. For the boys, employment was then available in local collieries, where they worked alongside Welsh-speaking neighbours and kinsmen. Employment opportunities for women were more limited. Young girls who did not choose to continue their education and become teachers had the choice of helping at home, or working as seamstresses or domestic servants within the community. If she was the eldest or only girl in a family of many boys, she had no choice at all. Therefore, for both sexes, the social networks of home and workplace overlapped, and were predominantly Welsh-speaking. Restricted mobility, and the size and homogeneity of Pont-rhyd-y-fen's population, also meant plenty of support for community based recreational activities. The main social centres were the nonconformist chapels, which played an important role in language maintenance, as their activities were almost exclusively Welsh in language. They therefore gave Welsh a respected status in a domain that was central to community life. Involvement in chapel activities also meant a high degree of exposure to formal varieties of Welsh, the Sunday schools providing a medium through which some level of literacy in the language could be attained. An alternative social centre was the Miners' Welfare Hall, where the men played billiards, draughts, chess and dominoes, and where local choirs, bands, drama and opera societies practised and performed. The village also boasted soccer, rugby, cricket, tennis and bowls teams. Village cultural and sporting activities flourished even through the Depression and war years. This, combined with the presence of numerous contemporaries, led to much intermarriage within the community. Members of the older generation in Pont-rhyd-y-fen are linked by a complex web of kinship ties, the densest clusters being based on common residence or membership of a particular chapel. Until the Second World War, therefore, Pont-rhyd-y-fen exhibited page_16 Page 17 characteristics generally associated with working class communities. Relationships were both dense and mutiplex, villagers being linked to one another in many capacities, for example as kin, neighbours, friends and co-employees. The density of communications between the members of the community provided environments in which the use of Welsh could be maintained. Following the economic depression of the 1930s, and especially following the Second World War, all this was to change. Socioeconomic changes were to affect all aspects of community life, eroding the traditional domains of the Welsh language, and leading eventually to language shift. In determining the causes of language shift in a minority language enclave such as Pont-rhyd-y-fen, one cannot ignore the effects of demographic changes, the social implications of a decreasing, aging and changing population. Between the two world wars, the birth rate dropped rapidly. By the early 1950s, an average of only 18 pupils a year were being admitted to the Junior school, compared with an average of 94 for the period 1908-1912. 5 The age structure of the community has therefore changed radically. According to the 1981 census,6 70% of the households in the central part of the village were without children under 15 years of age. Over a quarter of the households contained only people of pensionable age. This contrasts greatly with the situation in the early decades of this century, and has led to marked differences between generations in their experience of community life. Whereas older villagers have had, and still do have to a lesser extent, numerous contemporaries within a very local area, the post-war generation have few. So, for reasons of numbers alone, younger villagers are more likely to socialise outside the community than were their parents and grandparents. There is thus a greater tendency for them to marry and settle outside Pont-rhyd-y-fen. The community has therefore lost most of its Welsh speakers of child-bearing age. As the older native inhabitants die, their houses are bought by young families from the nearby towns of Neath and Port Talbot. A sizeable element in the younger age groups has no connection with the older population, who have their roots in the pre-war mining community. These newcomers are also invariably English-speaking. Unlike previous generations, younger Welsh speakers are no longer numerous enough to assimilate them.

There have also been sweeping changes in the field of employment. Most local collieries closed in the late 1920s. During the 1930s, young men left Pont-rhyd-y-fen in droves to look for work in England. Though some of them did eventally return to Pont-rhyd-y-fen, bringing with them English wives, the majority never did. Employment was never again as local as it had been before the 1920s. During the war, young men broadpage_17 Page 18 ened their horizons in the armed forces, while many of the young women found themselves working in munitions factories, which brought them into contact with girls from totally English-speaking backgrounds. The post-war period saw a diversification of industry and less localised employment. From the 1950s onwards, the steel industry became the main source of employment for the male population of Pont-rhyd-y-fen. By the early 1960s, the Steel Company of Wales' works in Port Talbot provided employment for over 17,000 men, drawn from all over south-east Wales. Welsh speakers were predictably in a minority. Although many from Pont-rhyd-y-fen worked there, they did not necessarily work together. Unlike previous generations, their networks of neighbours and relations did not extend into the workplace. In recent years, following redundancies in the steel industry, unemployment has once again become a problem. Those men in employment work in increasingly diverse occupations and have little work experience in common. Another major change in the employment patterns of the community has been the increasing employment of women outside the home. The growth of the service sector and the new lighter industries created since the war have provided more employment opportunities for women, while other obstacles have been removed by the decrease in the birth rate and a lessening of prejudice against women working. By 1981, 43% of the women in central Pont-rhyd-y-fen who were able to work were in employment. Unlike the older women, many of whom have never worked outside the home, younger women spend much of their working lives outside the community in English-speaking environments. For both men and women, therefore, the relocation and diversification of industry since the war has meant the weakening of network ties within the community, a greater contact with monoglot English speakers, and the loss of the workplace as a Welsh language domain. New work patterns, greater mobility, smaller and more scattered families have all left their mark on community life. Most of the community's organised social activities came to an end in the 1950s and 1960s. Steelworkers, unlike coal miners, were expected to do shiftwork and to work on a Sunday. Young men were thereby given a ready excuse not to attend chapel services, and many of the community's other social activities also suffered. Yet although shiftwork caused great difficulties, it was not solely to blame for the demise of the community's social life. The spread of the mass media, television in particular, provided instant entertainment, in English, of a standard with which local drama and opera groups could not compete. Only the village's bowls and rugby clubs still flourish. Membership of the chapels is both aging and dwindling, and chapel page_18 Page 19 activities specifically aimed at the young, such as the Sunday schools, have over the past 20 years gradually ceased to be. This has meant the loss of virtually the only public domain the Welsh language has in the community. Lack of population is a major problem. The age bias makes it difficult to provide a broad range of activities for the younger age group. The Rugby Club, for example, has to draw its membership from a wider area than the village itself. Young villagers generally have difficulty in finding company of the same age and interests locally. As one teenage boy put it: `There's a rugby club down by here, but I can't play rugby. So I don't go there. . . So I'm never in Pont-rhyd-y-fen if I can help it. There's nothing here. It's too small for me.' This tendency to look outside the village for recreation is also due to the dispersion of social networks brought about by the relocation of employment and changes in the educational system. Since the 1950s, all the community's young people have had to pursue secondary education outside the village. Young people who attend school and go to work outside the community invariably make friends and marry outside it. Even the perception of what is local differs between generations. `This area' to the older generation is Pont-rhyd-y-fen. To the young people it means Neath and Port Talbot. Inevitably this broadening of outlook has meant predominantly English-speaking contacts and the breakdown of the close-knit network structure which is an important factor in language maintenance (see Milroy, 1980).

There is, however, one domain in which the use of Welsh has actually increased over the years, and that is education. Ironically, the language of the school has always been at odds with that of the community. During the nineteenth century, when Pont-rhyd-y-fen was predominantly Welsh-speaking, the school's attitude towards Welsh was very intolerant. Some of my oldest informants told me that their parents were beaten for speaking Welsh among themselves. The headmaster looked upon Welsh as a `great difficulty' to be overcome, and congratulated himself whenever his scholars made progress `despite the prevalence of Welsh in the neighbourhood'. However, by the turn of the century, the attitudes of the authorities had softened, especially following the setting up of the Welsh Department of the Board of Education in 1907. Use was made of Welsh in teaching the infants' classes, but instruction in the junior school remained entirely in English apart from half an hour of Welsh reading each week, and six weeks of frantic preparation for a St. David's Day concert page_19 Page 20 each year. For this occasion they were taught Welsh songs, by a Welsh-speaking teacher giving instructions in English. Pupils were not taught to write in their native language, and many of the community's older Welsh speakers, though fluent in the language, have difficulty in dealing with Welsh in its written form to this day. From 1928 onwards, following the publication of the official report Welsh in Education and Life the previous year, teaching through the medium of Welsh in Pont-rhyd-y-fen's Infants' school became official policy. However, many of those who were at school during this period considered this as a handicap rather than an advantage. Instruction in the Junior school remained exclusively English, and many felt that they had insufficient time to get used to the new medium before trying the scholarship examination for grammar school at the age of 11. Lack of proficiency in English was a cause of real anxiety during the 1930s, when chances of local employment were few, and the only prospect of self-advancement was through migration or education. Previous generations, on leaving school, had been more or less guaranteed work locally, in a Welsh speaking environment. For those leaving school during the Depression years, the economic value of English could not be ignored. A low evaluation of Welsh led to many parents speaking English to their children. As far as the language of education was concerned, there were no further developments until the 1950s. The first Welsh medium primary school was a private venture, opened in Aberystwyth in 1939. Due to its success, state-run Welsh medium schools followed in the 1940s and 1950s. In the Port Talbot district, the provision of bilingual education had been in diffused pockets, Pont-rhyd-y-fen being one of its strong points. Falling school rolls thus made Pont-rhyd-y-fen the obvious choice for the location of a Welsh-medium primary school for the whole of the Afan valley. In 1954, Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Pont-rhyd-y-fen was opened in the former Infants school building, sharing a site with the English-medium Pont-rhyd-y-fen County Primary School. Thirty years on, it can be asked what effect the establishment of the Welsh school has had on language shift in Pont-rhyd-y-fen. The answer is very little. At the time of its opening, Pont-rhyd-y-fen was still a predominantly Welsh speaking community. 76% of its population in 1951 could speak Welsh. The school log book for 1953 shows that 60% of the Junior school pupils were Welsh-speaking, and a further 20% understood a little Welsh. Census statistics for the Pont-rhyd-y-fen area in 1981 show that only 16% of those under 16 years old were able to speak Welsh. The main reason for the Welsh school's ineffectiveness has been the page_20 Page 21 community's unwillingness to accept it. The village was, and still is, deeply divided on the issue of the Welsh school. In a meeting held prior to its establishment, representatives of the local education authority had tried to no avail to allay parents fears that Welsh medium education would disadvantage their children. But the issue was further complicated by the authority's original intention of taking over the whole school. This would have meant that Pont-rhyd-y-fen children who did not wish to attend the Welsh school would have had to attend school in the next village, while children from outside Pont-rhyd-y-fen would come to the Welsh school. The reactions to this threat are best shown by quoting one of the Welsh school's opponents: `The Welsh school has taken over Pont-rhyd-y-fen school. I've never agreed with that. It wasn't fair at all. All my family went to Pont-rhyd-y-fen school. Well, everybody who lived in the village did. And they wanted to close it, you know. Oh, it wasn't fair! They wanted everything for themselves. They wanted Pont-rhyd-y-fen children to go up to Ton-mawr or down to Cwmafan. And the school had been for the village! And everyone that didn't live in the village, they were the ones coming to the school. Oh no, I didn't believe in that at all'.

Note that Pont-rhyd-y-fen school and the Welsh school are not synonymous. The Welsh school was looked upon by many as something forced on the community from outside. Though the Welsh language seems to be an obvious part of Pont-rhyd-y-fen's identity as a community, the Welsh school was perceived by many villagers as being a threat to that identity, because it drew in people from outside. Although the threat of taking over the whole school did not materialise, the majority of Pont-rhyd-y-fen children chose, from the outset, to attend the English-medium school. As the numbers in the Welsh school increased, both the number and proportion of pupils from the village decreased. By 1958, the majority of the pupils came from outside Pont-rhyd-y-fen. Many of them in the early years were children of middle-class parents a fact which fuelled resentment at losing part of the village school to outsiders. These are no longer as obvious an element in the school's population as they once were, the pupils now being drawn from a wide cross-section of social backgrounds. Yet over a quarter of a century since its establishment, the Welsh school is no more popular with the people of Pont-rhydy-fen. While the Welsh school continues to grow, only 7% of its pupils in 1984 were from the village. What influence has the Welsh school had on those from Pont-rhydpage_21 Page 22 y-fen who have attended it? A side effect has been the splitting of the already sparse local networks of the young people of the community into two groups `Englishies and Welshies'. Welsh school pupils tend to socialise with school friends outside school hours, rather than with contemporaries from the English school. One young informant told me: `They didn't accept us, and we weren't willing to accept them... They thought that there was something different in us, and we thought there was something different in them because they went to the English school. And that's how we've grown up now.' Ironically the language of interaction in both groups is English. Though the majority of the Welsh school's pupils in the 1950s came from Welsh-speaking families, children from a Welsh-speaking background are now in a small minority. Welsh is looked upon as the language of school instruction, and is mainly restricted to the classroom. Outside the school, the influence of the English-speaking environments of home and community prevail. The majority of pupils at Ysgol Gymraeg Pont-rhyd-y-fen continue their education at a Welsh-medium comprehensive school at the head of the Swansea Valley, about 15 miles away. With the exception of scientific subjects, they are expected to follow their courses through the medium of Welsh. For some pupils, this presents difficulties which are compounded by a lack of motivation. This seems to be a particular problem in the case of the boys who opt for technical rather than academic subjects, and arises from the fact that there is little opportunity to make use of Welsh technical vocabulary on finding employment. To quote one teenage boy: `If I'd done history in English, I might have liked it. But in Welsh, it was just too much, mun. And geography too... Oh and woodwork and metalwork, because of the terms. Awful! I tried metalwork `O' level. If I'd done it in English I might have passed it. But not in Welsh. There's somebody sitting somewhere making up those terms, just making them up.' Difficulties in maintaining the use of Welsh on leaving school are many. For the majority, the classroom is the only domain in which they make regular use of Welsh. For those who find employment locally on leaving school, this domain is lost and not replaced. The majority, however, do not remain in Pont-rhyd-y-fen. Less than a fifth of those from Pont-rhyd-y-fen admitted to the Welsh school between 1954 and 1964 (those who would now be of child-bearing age) still live in the community. page_22 Page 23

Figure 2. Michaelston Higher 1981, percentage of each age group able to speak Welsh A number of former pupils have found employment in education, entertainment and the media, finding themselves in working environments where they can make use of their Welsh both professionally and socially. Work of this kind, however, is not usually found locally, so they do not continue to live in the community and help maintain a Welsh-speaking element in Pont-rhyd-y-fen itself. Those who have found the Welsh language to be of social and economic advantage are those who have pursued their careers elsewhere, contributing to what has been described as `an emerging breed of Welsh yuppies' (Aitchison & Carter, 1985: 43). On the broader scale, the success of Pont-rhyd-y-fen Welsh School cannot be denied. It has given a degree of bilingualism to a whole generation of children from the Port Talbot area who would otherwise have not experienced Welsh language and culture. It has not, however, succeeded in stemming the tide of anglicisation in the community in which it is situated. Its powerlessness is due to the antipathy of the community towards it, and to the overwhelming pressures of the wider English-speaking society to which Pont-rhyd-y-fen now belongs. The changes this community have undergone since the 1930s are reflected in the age distribution of its Welsh speakers (see Figure 2). Most of Pont-rhyd-y-fen's Welsh speakers are over 60 years of age, raised in the close-knit mining community that existed before the war. They use Welsh widely among themselves, but for the majority, Welsh is confined to interaction within the community. Their contact with other varieties is page_23 Page 24 limited, and their own variety held in very low esteem. Words used to describe the local dialect include `slang', `half and half', `pidgin Welsh', `Double Dutch', and `Ours isn't pure Welsh, is it?', the underlying theme being shame at the presence of English loanwords. There is, however, a minority who are less restricted in their use of Welsh. By virtue of their active involvement in chapel and other cultural activities, or contacts made through children who have become part of the Welsh establishment, they have become members of a wider network of Welsh speakers. These people are in frequent contact with other varieties of Welsh, and are able to style-shift. Ironically, it is they who are most aware of the value of the local dialect. In all the younger age groups, Welsh speakers are in a minority. These were of marrying age, raising families, and embarking on careers from the 1950s onwards, in a period of social change and broadening of outlook. Few Welsh speakers under fifty have married locally, fewer still have married Welsh speakers, and few have passed Welsh on to their children. None of them, to my knowledge, speak Welsh with contemporaries in Pont-rhydy-fen. Even with Welsh school pupils, Welsh is mainly confined to school and infrequent interactions with villagers of their grandparents' generation. They are sometimes unaware of the ability of some of their parents' generation to speak Welsh. The variety of Welsh spoken by them reflects the dialect of the Swansea Valley, where their secondary school is situated, rather than the local dialect. The only thing they have in common with the older generation is a low evaluation of their own speech: `We've got a Welsh accent when we speak English and an English accent when we speak Welsh.' To summarise, Pont-rhyd-y-fen survived the waves of in-migration in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a Welsh-speaking community, mainly because English speakers did not settle there in sufficient numbers. Although the educational system and the low economic value of Welsh led to bilingualism from an early stage in the community's development, the minority language was maintained by the existence of a diglossic situation, whereby the home, neighbourhood, chapel and workplace remained Welsh language domains. Language shift was brought about by the social transformations which have affected the community since the war. Counteractive measures, such as Welsh-medium education, have not been able to change the

basic cause of language shift, namely the disintegration of the dense, multiplex and localised network structure which is an important mechanism of language maintenance. Traditional Welsh language domains are either on the verge of disappearing, or have shifted to English as their location and participants have changed. I am page_24 Page 25 afraid that the attitude of many of the post-war generation in Pont-rhyd-y-fen can be summed up by the following quotation: `I don't think my Welsh is at all good. It could be better, but there's no need for it to be. People who speak to me, they can speak English, can't they? I don't think about language much.... It's only a means of communication, that's all. Pure and simple. I don't think about it all.... All the other countries are trying to learn English, aren't they? And we're lucky, we get it for nothing. That's the way I look at it. Everything in the world is in English. And that's good enough for me.' Notes to Chapter 2 1. These and other census statistics given in this chapter for Pont-rhyd-y-fen refer to the civil parish of Michaelston Higher, the administrative unit which most closely corresponds to Pont-rhyd-y-fen as a community. There is, however, a small part of Pont-rhyd-y-fen which lies across the river Afan in another, much larger administrative unit, and which therefore cannot be included in the statistics. 2. Language statistics are not available at parish level before 1921. However, for the censuses of 1841 to 1881, the original manuscript enumerators' books were available for consultation at Glamorgan County Record Office. These books give the parish of birth of each individual resident in the community at the time of each census, making it possible to measure life-time migration. For a fuller account of the 1851 and 1881 data, see Thomas (forthcoming). 3. The oral evidence presented in this chapter is drawn from tape-recorded interviews of a stratified sample of 55 of Pont-rhyd-y-fen's native Welsh speakers. All of the interviews were conducted in Welsh. Quotations included in this chapter are therefore my translations of the original Welsh. 4. The log book of Pont-rhyd-y-fen Mixed and Infants Schools (1866-1903), and that of the Junior Department of the Mixed School (1903-1957), are available for consultation at Glamorgan County Record Office. The log book of the Infants Department (1907-1954), and that of Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Pont-rhyd-y-fen (1954-1983), are still in the possession of the Welsh school's head-master. 5. All statistics regarding the population of Pont-rhyd-y-fen's schools are taken from their admissions registers, which are in the possession of the present headmasters, and which cover a period from 1870 to the present day. 6. These and other statistics for the community in 1981 are taken from census small area statistics, available at enumeration district level, and accessed using the generalised computer package SASPAC. page_25 Page 26 References AITCHISON, J. & CARTER, H. 1985, The Welsh Language 1961-1981: An Interpretative Atlas. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. BOARD OF EDUCATION 1927, Welsh in Education and Life. London: HMSO. MILROY, L. 1980, Language and Social Networks. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. THOMAS, B. forthcoming, Accounting for language shift in a South Wales mining community. Cardiff Working Papers in Welsh Linguistics, 5. WILLIAMS, D. 1950, A History of Modern Wales. London: John Murray. page_26

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3 Scottish Gaelic The Present Situation William Gillies Abstract. The Scottish Gaelic-speaking area has contracted substantially over the last couple of centuries and is now centred on the Western Isles, though Gaelic speakers can still be found scattered throughout the Highlands, and indeed beyond the traditional Gàidhealtachd. A number of spoken dialects exist; and where Gaelic is strongest a range of speech registers is in use. Various changes are affecting the language, both at the grammatical level and in register status and choice. Gaelic-English bilingualism is an important element in the speech-continuum, and, from the point of view of Gaelic, the most pervasive destabilising factor. English both competes with Gaelic and infiltrates it. Recent years have seen more effective measures aimed at stabilising the bilingual situation, especially in the Western Isles, and some tangible successes have resulted, though some sold problems remain and some new ones have surfaced. Like other minority languages Gaelic is endangered. There is little room for wasted effort and false starts. Comparative theoretical and practical insights must be utilised to maximise effectiveness. In fact Gaelic has been unduly neglected by linguists and would repay more intensive study. As I understand it I am permitted, indeed encouraged, to offer you both facts and judgements regarding the present circumstances and prospects of Scottish Gaelic. As it happens, a good number of interesting developments have been taking place in the Gaelic context over the past few years. Getting these developments across to you is another matter, since they include many which are either ongoing, or at least not sufficiently distanced from us to enable them to be pondered, sifted and reduced to a definitive précis; at any rate the task has proved formidable to this scholar. Moreover, the space available is challengingly short. In attempting page_27 Page 28 to meet that challenge I have been forced to cut a few corners; I hope that hindsight will not convict me of having distorted the picture unduly by what I now venture to emphasise or omit. I propose to start with the briefest evocation of some salient aspects of the external history of the language, and to look then at the language itself and at its relationship with English. This will lead to a review of some ways in which people have attempted to alter the terms of that relationship in favour of Gaelic in recent times, and to an appraisal of their effectiveness. Finally I shall attempt to describe certain potential weaknesses I see in the Scottish Gaelic context, and to suggest to you that if we are to tackle them realistically we shall require to take our cue from people with comparative experience or theoretical insights to offer. In my choice of themes and examples to highlight I have tried to be mindful that there are at least two different sorts of interest involved: the linguists and sociologists who wish to know more about how languages and their speakers behave; and those whose prime care and responsibility is to improve the fortunes of an individual minority language. I hope that what I have to say will be of interest to both sorts. To set the ball rolling, let me start by reminding you that Scottish Gaelic is nowadays spoken by an estimated 80,000 or so people. They are almost all native speakers of the language (rather than learners); and they are all, or virtually all, pretty competent speakers of English. Gaelic speakers form a substantial to overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the Outer Hebrides Barra, South Uist, Benbecula, North Uist, Harris and Lewis where geographical remoteness and crofting legislation have combined to keep down the numbers of incomers and holiday homes. A substantial minority of our Gaelic speakers are found outwith this `true Gàidhealtachd', in communities to a greater or lesser extent diluted by depopulation or the advent of non-Gaelic speaking settlers. They may be found in the Inner Isles and in scattered localities on the mainland from Durness in the far north down to South Argyll; they may also be found, in considerable numbers, in the Lowland cities. (For details regarding these points see the 1971 and 1981 Census Reports; MacKinnon, 1978 and 1984; Withers, 1983.) Historically speaking, of course, Gaelic was once much more widely spoken. For a relatively short period of time in the Middle Ages Gaelic speakers could be found throughout modern Scotland, and even down into the north-western corner of what is now England. The `Highland Line' which in more recent times marked the linguistic boundary between Gaelic and Scots took in all the central Highlands and Argyll, Wester page_28

Page 29 Ross and Sutherland, right down to the present century. Indeed the Linguistic Survey of Scotland, which started collecting only in the early 1950's, has been able to obtain Gaelic speakers from as far east as Braemar and as far south as Arran and Kintyre. (Jackson, 1958; for earlier times cf. MacKinnon, 1974; Murison, 1974 and 1979; Withers, 1984.) This period of decline for Gaelic has been punctuated, at least since the reign of King James VI and I, by deliberate and sustained official attempts to break the Gaelic language, either by inducing Gaels to speak English or by squeezing the Gaelic speakers right out of the Highlands. The legacy of this longstanding animus is still with us. From the point of view of Gaels, it has manifested itself over the years in a war of attrition between a passionate devotion to the language of one's forefathers, homeland and childhood, and an equally strong motivation to escape from it as a bar to success and fulfilment. From the point of view of non-Gaels, it has meant a tension between racial or ethnic suspicion and antagonism, and, as `we' came gradually to include more and more of `them' a stake in the Highlands for all, at the level of Scottish national mythology. (See Chapman, 1978; Durkacz, 1983.) The upshot of these factors, which I must leave here in the form of bald assertions, is that the Gaelic language is not a neutral commodity. As a Lowland nurse in a Glasgow health clinic put it to a relative of mine recently, `No wonder the wee laddie's covered in spots when you speak that funny language to him!' It is true, and we shall return to this point in greater detail in a moment, that educational policy in the Gàidhealtachd has in recent years recognised the social and psychological dimensions bound up with the speaking of Gaelic, and attempted to neutralise the potential for angst or trauma which the Gaelic-English inter-face has presented in the past. Moreover, despite occasional pronouncements to the contrary, available academic research indicates that at present the people of Scotland in general tend to wish Gaelic well and would assent to its being better supported officially and to instruction in Gaelic being more widely available to those who wish to learn it or have their children learn it (MacKinnon, 1981). Yet despite these generally encouraging signs and there are others besides I must close this section by reminding you that in terms of official status we have to cope with the legal opinion, reiterated from the Bench not long ago, that in the eyes of the Courts to speak Gaelic is tantamount to remaining silent. Of the recognised political parties only the Scottish National Party has anything like a coherent policy for Gaelic. page_29 Page 30 As recently as 1981 a parliamentary Private Member's Bill aimed at establishing a legal standing for Gaelic was talked out with the connivance of Government and Opposition. The debate was distinguished by the ministerial comment that the language was doing very nicely on the basis of an official subvention of the order of fifty thousand pounds per annum to An Comunn Gàidhealach. (An Comunn is the body best known to most people as the organiser of the annual National Mòd or musical festival.) By comparison with our fellow Celtic-speakers from Ireland and Wales we have a long way to go in terms of official support for the language. And I am sure my readers will know all too well what I mean when I say that at the purely linguistic level Gaelic is under manifold and ceaseless pressure from its big neighbour English. Gaelic has had, and continues to have, its champions; and we shall return to them directly. But their campaigns and battles tend to be defensive rather than offensive ones: their task is one of trying to protect an eroding coastline against the ceaseless battering of a powerful sea. Turning now to the language `itself', I am reminded of the remark attributed to the late Professor Angus Matheson who, when asked if he would prepare a Scottish Gaelic grammar, is supposed to have replied laconically, `Which Gaelic?'. For Scottish Gaelic contains not only a keenly perceived diversity of territorially based dialects, but also, at least where the language is regularly used, a healthy proliferation of sociolects or speech-registers involving such terms as age, sex and status of speaker and audience; subject-matter; occasion; and so on (cf. MacKinnon, 1977; MacAulay, 1978; Gleasure, 1983). Now some of the distinctions we employ to contrast the usage of dialects or registers may also be viewed as `conservative' or `progressive', on a scale involving development through time. That is to say, we can identify certain developments which are working their way through the system the language as a whole at varying pace. Learners of Scottish Gaelic come hard up against this dynamic quality of the language in matters like the treatment of complex noun phrases, where the diversity of usage they encounter may well appear to defy rational explanation; yet when one knows the correct frame of reference to apply it is not too difficult to diagnose the underlying motivation in this case the dismantling of a system of suffixed case-inflections and to identify main lines of development which will predict the majority of the occurring forms and account for all, or almost all of them. (Thus the rules for a Lewis dialect are given by MacAulay (1978: 87-88).) Reverting to the synchronic perspective we may note that, in addition

page_30 Page 31 to features relevant to the whole gamut of Gaelic dialects and registers, developments of a more local sort, or confined to a particular stratum, are also perfectly familiar, though painfully under-researched. (Cf. MacAulay, 1979, especially pp. 131-32; MacAulay's own contributions are both an inspiring exception to this general dearth, and an indication of the richness of the untapped material.) Thus, for example, the morphophonemic rules seem to be under pressure when one finds what I would categorise as `younger-generation Hebridean Gaelic' an fhear for am fear `the man', where an fhear shows the mutation traditionally associated with feminine gender (cf. MacAulay, 1978: 88 and references cited at n. 14). Similarly one meets with examples of non-lenition after prepositions which historically, traditionally and `normally' are attended by lenition: e.g. bho taigh gu taigh `from house to house' (where bho is a leniting preposition), dha Dòmhnall (`to Donald', where do/dha is a leniting preposition). This sort of thing still excites indignation on the part of more conservative speakers, especially when it surfaces in print; Thomson's strictures at the first meeting of this Conference (1980: 18) are by no means the strongest I have encountered. Yet I would stress that we are dealing here not with isolated speakers of terminal dialects, but with habitual and fluent speakers in the heartland of the Gàidhealtachd. Whatever processes and tendencies underlie these developments which MacAulay (forthcoming) assumes under the heading `Nua-Ghàidhlig' (`New Gaelic') it is pretty clear that they will have a part to play in whatever the future holds for the language. To take an example from a different area, it is noticeable that, for whatever reason, Gaelic-speaking children seem today to be less given to the use of the `polite' second person plural form when addressing their elders, than were their predecessors ten or twenty year ago. And more generally, although the patterns which will impose themselves in the future are not yet sufficiently clear for one to lay down the law about them, it is obvious that important adjustments are taking place as between the several speech registers, in the context of changing social circumstances, employment patterns, and so on (cf. MacAulay 1978: 93-4, and 1982a). It seems to me that these are most noticeable at the communal, public, `high' end of the register scale, that they reflect the decline of an old set of linguistic conventions built around traditional reference points for respect and authority, and that there is at present something of a vacuum waiting to be filled. If one may hazard a guess, it could be that the media represent the most likely focus for future development. Certainly the broadcasters are well-placed, if anyone is, to give a lead, by virtue of their power to reach the whole Gaelic-speaking population; their daily exposure to the different varieties of Gaelic; and their professional role page_31 Page 32 as communicators, which requires them to become as it were linguistic brokers for the rest of us; not to mention the fact that they are in the front line when it comes to expressing the complexities of current affairs in intelligible Gaelic form. It is true that we find an `older generation' reaction here, to the effect that `people nowadays don't know how to speak Gaelic in public'; and indeed one can easily enough extract examples of inconsistency, compounded of neologisms, dialectalisms, and the odd hyper-correct form, from the average interview or current affairs programme. But I think one could also argue that what we are hearing at present is in effect the birth-pangs of a new supra-dialectal register; at any rate one can cite examples of fresh coinages, or fresh applications of existing usages, or of strictly local forms attaining currency beyond their traditional locus, which have become established in the parlance of broadcasters and of interviewees over the past few years. It was interesting to note possible parallels to this experience amongst the information we received earlier in the Conference from the representatives of Radio na Gaeltachta in Ireland. One sees a slightly different resolution taking place in environments where Gaelic is less strong. Here the common denominator seems to be more a matter of jettisoning linguistic ballast cutting out the resonance and flexibility and nuance in order to keep an attenuated one-register form of speech alive e.g. in limited speechsituations or subject-domains (cf. Dressler, 1973: 50-51). The precise circumstances of individual communities have varied widely, of course, with differing results for the language. In some localities a relatively rich and conservative strain of Gaelic ceased to be passed on to children fairly abruptly within living memory, and one can now see that strain dying away with most of its richness intact as speakers born before the `shut off' point die away. In others, and perhaps more typically in Gaelic-speaking areas closer to the historical periphery of the Gàidhealtachd, one finds clearer evidence of impoverishment and `corruption' of the language i.e. the symptoms of language death as studied by Dorian (1973, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1981) and others. (One should perhaps add, in connection with the question of simplification in such dialects, that on the one hand this has been a feature of many of the more easterly mainland Gaelic dialects since long before the vitality of Gaelic became endangered there cf. Watson, 1925-27: 313-14 while on the other hand there are examples cf. Ó Murchú, 1976 of the development of new complexities in areas where Gaelic has been in decline.)

If one considers the various movements, tremors and subsidences that are affecting Gaelic it is clear that the proximity of English is by far page_32 Page 33 the most important destabilising factor. The ways in which English affects Gaelic may be divided crudely into two main sorts of impact one direct and the other indirect. Direct impact, or frontal assault, occurs where the two languages have come into direct competition for a given domain, and English wins the ground. The other type of impact is the result of infiltrations, where English words, syntactic patterns, or whatever, have smuggled themselves into the language. I shall comment briefly on these two sorts of impact in turn. We have come a long way from the linguistic situation of even a hundred years ago, when substantial and significant numbers of Gaelic speakers could be found who were either truly ignorant of English, or effectively monoglot, speaking English only in a very limited way, and only when addressing English monoglots. It is true that bilingualism was well-established at the upper levels of Highland society (where, indeed, members of the aristocracy and gentry remained Gaelic speaking) well before that time. And it is true that there were `front-line' areas like the fringes of the Highlands, towns, fishing-stations, railheads and tourist resorts, where Gaels received more prolonged exposure to non-Gaels and to the English language. Yet it is really only in the last century that English has become part of the common or majority experience in the Highlands as a whole, which I take to be the crucial precondition for substantial shifts in language loyalty. Whereas the nineteenth century Gael may have been motivated to learn English as a means to escape from depression and poverty in the Highlands, or as the key to social advancement through education, our own century has seen some extra trumps added to the hand of English. They tend to work by inducement rather than coercion nowadays, but they are not the less efficacious for that. For instance, the Highlands have not been exempt from the world-wide penetration of commercialism and the media, with the result that Gaelic speakers find themselves watching `Dallas' or `Dynasty' or whatever happens to be at the top of the glamour hierarchy in a given area and a good number, perhaps even a majority, would do so even if there were a Gaelic soap opera on the other channel. Similarly, the children of Gaelic speakers are as vulnerable as the next man's to the imperatives of the hit parade of `popular' music. The trouble is that these areas are strategic in the sense that people discuss them and use them as a source of allusion and tend to use English to do so. In short, they are beachheads for English in the home, traditionally the stronghold of Gaelic. On another tack, English has successfully taken on board the international language of commerce and technology, if indeed it has not become the source of it; at any rate it is the medium through page_33 Page 34 which countless technical vocabularies come to the Highland entrepreneur, chemist, typist, skipper, mechanic or whatever. The trouble here is that life is too short for most people to spend working out Gaelic equivalents to technical jargon which serves to get the job done and happens to be in English. That, I take it, is why one so often sees letters written by Gaelic speakers to Gaelic speakers in which the courtesies are expressed in Gaelic but the meat the size of the print run or the legal objections or whatever is in English. That is why meetings of Gaelic speakers to discuss the state of the Church Hall roof or the line of the new road, whenever they get down to business, have so often been punctuated by `ma dh'fhaodas sinn tionndadh chun na cànain eile' (`if we may turn to the other language'). That, I take it, is why Highland sheep-dogs have in some areas at least tended to receive the commands that matter in English (or rather Scots) and not in Gaelic. (This doubtless goes back, in part at least, to the Lowland shepherds who accompanied the `Great Sheep' north during the period of the Clearances.) Here the trouble is that phenomena of this sort reinforce one another, insinuate an unspoken belief in the inadequacy of Gaelic, and create a scenario in which English comes to seem the best bet in doubtful areas, and Gaelic the `marked' choice. Thus there are speech situations and subjects which bring the average Hebridean out in English today, which would not have done so with his counterpart a generation ago. (I shall be referring to `backlash' in a moment: and I would stress once again the term `average'.) In practice, of course, matters are not as clear-cut as I have made them out to be. The battle lines shift and wheel, and one must allow for a corridor of `no man's land' evidence for which may be found in the phenomenon of bilingual conversations where the participants switch from Gaelic to English and back to Gaelic again with the agility of mountain goats on the peaks, at the prompting of rules which we have hardly begun to explore. But the prevailing direction of underlying pressure may be symbolised by the fairly widespread practice of glossing in basically Gaelic conversations i.e. using both English and Gaelic (MacAulay 1978: 90, and 1982b; cf. Cram, 1981). Here the basic dyseconomy of saying something twice suggests an unstable situation; and the fact that the converse phenomenon of Gaelic glossing English does not occur anything like as noticeably suggests an unspoken uncertainty about the standing of Gaelic, and its competency to frame

free-standing statements. The process of language dilution, or infiltration, is intimately bound up with the phenomena we have been describing. I have attempted to discuss its impact on Gaelic at slightly greater length elsewhere (Gillies, 1980) and need mention only a couple of points here. Whereas Gaelic page_34 Page 35 has been taking English (or Scots) loanwords on board for centuries, it is noticeable that English speech-habits have penetrated rather further into the fabric of the language in the last hundred years or so. Note, for instance, the extent to which English verb + preposition constructions can simply be taken over by Gaelic nowadays: cha d'fhuair mi troimhe (`I didn't get through (on the phone)'), and so on. Many of these would have been meaningless to monoglot Gaelic speakers of the last century: now they come tripping off our tongues, aided on their progress from intelligible to standard by our shared fluency in English. This is a dangerous sort of dependency. Again, we are nowadays pretty proficient at hi-jacking English verbs into Gaelic by adding an -ig suffix. `React-ig mi', `Hooverig mi', `Bhootstrap-ig mi' and similar. Signs of life in the old language yet, you may say, since it can rise to the challenge of new vocabulary in this way. But I suspect that one of the reasons for the attractiveness of these verbs is that we are seeking to express our view of events and processes in subject-centred terms appropriate to English at the expense of situation-centred expressions historically and traditionally more typical in Gaelic: dh'explode-ig mi (`I exploded') or phanic-ig mi (`I panicked'), as opposed to a locution in which anger or fear `hit me' or `came over me'. As the older generation would put it, we are losing our Gaelic idioms; and the point that strikes me about all this is the danger that Gaelic may end up becoming a ghost language. `Change-idh mi na plate-ichean'; `Hoover-ig mi an carpet sa' lobby'; `Tha sinn a' vote-adh airson president'. What sort of a language is this? And I do not mean that in any aesthetic sense either; for loanwords, once naturalised, can become full and worthy citizens of their adoptive language. My concern is at a more basic level than that: if the load-bearing words in one's conversations become English to a sufficient degree, does there not come a point at which the remaining Gaelic syntactic framework becomes `odd' and hence liable to abandonment in favour of English, which is waiting in the wings all the time? And is not the cumulation of such little abandonments what language death, at the `micro' level, is all about? I know that a healthily functioning language can play the boa constrictor to get on the outside of massive doses of material from another language. English has managed it more than once. But I sometimes sense that present-day Gaelic is showing signs of indigestion; and my worry is that the market forces of linguistic choice may cause its speakers in time to abandon a language which ceases to have its own perspective on the world and becomes a mere Doppelgänger of another. Having indicated some of the pressures which combine to make life hard for Gaelic at present I wish to stress immediately that many Gaels page_35 Page 36 have been alive to the dangers over a long period and have taken steps to try to check them. It could be argued that Gaelic would be in a far worse position, if indeed it had any position at all, were it not for the work of men who saw the need to stem the tide, whether they would have classed themselves as language purists or politicians, educationalists or just thinking Gaels. I see the beginnings of this away back in the time of the Land League and in the controversy surrounding the 1872 Education Act; and I would trace it back ultimately to the same access of Gaelic self-consciousness and self-esteem which led to rent-strikes, land raids, and the promise of land law reform in the 1870s and 1880s (cf. Gillies, forthcoming). For my money, far and away the most important thing to have happened for Gaelic in recent years has been the designation of the Outer Hebrides as a free-standing local authority, as a result of the regional reorganisation of the mid-1970's. The advent of Comhairle nan Eilean, `The Western Isles Islands Council', meant that for the first time (in modern centuries at least) the Outer Hebrides would be administered together and on their own, where previously they had been split up and formed a series of remote appendices to different old-style county councils, each of whose centre of gravity was firmly on the mainland. The new `most purposes' Island authority was now required to provide the various social services, and especially education, in an area which included most of the strongest Gaelic-speaking communities. As regards Gaelic this was no small opportunity, challenge and responsibility. The Comhairle decided in April, 1975 to adopt a policy of bilingualism, and has subsequently clarified its intentions as follows: `The general aim of the Council's policy is ''that the Western Isles should be a fundamentally bilingual community in which Gaelic and English are used concurrently as the languages of communication, so that the people of the area can have the choice of language in as many situations as possible".'

(Comhairle nan Eilean, 1982; the Gaelic version concludes with the stronger formulation `in every situation'.) I believe that their efforts and results deserve admiration and commendation in general, though there have inevitably been some specific frustrations and disappointments. Of central importance was the Bilingual Education Project. Those concerned with implementing Comhairle nan Eilean's avowed commitment to the Gaelic language were forced to recognise at the outset that the existing educational framework would not suffice to stem the decline in Gaelic speaking amongst children, not least because formal schooling had page_36 Page 37 long since come to be associated with anglicisation. The idea of education taking place even in part through the medium of Gaelic, as was now mooted, was variously regarded as impracticable or, if practicable, undesirable. Indeed, there were problems in plenty: an absence of teaching and reading materials; a spectrum of language proficiency in any given classroom, ranging from strong Gaelic/weak English to weak Gaelic/strong English; a general lack of information about the methods and objectives of bilingual education; a spectrum of attitudes on the part of those who would be called on to learn and practice the new skills, including resistance to some of the educational concepts which underpinned the practical methods now being recommended; and above all a social set-up in which communal expectations from schooling were clear-cut and hard to change: school was considered to be a child's first taste of a harsh outside world and should be so because it had always been so. (On all these points, and on the Project in general, see Murray & Morrison, 1985.) Looking back over the ten years since the Project began to work its way up through the primary schools gives an interesting perspective. Some of the original problems appear to have been eliminated, some remain, and some new ones have arisen. First and foremost, the Project would have stood a pretty slender chance of success had it been conceived in isolation. Here the crucial factor, as I see it, was the fact that Comhairle nan Eilean, as a new authority, had a certain freedom for manoeuvre which might not have been available to a continuing bureaucracy. It had attracted back to the Islands some of the talented professional people whom the Islands have traditionally exported permanently. Some imaginative appointments were made in the educational sphere, and those chosen were given their head. As a result the Bilingual Education Project got under way at a time when other cultural regeneration projects were being promoted, offering the possibility of mutual support and interaction in the interlocking tasks of re-educating children, parents and teachers, together with beneficial contacts with experts from overseas to whom some of the Gaelic problems were familiar and even soluble. There was also an admirably practical even improvisatory approach to the problems. For instance, it was obvious that to stimulate and retain the enthusiasm of pupils and teachers, one had to have suitable reading material in Gaelic. `Suitable' would have to be defined in terms of the linguistic state and potential of the children in the context of their own experience and local environment, and in terms of the teachers' philosophy and aspirations. Given these conditions, the Bilingual Education Project team could not but recognise that for their purposes existing page_37 Page 38 materials were nil, and the likelihood of their being procured commercially were nil. So they moved into publishing, first with help from An Comunn Gàidhealach, and later through the creation of Acair, an ad hoc publishing house based in Stornoway, with the express primary remit of fulfilling the Gaelic publishing needs of its major customer, the local education authority i.e. Comhairle nan Eilean. I see these and other initiatives encouraged or sponsored by the Comhairle as reflecting a genuine and continuing effort to live up to its commitment to Gaelic within the limitations imposed by the need to run the region in difficult times. And there are some positively encouraging signs to report. For instance, if I may venture a gross generalization, I believe it is true to say that more Gaelic speakers are prepared to speak Gaelic openly e.g. to strangers, or in shops in Stornoway, or in Glasgow airport, or in other areas of exposure to the `outside world' than was the case ten or fifteen years ago. In other words, the traditionally clearcut public/private split between English and Gaelic is, in at least some environments, breaking down in a way that favours Gaelic. That, at least, has been my experience, both personally and through the reports of learners of Gaelic whose fortunes I have monitored over the period in question. Again, there is an increasing number of new communal occasions or venues where Gaelic is the norm, or at least has the dice loaded in its favour. I refer here to locally organised and patronised festivals, community centres, playgroups, co-operatives and so on. I would emphasise here the important role of educated younger Gaels with a positive commitment to the language, for whom jobs created by these new initiatives represent an

opportunity to remain in or return to the Gàidhealtachd: their presence can exercise an influence out of proportion to their numbers, in that they have a high profile in communities where in the past social leadership would have been associated to a damaging extent with incomers and the English language. The fact that one sometimes hears them semi-seriously described as `the Gaelic Mafia' could lead to a variety of inferences; but it at least bears witness to their collective impact on the community. I would also stress my use of the qualification `local' to describe cultural initiatives and events, in view of Professor Markey's no doubt justified association of `festivalising' with language death. Needless to say, Scotland can also provide instances of festivalising of the sort which celebrates Gaelic rather than using it; I sincerely hope there is a valid distinction to be drawn here. Again, with specific reference to the schools, time has brought a page_38 Page 39 measure of relaxation and assurance to people's attitudes towards bilingual education. Some who were originally doubtful are now enthusiastic; there is a more general perception that standard of academic attainment is a separate question from that of the language or languages of instruction. And the methods pioneered in the Western Isles are now being piloted in Highland Region. As I indicated earlier, however, some problems remain, and some new ones have materialised. For example, given that the bilingual principle has been established at the primary level, secondary education, with its greater degree of specialisation and need to conform to nationally set norms of curriculum and attainment within tightly defined timescales, remains a pretty intractable problem. Efforts are being made to develop Celtic Studies and to enhance the status of Gaelic as a subject within the curriculum, and (quite distinct) as the medium for instruction within that subject. But difficulties of staffing, teaching materials, and, for some purposes, the resources of the language itself as spoken by teachers and pupils, mean that we are far from being able to offer secondary training `through the medium' on a recognised basis in the way that Welsh and Irish are so used. There is currently some pressure for an all-Gaelic secondary school in Lewis, but apart from all other considerations the linguistic problems are quite formidable. Again, the last ten years have seen increasing pressure on local authority spending in the U.K. However well-disposed an authority may be towards Gaelic, Gaelic cannot be protected from all the cuts all the time; this has affected equally such matters as staffing, transport, provision of books and teaching aids, and resources for development. Again, the unity of the Western Isles as an administrative unit masks differences in tradition, symbolised by such basic facts as religious persuasion, which have actually been highlighted by regional reorganisation. Stornoway (the administrative centre) can appear quite remote to Barra, and vice versa. My impression is that good intentions engendered by the `new deal' have been pretty successful at the organisational and executive level, but that there may still be problems of acclimatisation at the `grass roots' level. Moreover, to revert to basic educational matters, such delicate and crucial matters as grading in vocabulary for primary reading materials is rendered very hazardous when one bears in mind the dialectal differences between Lewis on the one hand, and the more southerly of the Outer Hebrides on the other. And finally, social and economic factors such as inter-marriage, job-mobility, new industries and so on have brought about increased exposure page_39 Page 40 to external influence, increased penetration of Highland communities by non-Gaelic speakers, and so on. And when jobs and livelihoods are at stake it would be a bold local authority that would attempt to make a linguistic `conservation zone' of its area to the exclusion of these bread and butter, life and death considerations. On the other hand, that ultimate choice does not present itself in black and white terms all the time; and it seems to me that Comhairle nan Eilean has over the years exercised considerable ingenuity to keep it from surfacing too often. At the end of the day my impression of the Western Isles at present is captured by two anecdotes I have heard from people involved in the Bilingual Education Project. First, a group of young teachers was relaxing in an island hotel after a day of in-service training. They were in the lounge bar and they were speaking Gaelic. An old lady came across and asked them (in Gaelic) if they would mind changing to English since her brother and sister-in-law, who were home from the United States with her, might be offended to hear Gaelic. They listened politely, there was a lull for a moment, and they then resumed their conversation in Gaelic. Somebody later on remarked, had that incident occured five years earlier they probably would have changed to English. And somebody else added that had it happened ten years before, they would have been

speaking English anyway. The second anecdote concerns a group of B.E.P. primary children being taken out to see the men cutting peat in Lewis (as part of their environmental studies); as they approached, my informant tells me, they could hear the men the fathers of the children changing from English to Gaelic as the children and the teachers approached. These two stories epitomise for me the mobile, fragile state of Gaelic at the present time. There is for some a sense of pride about speaking it, for others a sense of shame about not speaking it, for all a greater consciousness that it is there. Whether that bodes ill or well for the future is, of course, another question. While I have so far concentrated on conditions in the Outer Isles, the last ten or fifteen years have also seen significant changes in the rest of the Gàidhealtachd. While Gaelic has become less strong in parts of Skye (which falls under the jurisdiction of the mainland-based Highland Region, not of Comhairle nan Eilean), one of the educational success stories in a pretty grim national context has been the establishment with full accreditation of the Gaelic College at Ostaig, offering Business Studies and other further education courses, through the medium of Gaelic and in the Highlands, to Gaelic-speaking school-leavers. It is worth noting that at the tertiary level of education, with small groups of well-motivated native-speaking students, it has proved possible to surmount the problems page_40 Page 41 posed by commercial and other technical vocabularies. (This has also been the experience of the University Celtic Departments, where similar conditions prevail.) Appropriately enough, Sabhal Mór Ostaig has recently become the centre for a project aimed at co-ordinating the various lists of recommended usages and coinages which have been compiled independently by local and national government agencies, broadcasting companies, educational bodies and commercial organisations using Gaelic in specialised contexts on a day to day basis. Again, the BBC has opened stations in Inverness and Stornoway and generally increased its Gaelic output (from an admittedly low base) three or four-fold. Here the experience of Radio na Gaeltachta in Ireland has, I know, been of enormous help in identifying problem areas and suggesting the sorts of solution that work. Gaelicspeaking playgroups and nursery schools have appeared on the scene, both in the Highlands and in the cities, where such support is desperately needed by parents trying to bring up their children with Gaelic. Here the Welsh experience has been both inspirational and practically instructive. Again, the Highlands and Islands Development Board has, through time, convinced itself and its masters that economic development in vacuo, without reference to social-cultural factors, including the encouragement of Gaelic, is not a practical solution for the Highlands; and the Board has recently been empowered to fund a new Gàidhealtachd-based organisation, Comunn na Gàidhlig (CNAG), to promote the speaking of Gaelic by all available means. It is early days to adjudicate on CNAG as yet; but I may say that a conference of administrators, educationalists and media workers which CNAG held last summer (`A dh'ionnsaigh Poileasaidh Nàiseanta airson na Gàidhlig' `Towards a National Policy for Gaelic') impressed me at least as being spectacularly more purposeful and realistic than any such gathering I had previously attended. People actually responsible for the devising and implementation of policies were there in the flesh; and, unlike so many revivalist gatherings in the Scottish context in the past, it was held in Gaelic. If I were asked to summarise the import of all these various developments I would say that the centre of gravity and initiative for the maintenance of Gaelic has shifted perceptibly away from the Lowlands from émigrés and well-wishers outside the Gàidhealtachd to the Gàidhealtachd itself. There is a greater understanding of the `Fourth World' dimension of the Gaelic situation both the dangers and the possibilities. This increased awareness, which owes a great deal to comparison with Wales and Ireland and other minority languages, was a long time coming in Scotland, but I believe it is there now. Given all this activity centred on the language, what does the future page_41 Page 42 hold? If the patient is receiving proper attention at last, what are the chances? One's pleasure in encountering cases where Gaelic has been built into the solution to a social or community problem i.e. where it functions naturally as part of a new `good experience' is tempered when one hears business management talk about the number of thousands of population which it is reckoned are needed to produce a senior executive or engineer or doctor i.e. `leaders', to use the jargon and when one also knows that the number of children being born to Gaelic-speaking parents is well under 1,000 per annum. The homogenisation of British society continues at many levels, and if recession has caused some people to stay at home because there are no jobs to emigrate to, the dole is hardly an appealing basis on which to stabilise the Gaelic-speaking population. Again, the scale of operations in the Scottish Gaelic context is small enough to cause difficulties. Can the sort of initiatives I have described retain momentum and remain innovative if there is not room for `new blood' on a continuing basis?

This is not the sort of question that receives much airing when one is dealing with a large pool of workers with a steady turnover through retirement and fresh recruitment; but it gives grounds for long-term concern in the Gaelic context, where one has a lot of little pools and little scope for continued expansion. One thing that is certain is that there is precious little room for `false starts' or wasted effort. Yet decisions with potentially far-reaching consequences are being taken all the time. Are we sure that the medication prescribed is the best available and that there will be no deleterious side-effects? For instance, the BBC Gaelic Department has recently decided that it must capture the young, and proposes to do this by increasing its commitment to pop music. But will this work in practice? Should one attempt to cater for all tastes in pop music? If so, how widely or narrowly should one define pop music, and should the programmes segregate or amalgamate its different varieties? Is there a danger of ending up pleasing no-one? Alternatively, if one identifies with one brand of pop, which should one choose to play the Top Twenty to please the twelve-year olds, or the cult groups to please the upper teens? Either way, should one attempt to reflect the tastes of the moment, or to create tastes for tomorrow? And, supposing one succeeded in hiring DJs who captured the market, what would one do with them when, given the nature of the pop scene, they became `yesterday's men' to next year's twelve or sixteen-year olds? Again, what if the teenagers of Lewis take to pop programmes in Gaelic, but those of the Uists reject them? And, in any case, will not the alienation of other (e.g. older) audiences be a greater loss? Allowing page_42 Page 43 always for differences between the Irish and Scottish situations, we have during the Conference heard members of the Radio na Gaeltachta team eloquently defending the alternative line. Again, given the recent and welcome upsurge in the provision of mother and children groups, I wonder how far those involved have been able to make deeply considered and widely researched decisions as to what can and cannot be attained at this level. For instance, should one permit actual instruction in Gaelic to pre-school children, or control it firmly, or avoid it like the plague? Given the perennial problem of finding ideally qualified people to act as group leaders, should one prefer warm-hearted Gaelic-speaking mums, or people with previous experience in leading non-Gaelic groups, if children's experience of Gaelic is to be maximally enriched at this level? When one sees, as I did recently, two Gaelic-speaking mothers with highly comparable backgrounds sitting side by side at a Gaelic play group, each hoping for her child to grow up Gaelic speaking, and when there is every sign that one of them is going to be successful and the other disappointed, one cannot help feeling a sense of waste a tongue lost to Gaelic, perhaps. I hesitate to say, `Children are too important to be left to their mums'; but it seems a pity if parental aspirations and enthusiasm are being thwarted by perfectly remediable omissions or mistakes. Should we not, as a matter of urgency, be collating theoretical knowledge, comparative insights and practical experience to provide a readily accessible body of received wisdom regarding early language learning in the bilingual context something capable of being translated into practical `do's and don'ts' in the same way that guidance on so many other aspects of child rearing is dispensed in the handbooks of gurus and the counsel of health clinic staff? Or again, given the major changes which are at present being implemented nationally in secondary school curricula, how can we ensure that the specific factors affecting Gaelic are adequately allowed for? Are there ways in which the aims of the new system are compatible with a better deal for Gaelic and are there other ways which are not? Although we may be sure that this was not a conscious part of the intention of the reforms based on the Munn and Dunning Reports, it could be that some features of the new Standard Grade curriculum and assessment programme, including the devolution of detailed curriculum planning, are tailor-made to deal with the varying strength of Gaelic linguistic ability in different parts of the Highlands, or even to permit gradualist advances in teaching subjects through the medium of Gaelic. But will the widely criticised extra burdens placed on teachers prove altogether too heavy in the case of Gaelic, whose teachers already labour under a lack of resource page_43 Page 44 materials and development facilities by comparison with other subjects? These areas, and others like them, pose questions which are not easy to answer. Of one thing I am tolerably sure: namely, that the comparative angle will continue to be of prime importance, to enable those concerned to maintain Scottish Gaelic to take the short-cuts and avoid the potholes that litter the road ahead. This is surely one of the main justifications for bodies like the Bureau whose work Dónal Ó Riagáin has outlined for us; and indeed for occasions like the present one. There is need, and room, for both applied and theoretical approaches, and for constructive linkage between the two. If I may revert to the medical analogy I employed earlier, Gaelic

educationalists need to be au fait with the symptomatology of language death, to recognise warning signs for what they are; and conversely to know when not to be worried (or at least when not to panic). I am thinking here of issues like the alarm of purists over younger generation phenomena which may turn out to be manifestations of a more effective survival strategy than the older generation one. That is, we need to recognise the faux amis and hidden friends of the language, by means of serious debate in which slogans like `What our fathers said' and `What our children say' come under equally close scrutiny. We need to place Gaelic typologically at various levels and with greater precision than hitherto before we can begin to predict, let alone play around with its future. And if the existing parameters of linguistic study do not come up with some of the answers we require, let me say with conviction that they should. I therefore turn in conclusion to the linguists i.e. to those whose interest is in language per se rather than language maintenance in a given area to suggest that, whatever your particular persuasion or approach, there is plenty for you to get your teeth into in the Scottish Gaelic context. You will have noted instances in which Gaelic conforms to classic studies or standard models for describing minority languages, bilingual communities, language death and so on. Unless I am mistaken there are also individuating characteristics which may suggest additions, refinements or modifications to established doctrines; and there is no doubt that the language is seriously under-researched, even by comparison with our sister Celtic languages, Irish and Welsh. In this chapter I have concentrated on the way things are in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd at pretty breadand-butter levels: wider cultural questions have been ably dealt with by others earlier in this Conference and elsewhere. The same is true of blueprints for the future: I speak as a mere Gaelic scholar. But I hope I have said enough to convey something of the current circumstances of Gaelic and the complex of hopes and fears page_44 Page 45 surrounding it, in a way that will permit fruitful comparison and stimulate interest and curiosity. References CHAPMAN, M. 1978, The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture. London: Croom Helm. COMHAIRLE NAN EILEAN 1982, Poileasaidh Dà-chànanach/ Bilingual Policy. Stornoway: Western Isles Islands Council. CRAM, D. 1981, Code-switching, Pidgin Gaelic and Whisky Galore. Scottish Gaelic Studies, 13 (2), 241-62. DORIAN, N.C. 1973, Grammatical change in a dying dialect. Language, 49, 413-38. 1976, Gender in a terminal Gaelic dialect. Scottish Gaelic Studies, 12 (2), 279-82. 1977, A hierarchy of morphophonemic decay in Scottish Gaelic language death: the differential failure of lenition. Word, 28, 96-109. 1978, The fate of morphological complexity in language death: evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic. Language, 54, 590-609. 1981, Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect. Philadelphia: Pennysylvania University Press. DRESSLER, W. 1973, Sprachbewahrung und Sprachtod in der Bretagne, Wiener linguistische Gazette, 3, 45-58. DURKACZ, V.E. 1983, The Decline of the Celtic Languages. Edinburgh: John Donald. GILLIES, W. 1980, English influences on contemporary Scottish Gaelic. Scottish Literary Journal, Supplement 12 (Language), 1-12. forthcoming A century of Gaelic scholarship. In W. GILLIES (ed.), Alba agus a' Ghàidhlig: Gaelic and Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. GLEASURE, J.W. 1983, Gaelic: dialects, principal divisions. In D.S. THOMSON (ed.), The Companion to Gaelic Scotland. Oxford: Blackwell. JACKSON, K.H. 1958 The situation of the Scottish Gaelic language, and the work of the Linguistic Survey of Scotland. Lochlann, 1, 229-34.

MacAULAY, D. 1978, Intra-dialectal variation as an area of Gaelic linguistic research. Scottish Gaelic Studies, 13 (1), 81-97. 1979, The state of Gaelic language studies. In A.J. AITKEN and T. McARTHUR (eds), Languages of Scotland. Edinburgh: Chambers. 1982a, Register, range and choice in Scottish Gaelic. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 35, 25-48. 1982b, Borrow, calque and switch: the law of the English frontier. In J. ANDERSON (ed.), Language Form and Linguistic Variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins. forthcoming, New Gaelic. In J.D. McCLURE (ed.), Proceedings of the 1st Languages of Scotland Conference. MacKINNON, K.M. 1974, The Lion's Tongue. Inverness: Club Leabhar. 1977, Language, Education and Social Processes in a Gaelic Community. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1978, Gaelic in Scotland 1971: Some Sociological and Demographic Considerations of the Census Report for Gaelic. Hatfield: Hatfield Polytechnic. 1981, Scottish Opinion on Gaelic: A Report on a National Attitude Survey for An Comunn Gàidhealach undertaken in 1981. Hatfield: Hatfield Polytechnic. 1984, Gaelic in Highland Region: The 1981 Census. Inverness: An Comunn page_45 Page 46 Gàidhealach. MURISON, D. 1974, Linguistic relationships in medieval Scotland. In G.W.S. BARROW (ed.), The Scottish Tradition: Essays in Honour of R.G. Cant. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. 1979, The historical background. In A.J. AITKEN and T. McARTHUR (eds), Languages of Scotland. Edinburgh: Chambers. MURRAY, J. & MORRISON, C. 1985, Bilingual Primary Education in the Western Isles. Stornoway: Acair. Ó MURCHÚ, M. 1976, The article in a variety of Scottish Gaelic. Celtica, 11, 187-93. THOMSON, D. 1980, Gaelic in Scotland: assessment and prognosis. In E. HAUGEN, J.D. McCLURE and D. THOMSON (eds), Minority Languages Today. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. WATSON, W.J. 1925-27, Some interactions between English and Gaelic. Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 33, 310-26. WITHERS, C.W.J. 1983, Gaelic-speaking in Scotland, demographic history. In D.S. THOMSON (ed.), The Companion to Gaelic Scotland. Oxford: Blackwell. 1984, Gaelic in Scotland 1698-1981. Edinburgh: John Donald. page_46 Page 47

4 Gender, Occupational and Educational Factors in Gaelic Language-Shift and Regeneration Kenneth Mackinnon

Abstract. A recent study of two Gaelic communities indicates differential abilities and attitudes towards Gaelic of young women remaining in these communities compared with other age and gender categories. Similar differences occurred in everyday Gaelic usage, the transmission of traditional entertainment skills, and in cultural loyalty. These findings are related to other studies of language behaviour and attitudes between the genders in contemporary British society. A model of language shift is discussed involving the differential migration of younger women of child-rearing age in search of economic opportunity elsewhere, and lesser rates of language maintenance and support amongst the female skilled manual and non-manual occupational categories. Contrasting trends of Gaelic language-regeneration are analysed from the 1981 Census small area statistics. Increases in Gaelic speaking had occurred between 1961-71 amongst school-age categories, increasing further between 1971-81. These upturns occurred in areas where Gaelic had been introduced in primary schools. In 1981 for the first time actual increases in Gaelic speaking occurred in the main Gaelic areas, chiefly amongst young adults and their families, and related to local economic opportunities. These opposing tendencies are related to models of language-shift and the creation of language policy in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd. The process of language-shift is never simply a case of the steady and page_47 Page 48 even replacement of the one language by the other across the whole spectrum of social identities within a given speech-community. In any particular case there are likely to be social areas within which the original language is actively conserved, others within which the adventitious language rapidly comes into general use, and others where the original language actually makes some sort of headway against the general tendency. The process is complex, and has been summarised by Fishman (1971) as resulting in the retention of the original language by increasingly atypical members of the society. The incidence of language abilities and usage patterns at any given time is therefore the resultant of a set of social pressures engendered by particular social dynamics. The present case of the Gaelic language in Scotland will be discussed in these terms, and in particular two conspicuous and opposite trends will be examined. The first results from the differential migration of younger women away from the most strongly Gaelic-speaking areas, and the lower levels of Gaelic language and cultural loyalty, speaking abilities and usage patterns of those remaining behind. The second involves the increases in incidence of Gaelic speaking ability amongst schoolchildren and young adults in the main Gaelic areas. The Gaelic language question has been on the Scottish population census for a century, and we therefore have some detailed impression of the spatial distribution of its speakers since 1881. From 1901 there are national age tables of Gaelic speakers, and from 1921 these are in terms of age and sex. In 1961 simplified age tables of Gaelic speakers were published for local government areas, but only in 1981 were detailed age and sex tables in five-year cohorts forthcoming for all local government areas, civil parishes, wards, enumeration districts, islands and localities. Similar information has also become available from the 1971 census reformatted in terms of 1981 census definitions. There is thus a great deal upon which to base the population geography and the demography of the Gaelic language in Scotland. (e.g. Withers, 1984; MacKinnon, 1978, 1984) The 1971 Census was also the first to seek information on Gaelic literacy, and it is possible further to analyse the distribution of abilities to speak, read and write Gaelic in terms of age, sex and geographical area. For the student of social aspects of language, the census reports are disappointing, as they do not attempt any analysis of language abilities in terms of occupational category or educational level. Neither is it possible to gain any impression of the association of Gaelic language abilities with attitudes towards the language and its culture, or with political and religious orientations of its speakers. Moreover, the census makes no attempt to define what is meant by ability to speak, read or write Gaelic. page_48 Page 49

Figure 1. Western Isles. (rural): Gaelic speakers 1981 population structure There is no distinction between native speaker and second language learner. The census has not tried to assess speakers' extent of language usage or intergenerational change. To attempt some limited exploration of such variables, I undertook a study, with S.S.R.C. support, of four Gaelic communities in 1976-78 (MacKinnon & MacDonald, 1980, 1985a, b). Two were in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and two in the Western Isles of Scotland: comprising the Isle of Barra and the southern part of the Isle of Harris. The following discussion is based on these latter two cases. Gender-Linked Language-Shift The demographic structure of these two Gaelic communities is typical of the present-day Scottish Gàidhealtachd. Population pyramids are `top-heavy' with the aged, and `wasp-waisted' in the young adult age-ranges. In these age-groups there is also an imbalance in the sexes, with a marked absence of young women and a differential retention of the young men. If the Gaelic populations of Highland centres such as Inverness or Lowland conurbations are examined, the reverse situation appears with a preponderance of young Gaelicspeaking women over the men (see Figures 1-2). Obviously a gender-linked migration process is in train whereby the younger women are extruded from their home communities in search of economic opportunity elsewhere. Probably in these traditionally highly male-oriented communities local economic opportunity becomes reserved page_49 Page 50

Figure 2. Inverness district: Gaelic speakers 1981 population structure

for the young men, perhaps with the unexpressed intention of securing future family stability. If so, the prospect is frustrated, as many young men find it difficult to find a Gaelic-speaking marriage-partner. Of all groups questioned in these community samples, the younger women evidenced the lowest levels of Gaelic speaking ability and usage (MacKinnon, 1982:11). They were also the least supportive of their Gaelic mother tongue of all the sampled age and sex groups. From a previous study, it was thought likely that the young women leaving these communities for further education and work elsewhere might have contrastingly higher levels of attachment to their home language and culture (MacKinnon, 1977:114-15, 160). These weaknesses of language factors amongst young women were also parallelled in terms of cultural loyalty. Ability to speak Gaelic and self-rated extent of fluency naturally enough decline by age as language-shift from Gaelic to English takes place. The process was better resisted in the Harris sample, perhaps as the result of the more highly literate religious culture. Respondents were asked whether they would return themselves as a Gaelic speaker on a census form and also how they rated themselves in pronunciation, making oneself understood, thinking quickly enough and finding the right word in Gaelic. Scores of three were regarded as everyday adequacy and no difficulties in all four as full fluency. The weighted results were also expressed as a 100-point mean score. The various measures are summarised in Table 1. page_50 Page 51 TABLE 1 Ability and fluency in Gaelic by age and gender: Gaelic speakers in Barra and Harris samples 1977-78 Area & Nil to Everyday Males Fluent Mean Nil to Everyday Females Fluent Mean Age-group minimal adequacy Fully % fluency minimal adequacy Fully No. % fluency No. score score Barra Under 45 0 58% 89.6 3 54% 79.2 5 7 8 13 45-64 0 40% 85.0 0 69% 92.2 6 4 5 11 65 & over 0 59% 89.7 0 81% 95.2 7 10 5 21 Harris Under 45 1 38% 78.8 2 31% 73.4 7 5 9 5 45-64 1 60% 86.7 1 61% 86.1 5 9 6 11 65 & over 0 64% 90.0 0 80% 95.0 8 14 3 12 Combined samples Under 45 1 48% 84.0 5 45% 77.5 12 12 17 18 45-64 1 52% 86.0 1 65% 90.0 11 13 11 22 65 & over 0 62% 90.4 0 80% 95.1 15 24 8 33 Proportions claiming full fluency: women under 45: 45%; all other: 63% (Z = 2.130, significant at the 0.014 level). Analysis of variance of the six age and gender groups yielded significant difference in fluency scores between women under 45 and all other groups (Z = 2.590 p < 0.01 level). page_51 Page 52 TABLE 2 Gaelic usage levels by age and gender: Gaelic speakers in Barra and Harris samples 1977-78 Mean Gaelic usage scores in:- Intergenerational decline in Gaelic usage levels Family of origin Present day Family Area & Males Females Males Females Males Females Age-group Barra Under 45 89.1 89.1 79.3 73.3 9.8 15.8

45-64 94.6 91.2 83.4 79.8 11.2 11.4 65 & over 97.8 98.2 91.0 93.2 6.8 5.3 Harris Under 45 87.3 87.9 78.4 74.2 8.9 13.4 45-64 85.3 87.8 77.6 79.7 7.7 7.0 65 & over 96.1 93.8 87.2 88.8 8.9 6.4 Combined samples Under 45 88.2 88.6 78.9 73.7 9.3 14.9 45-64 89.0 89.4 79.7 79.8 9.3 9.7 65 & over 96.9 96.8 88.9 91.6 8.0 5.2 The difference in mean score for Gaelic usage in present day family in the combined samples for women under 45 and all other respondents proved significant (t = 3.013 p < 0.001); as did differences in intergenerational decline (t = 2.046 p < 0.02). Everyday usage of language in eleven common speech-situations was elicited for respondents' present day and original families. 100-point mean scores were derived by weighting the response of `Gaelic always' as 100, `Gaelic mainly' as 75, `both languages equally' as 50, `English mainly' as 25, and `English always' as 0. The difference between originating and present day families was used as a measure of intergenerational decline. Again, it proved to be the case that the younger women regarded themselves as less likely to use their Gaelic than other respondents. They similarly evidenced the highest rates of intergenerational decline in Gaelic usage, as indicated in Table 2. The Study also examined language-loyalty and, since its purpose was to inquire into the transmission of both language and culture, a measure of cultural loyalty was devised as a parallel concept (MacKinnon & MacDonald, 1980, Mackinnon 1982, 1985a, b). The younger women also evidenced weaknesses of regard towards their ethnolinguistic culture in all these respects. (See Table 3.) The language- and cultural-loyalty measures were Likert-type scales deriving from ten questions relating to attitudes towards the Gaelic langupage_52 Page 53 TABLE 3 Language- and cultural-loyalty by age and gender: Gaelic speakers in Barra and Harris samples 1977-78 Mean languageMean culturalloyalty scores loyalty scores Area & Males Females Males Females age-group Barra Under 45 52.5 48.3 50.0 45.8 45-64 51.0 72.9 30.0 57.1 65 & over 62.4 69.6 55.9 57.2 Harris Under 45 46.9 40.6 30.8 26.9 45-64 54.7 63.9 47.3 54.4 65 & over 51.8 51.3 55.0 59.3 Combined samples Under 45 49.6 45.2 40.0 38.2 45-64 53.2 68.3 40.4 55.7 65 & over 56.4 62.8 55.4 58.0 The difference in mean language-loyalty scores of women under 45 compared with all other respondents proved significant (t = 2.432, p < 0.0074), as did the difference in mean cultural-loyalty scores (t = 2.647, p < 0.0076). age and aspects of Gaelic culture in everyday life (See MacKinnon, 1982). The results are summarised in Table 3.

The transmission of traditional Gaelic cultural entertainment skills differed noticeably between Catholic Barra and Calvinist Harris. 28% of Gaelic speakers in the Barra sample claimed some ability in Gaelic singing, traditional dancing, piping, folk poetry (bàrdachd), or storytelling (sgeulachd). This compared with only 17% in Harris. In these Gaelic communities the traditional cultural skills are very strongly kinship-linked. Amongst these respondents there was no case of the development of these skills independently of their presence in family of origin. In both samples the men on the whole were more culturally skilled than the women, the presence of these skills being significantly gender-linked. In Harris there was an age- and gender-linked patterning of the distribution of these skills, as Table 4 indicates, but this was not at a statistically significant level. Owing to the relatively small numbers involved the results are presented in two age-groups only (see Table 4). These patternings of lesser levels of Gaelic speaking ability, loyalty and usage on the part of the younger women as compared with other page_53 Page 54 TABLE 4 Proportions of Gaelic speakers with traditional cultural skills by age and gender in Barra and Harris samples 1977-78 Barra Harris Combined samples Age-group Males Females Males Females Males Females Under 45 31% 25% 8% 6% 19% 17% 45 & over 39% 21% 25% 11% 31% 17% 28% of men in the combained samples professed cultural skills, and 17% of the women (a difference significant at the 0.03 level: Z = 1.828, 204 d.f.) respondents paralleled the findings of an earlier study in the Isle of Harris as a whole (MacKinnon, 1977: 160), and similar findings were noted also amongst North Uist and Barra respondents as part of a later study of public opinion on Gaelic issues in Scotland as a whole (MacKinnon, 1981: 39-40, 56-57). These findings seem to indicate a social process of language-shift which involves the differential migration away from the home communities of the younger women seeking economic opportunities elsewhere, with those who stay behind evidencing these lesser levels of support for their Gaelic language and culture. In this instance there are parallels from other studies involving language and gender in the British Isles. In Wales, Glyn Williams (1978) reports on attitudes towards language of Welsh-speaking mothers of various social groups, and observes: `two sets of values held by women choosing to perpetuate the Welsh language. In the professional classes the women value the intellectual aspects . . . of Welsh . . . while in the unskilled working class Welsh is seen as the language of neighbourliness and lack of snobbery . . . The women of the intermediate groups seem not to value the cultural or the intellectual aspects of Welsh, and regard themselves as ''above" the Welsh-speaking "hoi polloi"'. In discussion of this Sara Delamont (1980) added that `it would be interesting to see how far the preservation of Gaelic in rural and urban Scotland is in the hands of women. . .' and the present chapter attempts to give some answer to this question. A subsequent Welsh study (Harrison et al., 1981) attempted to elicit why the children of bilingual mothers in Wales were not always bilingual themselves even when those mothers had favourable attitudes towards Welsh or towards bilingualism. The study reports the greater likelihood of page_54 Page 55 children being brought up bilingually in `social classes one and two' (professional, managerial) and `four and five' (semi and unskilled manual). The authors conclude,

`The social class in Wales which most strikingly does not rear bilingual children is social class three. This class [skilled manual and non-manual], like the mothers of monolingual children more generally, has a priority for getting on in the world.' (Harrison et al., 1981:62) TABLE 5 Gaelic speaking ability and fluency by occupational category and gender: Gaelic speakers in Barra and Harris samples 1977-78 Occupational Proportions fully fluent Mean Gaelic fluency level category Males Females All Males Females All pers. pers. Prof./Manag. 50% 63% 56% 87.5 90.9 90.0 Sk. man. & non-m. 29% 50% 38% 82.1 83.3 82.7 Semi-sk. man. 63% 55% 61% 89.1 88.6 89.0 Unsk. manual 48% 70% 65% 85.9 89.1 88.3 The Gaelic Fluency score was a mean value obtained by weighting as 100 those with no difficulties in four linguistic skills (pronunciation, being understood, thinking quickly, and finding the right word), weighting those with no difficulties in only three skills as 75, in only two as 50, and in only one as 25. The difference in mean score between the combined skilled occupational groups and the others was significant at the 0.05 level (t = 1.969, 201 df.). In the skilled occupational groups only 38% were fully fluent in Gaelic, compared with 63% of all others (Z = 2.413, sig. 0.008). TABLE 6 Language and cultural loyalty by occupational category and gender: Gaelic speakers in Barra and Harris samples 1977-78 Mean language loyalty Mean cultural loyalty scores scores Occupational Males Females All Males Females All category persons persons Prof./Manag. 62.5 54.5 56.7 40.0 52.7 49.4 Sk. man & 49.2 44.2 46.3 39.3 36.7 38.1 non-m. Semi-sk. man. 53.3 62.7 55.1 48.8 64.5 51.7 Unsk. manual 55.2 60.6 59.4 48.7 50.3 49.9 The loyalty scores derived from Likert scales of ten questions on Gaelic language and culture (see MacKinnon, 1982). The difference between the mean language loyalty scores of the skilled and the other occupational groups was significant only for women (t = 3.142, sig. 0.02, 112 df.). The corresponding difference for cultural loyalty was significant only in terms of all persons (t = 1.899, sig. 0.05, 201 df.). page_55 Page 56 Similar attitudes were apparent in this Gaelic case, since the skilled occupational categories registered the lowest of all groups in terms of Gaelic speaking ability and on the language and cultural loyalty measures, as shown in Tables 5 and 6. In England, Peter Trudgill's study of men's and women's conservation of the urban dialect of Norwich (Trudgill, 1972), introduced the concept of `covert prestige' of speech varieties, reflecting the value-system of society and its sub-cultures. Working-class male speakers in general and the youngest women under 30 years of age valued the working-class speech forms (Trudgill, 1972: 174). Accommodation towards standard speech norms was spearheaded by the middle-aged and middle-class women, and by the upwardly mobile and aspiring in general. Further British evidence is provided by Olwen Elyan and her colleagues (Elyan et al., 1978) who explored attitudes towards women's use of Received Pronunciation and of a Northern non-standard variety of English by questioning a sample of polytechnic students drawn from throughout the United Kingdom. She concluded that

`women have an interest in adopting prestige speech forms since doing so may increase their chance of marrying into a social class that is above their own. Indeed . . . it has been argued that women are better able to achieve upward social mobility through marriage than through achievement at work' (Elyan et al., 1978: 131). More recently, attention has been focused upon women's deferential behaviour in conversation, upon their being `linguistically available' and good listeners, and upon their easing of conversational flow. Dale Spender, for example, discusses work undertaken by Pamela Fishman and others in America (Spender, 1980), and there has subsequently been some anecdotal and journalistic exploration of these issues in Britain. Anna Coote, for example, reported upon male salience in taped transcripts of editorial conferences at the `New Statesman', demonstrating men's liability to interrupt women, and female brevity in speech (Coote, 1981). In Northern Ireland, Lesley Milroy's work on urban speech and social networks in Belfast (Milroy, 1980), analysed the strength of working-class vernacular English amongst young and middle-aged men and women from both Catholic and Protestant localities. It was found that the strongest vernacular speakers were those whose network ties were strongest (Milroy, 1980: 40), and in one area where male networks were the most closeknit, as the result of local employment patterns, there was significant differenpage_56 Page 57 tiation of strength of vernacular between the men and the women of these age-groups. (Milroy, 1980: 42, 43). These various studies focusing upon differing language behaviour between the sexes in United Kingdom speech-communities suggest that these Gaelic cases are not sociologically isolated. They all point to women as tending more towards societal norms of language behaviour and standard speech-forms, and suggesting that these characteristics are strongest amongst younger women, and especially amongst those who are upwardly aspiring. Trudgill's `considerable number of young working-class men marching resolutely in the other direction' in Norwich (Trudgill, 1972: 194), may be joined by their Gaelic-speaking Hebridean fellows. The prospects, though, of finding a wife and raising a family are much brighter in Norwich than in the Western Isles and hence the prospects of conservation of the local vernacular may be correspondingly better there than for Gaelic in Barra and Harris. The differential extrusion from these communities of younger women as compared with younger men is associated with lower levels of Gaelic language and cultural loyalty on the part of the younger women who remain behind. This `fuadach nam ban òga', engendered by a highly patriarchal society is a `sexual clearance' which may have set in train the attrition of social morale and confidence in their ethnolinguistic culture on the part of the young mothers and mothers-to-be in these communities. This is a field of crucial importance for the prospects of the speech-community, and it is one which both language-maintenance agencies and community organisations might well ponder. These factors, coupled with the presence of incoming non-Gaelic-speaking wives of local men, must threaten the transmission of Gaelic language and culture in the coming generation. Gaelic as community speech will soon be superseded unless there is strong social pressure to maintain the language, the creation of new institutions giving cultural support to younger women and youth in general, and effective implementation of supportive bilingual education policies in local schools. Whether this last factor may already have had some tangible effects may now be discussed. Education-Linked Language-Regeneration The results of the 1981 Census brought some satisfaction to Welsh language interests especially in the education field in that for the page_57 Page 58 first time the decline in Welsh speakers had been reversed amongst the school-aged and pre-school population. Much of this increase is clearly attributable to the inception and growth of Welsh-medium education which gathered much impetus from the 1960's onwards, and to the Welsh nursery schools movement which was established in 1971. In Scotland, the 1984 annual report of An Comunn Gàidhealach (then the principle Gaelic language organisation in Scotland) drew attention to these census results in Wales and observed:

`There is no doubt but that this matter is due to the praise-worthy progress that has been seen over recent years on behalf of Welsh in the schools. There is a great lesson for Gaelic in that in our own schools.' (my translation). The impression here is that Scotland has yet to follow Wales in language revival generated in the schools. In actuality, such a revival was to be noted not only from the 1981 census results in Scotland but also, earlier than in Wales, from the 1971 figures, ten years previously (Figures 3-5). Between 1961 and 71 there were numerical and proportionate increases in the incidence of Gaelic amongst children of school age in both the 5-9 and 10-14 age-groups, as well as in the immediate post-school groups aged 15-24. Between 1971 and 81 there were further proportionate increases in the 5-9 age-group, and both numerical and proportionate increases amongst the 10-14 year-olds (in both cases against a national decline in numbers in these age-groups). Additionally, the figures for the 15-24 years age-group contain a numerical increase of Gaelic speakers in this period. These results are summarised in Table 7. Although there had been no development of Gaelic-medium schooling (except at the initial primary stage in the Gaelic areas), nor even a Gaelic nursery or playgroups movement at that time, some regeneration of Gaelic had got under way by 1971 amongst pre-school and older school-aged children. In the Western Isles, a bilingual education project commenced in 1976. Also in the 1970's a number of Gaelic teaching schemes at primary level had also got under way in a number of areas: over much of Highland Region, in Tayside Region in the old `Highland' area of Perthshire, and in Strathclyde Region in parts of Argyll. The effects of these schemes may be evident in the comparison of the 1971 and 1981 census returns, affecting the contracting 5-9 age-group in proportionate terms, but being seen more strongly in the also contracting 10-14 age-group in both proportionate and numerical terms. page_58 Page 59

Figure 3. Welsh speaking school-aged and pre-school children Wales 1921-1981: Proportions in age-groups nationally The Gaelic nursery schools and playgroups organisation Comhairle nan Sgoiltean Àraich was not constituted until after the 1981 Census, in 1982. Prior to this there had been only some three or four isolated and sporadic groups in existence. By 1984, 14 groups were functioning and by 1986 there were 23 groups throughout Scotland with 400 children. The decline in Gaelic amongst pre-school children had occasioned some press attention, for example in The Times Education Supplement (Scotland) of 30.12.83 and 6.1.84. The figure of 738 Gaelic speakers amongst 3-4 year-olds compares poorly with the figure of 1,227 in 1971. However, this decline

to 60% of the 1971 total must be tempered by the fact that the declining birthrate nationally had reduced the numbers of 3-4 year-olds to 64% of the 1971 figure. Moreover, figures for this age-group in any page_59 Page 60

Figure 4. event give a poor measure of language-acquisition amongst young children. Numbers of Gaelic speakers in this age-group have invariably increased in the corresponding older cohorts ten and twenty years later in subsequent censuses. For example, the 1,088 3-4 year-old Gaelic speakers in 1961 had increased to an average 1,762 13-14 year olds in 1971 and to 1,790 23-24 year-olds in 1981. Similarly the 1,227 3-4 year-old Gaelic speakers in 1971 had increased to 1,972 13-14 year-olds in 1981. A more reliable measure of viability of the language might be to take the whole 3-9 years age-range, during which period mother tongue acquisition might be completed. Bearing in mind that total numbers in this age-group fell between 1961 and 71, the proportions who were Gaelic-speaking rose from 0.69% in 1961 to 0.75% in 1971, and again to 0.81% page_60 Page 61

Figure 5. in 1981, indicating that a greater proportion of children were being brought up speaking Gaelic over this period. Despite all the adversities suffered by the language, parental confidence had not completely collapsed. The establishment of CNSA with a full-time organiser and administrator may have some further effect in strengthening Gaelic at the pre-school stage. The overall increase in numbers of Gaelic speakers of almost 10% between 1961 and 71 may be partly explained by a change in the census question, which included sections on reading and writing ability for the first time. However, in Wales a similar change in question did not result in an increase in Welsh speakers in any age-group. In assessing the changing fortunes of these languages, there are further complications page_61 Page 62 TABLE 7 Gaelic speaking young people in Scotland 1961-81 1961 1971 1971 1981 Age-group Total and Gaelic (population (resident populations present) population) 3-4 years Total population No. of 182,714 182,460 180,914 116,601 Gaelic speakers 1,088 1,244 1,227 738 As % of total 0.60% 0.67% 0.68% 0.63% 5-9 years Total population No. of 420,726 468,410 466,154 344,408 Gaelic speakers 3,798 3,671 3,652 3,000 As % of total 0.90% 0.78% 0.78% 0.87% 10-14 Total population No. of 449,136 442,075 439,361 425,158 years Gaelic speakers 4,186 4,398 4,289 4,818 As % of total 0.93% 0.99% 0.98% 1.13% 15-25 Total population No. of 707,135 782,720 778,460 840,917 years Gaelic speakers 7,951 10,350 8,877 8,812 As % of total 1.12% 1.32% 1.14% 1.05%

arising from the modification of the language questions in 1981 and a change in principle from enumerating the population present on census night to one of population normally resident. To some extent these difficulties may be overcome in that reformatted data for 1971 have been made available in terms of the 1981 census definitions and administrative areas. Some `loss' of Gaelic population is apparent, however, owing to the relocation of the temporarily absent home population from areas in which the language question was not asked. This difference is chiefly noticeable in the young adult age-groups, which are the most mobile in terms of absence from home for work or education. This factor does not greatly affect the pre-school or school-aged population. It is surprising, bearing the Gaelic experience in mind, that the upturn for Welsh amongst pre-school and school-aged groups in Wales did not commence between 1961 and 71 rather than between 1971 and 81. In Wales there were some 67 Welsh-medium nursery school and playgroups in existence by 1971, which had grown to 360 by 1981. In addition to Welsh-medium schools in the Welsh-speaking areas, there were 28 bilingual primary schools in 1960, 46 in 1970 (with 6,253 pupils) and 56 page_62 Page 63 in 1980 (with 10,012 pupils). At the secondary stage the first designated bilingual school had opened at Rhyl in 1956, and by 1970 six had been established. By 1980 a total of 36 secondary schools were offering at least five subjects taught through Welsh (Khlief, 1980). Between 1961 and 71 there was some slight slackening in the decline in numbers of Welsh speakers, but some more substantial impression on census results should have been apparent by 1971. It may have been the impetus of the nursery school movement that brought about the increase in numbers of Welsh-speaking children between 1971 and 81. It will be interesting to see whether the development of Gaelic playgroups brings about a similar effect in Scotland, which has the advantage of two decades' upturn for Gaelic amongst the school-aged population as a starting point. These increases occur only within districts with above average incidence of Gaelic speakers, but more specifically within the catchment areas of primary schools with Gaelic teaching schemes, as may be seen in Table 8 and the map in Figure 7. It is clear from Table 8 that both numbers and proportions of Gaelic-speaking children of school age declined sharply between 1971 and 81 in those areas of Scotland without Gaelic teaching schemes at primary level. Amongst 5-9 year-olds whose total numbers declined sharply in this period, the areas with Gaelic teaching schemes maintained their numbers of Gaelic speakers much better than those without. Amongst 10-14 year-olds total numbers increased in this period in the areas with Gaelic teaching schemes, although nationally there was an overall decline. In the areas where Gaelic had been taught, the numbers of Gaelic-speaking 10-14 year-olds increased by a greater proportion than the age-group as a whole. In the areas without teaching schemes the numbers of Gaelic speakers decreased more sharply than numbers in the age-group as a whole. Amongst 15-19 year-olds total numbers increased in both types of area. However, in areas where there had been teaching schemes, numbers of Gaelic-speakers increased by a greater proportion than the overall increase, and in contrast in the areas without these schemes, despite a growth in their population in this age-group, its number of Gaelic speakers sharply contracted. These comparisons in terms of the 1981 figure as a percentage of the 1971 figure are presented in Table 9. In each age-group it is clear that the areas with primary school Gaelic teaching schemes maintained their numbers of Gaelic speakers at higher levels than the total numbers in each case (whether there had been a decrease or an increase in the total). In the areas without such schemes, the decline in numbers of Gaelic speakers was greater than decline in page_63 Page 64 TABLE 8 Gaelic-speaking young people in areas with and without primary Gaelic teaching schemes 1971-81 5-9 years 10-14 years 15-19 years Resident Gaelic speakers Resident Gaelic speakers Resident Gaelic speakers Census year and area Population No. % Population No. % Population No. % 1971 Argyll & Bute District Areas with schemes 92 5.7 154 15.7 1,607 1,448 10.6 1,236 194 District Total 116 2.4 184 5.5 4,886 4,606 4.0 3,997 221 Areas without schemes 24 0.7 30 1.0 3,279 3,158 0.9 2,761 27 1981 Argyll & Bute District

Areas with schemes District total Areas without schemes 1971 Highland Region Areas with schemes Regional total Areas without schemes 1981 Highland Region Areas with schemes Regional total Areas without schemes

1,440 4,388 2,948 6,166 15,250 9,084 6,279 13,579 7,300

154 10.7 180

4.1

26

0.9

430

7.0

559

3.7

129

1.4

374

6.0

480

3.5

106

1.4

1,736 5,081 3,345 6,015 14,239 8,224 7,176 16,013 8,837

286 333 47 584 752 168 812 1,064 252

16.2

1,580 197

6.6

5,050 254

1.4

3,470

9.7

5,284 469

5.3

12,615 627

2.0

7,331 158

11.4

7,118 578

6.6

15,973 785

2.9

8,855 207

57

12.5 5.0 1.6 8.9 5.0 2.2 8.1 4.9 2.3

(table continued on next page) page_64 Page 65 (table continued from previous page) 5-9 years 10-14 years 15-19 years Resident Gaelic speakers Resident Gaelic speakers Resident Gaelic speakers Census year and area Population No. % Population No. % Population No. % 1971 Perth & Kinross District Areas with schemes 5 0.7 13 2.8 740 743 1.8 758 21 District total 28 0.3 40 0.7 8,953 8,559 0.4 7,893 57 Areas without schemes 23 0.3 27 0.5 8,213 7,816 0.3 7,135 36 1981 Perth & Kinross District Areas with schemes 10 1.8 134 3.5 568 772 17.4 809 28 District total 29 0.4 168 0.7 7,103 9,024 1.9 9,314 66 Areas without schemes 19 0.3 34 0.4 6,535 8,252 0.4 8,505 38 1971 Western Isles Islands Area Whole area 1,703 66.9 1,788 1,220 56.8 2,547 2,499 71.6 2,148 1981 Western Isles Islands Area Whole area had schemes 1,540 64.7 2,034 1,824 74.9 2,379 2,765 73.6 2,435 1971 Scotland Areas with schemes 2,364 11.9 2,719 2,070 12.4 19,876 18,932 14,4 16,692 National total 3,652 0.8 4,289 4,037 1.0 466,154 439,361 1.0 390,989 Areas without schemes 1,288 0.3 1,570 1,967 0.5 446,278 420,429 0.4 374,297 1981 Scotland Areas with schemes 2,200 12.0 3,547 2,868 13.7 18,347 21,459 16,5 20,938 National total 3,000 0.9 4,818 4,337 1.0 344,408 425,158 1.1 446,605 Areas without schemes 800 0.2 1,271 1,469 0.3 326,061 403,701 0.3 425,667

page_65 Page 66

Figure 6. Proportions of local populations speaking Gaelic in 1981

Figure 7. Primary schools with Gaelic teaching schemes in 1981 page_66 Page 67 TABLE 9 Intercensal change in numbers of young people speaking Gaelic in areas with and without primary Gaelic teaching schemes 1971-81 Areas with and 1981 Numbers as percentage of 1971 numbers without primary 5-9 years 10-14 years 15-19 years Gaelic teaching Total Gaelic Total Gaelic Total Gaelic schemes numbers speakers numbers speakers numbers speakers Areas with schemes 92.3 93.1 125.4 113.3 130.4 138.6 Total age-group 73.9 82.1 114.2 96.8 112.3 107.4 Areas without schemes 73.1 62.1 113.7 96.0 80.9 74.7 total numbers for the 5-9 and 10-14 year age-groups, and amongst 15-19 year-olds whose total numbers increased in the areas without these schemes, the numbers of Gaelic speakers very sharply declined. The census, of course, does not seek to assess levels of language ability, nor whether language is acquired as a native speaker or later in life. Since so far as children are concerned the census forms are completed by parents, the assessment of ability to speak Gaelic lies with them. In the case of children learning Gaelic as a second language at school, the results may be rather of measures of satisfaction by parents of children's school performance and represents in effect a `school report' by the parents of their children's teachers. Even so, this reflects a considerable measure of goodwill and parental support for these educational policies relating to Gaelic in the schools.

These results relate to a fairly limited number of schools within the Gàidhealtachd as a whole, and until 1985 there were no Gaelic primary teaching schemes as such outwith the Highlands and Islands. It might be wondered what effects a more general provision of Gaelic teaching might have had in the last census results. In Highland Region some 81 primary schools were involved, including the 11 bilingual schools in norther Skye. In Argyll & Bute District, 13 primary schools in the islands taught Gaelic, together with 11 in the Oban area and 1 elsewhere. In the Western Isles there were 60 primaries finally involved in the bilingual scheme, and 4 others taught Gaelic as a second language. At the secondary stage, Gaelic was taught in all 15 schools in the Western Isles, 13 in Highland Region, 2 in Tayside, and 8 in Strathclyde. Elsewhere Gaelic is available on a minority time or extra-curricular basis page_67 Page 68 at one school in Central Region, three in Lothian and two in Grampian (44 in total). There is some use of Gaelic as a teaching medium in Western Isles schools but in general it is taught only as a `subject' at secondary level in the Scottish educational system. Even so, the language suffers a further disability as it is taught as an alternative to French, and pupils have to make a choice between them. There is often pressure to opt for French for its supposedly better career prospects. Whether Gaelic could in fact be effectively conserved as the language of its community through the education system remains to be seen. Schools can effectively enable children to acquire Gaelic as a second language (MacKinnon, 1977:79). Whether or not they actually use it depends upon thier response to the requirements of their social situation. However, there have been some notable recent advances for Gaelic on the educational front. In August, 1985, Gaelic-medium Primary 1 classes commenced in Glasgow and Inverness, with indications of others to follow shortly at Portree and Sleat. Earlier, in July, 1985, the Secretary of State promised specific grant up to £ 250,000 for Gaelic educational development schemes. Later in 1986 the Scottish Education Department's evaluative study of the Western Isles bilingual project is due to report, and if favourable may lead to the extension of this scheme to the secondary stage. In 1984 Comunn na Gàidhlig was established with Highlands and Islands Development Board funding. CNAG has been particularly active in projects involving young people. Since Autumn, 1985, BBC Gaelic television has given priority to programmes for young children. These developments are all building upon some real measure of advance for Gaelic in the schools. Conclusion: Language-Shift and Policy-Making The intergenerational transmission of Gaelic in the Scottish Gaelic speech-community is today being very severely weakened by external and internal processes. Of the latter, one of the most serious is the slackening in regard and usage of their mother tongue by young Gaelic-speaking women who remain in their home areas, coupled with the incoming non-Gaelic speakers who become young mothers. The extent to which this factor may be overcome by acquisition of Gaelic by their non-Gaelic-speaking children at playgroup or at school cannot as yet be assessed. The informal and formal education of children and young people clearly comprises a field of crucial importance for the future continuation of the language in community use. page_68 Page 69 In the formulation of language policies for Gaelic these two aspects call for early attention. How can supportive attitudes for Gaelic best be promoted amongst the younger women in the Gaelic areas? Might some form of women's movement similar to Merched y Wawr in Wales be practical and effective? What sort of appeal is made to this group by Gaelic language organisations? What initiatives might community education make concerning them? Are improvements in provision for Gaelic in schools and informal education being introduced expeditiously enough? Are they well enough conceived and resourced? Within what context would such measures operate? Scotland is only just now beginning to debate what forms a language-policy might take. Local authorities, led by Comhairle nan Eilean, have outlined administrative and educational policies for Gaelic, or set up Gaelic Committees, as has Highland Region. As yet there is no formulation of official policy at a national level as in Wales, although a small step towards this may have been the address by George Younger, then Secretary of State, at the special conference organised by CNAG in July 1985 at the Gaelic College Sabhal Mór Ostaig in Skye. With the plethora of bodies, both voluntary and official, which have dealings with Gaelic, it is surely timely that some formulation of policy at a national or overall level should be undertaken officially. A further step towards this lay in the publication in January 1986 of a `green paper' document by CNAG arising out of its 1985 conference, entitled `Towards a National Policy for Gaelic'.

In this process of policy formulation it will be important for the organisations involved to commission their own action-research so that policies may be guided by appreciation of the social character of Gaeldom and the social processes at work within it, as well as assessments of opinion and attitudes of the Gaelic speakers themselves. Acknowledgements The research project in the Western Isles in 1977-78 was funded by the U.K. Social Science Research Council (Project Grant No. HR 4039/1) and assisted by the research funds and media staff of the Hatfield Polytechnic. The fieldwork was carried out by Morag B. MacDonald. In each case this assistance is gratefully acknowledged. The prompt and helpful services of the staff of the Registrar General (Scotland) Customer Services, Edinburgh, and the Economic and Social Research Council Data Archive, University of Essex, in making available census small area statistics is also gratefully acknowledged. page_69 Page 70 Permission to use small area statistics (SAS 1981 and RSAS 1971) supplied by General Register Office (Scotland) is acknowledged with thanks. Material from Crown Copyright records made available through the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, the General Register Office (Scotland) and the E.S.R.C. Data Archive has been used by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office. I should also like particularly to thank Mr. Murdo MacLeod, H.M. Inspector of Schools, Inverness for his invaluable assistance in identifying schools with Gaelic teaching schemes. References COOTE, A. 1981, The nature of man-talk, New Statesman, Vol 101, No, 2588 (2.1.81), 10-11. DELAMONT, S. 1980, The Sociology of Women an Introduction. London: Geo. Allen & Unwin. ELYAN, O. et al. 1978, RP-accented female speech: the voice of perceived androgyny. In P. TRUDGILL (ed.), Sociolinguistic Patterns in British English. London: Edward Arnold. FISHMAN, J.A. 1971, The Sociology of Language: An Interdisciplinary Social Science Approach to Language in Society. In J.A. FISHMAN (ed.), Advances in the Sociology of Language, II. The Hague: Mouton. HARRISON, G. et al. 1981, Bilingual Mothers in Wales. University of Wales Board of Celtic Studies Social Science Monographs No. 6. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. KHLIEF, B.B. 1980, Language, Ethnicity and Education in Wales. New York: Mouton. MACKINNON, K. 1977, Language, Education and Social Processes in a Gaelic Community. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1978, Gaelic in Scotland 1971: Some Sociological and Demographic Considerations of the Census Report for Gaelic. Hatfield Polytechnic: Social Science Reports Series No. SSR 11 (ISBN 900458 08 9) 1981, Scottish Opinion on Gaelic A Report on a National Attitude Survey for An Comunn Gàidhealach undertaken in 1981. Hatfield: Polytechnic Social Science Reports Series No. SSR 14 (ISBN 90045817 8) 1982, Cape Breton Gaeldom in Cross-Cultural Context: the Transmission of Ethnic Language and Culture. (A paper given at the Sixth World Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Aberdeen University 21.7.82) Hatfield: Polytechnic Business and Social Science Occasional Papers Series No. 11 (ISBN 0 90045826 7) 1984, Gaelic in Highland Region: the 1981 Census a Report Prepared for An Comunn Gàidhealach. Inverness: An Comunn Gàidhealach. 1985a, Erosion and Regeneration in Gaelic Speech-Communities Some Transatlantic Comparisons (A paper given to the Status of Gaelic Conference, Iona Foundation of Canada, St. Columba's, Prince Edward Island, 10.7.85)

1985b, The Scottish Gaelic Speech-Community Some Social Perspectives (A paper given at the First International Conference, on the Languages of Scotland, University of Aberdeen 28.7.85, and forthcoming in Scottish Language, March 1987) page_70 Page 71 MacKINNON, K. & MacDONALD, M. 1980, Ethnic Communities: the Transmission of Language and Culture in Harris and Barra a report to the Social Science Research Council. Hatfield: Polytechnic Social Science Reports Series No. SSR 12 (ISBN 90045818 6) MILROY, L. 1980, Social Network and Language Maintenance. In A.K. PUGH et al. (eds), Language and Language Use. London: Heinemann, 35-45. SPENDER, D. 1980, Man Made Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. TRUDGILL, P. 1972, Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich. In Language in Society, I (2), 179-95. WILLIAMS, G. et al. 1978, Language and Aspirations for upward social mobility. In G. WILLIAMS (ed.), Social and Cultural Change in Contemporary Wales. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. WITHERS, C.W.J. (1984) Gaelic in Scotland 1698-1981: The Geographical History of a Language. Edinburgh: John Donald. page_71 Page 72

5 Language Revival in an Urban Neo-Gaeltacht Gabrielle Maguire Abstract. The principal research area upon which this chapter is based is the Gaeltacht Community which was established in West Belfast in 1969. Here 11 families rear their children as Irish speakers in an urban, Irish-speaking environment. One of the essential features of an Irish environment is Irishmedium education. Therefore, community members founded their own Bunscoil Ghaelach (Irishmedium Primary School), originally for community children, and later to include children from the outer English-speaking district. In this chapter I shall discuss the results of a sociolinguistic survey administered to the 98 families from outside the Community nucleus, whose children were attending the Bunscoil Ghaelach during the school year 1984/85. The principal aims of the study are outlined below: a) To define the extent to which the Bunscoil acts as a motivating force in the progress of bilingualisation amongst families of children attending the Bunscoil. b) To examine any patterns of diffusion of bilingualism throughout family groups, and to determine whether or not a network of bilingual families is emerging. c) To identify the norms which govern the usage of Irish by family members. d) To elucidate the difficulties of families who decide to become, to some extent, bilingual. e) To probe parents' attitudes towards the type of Irish being acquired by Irish learners. page_72 Page 73 Information derived from (e) is most interesting in the light of a linguistic analysis of the Irish spoken by the Gaeltacht community's older children, most of whom have already passed through the primary stage of formal education at the Bunscoil, and who now attend local Secondary Schools.

A summarised version of these results will be presented. Introduction In an article entitled, `Irish Revival Reconsidered,' the author, R.A. Breatnach (1964) propounded a theory that Irish might gradually be restored as the vernacular of the home if a considerable number of Irish-speaking couples decided to raise their families through Irish and organised themselves into self-contained communities. The suggestion was qualified as, `theoretically possible but, for obvious practical reasons, hardly feasible.' This chapter focusses on one such community which overcame the major practical difficulties and today survives as the core of a viable project, giving a dynamic impetus to the Revival of Irish within its own area: West Belfast. During the early 1960s a group of young couples, who were learning Irish as a second language in Belfast, resolved to raise their children as Irish-speakers and to build a community wherein Irish would be the first language of home, neighbourhood and Primary School. Their awareness of the importance of a supportive community was based upon the experiences of other Irish-speaking families who were scattered throughout the city. The history of the Irish language verifies the following statement by Dorian (1981: 105) `The home is the last bastion of a subordinate language in competition with a dominant language of wider currency.' Founder members of the Shaw's Road Community in Belfast decided to use the home as the first bastion of the Irish language, from where it would be propelled into other domains. They established a company which would negotiate loans and secure a site. Members built their own homes. The first family took up residence in 1969. An Irish-medium Primary School was opened two years later in a prefabricated classroom. Today 11 families live in the Community. One page_73 Page 74 hundred and ninety-four pupils, most of whom reside in neighbouring areas, are enrolled at the school for the current 1985-86 terms. A sociolingusitic and linguistic study of this urban neo-Gaeltacht Community began in 1982. This chapter describes some of the findings. Two principal sections are outlined here: 1. Results from a survey administered to the total population of parents, living in areas outside the Shaw's Road Community, whose children were attending the Bunscoil (i.e. the Irish-medium Primary School) during the 1984-85 school year. Date of Fieldwork: Spring 1985 Population surveyed: 100% 98 families Place: Family homes Analysis: Statistic Package for Social Scientists 2. Linguistic trends found to be prominent in the Irish spoken by Community children, some of whom have already passed through the Bunscoil and now attend local English-medium Secondary Schools. (Two girls attend an Irish-medium Secondary School in Dublin. A third girl has gone on from there to third level Education.) Date of Fieldwork commences: Spring 1982. Ongoing. Number of children: 22 Ages: 8 years-18 years Fieldwork methodology: a. recorded interviews

b. unrecorded interviews c. observation/participation in social events, e.g. fund-raising functions, community festivities, youth folk-group. Diffusion of Irish The success of the Bunscoil, which was granted official status by the Education Authorities in 1984, galvanised enthusiasm for the acquisition of Irish. This occurred within a dynamic socio-political context which was uniquely receptive to such an initiative. Most parents viewed it as an opportunity to give their children something of value which they had missed. Many considered it as a way of introducing Irish into their family. Change in language behaviour before and after a family's connection with the Bunscoil begins, convincingly demonstrates the strength of the impetus page_74 Page 75

Figure 1. Mothers' competence level before 1st child's n/s attendance which Bunscoil attendance imparts to the bilingualisation process. One of the most striking changes was evident in the competence levels of parents. (Figures 1, 2, 3, 4). Before their children joined the Irish-medium nursery class (naíscoil attendance at which is a pre-requisite to entry in the Bunscoil) proficiency levels most frequently pertained to the two lowest categories, i.e. `no Irish' or `a few words of Irish.' However, parents' current ratings for the time of the interviews were considerably higher. Most improvement was achieved by mothers. This reflected two facts; a) retrospective ratings were higher for fathers than for mothers, and b) helping with schoolwork was generally perceived as part of the maternal role, therefore mothers were more highly motivated to learn Irish. Another development which occurred after the children began to attend the Irish nursery concerned the relationship between proficiency and usage. In the before situation a substantial amount of Irish was used by only 12.2% of fairly fluent fathers with their children. Some 17.3% of those who could handle very basic conversations, at least, used a substantial amount of Irish with children (Figure 5). However, at the time of the survey administration it was found that greater proficiency correlated to greater usage. Fathers with a strong command of Irish were more likely page_75 Page 76

Figure 2. Mothers' competence level after 1st child's n/s attendance

Figure 3. Fathers' competence level before 1st child at naíscoil page_76 Page 77

Figure 4. Fathers' competence level after 1st child at naíscoil

Figure 5. % of Irish-competent fathers using considerable Irish with their children to use Irish with their children once the latter were enrolled at the Bunscoil. This contrast was not significant in the language behaviour of mothers, mainly because of their greater lack of proficiency in the before situation. Other aspects of the families' language comportment followed the same pattern of a shift towards Irish after the children's commencement page_77 Page 78

Figure 6. Interpersonal use of Irish before 1st child at naíscoil

Figure 7. Interpersonal use of Irish after 1st child at naíscoil at the Irish nursery. Figures 6 and 7 illustrate a considerable decrease in the number of families whose members were rarely or never using Irish together at the time of the questionnaire administration. Irish was used least often by parents to each other. Many respondents explained that they found it difficult and unnatural to converse with their spouses in Irish. A marked rise occurs in the degree of interpersonal usage with the children. page_78 Page 79

Figure 8. Situational use of Irish in the home An examination of the situational use of Irish at the time of the interviews revealed that most Irish was spoken in those situations which were linked to school activities, e.g. assistance with homework, prayer-time, storytime. Irish was used least often while television was being viewed. The diffusion of Irish extends beyond parents. The percentage of families whose members or friends began to learn since the respondents' first child joined the Irish nursery is indicated on Figure 9. The Bunscoil attendance of respondents' children was mentioned as a causal factor in this process of diffusion by three-quarters of the population. These results reflect positively on the Shaw's Road Community's aim that Irish should penetrate the surrounding neighbourhoods. However, one of the features which is apparent from the above illustrations is the tendency to cluster around the `sometimes/some Irish' categories in the after situation. The extensiveness of the pattern suggests that progress has encountered a serious impediment at this level. `Some Irish' is assigned to that degree of proficiency necessary for the conduct of basic conversations and for understanding the children's textbooks. When parents reach this stage primary motivation wanes because they realise that their children's educational development is unimpaired by their lack of fluency. Motivation is assailed by other factors also, e.g. social and personal page_79 Page 80

Figure 9. Language diffusion diagram restraints. Mothers are particularly susceptible to these pressures. Almost one-half of women would not initiate a conversation in Irish, though they would respond if Irish was introduced by the interlocuter. One-third were inhibited by certain locations. These mothers usually expressed a willingness to use Irish in the privacy of the home or some such familiar surroundings, whereas they felt self-conscious and often intimidated in public places. Parents require external assistance in order to pass this level of competence and usage, and to avoid fossilisation of linguistic achievement at this point. This is particularly necessary in view of the fact that almost one-half of mothers and one-quarter of fathers expressed diffidence about their ability to improve their command of Irish further. While parents were confident that their lack of further improvement would not obstruct their child's educational progress, they were unaware of other insidious repercussions. For example, cross-classifications revealed significant relationships between parents' linguistic behaviour and the children's use of Irish outside school. Results were more significant for the relationship between mothers' and children's language usage patterns than for that found to exist between fathers and children. To some degree this endorses the parents' stated belief that greater importance pertains to the mothers' acquisition of Irish than to that of the fathers. page_80 Page 81 Twenty-one per cent of the eldest Bunscoil children evinced a temporary rejection of Irish outside school. Usually this reaction was evoked by their astute observation of parents' lingusitic limitations. This phenomenon occurred most frequently during the child's Primary 2 year, when the child's linguistic progress begins to surpass the `simple pieces' level of parent(s). Many of these children desisted from speaking Irish to parents, and sometimes to others in the parents' presence. They often refused to allow the `guilty party' to continue helping with homework. All of those children were disarmingly direct about expressing their realisation of parents' linguistic weaknesses. In effect, they call their parents' bluff! Attitudes to Traditional Gaeltachts Within the general pattern of the families' increased contact with Irish there emerged one exception: visits to traditional Gaeltachts. Three-quarters of the population had rarely or never visited a rural Gaeltacht during the years prior to Bunscoil attendance. This figure is little altered in the after situation. The general attitude expressed towards rural Gaeltachts was one of indifference. No disrespect or disparagement was conveyed, but parents generally considered that traditional Gaeltachts bore no relevance to their way of life. One-half of the population who had heard Donegal Irish spoken stated that one of the principal distinguishing traits between Donegal Irish and Belfast Irish was that the latter was easier. Over one-quarter of those parents believed that Belfast Irish was less accurate. This comment was not expressed as a criticism; indeed it was usually qualified, e.g. `. . . people here are more enthusiastic about Irish, and more willing to speak it.' The significance of the general isolation from traditional Gaeltachts and the low ranking allocated to Donegal Irish within these parents' own value system will become more apparent in the following section, wherein an outline of linguistic trends is presented.

Subjects of Linguistic Analysis This is not a description of parents' Irish, nor that of Bunscoil children from outside the Community. More specifically it focusses on the Irish spoken in fairly casual situations by some of the children from the Shaw's Road Community. Most of these young people did, or do, attend the Bunscoil. However, Irish was their first language from the cradle. page_81 Page 82 General Language Allocation Basically Irish is the langauge of home, neighbourhood, Primary School and church. Attendance at local English-medium Secondary Schools was proven to affect usage of Irish, attitudes towards the language and changes within the lingusitic system. The nature of this sociolinguistic compartmentalisation helps mould the variety of Irish spoken just as surely as isolation from rural Gaeltachts also leaves its mark. Linguistic Trends The Irish of the Shaw's Road children is characterised by an accelerated deviation from linguistic norms. (By norms I refer to the principal source of Irish available to Belfast learners, i.e. the grammar textbook. I also include features of Ulster Irish which are not found in the standardised grammar books.) One of the most significant occurrences in the Irish spoken by these children is the collapse of the Initial Mutation Systems. This is identified by Holmer (1940: 36) as one of the first occurrences of a dying dialect. It is also an area which poses difficulties for learners of Irish as a second language. (See Ó Baoill, 1979: 415-439) Certainly this development has a reductive effect on a great many grammatical categories. For example, with reference to the tense system, both forms under A and B are produced by the children. A [non-standard forms] tosaigh (began) mura tógfaí (if were not raised) go beadh (that would be) a déanamh (to do) a fáil (to get) go thiocfadh (that would come)

B [Gaeltacht forms] thoisigh/thosaigh mura dtógfaí go mbeadh a dhéanamh a fháil go dtiocfadh

In fact the two forms may be found to alternate within the same utterance. Gender distinction of nouns is another category wherein reductions are encouraged by the weakening mutation system. Feminine nouns often retain their base form when preceded by the definite article, e.g. A an feirm (the farm) an bean (the woman) an Fraincis (French) an Gaeilge (Irish) an páirc (the park)

B an fheirm an bhean an Fhraincis an Ghaeilge an pháirc page_82 Page 83

Qualifying adjectives are usually left unlenited. In other environments which traditionally may or may not require initial mutation similar inconsistencies are found, e.g. after numerals, A an dhá theangaidh (the two languages) an dhá cailíní (the two girls) trí sheachtain (three weeks) ocht ábhar (eight subjects) an taon fadhb (the only problem)

B an dátheangaidh an dá chailín trí seachtaine ocht nábhair an taon fhadhb

cúig bomaite (five minutes)

cúig bhomaite

The phenomenon of initial mutation is disappearing. It is still employed according to grammatical norms, but deviation from these norms is more commonplace, and its appearance is no longer predictable. Nevertheless, although loss of initial mutation occurs, it seldom causes confusion. Often it is a redundant signal. In the genitive construction, i ndiaidh an geimhreadh, (after the winter)

pro . . . gheimhridh

two signals are omitted without any resultant ambiguity. Where initial mutation is a marker of gender or number the sense is usually clarified by a prior reference to the subject, e.g. bhí muinne ina suí. (we were sitting)

pro . . . inár . . .

The process of a linguistic sub-part's disappearance occasions some degree of overgeneralisation, e.g. bhi muinne just ina shuí ansin. (we were just sitting there.)

pro . . . inár . . . sut

The verbal system has been mentioned in reference to the influence exerted by the weakening mutation system. Some other aspects of the children's verbal system are as follows. Tense The past habitual is the only tense form (apart from the subjunctive mood) which is not used. But the children have a wide range of possibilities for expressing the sense of the past habitual; page_83 Page 84 1. The conditional tense form has taken over the role of the imperfect, as it has in many dialects: rachainn gach lá (I used to go every day.) pro théinn . . .; 2. Past tense qualified by I gcónaí (always): bhí sé i gcónaí ag gabháil ansin. (he used to go there/he was always going there); 3. ba gnách leis rith síos agus suas ina ward i lár na hoíche. (he used to run up and down his ward in the middle of the night); Voice The passive voice is quite extensively used in the past and present tense. It also appears, though less frequently, in the conditional mood. Person A preference is shown for analytic forms of the verb, e.g.: bheadh mé (I would be) bíonn mé (I (usually) am)

pro bheinn, pro bím.

Sometimes the synthetic form is retained but is followed by a pronoun, e.g. labharaim mé (I speak) The present tense forms of the irregular verbs have been developed by analogy with future tense forms. This phenomenon is not unknown in rural Gaeltachts:

tiocann (comes) rachann (goes) gheobhann (gets) tabharann; tabhartar (gives; is given)

pro tig; pro theid; pro gheibh; pro bheir; bheirtear.

Irregular verb forms have an abundance of variants which may alternate with each other within a piece of discourse by the same individual, e.g.: Gheibh tú deich faoin gcéad ar do scrúdú Gaeilge má dhéanann tú é, má théid tú ar scoil Gaeilge . . . . . .; faigheann sí i bhfad i bhfad níos fusa Béarla a labhairt page_84 Page 85 (You get ten per cent for your Irish exam if you do it, if you go to an Irish School . . . .: . . .; she finds it much much easier to speak English.). The case system has also been further simplified in the Irish of these children. The vocative case is extinct. During my early acquaintance with one group of these children I subjected one or two young boys to the gleeful mocking of peers when I addressed them in the vocative. The unfortunate victims had Christian names with initial `F'. The genitive case retains the traditional word order, without morphological changes to the noun, e.g. hata an fear (the man's hat) páirc feirmeoir (the farmer's field) otharlann na páistí (the children's hospital)

pro . . . fhir pro . . . fheirmeora pro . . . na bpáistí

This same phenomenon is described by Dorian (1981: 130) as a feature of the decaying genitive case. Grammatical aberrations are reinforced by simplifications of the phoneme system. Therefore the Irish for `two boys' is produced as, dhá gasúr

ga: 'gaser *

for two reasons: a) omission of lenition and b) loss of the phomene /

/

As in Scottish Gaelic palatal and non-palatal varieties of labial consonants have lost their phonemic distinction. This distinction is neutralised by the children in other consonants also. Therefore in the pronunciation of teach an phobail `church' as, /t'fak 'fobel*/ inflection of the genitive noun is rendered even more unlikely by the disappearance of the phoneme /l'/. Transference Contact with English is, of course, the main factor which determines the changing shape of the children's linguistic system. This is evident also page_85 Page 86 in the allocation of emphasis. As in English, the element to be emphasised receives amplified stress. Consequently, stress is placed on certain items which resist it in conserative patterns, e.g. possessive adjectives and simple prepositions.

The children's tendency to introduce the subject at the start of a sentence also serves to place emphasis. However, the copula is not implied in the structure: Ach le Mícheál, tháinig seisean anseo . . . . . (But with Mícheál, he came here . . . . .). Direct transference from English affects the shape of syntactic structures. One example of this is the widespread substitution of the conservative structure: preposition and possessive adjective and verbal noun, e.g. do mo bhualadh (lit. `to my beating', i.e. `beating me') by the popular ag and verbal noun and pronoun, i.e.: ag bualadh mé (at beating me). Transference of idioms is also prominent: tá sé ag gabháil maol (he is going bald); ag gabháil dearg (turning red); bhí sé a dhéanamh é a codladh (it was making him sleep) and chuaigh an guthán (the phone went/rang). Lexical items are transferred freely and abundantly in casual speech. Often they trigger a switch to English, or a syntactic aberration which would otherwise be unlikely, e.g.: tá glas bhán is oráiste beads ar an fear sin (there is green white and gold beads on that man). The children usually adhere to the grammatical norm of placing the attributive adjective after the noun. Contact with English has been cited as the principal factor which moulds the linguistic variety produced by these children. However, it does not operate independently. In fact, its influence is sometimes controlled by the speakers. Deviation from grammatical norms in casual speech does not imply that the children are unfamiliar with all these norms. For example, on one rare occasion I asked a group of twelve year olds to translate an English phrase, `You are living.' The spontaneous response was: tá tú a cónaí. page_86 Page 87 A few members corrected this popular version and offered the conservative form tá tú i do chónaí (lit. `you are in your living', i.e. `you are living'). A lively dispute ensued which was resolved by the unanimous accord with: `cónaíonn tú (you live). The children are aware of the need for closer adherence to grammatical norms to be applied in written Irish. During discussions about this subject older children (those at secondary school) listed examples of items which are acceptable in speech, but not in written work. Formal speech situations also trigger the children's self and group monitoring systems. During early recording sessions many of them displayed occasional intolerance of lexical transfers and grammatical aberrations. They accepted correction from peers very naturally. These are two factors which govern the nature of the speech variety produced by these young people in relation to tolerance of transference. Another factor is the speech topic. Teenage girls described how Irish was a suitable medium through which to discuss fashion. However, when the subject of romantic pursuits arose several amusing comments were uttered which communicated the inappropriateness of Irish for this topic. Younger children expressed this sentiment differently. A ten year old girl explained that Irish was used to discuss rudaí atá fíor, (things which are real) as opposed to events which had not actually occurred.

A fourth factor which is related to conversational topics is setting, for it is within certain situations that specific topics are usually discussed. Therefore particular subjects associated with secondary schools cause a switch to English when they arise within the Community, because the speakers are more familiar with the English terminology, the translation of which would inhibit the flow of dialogue. The switch is triggered by these lexical transfers. The speakers' sensitivity to the listeners' powers of comprehension is a fifth factor which determines when an item is transferred from English. page_87 Page 88 Summary It is evident from this account that this urban Gaeltacht Community has fulfilled its own original goals: a) raising their children as Irish-speakers, b) providing them with a supportive Irish-speaking environment, c) diffusing Irish throughout the surrounding area. For an outline of the linguistic variety spoken attention was focussed on Community children. They adapt their system to suit their own needs. However, although communicative competence and functional adequacy are mastered, a language which is very much on the defensive must aim higher in order to ensure its own separateness from the dominant language. This fact must be recognised before it can be allocated as a responsibility. If a decision is made to accept this, then co-operation with Educational and Research Institutions must be established in order to provide guidelines for a language plan which would steer linguistic developments and an efficient monitoring system to check progress. References BREATNACH, R.A. 1964, Irish Revival Reconsidered. Studies, 53, 18-31. DORIAN, NANCY C. 1981, Language Death. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. HOLMER, N.M. 1940, The Irish Dialect Spoken in the Glens of Antrim. Uppsala: Universitetets Årsskrift 1940:7. Ó BAOILL, D. 1979, Error Tendencies in Learners of Irish. International Journal of Human Communication, 12, Nos. 3-4, 415-39. page_88 Page 89

6 Phonological Borrowing in Irish and Problems of Orthographical Representation Dónall P. Ó Baoill Abstract. This chapter will address itself to certain developments within the Irish phonological system owing to its close contact with English over the last 400 years. The kind of phonological restructuring that has taken place during that time has developed in a way which is broadly consistent with and predictable from universal linguistic principles. In the last 100 years, however, as more and more native speakers have become bilingual, the Irish phonological system has been more accommodating to English sounds and has now within its system new sounds and sound sequences which were until very recently alien to the Irish phonological system. These developments are also linguistically predictable, given the kind of language contact that is part of the reality of modern Ireland. Some of the changes, however, were not easily accommodated by the Irish writing system as used in the standard written language and were completely ignored in many cases in the creation of much of our international and technical vocabulary in the last 20 years.

Some ensuing problems for the language planner, for the native speaking population and for those learning Irish as a second language are discussed and possible solutions proposed. Introduction Owing to its close contact with English over the last 400 years, certain page_89 Page 90 developments have taken place within the Irish phonological system. The phonological restructuring that has taken place is broadly consistent with and predictable from universal linguistic principles. Generally speaking this chapter will be concerned with two main issues arising from such contact: (i) the way in which native speakers accommodate English sounds in words borrowed into Irish and how such words are represented in the standard written language, and (ii) the creation of thousands of new words by committees working on specialised vocabulary by means of certain well defined rules of transliteration. The main problems concern the representation of consonants and diphthongs, particularly the former. Indeed, various solutions are possible and the problem areas have not been treated consistently over the years by those involved in the standardisation of the language and in work on translation and lexicography. Irish Orthography The Irish language has had a long literary tradition stretching back to the fifth century. Before that time, the Irish had evolved a writing system called Ogham for inscription on stone and wood. After the introduction of the Latin alphabet with Christianity in the fifth century a written language and literature developed. Many of the distinctive and more bewildering features of written Irish can be traced back to that period. The anomalies of the Old Irish (6th-9th century) spelling were gradually rectified and normalised. Up to 1600 the spelling of texts generally displayed considerable fluctuation between earlier Old Irish conventions and principles developed during the Early Modern Irish Period (1200-1600). These latter principles were more consistently applied with the advent of printing at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Consequently, this Early Modern Irish orthography was adopted in all printed writing from the eighteenth century onwards. Diversity and instability crept into Irish orthographical practices in the beginning decades of this century. However, in the last 40 years a standard spelling and grammar has evolved and is outlined in some detail in Gramadach agus Litriú na Gaeilge An Caighdeán Oifigiúil 1958 [The Grammar and Spelling of Irish The Official Standard, 1958]. It is a compromise between different dialects which was achieved only after detailed discussion and debate. Most of the recommendations given in page_90 Page 91 that handbook have been accepted by and large. This new standard has been confirmed and definitively codified in all the major dictionaries in particular (De Bhaldraithe, 1959 and Ó Dónaill, 1977). The Irish Phonological System In order to see how phonemes are represented in Irish writing, we must look briefly at the conventions used in the standard written language as it exists today. The Irish phonological system has the following inventory: Vowels: /i, i: e, e: a, a: o, o: u, u: and

/

Diphthongs: /ai, au, ia and ua/ Consonants:

p, t, k b, d, g m, n, ( ) v, z, f, s, x, h l, (

)r

t

, d3

[The contrast between alveolar /l, n/ and dental /

,

/ does not exist in all dialects.]

Except for /h/, /t / and /d3/ all the above consonants can be either palatalised or velarised and this is an important distinction in the language. Replacing a velarised consonant by a palatalised one can change the meaning of a word. This distinction is shown by the following contrastive pairs. Palatalised consonants are marked by a following subscript /

/ the velarised consonants are unmarked:

beo /bjo:/ `alive' : bó /bo:/ `cow' cead / ad/ `permission' : cad? /kad/ `what?' cáis/ka: / `cheese' : cás /ka:s/ `case' stát /sta:t/ `state' : stáit /sta: / `states' Long and short vowels must also be distinguished. min /mj i / `meal' : mín / mj i: / `soft' te / e/ `hot' : té / e:/ `the person who' seal /

al/ `a while' : seál /

a:1/ `a shawl'

The neutral vowel ( ) occurs in unstressed syllables. Its quality is affected by the surrounding consonants. Beside velarised consonants it sounds more like the initial vowel in `about', whereas preceding or followpage_91 Page 92 ing a palatalised consonant it sounds more like the vowel in the English word `in'. Thus phonemically we write /ma:le */ and /mji:le*/ for the Irish words mála and míle respectively. In phonetic terms the final / / in each case will be realised differently in the former case it will be nearer to while in the latter it will be closer to [I]. Long vowels must also be distinguished from diphthongs. We must pay particular attention to the distinction between /i:/ and /ia/ and between /u:/ and /ua/. Learners do not always succeed in making this distinction because of the tendency to lengthen the first element of the diphthongs in many dialects. Words of the following type, however, must be distinguished: síor/ i:r/ `forever' : siar / iar/ `westward' cúirt /ku:r / `a court' : cuairt /kuar / `a visit' Before we go on to discuss what actually happens to loanwords in Irish, it might be appropriate at this stage to show how the contrasts exemplified in the preceding discussion are realised in Irish spelling. Irish Letters and Their Values All the following letters of the Roman alphabet are used in Irish spelling: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, y, z. The letters j, q, w, y and z are peripheral to the convention and are used mainly in the adoption of recent loanwords. The phonetic values of vocalic letters are as follows: í, é, á, ó, and ú represent long vowels as in mí `a month', mé `I', má `if', mó `bigger' and tú `you' (sg). The corresponding short vowels are shown by the same letters without the length mark /'/ as in ith `eat', te `hot', cat `cat', do `to' and dubh `black'. The diphthongs /ia/ and /ua/ are spelled in a consistent manner. Thus we get words such as fuar `cold' and Dia `God'. The diphthongs /ai/ is represented in writing by `a', `ai' and `ei' followed by `dh' or `gh' and /au/ by `a', `ea' and `o' followed by `bh', `dh', `gh' or `mh'. Examples are: leabhar `book' /laur*/, domhan `a world' /daun/ and radharc `a view' /rairk/. This spelling convention which basically shows that /ai/ and /au/ are derived historically from the sequence, vowel plus fricative, presents problems in trying to devise suitable spellings for loanwords. `Bh', `mh' and `dh/gh' represent historical /v/, / / and / / respectively. Original `dh' resembled English `th' in `then', but converged with `gh' / / in the course of the twelfth century. The digraphs `ao' and `ae' also represent long vowels. `Ae' represents a pronunciation /e:/ with the /e:/ retracted, while

page_92 Page 93 `ao' can represent /i:/, /e:/ or / / depending on one's dialect. The digraph `eo' can indicate a long or short vowel but is mainly used to denote a long vowel. The word `ceo' `mist' is pronounced / ,o:/ while seo `here' has a short vowel /

o/.

The problems with Irish spelling arise when one is trying to represent the palatalised or velarised colouring of Irish consonants, and at the same time represent the quality of the vowel(s) in the immediate environment of those consonants. There are no problems when any of the following situations obtain: (i) Palatalised consonants in the environment of front vowels, as in: Sí `she', Te `hot', Sín `stretch'. The short and long vowels /e/ and /e:/ are shown in spelling between two palatalised consonants by the digraphs `ei' and `éi' respectively, as in: Ceist `question' and Féin `self'. (ii) Velarised consonants in the environment of back vowels, as in: Do `to', Bán `white' and Cúl `back'. Between two velarised consonants the digraphs `ao' and `ae' are used to represent the front vowels /i:/ and /e:/ as in: Saol `life' and Gael `An Irishman, a Gael', Whenever a palatalised consonant is preceded or followed by a back vowel or a velarised consonant by a front vowel, then Irish orthography had to develop ways of representing this sequence in an unambiguous fashion. This has been achieved by using the following spelling conventions: (a) Velarised consonants are marked in writing by having `a', `o' or `u' precede or follow them. These vowels are not pronounced. (b) Palatalised consonants are shown in writing by putting `i' or `e' before or after them and these letters are also silent. Thus the word síol `seed' /

i:1/ has a velarised /l/ shown in writing by having `o' precede it. The word croí

`heart' /kri:/ where `cr' is velarised is similarly marked. In the same way Seán `John' /

:an/ which has a

palatalised / / is shown by putting `e' after it. At the end of a word or syllable, however, palatalisation is shown consistently by putting `i' before the palatalised consonant, as in: Gaeil `Irishmen, Gaels' /ge: / where the palatalised / / is marked by `i'. To conclude this section on the conventions of Irish spelling, I think it is fair to say that Irish orthography is consistent in its representation of page_93 Page 94 the basic phonemes of the language. One must, however, interpret various two- or three-vowel letter sequences for what they are. In general, a sequence of two or three written vowels carries the following information the basic vowel to be pronounced and another vowel (or other vowels) to show that a preceding or following consonant is palatalised or velarised. Thus the sequence `ei' denotes that `e' is the basic vowel and that the following consonant is palatalised. The sequences `ai', `ea' and `eai' all denote a basic vowel /a/ with the `e' and `i' denoting a preceding or following palatalised consonant. Recent Borrowings in Irish Through the history of Irish many languages have contributed to the development of specific vocabulary Latin and Welsh from the fifth century onwards, Old Norse from the ninth century, Norman French from the twelfth century and English from the fourteenth century to the present day. The Norman invasion brought Ireland

firmly into the political and ecclesiastical system of Western Europe. When Norman French ceased to be the language of court administration, English became the normal speech of the towns and from these centres English words made their way into Irish. Although the decline of Irish amongst the population in general has been going on for almost 400 years, I think it is fair to say that Irish had until very recently the capacity to deal with English loanwords in accommodating them to the Irish Phonological system with special reference to the dichotomy between palatalised and velarised consonants. However, with increasing bilingualism many sounds not native to Irish are used in everyday speech. As the following discussion indicates, they have not always been successfully accommodated by the conventions of Irish orthography. We will focus particularly on the fate of the following English sounds: `t' and `d' as in `tea' and `day', the initial sounds in words such as `job', `chance' and `yoke' and the diphthongs in words such as `fry' and `round'. English /t, d/ It would seem that in almost all cases English `r' is now interpreted as a broad (i.e. velarised) /r/ in Irish. This has a bearing on the pronunciation of /t, d/ in words borrowed into Irish. In many English dialects in Ireland and Scotland, `r' next to `d' or `t' tends to make these two page_94 Page 95 consonants more fronted with tongue blade articulation and hence sound more like the velarised, mainly dental / , / of Irish. However, when /t, d/ are next to other consonants they are borrowed as alveolar consonants. While Irish does have alveolar l, n and r it did not tolerate alveolar /t, d/ until recently. Examples: With `r' /trik */ /sa:der*/ /trafer*/ Without `r' /fji:da:l*/ /te:/ /ti:mj/ / u:b/

English Gloss trick solder thrasher

Dictionary Entry (if any) truiceadóir `trickster' sádar trais `trash'

feeding tea team tube

no entry tae no entry tiúb

It will be observed from the examples that words including `r' now have a fully normalised / , / sound in Irish, whereas English words not having `r' keep their alveolar /t/ and /d/ sounds in Irish. The initial `t' of English `tube' is restructured as a palatalised / / in Irish because of the great acoustic similarity of the two sounds. Words which have been completely assimilated are represented in the dictionary. Those that have not (with the exception of tae `tea') have been ignored and no attempt has been made to form a spelling to suit their new pronunciation. It may also be the case that Irish has already many words with similar meaning which can be used instead. Note, however, that although truic `trick' is not in the dictionary a derived form truiceadóir with the agentive ending ` eadóir' is. The opposite is true for traisear `thrasher' where we get trais `trash' in the dictionary. `Tae' is normally pronounced with an alveolar /t/ although the spelling indicates a more dental articulation. English /b, f, m and p/ With `r' /bre:ka:l;*/ /bro

, bre

/

English Gloss braking

Dictionary Entry (if any) no entry

brush

bruis page_95 Page 96

Without `r' /fjakderi * fjaktri:*/ /pjinfen*/

factory pension

no entry pinsean

/raifji /

rifle

raidhfil

The rule seems to be that when `r' is present in a consonant group with labials and dentals, then it is generally speaking restructured in Irish as a velarised /r/ and since all consonant groups in Irish (with few exceptions) are all either palatalised or all velarised, then groups with `r' are all velarised. Generally speaking, if `r' is absent then the labial consonants tend to become palatalised. Another interesting point is that borrowings such as `factory' in Irish have palatalised and velarised consonants next to one another, something that never happens in native vocabulary. This creates a slight problem in the sense that a golden rule of Irish spelling is broken. This rule is stated as follows `caol le caol agus leathan le leathan' which when translated is `slender with slender and broad with broad'. Broad and slender or the Irish equivalents leathan and caol are the terms used to denote velarised and palatalised consonants in Irish grammars. English /k, g and ng/ /akfen*/ /gfan(gf)*/ /gune*/

action gang gun

aicsean no entry gunna

Words containing English `k', `g' and `ng' create no problems for Irish. The back varieties of those consonants found in the environment of back vowels as in such words as `coke', `gun' and `gong' are all interpreted in Irish as velarised consonants. The fronted varieties of the three consonants under discussion found in the environment of front vowels, as in the English words `action' and `gang' are interpreted as being palatalised. They could be written thus in the standard spelling: `aicsean' and `geaing' although this latter word has no dictionary entry. English /t

and d3/

There was a time when such consonants were not accommodated in the language as testified by spelling such as Seáan `John' and `seans' chance, which show that they were both converted to /

/. However, with increasing

page_96 Page 97 bilingualism native speakers were able to pronounce such words and finally the spelling `j' was used to denote /d3/ as in English, but only word initially. Word finally it was not employed. In the case of /t / it is not represented in the dictionaries in word initial position except for the single word tseo a call to a dog meaning `get out'. Word finally it is written as `ts', to be interpreted as two single consonants and not one single unit or affricate as in English. Here are some examples: /d3ake:d */

jacket

seaiceád

/mja

/

match

meaits

/wat

/

watch

no entry

`Jacket' was borrowed earlier as seaicéad and this is what we find in the dictionary, and the later borrowing is not represented. `Match' is represented by `meaits' while `watch' has no entry although `waits' would do the job nicely. The reluctance to use `j' at each position in a word, initially, medially and finally and the fact that no new spelling was created to represent /t /, is an indication of the conservative nature of Irish lexicographical work, and the lack of initiative in allowing new sound sequences into the language. One could imagine that English `chance' should be entered as `tseans' as well as the current `seans'. English /j/ This sound is used in many recent borrowings. A similar sound exists in Irish, written as `gh' or `dh', followed by a front vowel such as `i' or `e'. However, to write such words as English yoke as `gheoc' or `dheoc' does not appeal to the eye and was probably on that account discarded. Words, such as `yoke' and `use' which are rended in Irish as /jo:k/ and /ju:sa: / with the verbal ending ` áil' attached to the latter, have no dictionary entry as well as many other words beginning with the sound /j/. However, the letter `y' would suffice to indicate the pronounciation intended and thus we would get `yóc' and `yúsáil', which should create no problem.

Our main observations so far with regard to the adaptation of loanwords in Irish can be summarised briefly as follows: (i) all words that are represented at dictionary level are those that have been fully accommodated within the phonetics of Irish, (ii) it is only when (i) has been achieved that a word is given an acceptable orthographical representation and hence page_97 Page 98 becomes a headword in all modern dictionaries, (iii) there is a great reluctance to innovate in terms of creating new spellings to represent the English sounds that were hitherto alien to the Irish phonological system. Despite my reservations about innovation in spelling to accommodate recent loanwords more fully, it is when we turn to the adaptation of technical and scientific vocabulary by means of certain well defined rules of transliteration that I feel much time and energy have been wasted. The creation of thousands of words by this process of transliteration shows in my view blatant disregard for Irish phonology and the psychological and sociological complexities that are attached to language use in a bilingual community. It is to this problem of transliteration that we now turn. Transliteration of English words Great caution is necessary in transliteration from English into a language like Irish, which is a minority language and not in widespread use, even in Ireland. The vast majority of Irish people learn Irish as a second language, mainly in school, which itself is a difficult task, considering the restricted use of Irish in the community at large. Their task, however, is not made any easier by the complexities of Irish grammar and pronunciation. Vocabulary items created by the process of transliteration will, for the purpose of discussion, be divided into three main groups. The first group contains words adapted using a `process of phonetic spellings' the second group contains words which show a great deal of inconsistency in dealing with particular endings as well as the representation of the distinction between palatalised and velarised consonants so important in conveying meaning in Irish. The third group under discussion contains words spelt in a manner which, if one were to rely on it as a guide, would make their pronunciation totally incomprehensible in most cases. Group 1 The following words would in my opinion belong to this group. These words present very few problems in being adapted as Irish words and in being pronounced in a comprehensible and acceptable manner. This is due mainly to the fact that due consideration and weight has been given to their pronunciation in English and the peculiarities of Irish pronouncipage_98 Page 99 ation and spelling. Anyone familiar with Irish orthography as outlined earlier will have no problem in identifying these words. They include aicsean, amóinia, ararút, beár, biúró, bónas, bróisiúr, cuirfiú, ceamara, curaí, júdó, wigwam and yó-yó. The word `wigwam' is the only word found in Irish dictionaries which uses the letter `w'. Two of the three major Irish dialects have a similar sound, and, although the corresponding sound in the third dialect is a bilabial, velarised fricative, it would seem that the powers that be decided that intelligent bilinguals from this dialect area would succeed in transporting their English `w' sound into their usage of English loanwords in Irish. We assume that the `g' is palatalised and that the `m' is velarised. It makes for greater harmony between the two languages. Group 2 In this group we show the many inconsistencies that exist in the application of certain principles of transliterature. We will deal with them under the relevant headings. Words ending in -ia/-ya

One would expect that all such words should be spelled with `ia' in Irish and pronounced as a diphthong /ia/. A quick glance at some examples will show three different treatments: `ia', `e' and deletion of the `ia' ending. Compare the following pairs: amóinia `ammonia' An tSomáil `Somalia'

: niúmóine `pneumonia' : An Bhablóinia `Babylonia'

The common productive rule in modern Irish in dealing with English words ending in `ia'/`-ya' is to equate it with the diphthong /ia/ in Irish and should, therefore, in all cases be written as `-ia'. A long time ago when Latin words ending in `-ia' were being assimilated by monolingual Irish speakers, `ia' was in many cases rendered as `e'. This rule would seem to have been resurrected to deal with the adaptation of pneumonia. With regard to the name of countries, someone decided that a name having more than two syllables and ending in `-ia'/`-ya' should be adapted in Irish without the ending. Again, older loanwords from Latin in the sixth and seventh centuries showed similar developments. Why this rule should be applied to loanwords being borrowed during the second half of the twentieth century escapes me. Some words, however, have gone page_99 Page 100 through the transliteration process untarnished, as it were. Why `Somalia' is not `An tSomáilia' instead of `An tSomáil' and Babylonia is `An Bhablóinia' instead of `An Bhablóin' defies rational explanation, in my opinion. I think a simple, productive rule which would write and pronounce `ia' everywhere should be applied in all cases. The Ending -er clipéar `clipper' clíbhéar `cleaver'

: cibhear `quiver' (bh = v) : Caecar `Quaker'

All these words should have a neutral vowel in the second syllable. Instead we have two rules applying an historical rule which is no longer productive which shows `-er' as `-éar' or -`éir' in Irish, and a more synchronic and productive rule which states that `-er' is to be a neutral vowel followed by a velarised /r/. It should thus be written - `-(e)ar'. The spelling of the word `Caecar' from `Quaker' reveals quite a lot about the process that is at work in the transliteration of English loanwords. First of all it was decided that the initial consonant should be velarised. Since the following vowel is /e:/ then the only way to represent it in Irish writing is by the digraph `ae', which is fine. Next the intervocalic `k' was decreed velarised and hence the only possibility left was to spell the word `Caecar'. Many questions come to mind. Why was the /w/ element in English ignored? Why not use `Q' in Irish to denote the sequence /kw/? Why wasn't the intervocalic `k' adopted as a palatalised consonant as indicated by its fronted pronunciation in many varieties of English, including Irish English? Did those who took it upon themselves to create such a spelling think about the fact that in many cases the initial `c' will have to be changed to `ch'=/x/? This change alone will make the word even more difficult to comprehend. Why wasn't the spelling Quaecear or Quaeicear devised to suit the needs of Irish native speakers and learners alike? Words with `gn-, kn-' in English Two examples will suffice to show how little attention has been given to the constant psychological battle that Irish/English bilinguals have to face daily in trying to deal with words which ought to be pronounced more or less the same in both languages, but whose spelling would indicate otherwise. cnat < English `gnat' cnapsac < English `knapsack' page_100 Page 101 Consider now for a moment that two of the three major dialects of Irish have a rule which changes `cn' and `gn' to `cr' and `gr' respectively. Hence, `cnapsac' becomes `crapsac' which is now bordering on the profane. So much for being bilingual! Words Involving Palatalised/Velarised Alternations This problem is a more serious one when one considers the semantic load being carried by the palatalised/velarised distinction in Irish consonants. One would hope that consonants that sound similiar or the same in English would be transliterated consistently. The examples below prove otherwise.

With a palatalised consonant craic `crack' búmaraing `boomerang' ceanastar `canister' beiril `Beryl'

With a velarised consonant anorac `anorak' meireang `meringue' cangarú `kangaroo' basal `basil'

Considering how these words are pronounced in English, I believe they should all end in a palatalised consonant, and the third couple should each begin with a palatalised / /. Group 3 Miscellaneous Spellings The following words, in my opinion, show total disregard for many of the basic tenets of linguistic borrowing in a bilingual community. If one were to follow the spelling conventions of Irish and pronounce these words, I am convinced that a total breakdown in communication would ensue. Here are some of the more dubious examples. bícéips /bji:ke:pjs */ `biceps' braille /brale*/ `braille' fanaile /fanele*/ `vanilla' mars /mars/ `Mars' maonáis /me:na:

/, /mi:na:

/, /m

:na:

/ `mayonnaise'

séans / e:ns/ `seance' spaigití /spagji i:/ `spaghetti' Why such words were not spelled so as to adhere to general English pronunciation, we shall never know. page_101 Page 102 Conclusion In dealing with modern scientific and technical vocabulary and with the transliteration of words from English, one would wish to see greater attention paid to the following aspects: (a) a greater consistency in devising spellings for words spelt in a similar way in English and (b) allowing words to be spelt in a way in which they could be easily pronounced by native speakers and learners alike and (c) a willingness to allow Irish words to be spelled in a manner which would indicate to a certain degree the pronunciation current in English. Since Irish is not used very much in the areas of science and technology, it is hard to evaluate the impact of the new spellings and the word formation and phraseology used in teaching and studying these disciplines. Texts dealing with science and new technologies are almost exclusively in English and, until there is more demand for texts in Irish, there is very little evidence of the success or otherwise of using all the newly coined vocabulary items and structures. There has been very little if any research on the acceptability of spellings of the type under discussion among the general public. Whatever the success achieved in writing, a great psychological difficulty is to be overcome in pronunciation for many reasons, not least the `bad' pronunciation habits prevailing among all learners from teachers right down to the child in the infant classes in primary school. If Irish is to become a viable means of communication amongst the general population, I fear that much levelling will have to take place and it is certain that many of the contrasts now existing in Irish will be lost. If the revival of Irish were to succeed then it might all be worthwhile. Bibliography BLISS, A. 1981, The Standardisation of Irish, Crane Bag, 5(2), 76-82. Committee on Irish Language Attitudes Research 1975 (CLAR Report). Dublin: The Stationery Office. DE BHALDRAITHE, T. 1953, Nua-Iasachtaí i nGaeilge Chois Fhairrge, Éigse, 7, 1-34. 1959, An English/Irish Dictionary. Dublin: The Stationery Office. DINNEEN, REV. P.S. 1927, An Irish/English Dictionary. Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland Ltd.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 1948, 1979. Gramadach na Gaeilge & Litriú na Gaeilge: An Caighdeán Oifigiúil. Dublin: The Stationery Office. GREENE, D. 1966, The Irish Language. Dublin: Mercier Press. HICKEY, R. 1983, The Phonology of English Loan-Words in Inis Meáin Irish. Ériu page_102 Page 103 33, 137-56. MACEOIN, G.S. 1961, Review of De Bhaldraithe's Dictionary and of Graiméar na mBráithre. Studia Hibernica 1, 218-23. MCKENNA, FR. L. 1935, An English/Irish Dictionary. Dublin: The Stationery Office. Ó BAOILL, D.P. 1983, Is beannaithe lucht an chaighdeáin óir is leo . . . . . Teangeolas 17, 40-46. Ó Cuív, B. 1969, A View of the Irish Language. Dublin: The Stationery Office. Ó DOMHNAILL, N. 1951, Forbairt Na Gaeilge. Dublin: Sáirseal & Dill. Ó DóNAILL, N. 1977, An Irish/English Dictionary. Dublin: The Stationery Office. Ó GLAISNE, R. 1965, Leasuithe ar chaighdeán na Gaeilge, Studia Hibernica 5, 78-87. Ó MURCHÚ, M. 1969, Common Core and Underlying forms. Ériu, 21, 42-75. 1977, Successes and Failures in the Modernization of Irish Spelling. In J.A. FISHMAN (ed.), Advances in the Creation and Revision of Writing Systems. The Hague, Mouton. 1985, The Irish Language, Dublin: Department of Foreign Affairs and Bord na Gaeilge. Ó MURCHÚ, S. 1978, An Caighdeán Oifigiúil tar éis fiche bliain, Éigse, 17(3), 361-370. Ó RIAGÁIN, P. & Ó GLIASÁIN, M. 1983, The Irish Language in the Republic of Ireland 1983: Preliminary Report of a National Survey. Dublin: Linguistics Institute of Ireland. Ó SIADHAIL, M. 1981, Standard Irish Orthography: An Assessment. Crane Bag, 5(2) 71-75. Ó SIADHAIL, M. & WIGGER, A. (1975), Córas fuaimeanna na Gaeilge, Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies. Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann (1983, 1984, 1985). Teangeolas Nos. 17, 18, 19, 20. Dublin: Linguistics Institute of Ireland. WIGGER, ARNDT 1979, Irish Dialect Phonology and Problems of Irish Orthography. In DÓNALL P. Ó BAOILL (ed.), Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning No. 6: Papers in Celtic Phonology. Coleraine: The New University of Ulster. page_103 Page 104

7 Irish and English in Gaeltacht Primary Schools John Harris and Lelia Murtagh Abstract. This chapter reviews existing evidence on achievement in Irish and English amongst Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking area) primary-school children and presents new data based on objective tests. The main data consist of the percentage of children in Gaeltacht schools who attain mastery of the various objectives in spoken Irish which are represented in the Department of Education's conversation courses.

The objectives correspond to relatively broad categories of linguistic performance such as `general comprehension of speech' and `control of the morphology of verbs in speaking'. The speaking and listening tests which provided measures of these objectives were developed in recent years by ITÉ (Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann/ The Linguistics Institute of Ireland) and were administered by primary-school inspectors of the Department of Education. Other data, based on a nationallystandardised test developed by the Educational Research Centre, provide a measure of the verbal reasoning ability in English of these same Gaeltacht pupils. The information on mastery of spoken Irish and on verbal reasoning ability in English is also related to a number of linguistic and educational variables including home language and medium of instruction. Comparisons are also made with all-Irish (immersion) schools in English-speaking areas outside the Gaeltacht. Particular attention is focussed on the possible reasons for a distinctive improvement to be observed in Gaeltacht children's competence in spoken Irish between 2nd grade and 6th grade. Some implications of the findings for the manner in which intergenerational transmission of Irish occurs in the Gaeltacht are also discussed. Background The Gaeltacht refers to those areas of Ireland in which the inhabitants page_104 Page 105 are for the most part native speakers of Irish. Gaeltacht areas are to be found in counties Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Mayo, Meath and Waterford. The official Gaeltacht 1 as it exists today is defined under the Gaeltacht Areas Orders of 1956, 1967 and 1974 and includes some districts where only small pockets of native speakers remain. Census data collected in 1981 (Ireland, 1985) show the population of the official Gaeltacht to be 79,502, of whom 77% are reported as being able to speak Irish (`Irish only' or `English and Irish'). A major sociolinguistic survey conducted by the Committee on Irish Language Attitudes Research in the early 1970's (CLAR, 1975) provided data on the actual usage of Irish. In that survey, 57.5% of the adult population of the Gaeltacht reported that at least some Irish was used by someone in their home `often' or `always'; 12.4% reported someone using at least some Irish `occasionally'; and 29.3% reported that Irish was `seldom' or `never' used by anyone in the home. The achievement in Irish of children attending schools within official Gaeltacht areas has not been directly or systematically monitored, and even the limited information which is available does not always lend itself to a simple interpretation because of the complex linguistic and educational context in which Gaeltacht children acquire competence in the language. For the same reason, comparisons between the achievement in spoken Irish of pupils in Gaeltacht schools and those in ordinary or all-Irish2 (immersion) schools in the Galltacht (English speaking area) are also difficult to make. In the last few years, however, ITÉ (Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann) has been engaged in a long-term programme to monitor achievement in spoken Irish in ordinary, all-Irish and Gaeltacht primary schools (Harris, 1982, 1983, 1984). The research is based on objective criterion-referenced tests which are designed to directly assess mastery of various listening and speaking objectives in Irish. Data on social, linguistic and educational factors likely to be related to achievement in spoken Irish are also being collected e.g. home language, amount of teaching through Irish and verbal reasoning ability in English. The present chapter reports some of these data relating to children in Gaeltacht schools and, for purposes of comparison, children in all-Irish schools. Particular attention is focussed on differences between the achievement in spoken Irish of Gaeltacht children at early and late stages of their primary-school career, and on the possible implications of these differences for the manner in which intergenerational transmission of Irish occurs in the Gaeltacht. page_105 Page 106 We shall begin, however, with a review of existing evidence concerning Gaeltacht children's achievement in Irish and English. Very briefly, it may be stated that prior to the present study there were three main indices of the achievement in Irish of children in Gaeltacht schools award of the £ 10 native-speaker grant, children's self-assessments of their ability in Irish, and performance on a standardised test of Irish reading. Among the issues involved in interpreting these data are whether children's competence is primarily acquired inside or outside the school, the extent to which the school teaches through Irish and uses it as a medium of communication, and the proportion of children in the school who are native speakers of Irish and English.

Gaeltacht schools are generally assumed to teach mainly through Irish. Survey data do not support this assumption consistently. In a national survey of primary teachers between the ages of 35 and 55 conducted by ITÉ in 1975, 24 teachers were found to be teaching in schools where the majority of pupils lived in Gaeltacht areas (Ó Domhnalláin & Ó Gliasáin, 1976). Somewhat more than one-third of these teachers taught each of six subjects mainly or entirely through English. The remainder of the teachers taught these subjects half through Irish, mainly through Irish or entirely through Irish. Data from the CLAR (1975) survey show that 49.3% of adults in Gaeltacht areas had attended primary schools where all formal class work was in Irish, 21.4% had had some subjects taught through Irish and 23.6% had had Irish as a subject only. In many cases, of course, these reports would have referred to situations which existed long before the date of the survey itself. Routine annual school returns for the years 1969-1977 show a gradual decline in the number of primary schools within official Gaeltacht areas providing entirely Irish-medium education due in part, perhaps, to school amalgamation and a decline also (from 11,405 to 10,882) in the number of pupils in these schools receiving all-Irish education (Ireland: Department of Education, 1983; Ó Domhnalláin, 1979). Unpublished data kindly supplied by the Department of Education show that, based on annual school returns, the percentage of Gaeltacht pupils attending Gaeltacht primary schools in which all instruction was through Irish for the six school years from 1976-77 to 1981-82 was, in order, 94%, 92%, 93%, 93%, 93% and 90%. These latter figures are at variance with the estimates of the amount of Irish-medium instruction conducted in Gaeltacht primary schools which are provided by the two earlier-mentioned studies. New data on the number of school subjects taught entirely through Irish were collected in the present study. Probably the most important index of Gaeltacht children's proficiency page_106 Page 107 in Irish is provided by information on the award of the £ 10 native-speaker grant, Scéim Labhairt na Gaeilge administered by the Department of the Gaeltacht. The £ 10 grant is awarded annually in Gaeltacht areas to the parents of those children, aged six years or more and attending school full-time, whose command of Irish is at a level which would indicate that Irish was the normal language of the home. The children's competence is directly assessed by Department of the Gaeltacht examiners. There appears to be a small degree of latitude allowed in awarding the grant, since the letter informing parents that they have been awarded it sometimes cautions that unless the child's competence improves the grant may not be awarded again. The £ 10 grant has an importance which is considerably greater than its nominal value would suggest since the award of a number of other Gaeltacht grants depends partly on it. It is generally believed, in fact, that only a very small proportion of those parents whose children would qualify for the grant actually fail to apply for it. For this reason, it is considered to provide quite a good indication of the number of native Irish-speaking children in Gaeltacht areas. At the time of the CLAR survey, the number of primary-school children receiving the £ 10 grant was 4,906. By 1978, this number had fallen to 4,427 (Ó Domhnalláin, 1978, 1980). Unfortunately, the proportion of the population of primary-school children aged six and over in Gaeltacht areas which these numbers represent is not known. Data on the number of children receiving the £ 10 grant, and on the total number of children in Gaeltacht primary schools, are not published routinely. On the basis of unpublished information supplied by the Department of the Gaeltacht and the Department of Education, however, a rough estimate of the proportion in question may be made for the year 1981-82. The total number of children in Gaeltacht primary schools in 1981-82 was 12,845. Since information on the number of these pupils who were aged six years or under was not readily available, this was estimated on the basis of the corresponding proportion (18.46%) for the Republic of Ireland as a whole (Ireland: Department of Education, 1983). In this way it was calculated that 10,474 children were potentially eligible for the grant. The number of pupils in Gaeltacht primary schools who actually received that grant that same year was 4,536, wich represents 43.3% of those who were estimated to be potentially eligible. In other words, somewhat less than half of all children aged six years and over in Gaeltacht primary schools were judged to have native-speaker ability in Irish. A further 93 children receiving the grant attended primary schools outside Gaeltacht areas. Thus, the total number of children receiving the grant in 1981-82 was 4,629, an increase of 202 from the 1978 figure. The figures for the following page_107 Page 108 TABLE 1 Percentage of post-primary Gaeltacht students with varying degrees of self-assessed ability in speaking and understanding Irish Percentage of students Speak Understand Ability 1st year 6th year 1st year 6th year Only the odd word 4.4 0.0 4.2 0.0

Simple sentences Parts of conversations Most conversations

3.5

0.0

7.0

0.7

20.8

20.4

15.1

10.6

19.4

26.4

19.1

31.5

48.1

50.0

36.5

53.6

As good as or better than English No information/not applicable 3.9 3.3 18.1 3.7 Source: CLAR, Educational Sub-Report (1974), Tables 3.1.1. and 3.1.2. two years (1982-83 and 1983-84), however, show a small falling off again in the overall numbers of children receiving the £ 10 grant, with 4,423 and 4,364 pupils respectively receiving it. In assessing the implications of the above statistics, it must be borne in mind that the £ 10 grant was not designed to be used as an index of speaking proficiency. Thus, many factors could affect its validity and reliability as such an index, including the stability over the years of the performance criteria for the award of the grant, and the consistency of the presumed small proportion of Gaeltacht parents declining to apply for it. Table 1, based on the CLAR survey, shows the percentage of 1st and 6th-year post-primary students in Gaeltacht areas who rated themselves at each of five ability levels in speaking and understanding Irish. About half of the 1st-year and 6th-year students rated their speaking ability as `as good as or better than English'. If students who rate their speaking ability as `most conversations' are added to these, then more than two-thirds of 1st-year students and more than three-quarters of 6th-year students could be said to judge themselves as having a high level of speaking ability. As the authors of the CLAR report point out, of course, the fact that the percentages of 1st-year and 6th-year students in Gaeltacht schools who assess their ability as `as good as or better than English' are almost equal (48.1% and 50%), does not imply that these groups are of equal ability. The demands made on the 1st-year students in interactions in which they are participants are probably not as great as the demands made on 6th-year students. First-year students (11-13-year-olds) are more likely than 6th year students (17-19-year-olds) to be passive participants in conversations in Irish involving adults. Thus, 6th-year students may assess their page_108 Page 109 speaking ability against a more stringent criterion. If these observations are correct, it would suggest that the differences in speaking ability between 1st-year and 6th-year students in Gaeltacht schools may be somewhat greater than the self-report data in Table 1 would indicate. Data in Table 1 on the ability of students in Gaeltacht schools to understand Irish are more difficult to interpret because the percentage of 1st-year students included in the `no-information/not applicable' category is quite high (18.1%). It was noted earlier that Irish was `seldom' or `never' used in 29.3% of Gaeltacht homes. Yet by the beginning of their post-primary education only 7.9% of Gaeltacht students rated their own speaking ability in Irish at the `simple sentences/only the odd word' levels (Table 1). No 6th-year Gaeltacht students at all rated their speaking ability this low, but then perhaps 6th-year students are also less likely than 1st-year students to represent the full range of home-usage conditions in the Gaeltacht. The 1st-year speaking-ability ratings alone, nevertheless, strongly suggest that a substantial amount of the Irish acquired by many Gaeltacht students must be acquired either in school or in the wider community outside the home. One study has used an Irish-reading test, standardised on students in Galltacht schools, to compare the performance of 1st-year post-primary students in Gaeltacht and Galltacht schools. Although the Gaeltacht schools were not randomly selected, they accounted for 70% of the Gaeltacht population of 1st-year students. Results showed that the test was too easy for the particular Gaeltacht students tested 72% of them scored at or above the 80% correct level (De Faoite et al., 1977). Two studies compared attainment in English among pupils in Gaeltacht and Galltacht schools. Macnamara (1966) compared the scores of 5th-grade primary-school pupils from `English speaking districts' (mainly Galltacht) of the country with the scores of corresponding pupils from Fíor-Ghaeltacht areas. Fíor-Ghaeltacht refers to wholly Irish-speaking areas, which are considerably smaller than the official Gaeltacht. The test used was the Moray House English Test 14 which had been standardised on a sample of British children. Macnamara found that the Fíor-Ghaeltacht group were about 13 months behind in terms of `English age' compared to the group from the `English-speaking' districts. The De Faoite et al. (1977) study, mentioned above, found that a large group of Gaeltacht pupils did less well on a test of English reading than mainly English-speaking pupils in

Galltacht schools. The results of these two studies were not specifically related to home language at the individual-pupil level. Summarising the position in Gaeltacht schools, then, it may be stated page_109 Page 110 that a substantial minority of children living within official Gaeltacht areas probably begin school with little or no Irish. Somewhat less than half of all children over the age of six years in Gaeltacht primary schools are native-Irish speakers as judged by recent data on the award of the £ 10 grant. Most Gaeltacht primary schools appear to conduct mainly Irish-medium instruction but the available data are not consistent. The school and other influences outside the home probably play an important part in the development of most Gaeltacht children's competence in Irish. This influence is most clearly seen in the very small proportions of post-primary students who themselves report low levels of ability in speaking Irish. The overall ability of students in Gaeltacht schools in speaking, understanding and reading is markedly superior to the ability of students in ordinary schools in Galltacht areas. Comparisons between students in Gaeltacht schools and those in all-Irish schools in Galltacht areas have not been made. There is some evidence from objective tests that children in Gaeltacht schools may have a lower level of achievement in English than children in Galltacht schools. The new data to be reported here are intended to confirm and extend this tentative account of Gaeltacht children's abilities in Irish and English. The study provides for the first time a direct assessment of proficiency in spoken Irish among Gaeltacht primary-school children based on newly-constructed objective tests. Corroborative evidence for our conclusions will be sought, however, in other linguistic and educational data relating to home language, medium of instruction and receipt of the £ 10 native-speaking grant. Comparisons will also be made with data from Galltacht all-Irish schools where such comparisons are likely to be illuminating. Most of the evidence and arguments to be presented centre on two main questions: 1. How does Gaeltacht children's competence in spoken Irish grow during the primary school years? And how is this growth related to home language, amount of Irish-medium instruction, receipt of the £ 10 grant etc.? 2. To what extent are Gaeltacht children capable of thinking and reasoning in English by the end of primary school? How does their verbal reasoning ability in English relate to home language? Finally, we will attempt to provide some general assessment of the role of home, community and school in the growth of Gaeltacht children's command of Irish during the primary-school years. page_110 Page 111 Method Sample The data in the present study are based on random samples of classes from two kinds of primary schools (Gaeltacht and Galltacht all-Irish) at two grade levels (2nd and 6th). The 2nd-grade classes were tested in 1982 and the 6th-grade in 1985. The 2nd-grade Gaeltacht sample represented 18.9% of the 127 2nd-grade classes in Gaeltacht schools. The 2nd grade all-Irish sample represented 43.5% of the 23 2nd-grade classes in the population of officially recognised all-Irish schools. The 6th-grade samples contained 35 Gaeltacht school classes and 16 all-Irish school classes. These represented 22.4% and 61.5% respectively of the corresponding populations of classes. Instruments There were four main sources of information. 1. Béaltriail Ghaeilge ITÉ II & VI (objective tests of spoken Irish for 2nd-grade and 6th-grade). 2. Drumcondra Verbal Reasoning Test (in English) administered to 6th-grade pupils only. 3. A Teacher Questionnaire. 4. Individual pupil information relating to home language and receipt/non-receipt of the £ 10 grant. Home language information was based on questions put directly to each pupil and checked was for accuracy with the class teacher.

Béaltriail Ghaeilge ITÉ II & VI These are criterion referenced tests designed to show whether pupils have attained mastery of particular listening and speaking objectives in Irish. The objectives may be thought of as consisting of the ability to perform specific listening and speaking tasks in Irish requiring the kind of knowledge and skills which are outlined in the primary-school curriculum handbook (Ireland: Department of Education, 1971) and in the relevant Nuachúrsaí teacher's handbook for 2nd and 6th grade (Ireland: Department of Education, 1969, 1974). The mainly audio-visual Nuachúrsaí provide the basis for the teaching of spoken Irish in the vast majority of page_111 Page 112 ordinary schools and are also used extensively in Galltacht all-Irish and in Gaeltacht schools. The Nuachúrsaí teacher's handbook for each grade consists of up to 40 lessons, some of which may be revision lessons. Each of the regular lessons follows a structured five-step plan, the first three of which are clearly audio-visual in character: (a) `hearing and recognition' (b) `imitation' (c) `repetition from stimulus' (d) `speech mould and vocabulary exercises' and (e) `free creative conversation'. The objectives measured by the ITÉ tests are carefully tailored to the content of the Nuachúrsaí lessons at the relevant grades. There are two parts to each test a `listening' section and a `speaking' section. The objectives range from relatively broad categories of behaviour, such as `general comprehension of speech', to quite narrow ones, such as `control of the morphology of verbs in speaking'. The 2nd-grade test contained 68 listening items and 70 speaking items. The 6th-grade test contained 75 listening items and 60 speaking items. All items used to test listening objectives were in multiple-choice form and were presented on a cassette tape to entire class-groups of pupils. The speakers in all cases were male and female teachers who were native speakers of Irish. At 2nd grade, separate taped versions were made available in each of the three main dialects of Irish. At 6th grade only one tape using the Connaught dialect of Irish was available. The `speaking' section was individually administered to each pupil in a face-to-face interview with an examiner. Examiners could give instructions in Irish or English, whichever language would best ensure that the pupil understood the task. The items themselves, however, contained only Irish. The examiner was instructed to adjust the test material to suit local speech norms. Most of the data to be presented here consist of the mean percentages of pupils attaining mastery of each objective in the test. The proportion of successes required for `mastery' was decided before any testing began and was based in part on the judgements of a group of primary-school inspectors. All testing was conducted by primary-school inspectors of the Department of Education. Drumcondra Verbal Reasoning Test (DVRT) The DVRT (Gorman, 1968) was designed to measure the ability to use and reason with verbal symbols in English. It contains sections on analogies, word opposites, identification of concepts as belonging to a particular category, and problems in inductive and deductive reasoning. The test was originally standardised on a national sample of Irish students aged approximately 10 to 13 years in 1967. Because of the gradual drift page_112 Page 113 upwards in raw scores which has taken place in succeeding years, unpublished norms based on a new standardisation of the test in the late 1970's were used in the present study. These unpublished norms were kindly made available by the Educational Research Centre. Based on this later restandardisation, the test had a mean standard score (SS) of 100 and standard deviation of 15. The Teacher Questionnaire The teacher of each class was sent a questionnaire in Irish by ITÉ more than two weeks before testing began. The questions covered a range of issues connected with the teaching of Irish. The 6th-grade questionnaire was slightly different to the 2nd-grade one. For example, the 6th-grade questionnaire included two questions relating to the teaching of English. The final number of questionnaires returned to ITÉ was very high. At 2nd grade, only two of the 24 Gaeltacht teachers and none of the all-Irish teachers failed to respond. At 6th grade, only four of the 35 Gaeltacht teachers and two of the 16 all-Irish teachers failed to respond. Questionnaire data presented in this chapter are based on the number of teachers who returned questionnaires and not on the total number of teachers in the samples. Result and Discussion

Before presenting our data, two general points should be made. First, it should be noted that the spatial distribution of Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht generally is quite uneven. Thus, while our samples are randomly selected, and while they represent substantial proportions of the corresponding populations, the fact that their absolute size in terms of classes and teachers, if not in terms of pupils, is small suggests the need for caution in generalising our results. Final confirmation of our initial conclusions here will have to wait until replications have been done. Second, it must be borne in mind that in a short paper such as this we are obliged to ignore or simplify many issues which, while relevant, are not absolutely central to our main arguments. These additional issues will be dealt with in fuller a report to be published by ITÉ at a later date. Part 1: Achievement in Irish Data on Gaeltacht children's achievement in spoken Irish are given page_113 Page 114 TABLE 2 Percentage of 2nd-grade and 6th-grade pupils in Gaeltacht schools who receive the £ 10 grant 2nd Grade 6th Grade Receipt of £ 10 grant N(pupils): 260 369 Pupils receiving the £10 grant 38% 48% Pupils not receiving the £10 grant Not recorded

62%

51% 1%

100%

100%

in Tables 2-6. The most striking feature of the data, and the one on which we will mainly dwell, is the substantial improvement between 2nd grade and 6th grade in Gaeltacht children's command of spoken Irish. This improvement is considerably more than the predictable, steady growth in the command of the language which is achieved by children in Galltacht all-Irish and ordinary schools. The kind of improvement to be observed appears to be unique to children in Gaeltacht schools. It must be emphasised that what is considered distinctive about Gaeltacht children's command of the language is the scale of its improvement between 2nd and 6th grade. The command of Irish which is finally achieved by the end of primary school by Gaeltacht children, as opposed to all-Irish or ordinary school children, is a separate matter. One indication of the improvement in Gaeltacht children's command of spoken Irish is provided by data on the £ 10 grant. The £ 10 grant, it will be recalled, is awarded to the parents of children whose command of the language indicates that Irish is the normal language of the home. We estimated earlier that in 1982, 43% of all children over the age of six years in Gaeltacht primary schools received the £ 10 grant. Table 2 shows that in our present samples, only 38% of 2nd-grade children receive the grant, while 48% of 6th-grade children receive it. These new figures from our own study are consistent with the earlier estimate of 43% for Gaeltacht children of all grades, assuming that there is a gradual increase during the primary school years in the number of children who exhibit a native speaker command of Irish as independently judged by Department of the Gaeltacht examiners. One question which might be raised here is whether the overall number of grants being awarded during the period 1982-1985 has increased due, perhaps, to a greater leniency in judging native-speaker competence. page_114 Page 115 TABLE 3 Percentage of 2nd-grade and 6th-grade pupils in Gaeltacht schools who come from different home-language backgrounds Home language N = (pupils): 2nd Grade 6th Grade 260 369 `English only' at 46% 34% home `English and Irish' at [more 34% 19% English home

9% 9% `Irish only' at home Not recorded

20%

29%

1%

0%

100%

100%

[half & half [more Irish

As we pointed out earlier, however, for the first two of the three years under consideration the years for which we have official data the total number of grants awarded has fallen slightly, making it unlikely that there has been a change in the standard being applied. More direct evidence on this point from the ITÉ tests is given below. For now, however, the £ 10-grant data support the claim that there is a substantial growth between 2nd grade and 6th grade in the proportion of Gaeltacht children who exhibit a native-like command of Irish. Table 3 presents additional indirect evidence for the latter claim. It shows the proportion of Gaeltacht children in 2nd and in 6th grade who come from different home-language backgrounds. It can be seen that there is a noticeable shift between 2nd grade and 6th grade in the language which the children themselves say is used at home. Whereas at 2nd grade 46% of children say that English was the only language used at home, at 6th grade only 34% of children say that English was the only language used at home. Correspondingly, the number of children who report that only Irish is used at home rises from 20% among 2nd-grade children to 29% among 6th-grade children. Incidentally, somewhat more precise home language categories were used at 6th grade than at 2nd grade. While the single category `English and Irish' was used at 2nd grade, finer distinctions were made between the three categories `more English than Irish', `half and half' and `more Irish than English' at 6th grade. It is important to note that this change in the home language reported by children at 2nd and 6th grade is something peculiar to the Gaeltacht. For example, in the case of children in all-Irish-schools, the home language reported at 2nd and 6th grade is very similar. At both grades, exactly page_115 Page 116 TABLE 4 Mean percentage of 2nd and 6th-grade pupils in Gaeltacht and All-Irish schools attaining mastery of objectives in spoken Irish by home language Mean % of pupils attaining mastery 2nd Grade 6th Grade N(pupils) = AllIrish Gaeltacht AllIrish Gaeltacht Home 216 260 301 369 language `English only' at home 79.3 41.7 76.6 53.8 `English and Irish' at 90.2 68.6 83.5 72.6 [more home 85.7 81.9 English 84.7 [half & half * [more Irish `Irish only' at home * 77.9 * 89.4 All pupils 83.8 57.9 80.0 73.1 * Mastery data are not reported for `home-language by school-type' categories with very small numbers of pupils. 2nd grade pupils took the 2nd-grade test (BG-II) in 1982; 6th-grade pupils took the 6th grade test (BV-VI) in 1985. Home language was not recorded for two Gaeltacht pupils at 2nd grade. equal proportions (59%) of all-Irish school children report that they come from homes where `English only' is used. At 2nd grade 36% of children come from homes where `English and Irish' are used. The corresponding figure for 6th grade is 39%. The remainder 5% of children at 2nd grade and 3% of children at 6th grade come from `Irish only' homes. We turn now to the results of the ITÉ tests of spoken Irish. Due to limitations of space we cannot present detailed results of the test, objective by objective. Instead we will average over objectives so that we are working with the mean percentage of pupils in various categories who attain mastery of each objective.

Table 4 shows the mean percentage of pupils in all-Irish schools and Gaeltacht schools who master each objective in spoken Irish according to grade and home language. It is important to note that the 2nd-grade pupils were tested on the 2nd-grade test and 6th-grade pupils were tested on the 6th-grade test. Each test was based on the speaking and listening objectives of the Nuachúrsaí at the appropriate grade. Given a steady growth in competence in Irish during primary school, then, it should be expected that for particular categories of pupils (e.g. those in all-Irish schools or those in Gaeltacht schools) roughly equal percentages of pupils would obtain mastery of the objectives in spoken Irish appropriate to their grade level. page_116 Page 117 TABLE 5 Percentage of 2nd and 6th-grade pupils in All-Irish and Gaeltacht schools attaining mastery of three objectives in spoken Irish at the appropriate grade levels Percentage of pupils attaining mastery All-Irish Gaeltacht Objectives 2nd 6th 2nd 6th grade grade grade grade General comprehension of speech 96% 96% 68% 85% Understanding the morphology of verbs in listening

83%

76%

42%

61%

Control of the morphology of verbs in speaking

68%

65%

40%

62%

This expectation is confirmed for children in all-Irish schools but not for children in Gaeltacht schools. The last row in Table 4 shows that in the case of all-Irish school children there is a slight fall from 2nd grade to 6th grade in the mean percentage attaining mastery of each objective. But for the corresponding Gaeltacht children, tested at the same time, the mean percentage attaining mastery increases substantially from 57.9% at 2nd grade to 73.1% at 6th grade. Table 5 gives more detailed information on three of the objectives over which we averaged in Table 4. This is simply to give some idea of the kinds of changes in the command of Irish which are to be observed in Gaeltacht children. In examining these percentages it must be borne in mind again that despite the title of the objectives being the same at 2nd and 6th grade, the 6th-grade objective in each case reflects the more advanced knowledge of the language specified in the Nuachúrsaí at that level. Thus, any actual growth between 2nd grade and 6th grade in the percentages of children attaining mastery of similarly titled objectives indicates that ordinary expectations about the pace of growth in competence in this aspect of the language have been exceeded. The extent to which this happens in Gaeltacht children is quite dramatic as Tables 4 and 5 show. Incidentally, the two objectives related to knowledge of the morphology of verbs in Table 5 are the objectives which we have consistently found to be most sensitive to the amount of realistic communicative use of Irish engaged in by the child (Harris, 1984). Other more detailed data not presented here show that the improvement in Gaeltacht children's command of Irish between 2nd and 6th grade is much more marked in the case of speaking objectives than it is in the case of listening objectives. page_117 Page 118 While there was a difference of 9.5% between the percentage of 2nd-grade and 6th-grade Gaeltacht pupils mastering the listening objectives (60.5%-70%), the corresponding difference for the speaking objectives was more than double that (55.2%-75.5%). The possibility was raised earlier that the increase between 2nd grade and 6th grade in the proportion of Gaeltacht children receiving the £ 10 grant might be due to a lowering of standards for the award of the grant either in more recent years or at more senior grades in primary school. But our own data on Gaeltacht children's competence in Irish show that, if anything, exactly the opposite is true. The mean percentage of those pupils receiving the £ 10 grant who attain mastery at 2nd grade is only 78.7%, while at 6th grade it is 87.6%. The corresponding mean percentages for those not receiving the grant at 2nd grade is 45.4% and at 6th grade is 59.2%. Thus, the mean percentage both of those receiving the grant and of those not receiving the grant who attain mastery of each objective actually improves between 2nd and 6th grade. Looking at it another way, we can say on the basis of our own test results that the increase between 2nd and 6th grade in the proportion of

Gaeltacht children receiving the £ 10 grant does not reflect the full scale of the improvement in their command of the language during that period. The evidence presented so far gives rise to a number of new questions. Some of these can be answered with reasonable certainty while others can be given at least a speculative or partial answer. We must ask, for example, if the distinctive improvement in command of the language between 2nd and 6th grade is simply due to the shift in reported home language? More difficult to answer is how and why do home-language changes occur during the period while the child is in primary school. Another important issue is the extent to which the school is the responsible agent in the distinctive growth in Gaeltacht children's competence in Irish. Can this growth be related to the amount of teaching through Irish which is done in school? And to what extent is peer (native speaker) influence and contact inside and outside the school a factor in improving the competence in Irish of children from `mainly English' or `English only' homes? Looking back to Table 4 again it can be seen that within each home language category, such as `English only', the mean percentage attaining mastery falls some what between 2nd grade and 6th grade for all-Irish school children (79.3% to 76.6%) but increases for Gaeltacht school children (41.7% to 53.8%). Thus, the distinctive growth in Gaeltacht children's command of Irish between 2nd and 6th grade cannot be page_118 Page 119 TABLE 6 Percentage of 2nd-grade and 6th-grade classes in Gaeltacht schools in which each of six subjects are taught entirely Irish Percentage of classes Subjects taught entirely through N(classes) = 2nd grade 6th grade Irish (I) 22 31 Religion (I) 36% 36% Mathematics (I) 82% 68% Arts/Crafts (I) 64% 61% Social/Environmental Studies (I) 59% 55% Music (I) 59% 58% Physical Education (I) 59% 71% explained simply in terms of home language or home-language shift. Because not only is there an increase in performance related to the use of more Irish at home, there is also a substantial improvement in the performance of those children who remain within each home-language category. We must accept, then, that some of the distinctive improvement in Gaeltacht children's competence in Irish must be due to factors outside the home in school or in the wider community. Of teaching factors within the school, the dominant one determining achievement in spoken Irish must surely be the amount of Irish-medium teaching which is conducted (Harris, 1983, 1984). The data in Table 6, however, provide no evidence that the distinctive growth in Gaeltacht children's competence between 2nd and 6th grade could be explained in terms of an increase in the amount of Irish-medium teaching at later grades. The most plausible overall explanation, then, may simply be that a number of different factors, perhaps interacting, are responsible. It seems reasonable to assume, for example, that children from English-speaking homes will be motivated to acquire native-like competence in Irish where there are substantial numbers of native Irish speakers in the class or where Irish is the dominant language in the community outside the home. Obviously home influence on language use will be stronger at 2nd grade than at 6th grade, both in terms of the child's choice of language and the amount of time the child has been exposed to a particular language. Correspondingly, peer language both at school and in the community is likely to be a relatively greater influence as the child progresses to the more senior grades in primary school. page_119 Page 120 Perhaps this is how the apparent paradox of home language actually switching, or partially switching, between 2nd grade and 6th grade is to be explained. For example, the children of bilingual parents who are spoken to entirely or mainly in English at home, but who attend schools where Irish is the dominant peer language, may gradually stimulate parents to revert to more Irish usage as the children themselves acquire the language independently at school. Alternatively, there may be cases where the parents wish the child to acquire a good command of Irish but where their strategy is to allow him or her to acquire it outside the home initially before

responding later with more use of Irish at home. Note incidentally that in this study it was the child who reported on the language used at home. It seems reasonable to assume that the child's report is mainly influenced by the language used by the parents in communicating with him or her. It is probably less influenced by the language used in adult-adult conversation. Thus the `home-language switch' we have referred to may in reality consist simply of some degree of change in the language chosen for parent-child communication. Needless to say, this change need not necessarily constitute a dramatic reversal, but may merely amount to a gradual change from use of, say, `English only' to `mainly English' or from equal use of `Irish and English' to `mainly Irish'. We must emphasise that these are no more than speculations, and we are advancing them here simply as possible working hypotheses to be considered in future studies. Clearly, we are still in need of much better information on how knowledge of Irish is transmitted in the Gaeltacht, on the conscious acquisition strategies favoured by parents, and on the relative contribution of home, community and school to children's acquisition of the language. Part II: English Verbal Reasoning Ability We turn now to Gaeltacht children's ability to think and reason in English. Table 7 shows that the mean standard score (SS) of all 6th-grade Gaeltacht pupils on the Drumcondra Verbal Reasoning Test was 105. The corresponding mean scores for children in ordinary schools and in all-Irish schools not shown in Table 7 were 109 and 115 respectively. It may be observed also that the mean SS for ordinary schools has drifted upwards from the mean of 100 when the test was restandardised. Table 7 also shows the performance of Gaeltacht children on the Drumcondra Verbal Reasoning Test broken down by home language. Note that only the mean SS for children from `mainly English' homes (X=109) is as high as the mean SS for children in ordinary schools. page_120 Page 121 TABLE 7 Mean standard scores (SS) on the Drumcondra Verbal Reasoning Test (DVRT) of 6th-grade Gaeltacht pupils broken down by home language Home language N(pupils) Mean `standard score' Percentile equivalent on DVRT (SS) of mean SS `English only at 106 66 (122) home' `Mainly English at 109 73 (68) home' `Half & half (Eng 108 70 (31) & Irish)' `Mainly Irish at 106 66 (32) home' `Irish only at home' 101 53 (103) All 6th-grade 105 63 (356) Gaeltacht pupils We conducted an ANOVA on the data summarised in Table 7 and found that, overall, home language had a significant effect on verbal reasoning in English in Gaeltacht children. 3 When we conducted more specific tests between each possible pair of means, however, we found only one significant difference. Children from `Irish only' homes had a significantly lower mean SS than the children from `mainly English' homes (Scheffé Test (Edwards, 1968): F = 3.1, df (4,35); P < 0.05). But how big a difference is this in practical terms? The percentile equivalents of the various mean SS which are shown on the right hand side of Table 7 give some idea. These figures indicate that, on average, there is a difference of about 20 percentile points between the English verbal reasoning ability of children from `mainly English' homes and those from `Irish only' homes. Translating that into a more informal description it might not do too much violence to the facts to suggest that for every seven children from `mainly English' homes who reach a particular level of English verbal reasoning ability about five children from `Irish only' homes reach that same level. Thus, it is probably reasonable to conclude that while the English verbal reasoning ability of Gaeltacht children falls below that of children outside the Gaeltacht, the difference is not on a scale which would give cause for concern. This would also appear to be the view of parents as reported by teachers in our study. Twenty-nine per cent of Gaeltacht teachers reported that parents were `very satisfied' with their children's competence in English, while the remaining 71% reported that parents were `satisfied'. A very high level of parental satisfaction with the amount of time being spent teaching English was also reported by Gaeltacht teachers.

page_121 Page 122 This is not to urge complacency regarding the teaching of English in the Gaeltacht or to suggest that there is no basis at all for the concern which has been expressed from time to time recently in that regard. It must be borne in mind, too, that we have assessed only the ability to think and reason in English here we did not assess competence in spoken English. But the data do serve to set at least some limits on any future statements about Gaeltacht children's general knowledge of English. In conclusion, we hope the data which have been presented here indicate the potential of large-scale monitoring of language performance in Gaeltacht schools, even in cases where the test instruments available are not perfectly suitable for the population. Clearly, small-scale, in-depth studies also have a crucial role to play in developing our understanding of the position of Irish and English in the Gaeltacht. But the broadertype survey based on representative samples does provide an extremely useful basis for making comparisons with non-Gaeltacht populations, as well as allowing the measurement of general changes over time and the early identification of new problems as they develop. Finally, the study stresses once again the complex linguistic and educational task facing many Gaeltacht teachers and emphasises the need for more information on and consideration for the problems they must encounter. Acknowledgements The research reported in this paper is part of a larger project conducted by Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann with the assistance and co-operation of the Department of Education and the Educational Research Centre. We are indebted to the inspectors of the Primary Branch of the Department of Education who administered all the tests and to members of the Department's Curriculum Unit who consulted with us regularly. In particular we would like to express our appreciation to Dónall Ó Coileáin, Breandán Ó Cróinín, Aodán Ó Donnchadha, Brandán Ó Coinghéallaigh, Tomás Ó Fiacháin, Éamonn Mac Aonghusa, Proinsias Mac Suibhne, Seán Mac Con Mara, Páraic Mac Donncha and Proinsias Ó Maolmhuaidh. We are also grateful to Michael O. Martin of the Educational Research Centre and to Tomás Ó Domhnalláin, Diarmaid de Nais and Martina Hickey of Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann. Special thanks are due to Eoghan Mac Aogáin, Director of Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann, and Pádraig Ó Riagáin for their comments on the paper. Responsibility for the analyses and views reported here is entirely our own. page_122 Page 123 Notes 1. The term `Gaeltacht' as used here refers to the official Gaeltacht defined by various Government orders for administrative purposes. Fíor-Ghaeltacht (fully Irish speaking districts) and Breac-Ghaeltacht (partly Irish speaking districts) are two other terms commonly used to distinguish between areas with different distributions of native-Irish speakers within the official Gaeltacht. The `Galltacht' is the much larger English-speaking part of Ireland outside the Gaeltacht. 2. For the purposes of this paper, the term `all-Irish' refers to immersion schools in the Galltacht (English speaking area). Needless to say, many Gaeltacht schools also teach mainly or entirely through Irish, but we refer to these simply as Gaeltacht schools to distinguish them from all-Irish schools in the Galltacht. 3. In this brief paper we cannot consider a number of variables (e.g. socio-economic status) which are known to be related to verbal reasoning ability and which may be confounded with home language. References Committee on Irish Language Attitudes Research (CLAR) 1974 Educational sub-report. Unpublished manuscript. 1975 Report. Dublin: Stationery Office. DE FAOITE, M., Ó CEALLAIGH, F., Ó SÚILLEABHÁIN, E. AND EDWARDS, J.R. 1977 Irish speaking pupils' performance on Irish and English tests with special reference to reading. In V. GREANEY (ed.), Studies in Reading. Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland.

EDWARDS, A.L. 1968, Experimental Design in Psychological Research. (3rd ed.) New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. GORMAN, W.G. 1968, The construction and standardization of a verbal reasoning test for age range 10 years 0 months to 12 years 11 months in an Irish population. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University College, Dublin, Ireland. HARRIS, J. 1982, Achievement in spoken Irish at the end of primary school. Irish Journal of Education, 16, 85-116. 1983, Relationships between achievement in spoken Irish and demographic, administrative and teaching factors. Irish Journal of Education, 17, 5-34. 1984, Spoken Irish in Primary Schools. Dublin: Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann. IRELAND: DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 1969, Cúchulainn/An Seanteach: Cúrsaí Comhrá Gaeilge le haghaidh rang V/VI. Baile Átha Cliath: Oifig an tSoláthair. 1971, Curaclam na bunscoile: Lámhleabhar an oide. Cuid 1. Primary school curriculum: Teacher's handbook. Part 1. Dublin: Department of Education. 1974, Hóra a Pháid/Dúisigh a Bhríd. Cúrsaí comhrg * Gaeilge le haghaidh rang I/II. Baile Átha Cliath: Oifig an tSoláthair. 1983, Tuarascáil staitistiúil, (Statistical report) 1980-81. Dublin: Stationery Office. IRELAND: CENTRAL STATISTICS OFFICE 1985, Census of Population of Ireland 1981: page_123 Page 124 Volume 6 - Irish Language. Dublin: Stationery Office. MACNAMARA, J. 1966, Bilingualism and Primary Education: A Study of Irish Experience. Edinburgh: University Press. Ó DOMHNALLÁIN, T. 1978, Cainteoirí dúchais sa Ghaeltacht. Líon na ndeontas £ 10. Teangeolas, 8, 12-13. 1979, An Ghaeilge san oideachas. Teangeolas, 9, 25-28. 1980, Cainteoirí dúchais sa Ghaeltacht. Scéal na ndeontas £ 10. Teangeolas, 10, 33-34. Ó DOMHNALLÁIN, T., & Ó GLIASÁIN, M. 1976, Audio-visual methods v. A.B.C. methods in the teaching of Irish. Dublin: Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann. page_124 Page 125

8 A Linguistic Minority under the Protection of its Own Ethnic State: A Case Study in an Irish Gaeltacht 1 Michie Akutagawa Abstract. One of the striking aspects of the Irish Gaeltacht is that the definition of this minority in the official designation has never become a self-defining category for the Gaeltacht people themselves. The question of a separate identity for this minority does not seem to have arisen even among its mobilised sector. This situation is structurally rooted in the Gaeltacht's historical and institutional relationship with the state. The Gaeltacht is within the jurisdiction of its `own ethnic state', whose major `project' is the maintenance of Irish as the national language part of the symbolism of Irish national identity. With its unitary state structure as well as this symbolism, the state's approach became an imposition on the Gaeltacht of the specific function of contributing to the state in its cultural objective. Its logic simply

denies a separate identity for the Gaeltacht. This characterised the central response to the demand for autonomy from the Gaeltacht and at the same time indirectly determined the Gaeltacht movement's failure in mobilising collective identity. Even its distinct language with the official status turned out to be a double-edged weapon in this context. Introduction The Irish Gaeltacht Areas The Irish Gaeltacht comprises officially designated areas located page_125 Page 126 mainly in the west coast of the Republic where Irish is considered to be spoken as the community language (see map, p. 128). Currently they contain 79,500 people or 2.3% of the Republic's population. Of the Gaeltacht population of 3 years and over 77.4% reported themselves as Irish-speaking in the 1981 Census of Population (Central Statistics Office, 1985). Unlike other linguistic minorities, which may more properly be called ethnic minorities, the Gaeltacht people are supposedly enjoying, as it were, their `own ethnic' state's language protection policy since the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1921. They have, however, particular problems concerning their survival. This is not just a question of loss of population through emigration or the recent arrival of immigrants or returned emigrants with English-speaking children. Obviously those trends are relevant to the size and quality of the linguistic repertoire of the Gaeltacht; but a wider complex of recent changes has affected the social basis for the natural intergenerational transmission of linguistic distinctiveness. 2 This is not, however, the only aspect of the question. Generally speaking, without any distinct cultural attributes like language or a separate collective identity, no cultural minority can be said to subsist. This latter dimension can be identified in a most salient way in some self-mobilisation or politicisation of the minority. Hence the other crucial aspect to the Gaeltacht question is the failure of self-mobilisation based on indigenous uniqueness, or distinct language. This chapter will deal mainly with the latter aspect, drawing on a case study located in one of the biggest Gaeltacht areas the Galway Gaeltacht.3 This particular Gaeltacht, or more precisely the South Connemara part of it, was selected because of its size and above all its experience of various self-mobilisation attempts. The chapter draws on part of the results of research, which includes a field study conducted in the Connemara Gaeltacht in 1985. The Role of Identity and Distinct Language in Mobilisation Considering the many cases of mobilised linguistic, or ethnic minorities, it is well-known that their ethnic identity and cultural or linguistic distinctiveness play an important role in their mobilisation.4 An ethnic group under threat quite often tries to reconstruct or reinforce its eroded but undissolved sense of separateness with the aid of its distinct cultural attributes. If there is little sense of group identity, it has to be formed by contriving the myth of common group origin and promoting distinct language or other cultural dimensions. This redefined collective identity page_126 Page 127 is a supra-local identity as opposed to localised sentiments and identification. 5 In the case of the Gaeltacht people, their mobilisation seems to show anomalous characteristics and particular predicaments in spite of the presence of a distinct language. One of the most striking aspects of this case is that the question of a separate identity for the Gaeltacht does not seem to have arisen even among the mobilised section of the Gaeltacht people, still less among those concerned with the language question in general. As we shall see, one cannot expect that the Gaeltacht people would have had a ready-made identity when the Gaeltacht was officially designated. At that time an ethnic category like `the Gael' had long been dissolved. However, some sort of identity-building, at least in the Galway Gaeltacht, especially in its Connemara area, could be expected during the period of attempted politicisation in the area. This chapter will indicate that such a sense of collective identity did not emerge effectively. Proposition and Objectives The main proposition of the chapter is that this failure in the mobilisation of collective identity is structurally rooted in the Gaeltacht's historical and institutional relationship with the state. The Gaeltacht people are a linguistic minority within the jurisdiction of `their own ethnic state'. A major `project' of this state is the

protection of their language (Irish) as the national language through the establishment of a bilingual society. These conditions make the Irish Gaeltacht an exceptional case among the so-called linguistic minorities in the European context. The implications of this situation have never been examined empirically. The specific objectives of the chapter are: (i) to clarify the origin of the Gaeltacht and the basic characteristics of the Irish state's Gaeltacht policy; (ii) to investigate interactions between the Gaeltacht and the central government concerning the demand for a degree of Gaeltacht self-government in the early 1970's; and (iii) to deal with the questions: what are the problems of this self-mobilisation attempt? Why was it so difficult to mobilise the Gaeltacht people's collective identity in spite of the distinctive language? How can those predicaments be explained? page_127 Page 128

page_128 Page 129 State Gaeltacht Policy Nationalist Cause and the Language

The language shift in Ireland is traceable to the early seventeenth century, when Irish was still the main medium of communication throughout the whole island. The process of massive anglicisation, which was due to historical factors including English colonial control, became quite intense by the middle of the nineteenth century (see de Fréine, 1978). This trend on the other hand brought about cultural and linguistic revivalism among those who became concerned about the process of anglicisation. Revivalism was developed by the Gaelic League into the nationalist cause: `Gaelic Ireland'. Towards the end of the nineteenth century this revivalist tradition was combined with various trends such as the struggle for the land, for political autonomy, for religious freedom and the emergence of constitutional nationalism. Thus revivalism subsequently formed part of the ideology of the independence movement. In 1921 the Irish Free State was established (in 26 of the country's 32 counties) and it embarked on the fulfilment of this nationalist cause through the restoration of the language for the whole of society. The language was declared the national language and later, in the 1937 Constitution, the first official language. Its restoration or maintenance was espoused in successive government policies. The major aims were, initially, the revival of Irish as the language of the people and, later, the establishment of a bilingual society through school curricula and other educational programmes, such as summer courses in the Irish-speaking areas. It was also state policy to preserve or expand the Irish-speaking areas as the heartland of Irish national and cultural identity. After the task of language restoration was taken over by the state, the role of the Gaelic League became that of criticising the government for lack of implementation of policy, pressurising for action and promoting Irish on a voluntary basis. There are other voluntary organisations which aim at national language promotion more or less on the same ideological basis and mainly based in Dublin. These, together with state agencies for language promotion, constituted the revivalism of the independent Irish state. However, this language restoration policy was not successful, though it brought about some improvement outside the Gaeltacht as evidenced in the relatively high percentage (up to 31%) 6 of the population who report being able to speak the language. As noted above, the aim of page_129 Page 130 restoration was replaced by that of language preservation in a bilingual context. More recently the state examination requirement of a pass grade in Irish and the requirement of a pass in Irish for entry to the civil service were abolished, in 1973 and 1974 respectively, when a newly-formed political alliance, the Fine Gael party and Labour party, came to power. Currently the majority of the population give high attitudinal support to the language (CLAR, 1975). This can be seen as a re-affirmation of their loyalty to the ethno-cultural symbolism of Irish national identity which has been successfully maintained in other ways. 7 Because of this attitudinal support and the expansion of a form of secondary bilingualism among sections of the predominantly well-educated urban population there seems to be some tendency to see more prospect of language promotion among this sector of population than in the Gaeltacht. In fact, in the Gaeltacht there has been a drastic decline in language strength since the 1920's. Unitary State It is also essential to clarify the basic state structure in order to understand the characteristics of the state Gaeltacht policy. Ireland is known for its highly centralised government structure, by European standards. Though it took over the structure of authorities based on the British system, the Victorian concept of local democracy, which in Great Britain resulted in a two- or three-tier system everywhere except in the largest cities, was never fully implemented. Parish councils were never set up. After independence the lower tier was practically abolished and local government in Ireland is now primarily local administration under central control. These local authorities, i.e. County Councils, have minimum powers and functions. In various ways they have become agents of central government (see Chubb, 1970). The useful typology of state-building and `nation-building' processes by Rokkan & Urwin (1983) also classifies Ireland as being of unitary state structure and of dominant territorial space. Unitary state here means that it takes a centralising strategy of unification, built up around one unambiguous centre enjoying economic dominance and pursuing an undeviating policy of administrative standardisation. All the institutions are directly under the control of the centre. `Dominant territorial space' or geographical space is based on monocephality in a `nation-building' process, as opposed to policephality which characterises membership space where each component local group has its distinctive identity for specific political or economic purposes (Rokkan & Urwin, 1983). page_130

Page 131 Designation of the Gaeltacht In 1926 the government designated the official Gaeltacht areas according to the recommendations of a Gaeltacht Commission. In 1956, following the establishment of the Department for the Gaeltacht, a Gaeltacht Areas Order was made defining portions of six counties Kerry, Cork, Donegal, Galway, Mayo and Waterford as constituting the Gaeltacht. 8 Since then three minor amendments have been made to cover two very small eastern `colonies' transplanted from the West to County Meath (1967), to extend the areas in Kerry and Waterford (1974), and in Cork and Meath (1982). Firstly, this designation of the Gaeltacht areas can be seen as an attempt at freezing the language borders at a particular point in the geographical recession of the language towards the more remote westcoast areas. Each Gaeltacht area circumscribed by such statutorily defined borders did not correspond to any historically formed unit of population or area composed of smaller identifiable units. In addition the areas are scattered, isolated from each other. Therefore one cannot expect any established regional identity to cover the whole Gaeltacht or even individual (major) Gaeltacht areas. Secondly, the emergence of those artificially created areas was obviously designed to satisfy the specific function of helping the nation to become Irish-speaking. In other words, their role was primarily to serve the state in the fulfilment of its cultural objective. This does not contradict the fact that the Gaeltacht policy was implemented mainly in the form of regional economic policy, for the role of the designated areas was to give their best contribution in cultural terms, not in economic terms. One might describe this as the cultural version of functional regionalism where state action in a region is based on a concept of the interests and goals of the society in general rather than of the region's goals. Institutions As will be expected, the Gaeltacht policy has been implemented through the centrally controlled administration, through state departments, state bodies and local authorities, under which development activities were organised along sectoral lines. However there was not much by way of specific policy until the 1950s when the Department for the Gaeltacht (1956) and the developmental agency for the Gaeltacht, Gaeltarra Éireann (1958), were set up. Gaeltacht policy has been mainly page_131 Page 132 aimed at population maintenance and early policy measures were oriented towards the containment or marginal improvement of a rural economy. 9 However, the 1950s and 1960s saw a clear change of direction corresponding to the change of national economic policy. The Department for the Gaeltacht took over various activities from the Departments of Lands and Education (Foras Forbartha, 1971) and their responsibility for rural industries was given over to Gaeltarra Éireann. In the mid-1960s Gaeltarra Éireann's role was aimed directly and very definitely towards industrialisation. It was a state-sponsored body and its board comprised seven members nominated by the Minister for the Gaeltacht. In 1979 as a political response to the pressure caused by demands from the Gaeltacht for a form of self-government or devolution, Gaeltarra Éireann was eventually restructured. The new agency was called Údarás na Gaeltachta (Gaeltacht Authority as translated), reflecting the original idea of setting up a local authority for the Gaeltacht. This process of demand and response constitutes part of our major concern in this chapter. The Galway Gaeltacht Introduction The Galway Gaeltacht is one of the three largest Gaeltacht areas, with a population of 26,444. Unlike the other major Gaeltacht areas, it is located in the hinterland of a city, on which it depends for facilities like third-level education and to a lesser extent second-level education, shopping centres, recreation facilities and various public services. Partly because of this, the Galway Gaeltacht also offered a site for the main administrative section of the Department for the Gaeltacht, the headquarters of Údarás na Gaeltachta and also a special Gaeltacht radio station (Raidio na Gaeltachta). The Impact of Socio-Economic Changes The Galway Gaeltacht, and specifically the Connemara area west of Galway city, has experienced the most intense change among all Gaeltacht areas in the last few decades. Its population, for example, increased during the 1970s to reach almost the same level as in the early 1950s. This is mainly due to its location close to the rapidly expanding city, and to the introduction of state-sponsored (by Gaeltarra Éireann and Údarás na

page_132 Page 133 Gaeltachta) manufacturing industry into the area. The improvement of social infrastructure, employment opportunity, etc. brought about a minor economic boom which raised living-standards and educational levels in the area. This, among other factors, 10 changed the migration pattern, limiting the traditional emigration for a while, bringing in returned-emigrants and immigrants as well. Currently the traditional economy, which was dependent on small subsistence farming and fishing, is being dissolved, resulting in a much wider range of occupations. Divergent Identities and Localised Identities These changes have also affected the life-style, values and attitudes, and identification with the local areas. There has been emerging divergent attitudes and identities among sections of the population, reflecting the increasing variety in origin, educational level and life experiences. However, the sentiments which are usually associated with a traditional agrarian society have remained to some extent. There is, for example, a fairly strong tendency among the local males to put a high social value on personal autonomy which was fostered by the traditional life-style based on multiple income sources, seasonal patterns of work and personal social networks (see Halpern, 1978). The Connemara area is still composed of tightly-knit communities where people have a sense of belonging and can claim to know each other. Parishes (or half-parishes) and villages still remain the most basic identifying territorial units for the residents. This can be said to be a traditional localised identification, which has obviously been eroded by the recent dilution of communities and the intensified mobility, though not yet replaced by some alternative identification pattern. One can hardly say that there is a supralocal identity to cover the whole Galway Gaeltacht or even the Connemara Gaeltacht among the wide sector of population. This is the case even after the experience of a form of mobilisation in the early 1970s. On the other hand the decline of the Irish language has been gaining momentum. Firstly, emigration, which slowed down in the 1970s, has resumed to some extent in the last five years. Secondly, there is an increasing number of households with one of the parents from outside and in these the children tend to be brought up through English; there are also couples who are returned emigrants with English-speaking children. These trends have made school education through Irish more and more difficult and affected the language use pattern in the area. Thirdly, historically negative, or at best ambivalent, attitudes towards possible page_133 Page 134 linguistic stigma have been too deeply rooted to be changed easily. Local people, young or old, can often be observed switching to English when they talk to children. This practice has been traditionally related to the fear that the children might not have good competence in English when they grow up and emigrate. 11 In this situation one can argue that for the indigenous population, language might be a reminder of their local origin but it has not served the function of helping to form a supralocal identity for the whole Galway or Connemara Gaeltacht. Demand for Autonomy Introduction With the lack of natural and human resources combined with a widespread apathetic feeling and traditionally strong allegiance to the major national parties (Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael but especially the former) in the Gaeltacht, it is easy to understand the lack of strong regional politicisation in the area. On the other hand, there were a few campaigns to attract public and government attention to developmental problems of the West in general and of the Gaeltacht areas in particular, or to organise the Gaeltacht people to a limited extent. But the initiative usually came from incoming intellectuals or language enthusiasts in Dublin.12 Nevertheless, in the late 1960s and early 1970s there emerged a new trend described by a historian in University College Galway as: `. . . distinct signs of new life and attitudes among sections of the Gaeltacht youth. To an extent this was part of the general and global dynamics of youth politics and civil rights which characterised the late 1960s . . .' (Ó Tuathaigh, Irish Times, February 8, 1977).

This mood was represented by the emergence of the so-called Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement (Gluaiseacht Cearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta), the first indigenous movement by the Gaeltacht people based on a certain version of self-determination or regional autonomism. In spite of a substantial contribution from outside,13 the initiative came from the Gaeltacht and it created in the area a potential alternative political force to the traditional dominant parties. Local councils then being set up in each church area and their supra-local co-ordinating organisation (see p. 137) page_134 Page 135 recruited the emerging leadership. The setting up of community co-operatives in the area was also to some extent related to this trend. Though the Movement itself was sustained by a tiny group, with many members from outside, and had various limitations, a certain role it played has to be given due recognition. The Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement In the late 1960s a small group composed mainly of students set up a development association in An Cnoc church area, Cois Fharraige, Conamara. From this group the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement emerged in March 1969, stimulated directly by the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland. What brought about the Movement was a frustrated feeling that the Gaeltacht people had been neglected; that services, regarded by them as civil rights, which people were enjoying elsewhere, were not available for the Gaeltacht people; that services meant for the Gaeltacht people were not reaching them but benefiting non-Irish speakers; that policies relating to the Gaeltacht were decided only in Dublin; and that the Gaeltacht question had even been an instrument of party politics. Their demands ranged from the socio-economic and political-institutional to cultural aspects of life. Significantly, the language question as such was not put forward as a major issue (as we shall discuss later, see pp. 139-43). Among their early demands were: a regional planning and development authority for the Connemara Gaeltacht, the transfer to the Gaeltacht of the headquarters of state agencies which were responsible for Gaeltacht development, the creation of more jobs to halt emigration, the restoration of sea and inland water fishing rights to the Gaeltacht people, a more appropriate system of Gaeltacht education, and a local Gaeltacht radio station. Militant and confrontational tactics were adopted, such as picketing of a hotel where the national radio and television service (R.T.E) was conducting a TV show through English, 14 protests against the selling of land and the giving of planning permission for building to people from outside, and objections against tourist business by them. Sitin demonstrations against poor conditions of public transport, `occupations' or `fish-ins' of fishing waters, and broadcasting from a pirate radio station were also carried out. However, electoral participation was not excluded as a campaign strategy. But the Movement basically remained dependent on a small number of radicals (composed mainly of teachers at that time) who had no idea about the wider mobilisation of page_135 Page 136 the people and indeed left them in indifference. Consequently it failed to bring about any break-through in the conventional political allegiances in the area. Demand for Gaeltacht Local Authority At the beginning of the 1970s their major demands became clearly oriented towards a degree of self-government or autonomy for the whole Gaeltacht, including the setting up of the Gaeltacht radio service under the control of the Gaeltacht people. The characteristics of the local authority they demanded for the Gaeltacht can be summarised as follows: (i) It should cover the powers and functions of both local government and development agencies; (ii) The local government should be based on a three-tiered structure, composed of local councils, provincial councils and national Gaeltacht authority; (iii) These local councils should be augmented by delegation of functions and powers of existing local authorities (i.e. County Councils); and (iv) The jurisdiction of County Councils, state departments and bodies over the Gaeltacht should be dissolved and taken over by the proposed authority. 15

These demands implied a very drastic change in the local government structure, which one cannot say was supported by the majority of the Gaeltacht people at any stage. However, in spite of the indifference or even hostility to the Movement among people in the area, those demands did obtain great publicity outside the Gaeltacht, thus producing political pressure. One can say that the official status of the language, related to the state's policy, gave the Movement's claim a certain outward authenticity which, in turn, invited a rapid and rather enthusiastic response from the media and from a sector of public opinion in Dublin. On the other hand this promoted the Movement's dependency on the media in its campaign strategy, as it attempted to capitalise on such publicity.16 This could be said to account partly for the Movement's lack of interest in making patient efforts to mobilise people on a day-to-day basis. The tendency to seek publicity without attempting mass mobilisation constituted one of the most striking characteristics of the Movement. On the other hand, the appeal to the state's policies concerning the official language obviously opened a way for the adoption of the Movement's demands on the part of the government and for reinforcement of the state's interventionist role. page_136 Page 137 Comhchoiste Ghaeltacht Chonamara In 1972 some of the original members of the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement became involved in setting up elected (though non-statutory) local councils and development associations in the whole Connemara Gaeltacht, and organising these into a regional co-ordinating organisation, Comhchoiste Ghaeltacht Chonamara (the Connemara Gaeltacht Joint-committee). By 1974 around 15 church areas, which practically corresponded to the whole South Connemara area, were covered by this in some way. This was an attempt to replace the parish councils which already existed in a limited way and most of them had been, according to the Movement, established for ecclesiastical purposes and had no democratic local representation (Irish Times, January 13. 1972). This movement was meant to form the basis for the lowest tier of the local government structure which it demanded. The leadership of this movement was provided by the Civil Rights activists and people under its influence but the elected members of those councils were of various political allegiances. There were councils in which most of the members belonged to the dominant party, Fianna Fáil. Their approach to the government was negotiative, avoiding confrontation. Those councils were not really oriented towards an alternative political campaign platform. State Response Introduction The response on the part of the government and political parties towards the political pressure of this Gaeltacht movement was inexplicable unless it is viewed in the framework of this particular state-minority relationship. The official status of the Irish language related to the state's `project' did turn out to be a sharp double-edged weapon for the mobilised section of the Gaeltacht people. Though it undoubtedly gave their demands a legitimacy it also created scope for a greater role by the government and eventually enabled it to handle the political pressure. The governments, both Fianna Fáil and the Coalition, took the line of giving visible but not costly (politically) concession as quickly as possible and waiting for the movement's energy to subside. Meanwhile by making promises and repeating the rhetoric of `people's participation' the government managed to delay the decision on costliest measures. page_137 Page 138 Setting-up of the Gaeltacht Radio Station In 1972 the Fianna Fáil government set up the Gaeltacht radio service (Raidio na Gaeltachta) in Casla, Conamara. Many young people involved in the pirate radio station at that time were actually recruited into this new state-sponsored station, a classic example of `co-opting the opposition'. In fact, the Movement seems to have lost its impetus and drive soon after this arrangement. Another important point is that the organisational structure did not contain any system to guarantee representation of, or control by, the Gaeltacht people. Raidio na Gaeltachta was set up as a division of the national radio and television service (R.T.E.) but had its own editorial responsibility. But the Raidio na Gaeltachta Council (Comhairle Raidio na Gaeltachta) which was meant to represent the Gaeltacht people was, in fact, composed of members nominated by the Minister of Post and Telegraphs and had mainly consultative functions. Setting-up of Gaeltacht Authority

As early as June, 1970, Mr Colley, the then Minister for the Gaeltacht and Finance, made it clear that plans were under way for setting-up a local authority for the Galway Gaeltacht with the powers of a development corporation. Soon afterwards the White Paper Local Government Reorganisation (Department of Local Government, 1971) was published. This contained proposals for the greater localisation of government, e.g. by giving recognition to sub-county units. Later, officially established organisations or agencies took over the demand and three major sets of proposals on the local authority and related development institutions for the Gaeltacht were prepared. They were those of An Foras Forbartha (1971), Comhairle na Gaeilge (1971), and Gaeltarra/SFADCO Working Group (1971). These three sets of proposals coincided in their major orientations. They treated the local government system and development instituions for the Gaeltacht separately and viewed the planned Gaeltacht authority as a regional development authority an expansion of Gaeltarra Éireann in this sense. Secondly, they agreed that a local council should be set up in each Gaeltacht area based on local election, and that some functions of the County Councils be formally delegated to such organisation in some way. Further, these local councils should have some form of representation system at the Board of the planned development authority for the Gaeltacht. However, none proposed the setting up of a separate local authority page_138 Page 139 a County Council type structure for the Gaeltacht. Nor did they suggest that the jurisdiction of the existing local authorities or state bodies over the Gaeltacht should be taken over by the planned authority. The Civil Rights Movement was critical of those proposals, in particular, saying that they did not guarantee a democratic representation. However, had the government tried to operate an arrangement along the line of those proposals there would have been a strong resistance in various sectors of the administration and local political party machines. It was not until 1978 under the Fianna Fáil Government that any Bill for the new arrangement was produced. By then the Movement had already been exhausted and the state eventually managed to avoid the more costly measures. According to the new Act, Gaeltarra Éireann was restructured into a new body, Údarás na Gaeltachta, with 7 from its board of 13 to be elected directly from the entire Gaeltacht population. In effect, however, there was basically no change in the centrally controlled structure. It has a board of directors, who were not directly answerable to those whom they are supposed to represent. Six of the 13 members, including the chairman who has a casting vote, are nominated by the Minister for the Gaeltacht. Further, though the Act empowers Ministers to delegate some powers and functions of County Councils and state agencies to the Údarás, no such arrangement has yet been made. Most importantly, no legislation was introduced to set up local councils in Gaeltacht areas. Hence there was no devolution of powers to local structures and elections along the conventional party lines were not changed at all. In fact, the Civil Rights Movement, hoping to get a chance to change the structure from inside, reconstructed itself for election purposes and put forward its own candidates. These, however, failed to win any seat on the Údarás Board. Distinct Language and Identify Mobilisation Introduction We have seen that the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement caused political pressure through publicity but it did not have mass support from the Gaeltacht people. Its demands were taken over by officially established organisations and the rhetoric of direct participation of the people was repeated on the government's side. But the actual central response did not result in the most basic idea of the demand institutions to facilitate page_139 Page 140 a certain amount of self-government. The centralised state bureaucracy never failed in maintaining its control machinery in the new arrangement. On the other hand the Movement did not succeed as a mobilisation effort and left the majority of the people indifferent. The new political trend it produced never grew strong enough to offer a basis for an alternative political allegiance. How can we identify and explain the failure of self-mobilisation of the Gaeltacht people? What is the relevance of a distinct language here? Resources and Infrastructure for Mobilisation

The inter-relationship between the movement and the state was characterised by the former's weakness and latter's overwhelming dominance. This state is the unambiguous centre in economy, politics and culture. The Gaeltacht, on the other hand, is located in the `marginal regions' without any self-sustaining economy or any facilities (like the educational system) under its own control, or any tradition of alternative political activities to centrally orgainsed party politics. Hence, firstly, there was a poor resource base for self-mobilisation, reflected in the lack of human resources, a wide-spread apathetic feeling, and a deeply rooted tendency of the people to expect benefits to be given by the state, seeing themselves simply as recipients of services. This attitude was reflected in the Movement's inclination to believe in the state's intervention, though the government's declared policy on the Gaeltacht would have also strengthened their expectation. Secondly, there was a lack of infrastructure that could have sheltered or nourished a distinctive identity. Because of this, the idea of regional autonomy or self-government was basically unknown to the people and could not become rooted or gain sympathy among them when proposed by the Civil Rights Movement. The institutional arrangements for the Gaeltacht were also relevant here. If identity-building is to occur for the Galway Gaeltacht (or more specifically Connemara) it has to be based on the existing local identities rather than totally replacing them. The monocephalic principle, on which the geographic definition of the Gaeltacht areas was based, does not foster but rather ignores the existing localised identification pattern and related identities. Neither does it foster or help to form a supralocal identity for the whole Galway or Connemara Gaeltacht. The terms of reference for the state Gaeltacht policy, which we have described as a cultural version of functional regionalism, were obviously not oriented towards a promotion of separate identity for the Gaeltacht. The new arrangement page_140 Page 141 which was brought about as the result of state response to the political pressure was basically a repetition of this principle. It can be seen as a failure to give the Gaeltacht an institution that might come to function as an infrastructure to facilitate its identity-building. Language Concern and Formulation of Demands We now turn to the question: Why was it so difficult for the Gaeltacht people to mobilise themselves in spite of the presence of their own distinct language? As we have discussed earlier (see pp. 132-34) there is no indication that some separate identity had emerged among the wide sector of population of the Galway or Connemara Gaeltacht based on its distinct language or its dialect of Irish. Comparison with mobilised ethnic minorities is useful. In their politicisation these try to promote distinct cultural attributes like language in order to reinforce their eroded group identity and attain legitimacy for their political and economic demands. Did the movement in the Gaeltacht not take the same approach? The answer is no. In the case of ethnic minorities the aim is to obtain the status of `peoplehood', or nationhood, which is supported by cultural distinctiveness. Hence the demands for political identity. It is the claim to distinctive `peoplehood' that gives their demands authenticity both for outside and inside. For the Gaeltacht people, however, the ultimate aim of the attempted politicisation was the preservation of the language itself. This is not in contradiction of the fact that the Civil Rights Movement deliberately de-emphasised its language concern and never formulated it as one of its major demands. 17 Its demands were usually confined to socio-economic and administrative claims, because the people involved considered that if the communities of the Gaeltacht survived economically and socially, then the language would take care of itself. Further, the fact was that the authenticity of those demands was based on the official status of the language as declared in state policy (which was actually the only source of such authenticity). Consequently, there was practically no imperative to seek for identity-building or claim to `peoplehood' in the reasoning of this frame of reference. This was the basic reason the Movement did not show any interest in identity-mobilisation or identity-building. Thus, again one can say the official status as the national language was a two-edged sword from the viewpoint of group mobilisation. This leaves the following question only half-answered: why did the distinct language not help to form a separate identity in mobilisation? page_141 Page 142 Distinct Language and Identity-Building A theoretical explanation of the group-forming mechanisms that operate around ethnic identity can be found in the following argument:

`. . . [these] cultural dimensions remain secondary (though still of great importance) to the sense of common origins and history of the group. This constitutes the core of the group's identity, and of its sense of uniqueness. . . For an ethnic community to exist, there must be some common and distinctive cultural attributes and ties, traceable ultimately to the fact of a separate group history and origins. The cultural ties may be more lively than the sense of the history at a given point in time, and much of the history will have to be rediscovered, even `invented'; but without some real historical foundation and without a sense of those common origins and history, however garbled and `mythical', no ethnic community can subsist.' (Smith, 1981:67) In the case of the Gaeltacht people, however, we contend that this mechanism of group-formation could not operate. Why? Firstly, there is no historical basis to help to form a sense of separate group origin or even `to garble' a sense of unique history for the areas designated or the people who live or were born there. The Gaeltacht designation is an artificial creation theoretically based on a simple linguistic criterion and the section of population concerned cannot be claimed to correspond to any distinguishable category like the `Gael' or `the Gaelic Society' of the past. Secondly, even if it were possible to `garble' a sense of unique history of origin, their language is not available as a totally distinct cultural property, traceable ultimately to this `garbled' origin. For the language is, as already mentioned, part of the established value system associated with Irish national identity, which itself was formed by exactly following the group-formation process we have seen above. This same difficulty also applies to the possibility of identity-building for any individual Gaeltacht area. A distinct language can help to form or promote a separate identity only when it is coterminous with the community to whose origin the language can ultimately be traced. Our arguments have shown that, under this particular state-minority relationship, i.e. a linguistic minority within the jurisdiction of `its own ethnic state' with such a state claiming the minority's language as the national language, self-mobilisation of the minority is extremely difficult. This is especially so when the state has a centralised unitary structure and a strong nationalist basis, since the logic of the state's `project' does not page_142 Page 143 facilitate but even denies a separate identity for the minority. Conclusion The definition of a linguistic minority in the official designation of the Irish Gaeltacht, which was for purely administrative purposes, has never really become a self-defining category for the Gaeltacht people themselves. They still lack a distinct collective identity, viz., a sense of belonging to a group that is separate from the wider society. Their language has not become a vehicle to carry a separate identity for a minority group in any newly defined sense. This is partly the result of the state's failure in providing the Gaeltacht with new institutions that might facilitate identity-building for the Gaeltacht. Moreover, the Gaeltacht movement itself failed to mobilise such collective identity. This situation was rooted in the historical and institutional background of the Gaeltacht and, in particular, its relationship with the state. The underlying framework is the state's approach to the minority, which we described as a cultural version of functional regionalism, and also the related definition of the Gaeltacht which denies a separate identity for the minority. In this context the ironical implication which the official status of the language can have is obvious, especially when that language used to be the emblem of nationhood for a wider society and in fact still constitutes a symbol of the national identity. This basic aspect of the question relating to the Gaeltacht's survival cannot be accounted for simply by the predicaments of `marginal regions'. It also differentiates the Gaeltacht people from other so-called linguistic minorities in Europe. But at the same time this aspect suggests a new problem area other ethnic minorities or nations might face after attaining a degree of political identity. Acknowledgement The author would like to express gratitude to people in Conamara and her friends there for their help during her stay among them, for their long discussions, the various documents they provided, and their interest in her work. Thanks are also due to Údarás na Gaeltachta for financial aid which partly supported the field research in the Galway Gaeltacht. Lastly, she is especially grateful to Patrick Commins (An Foras Talúntais, Dublin) for his criticism and advice on the earlier version of this chapter, page_143

Page 144 as well as to Professor M. Ó Murchú (Head of the Department of Irish, Trinity College, Dublin) for his comments on it. Notes to Chapter 8 1. This is a revised version of the paper presented to the Third International Conference on Minority Languages in Galway, 1986. 2. However, comprehensive study of the language shift and the impacts of wider aspects of recent changes in the Gaeltacht is non-existent. For an attempt to correlate the socio-economic variables and the statistics in language use (mainly based on CLAR, 1975) in the Gaeltacht for the last decade or so, see Commins (1985a, b). For the general trend for the whole society of the Republic in socio-economic changes, language situation and language policy see Tovey (1978). 3. Though the official Gaeltacht in Co. Galway includes the east hinterland of Galway city there is a wide consensus that the actual Irish-speaking area is the South Connemara area west of the city, which is usually called the Connemara Gaeltacht. 4. Ethnic identity here is understood as a possible (not fixed or cardinal) focus of collective identity. As for the important role of ethnic identity in ethnopoliticisation, Mckay (1982:409), for example, argues as follows: `. . . no matter how high the degree of political and economic interest in a given group there must have been some ethnic diacritic (no matter how real or contrived) which made mobilisation possible in the first place.' Esman (1977a:284) also states that: `For the political mobilisation of regional interests, an ethnic base is useful, perhaps indispensable, both to activate domestic support and to claim legitimacy within the encompassing system.' As for the role of cultural distinctiveness, as will be obvious from my arguments I am not taking a position of cultural determinism on ethnic phenomena, which is to be avoided, as well as economic determinism. Nor do I intend to characterise ethnic conflicts as religious or linguistic conflicts, etc., which was criticised by Connor (1972, 1977). What I mean is, as well as the potential of cultural dimensions to function as identitymaintaining institutions, their potential to offer a rallying point or even a `tribal badge' that ethnic groups might strategically utilise or even manipulate around in politicisation. This aspect has been evidenced by many cases of ethnic mobilisation, among which the most familiar would be the conflict in Ulster and that between Flemings and Walloons. 5. For these arguments the author is indebted to Smith (1981). 6. CLAR (1975), the first major national study of the situation of Irish which dated from 1972-1973, estimates 31% of the total population had at least a moderate level of spoken competence. According to the Census of Population in 1981 (Central Statistics Office, 1985) 31.6% is able to speak Irish. But outside the Gaeltacht only a tiny minority are native bilinguals (CLAR, 1975). 7. Before independence the distinctive and pervasive presence of Catholicism helped to preserve a sense of separateness, as did the burning grievances over land-ownership. These were reinforced by the nature of the central British presence, uncaring as much as repressive (Rokkan & Urwin, 1983:89). After page_144 Page 145 1922 the issue of the partition of Ireland has been an important factor in contributing to the symbolism. 8. The Ministers' and Secretaries' (Amendment) Act, 1956, under which the Gaeltacht Areas Orders have been made, defined the Gaeltacht as `areas being substantially Irish-speaking and areas contiguous thereto which in the opinion of the Government ought to be included in the Gaeltacht with a view to preserving and extending the use of Irish as a vernacular language'. However, there has been a lack of clarity in the criterion of the definition. Various grants schemes for the Gaeltacht have been applied according to different definitions, sometimes applying to much wider areas than designated by the Order (Commission of the Restoration of the Irish Language, 1963). 9. The discussions here on development institutions and the recent change in economic structure in the Gaeltacht draw mainly on Commins (1985a, b). See also Breathnach (1983, 1984). 10. By the 1970s the employment opportunities and the levels of wages in the U.K. had become less attractive for the Irish emigrants because of the recession there and various improvements in living standards in Ireland. There has also been tightened restriction on immigration to the U.S.A.

11. Because of this practice the proportion of Irish-speakers among pre-school children is traditionally low. This deficiency has been usually made up for by primary school education in the Gaeltacht. 12. However, the polemical writing of a prominent author, Máirtín O Cadhain (a native of Cois Fharraige, Conamara) was significant, especially in the Galway context. 13. Especially the ideological input into the movement is to be noted, in which Desmond Fennel (journalist and political scientist) made one of the most important contributions. 14. This incident was the trigger which set off the establishment of the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement. It indicates that aspiration was basically linguistic. However, as already mentioned, the Movement's major demands and aims when formulated did not include the language issue as such. 15. These demands were formulated in detail in the movement's document Plean I (Plan I, undated) prepared and submitted to the Minister for the Gaeltacht around 1970. 16. The Movement also published a periodical Tuairisc, which was meant to be another campaign method. 17. This tendency was partly due to the Movement's desire to differentiate itself from Dublin-based revivalism, which it claimed was interested only in language rather than the material welfare of people who speak it the Gaeltacht people. References BREATHNACH, P. (ed.) 1983, Rural Development in the West of Ireland: Observations from the Gaeltacht Experience. Maynooth: Maynooth College. 1985, Community Perceptions of Development and Change. Maynooth: Maynooth College. CENTRAL STATISTICS OFFICE 1985, Census of Population, 1981, Vol.6 Dublin: page_145 Page 146 Stationery Office. CHUBB, B. 1970, The Government and Politics of Ireland. Stanford: Stanford University Press. COMHAIRLE NA GAEILGE 1971, Local Government and Development Institutions for the Gaeltacht. Dublin: Stationery Office. COMMINS, P. 1985a Language and Socio-economic Development in the Gaeltacht. Mimeo. 1985b, Socio-economic Development and Language Maintenance: The Case of the Irish Gaeltacht. A paper presented to the International Seminar on Marginal Regions, Galway, Ireland. COMMISSION ON THE RESTORATION OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE 1963, Summary, in English, of Final Report. Dublin: Stationery Office. COMMITTEE ON IRISH LANGUAGE ATTITUDE RESEARCH (abbreviated as CLAR) 1975, Report. Dublin: Stationery Office. CONNOR, W. 1972, Nation-building or nation-destroying? World Politics, 24, 319-55. 1977, Ethnonationalism in the First World: the present in historical perspective. In M.J. ESMAN (ed.), Ethnic Conflict in the Western World. New York: Cornell University Press. DE FRÉINE, S. 1978, The Great Silence. Dublin: The Mercier Press. DEPARTMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT 1971, Local Government Reorganisation. Dublin: Stationery Office. ESMAN, M.J. 1977a, Scottish nationalism, North Sea oil, and the British response in M.J. ESMAN (ed.) Ethnic Conflict in the Western World. (ed.) 1977b Ethnic Conflict in the Western World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

FORAS FORBARTHA 1971, The Gaeltacht Studies. Dublin: An Foras Forbartha Teo. GAELTARRA/SFADCO WORKING GROUP 1971, Gníomh don Ghaeltacht (An Action Programme for the Gaeltacht) Shannon: SFADCO. HALPERN, J. 1978, Working in the Factory: Resistance to Industrialisation in Rural Ireland. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Pittsburgh. MCKAY, J. 1982, An exploratory synthesis of primordial and mobilisationist approaches to ethnic phenomena. Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol.5 No. 4, 395-420. ROKKAN, S. & URWIN, D.W. 1983, Economy, Territory, Identity: Politics of West European Peripheries. London: Sage. SMITH, A.D. 1981, The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TOVEY, H. 1978 Language Policy and Socioeconomic Development in Ireland. Dublin: Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann. page_146