Every generation of Republican activists has recognised the restoration of the Irish language as central to the struggle for decolonisation and a free country. However, the decline of the Irish language cannot be viewed alone. Rather, it should be understood as part of the worldwide demise of minority languages and cultures. While the ten largest languages are, in the estimates of K. David Harrison, spoken by over fifty percent of the human race, about half of the world’s languages – some 3,500 – are spoken by a mere 0.2 percent of people[1]. According to David Crystal, nine in ten languages will become extinct by this century’s end[2].
Languages are more than mere tools of communication. They embody a specific knowledge integral to the indigenous communities who speak them, an essential reflection of their way of life and culture. With the death of every language, therefore, comes an irreplaceable loss of culture, intellectual wealth and knowledge.
The death of languages occurs for a number of reasons – including natural disasters, cultural assimilation, and physical extinction of their speakers. Globalisation has also been recognised as a leading factor in language extinction, putting extreme pressure on cultures worldwide to learn a dominant language (mostly English), to serve multinational companies that use dominant languages as their lingua franca.
But the decline of Irish pre-dates globalisation and its ill effects. Irish has been spoken in Ireland for over two-and-a-half millennia and possesses the oldest living vernacular literature in Europe. It was the country’s dominant language for most of that time. But this changed as part of a calculated process of cultural conquest implemented by successive British governments. During these years, English colonisers managed to almost completely destroy Irish as the native tongue of the indigenous population, successfully imposing their own country’s language.
The colonisers held the view that the indigenous Irish were inferior to them, that their culture was backward and stupid. By abandoning their language and adopting the language of the coloniser, it was believed that the indigenous Irish would therefore accept the superiority of the colonial culture and the backwardness of their own. “For cultural invasion to succeed it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority,” Paolo Freire wrote in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed. “The more the invasion is accentuated and those invaded are alienated from the spirit of their own culture and from themselves, the more the latter want to be like the invaders: to walk like them, dress like them, talk like them.”[3]
This cultural conquest was central to Britain’s imperial designs on Ireland, and became a significant tool for imperialist powers in their efforts to dominate native peoples worldwide. “Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship,” Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote in his book Decolonising the Mind. “But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world.”[4]
It is in this context that efforts were made over hundreds of years to destroy the linguistic and cultural markers of Irish identity and replace them with the English language. During the latter part of the sixteenth century, we see a concerted effort to advance English rule in Ireland, and to destroy the Irish language. In A Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued, a book written by the Tudor writer John Davies in 1612, the writer remarks: “We may conceive and hope that the next generation will in tongue, and in heart, and in every way else, become English; so that there will be no difference or distinction, but the Irish Sea betwixt us.” (Quotation taken from Louis de Paor’s Disappearing Language[5]).
We first see a dramatic decline in the Irish language following the defeat of the Ulster chiefs at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, with the collapse of the Gaelic polity and subsequent Flight of the Earls. The consequent implementation of forced population changes and continued suppression of Irish resulted in the status and usage of the English language being reinforced, particularly in the previously recalcitrant Ulster counties. By 1649, Cromwell’s murderous aggression and the forcible deportation of tens of thousands had halved the Irish population. The introduction of the Penal Laws in 1695 led to further suppression of Irish language and culture. Although the vast majority of the indigenous population still spoke Irish, the language was definitively excluded from the institutions of power and state.
Repression continued apace over the following centuries. In 1831, the British government introduced a system of free primary education, known as the National Schools. In these schools, Irish was forbidden and those who spoke it were humiliated and punished. The “tally stick” was introduced to deter Irish being spoken at school or with family members at home. Ó Giolláin, cited in Mac Ionnrachtaigh[6], writes:
“A little boy about eight years of age, addressed a short sentence in Irish to his sister, but meeting his father’s eye, he immediately cowered back, having to all appearance, committed some heinous fault. The man called the child to him, said nothing, but drawing forth from its dress a little stick…which was suspended by a string around the neck, put an additional notch in it with his penknife. We were told that it was done to prevent the child from speaking Irish; for every time he attempted to do so a new nick was put in his tally, and when these amounted to a certain amount, summary punishment was inflicted on him by the schoolmaster.”
This policy aimed to instil shame in young Irish people towards their language and culture, severely damaging the status and continued use of Irish. It was a very effective tool in what Ngugi describes as “mental colonisation”. Pádraig Pearse, who advocated for the Irish language and its speakers throughout his adult life, recognised the deliberate brainwashing being carried out by the National School system, dubbing it “The Murder Machine”. Not all nationalist politicians took Pearse’s view unfortunately. Many, most notably Daniel O’Connell, abandoned Irish for the English language. English came to be associated with cultivation while the Irish language was associated with poverty and backwardness, a success of the English “mental colonisation” process. The Great Hunger of 1845-49 brought Irish to the verge of extinction.
The revival of Irish as an anti-colonial tool
But in every colonised nation cultural assimilation is always met with resistance. Frantz Fanon argues in The Wretched of the Earth that: “To fight for national culture means in the first place to fight for the liberation of the nation, that material keystone which makes the building of a culture possible. There is no other fight for culture which can develop apart from the popular struggle.”[7]
Efforts to reverse the language shift that took place in most areas throughout the country as well as building a sense of pride in the Irish people in relation to their culture is evident with the founding of The Gaelic League and the GAA in the late nineteenth century. The leaders of the 1916 Rising recognised that to end imperialism in Ireland, the Irish language and culture would have to be central in the struggle for Irish freedom. Many of those who played a part in the Easter Rising were actively involved in the Irish language revival movement and in the GAA. Pádraig Pearse, also an active member of The Gaelic League, famously asserted that Ireland must be: “not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well”.
James Connolly believed that capitalism sought to destroy all national identities, cultures and languages. “The chief enemy of a Celtic revival today”, he said, “is the crushing force of capitalism which irresistibly destroys all national or racial characteristics, and by sheer stress of its economic preponderance reduces a Galway or a Dublin, a Lithuania or a Warsaw to the level of a mere second-hand imitation of Manchester or Glasgow.”[8] He charged that Irish politicians and the Church had played a key role in the abandonment of Irish language and culture. This abandonment created an inferiority complex in the Irish: "It was the beginning of the reign of the toady and the crawler, the seoinín and the slave.”[9]
By abandoning Irish, the oppressed had become the slave of the oppressor, and Connolly believed that, by reclaiming Irish identity, the shackles of oppression would be thrown off. “Besides, it is well to remember that nations which submit to conquest or races which abandon their language in favour of that of an oppressor do so, not because of the altruistic motives, or because of a love of brotherhood of man, but from a slavish and cringing spirit. From a spirit which cannot exist side by side with the revolutionary idea.”[10]
When the Free State was established in 1922, both Irish and English languages were designated official state languages, with Irish being recognised as the first language of the state. The state’s objective in relation to Irish during this period was to maintain Irish as the spoken language of the Gaeltacht and to revive it in other areas. The Free State government believed that the education system could be used to revive the language, but this was one of the few places where efforts were made to restore Irish amongst the population.
Despite these limited efforts, Irish had no place in people’s daily lives, and the language became irrelevant to many people in areas outside of the Gaeltacht. The role of Irish in decolonisation and in building the new state was not part of the broader discourse at this time and the political establishment did not choose to adopt the language themselves in the administration of the state. The English language maintained its dominant position in Irish society and continued to be used as the main language in the halls of power, just as it had under British administration.
Douglas Hyde, writing in 1892, stated that Irish sentiment “contrives to clamour for recognition as a distinct nationality and at the same time throws away with both hands ‘what would make it so’”.[11] Real change could never be achieved in the new Free State as those who took over the reins of power from the English ultimately preferred to preserve a conservative status quo. As Mac Síomóin commented, “Class consciousness, germinating in the crucible of revolutionary struggle, was crushed by the hegemony of the post-Civil War counter revolutionary bourgeoisie, in cahoots with the Catholic Church.”[12]
In the North, the Irish language was treated by the Unionist government with contempt and outright hostility and many efforts were made over the years to weaken its position and status. The importance of the language to the broader decolonisation effort was nonetheless recognised by republican prisoners incarcerated in jails in Ireland, where Irish was taught and spoken and used as a tool of resistance against criminalisation. Many prisoners in Armagh Gaol, Portlaoise Gaol, Long Kesh and the H-Blocks, became fluent in Irish and went on to teach the language to others who came after them. One such prisoner, Bobby Sands, learned the language while in the H-Blocks and went on to teach it, without resources, during the blanket protests to other prisoners.
On release from prison, numerous ex-prisoners continued to give their time and efforts to the Irish language revival, and many were involved in establishing Gaelscoileanna, Irish classes and community projects. Former prisoners taught Irish in their local communities and initiated debate around cultural conquest in Ireland and the importance of Irish within the broader struggle. One republican prisoner, cited by Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh, wrote in 1982:
“If at a later stage, the story of our H-Block struggle is told, let it be known that we learned the Irish language without any books or facilities in totally inhuman conditions. I say to all republicans, nationalists and anybody else for that matter who aspires to learn the language; such deprivation will not prevent you from doing so. We have proved that. Take inspiration from our example.”
The state of the language in Ireland, North and South
Partly as a result of active decolonisation efforts, the Irish language has seen huge growth in the North of Ireland, in both educational and community sectors. This is evident with the development of Cultúrlanna (cultural centres) in Belfast, Derry and Armagh, and with the expansion of the Irish-language youth sector across the North. Republicans and Irish language activists in the North have inspired discussions and debate about this role and have encouraged communities to engage with the language in many different ways, whether that be through attending Irish classes, sending their children to Irish-medium schools or joining An Dream Dearg movement to campaign for language rights. The Irish language has not been solely confined to the classroom but is central to the cultural reconquest project. It is seen by many as a tool of resistance against colonisation.
This has not, however, been the case in the South. Decolonisation is rarely a topic of conversation in activist circles and does not present itself very much for discussion in any media. In the Twenty-Six Counties, the Irish language is very much associated with the education system and, for older generations, may even carry negative connotations. Another article would be required to analyse the different trajectories of history in both states and to draw conclusions in relation to different mindsets that exist North and South on the subject of the Irish language. However, it is clear that since the civil war a lack of awareness exists in the South in relation to colonisation in an Irish context. Writers such as Tomás Mac Síomóin have attributed this to a lack of awareness of Irish history and the deep damage wrought by colonisation: “Prerevolutionary hopes that the new Ireland would be both Gaelic and intellectually free were lost in the “carnival of reaction” that characterized the polity of the new Irish state.”[13]
Nonetheless, Irish survives and – in many places – thrives. Where do we go from here, to further the cultural reconquest of Ireland? Many steps are involved in decolonisation and in language revival but, for political activists, the first step is raising awareness. The total lack of discourse on this subject, particularly in the Twenty-Six Counties, must be addressed to ensure that an awareness of our history exists, firstly among political and community activists, and secondly among the general population. Initiating debate on this topic highlights how forced assimilation and mental colonisation have shaped Ireland as well as other nations.
I hope that activists will understand the importance of language in reversing the subjugation process, and recognise that a truly free Republic must undergo decolonisation in all its forms. Learning Irish, choosing to speak Irish, raising our children with Irish, advocating for language rights and including it in our everyday lives is a revolutionary act. It is reclaiming what’s ours and it is being a part of the decolonisation effort that will prepare the ground for real freedom and for the building of a decolonised Republic.
Cultural reconquest must take place where colonisation has deliberately and forcibly destroyed the indigenous culture of oppressed people. Solidarity with other subjugated peoples and the building of indigenous language projects and movements can help activists to understand colonisation better and to feel part of a unified movement. Going forward, Irish activists should reach out to activists around the world and explore the development of projects for the revival of what has been robbed. This would indeed result in the revolution of the mind.
[1] K. David Harrison, When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2007).
[2] D. Crystal, Language Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
[3] P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Penguin Books, 1970).
[4] Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London; Portsmouth, N.H.: J. Currey; Heinemann, 1986).
[5] L. de Paor, “Disappearing Language: Translations from the Irish,” The Poetry Ireland Review No. 51 (Autumn 1996): 61–68.
[6] F. Mac Ionnrachtaigh, Language, Resistance and Revival: Republican Prisoners and the Irish Language in the North of Ireland (London: Pluto Press, 2013).
[7] F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Penguin, 1967).
[8] James Connolly, “The Language Movement,” The Workers’ Republic, October 1, 1898.
[9] Connolly, 1898.
[10] James Connolly, “Socialism in Ireland,” The Harp, March 1908.
[11] D. Hyde, “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland,” 1892.
[12] T. Mac Síomóin, The Broken Harp: Identity and Language in Modern Ireland (Nuascéalta Teoranta, 2014).
[13] Mac Síomóin, 2014.
Dr. Ursula Ní Shionnain has been an Irish-language activist for 20 years. A former republican prisoner, she has been active in campaigns on Palestine, women's rights, anti-austerity and many other social issues. She is the author of 'Plean Teanga Iarthar Bhéal Feirste' and 'Plean Teanga an Chlocháin' and co-author of 'Plean Teanga Chathair Saidhbhín' and 'Cross-border Irish language Research Project: A Full and Comprehensive Review of the Irish language in the North-West Region'. She is currently living in Co. Meath and raising her daughter with Irish and has established a family support service, Seirbhís Tacaíochta Teaghlaigh Ghaeltacht na Mí, for families raising their children with Irish in the Ráth Chairn Gaeltacht.