Greetings!

I am a 5th year Linguistics student at the University of Victoria in British Columbia Canada. I am taking a Sociolinguistics class and we have to do a report on a language or area, assessing it's policies, history and current use. I am desparately trying to find any texts, articles, literature on Irish Gaelic's history, how it got started, and more importantly, the legislation that has been passed regarding it's status in Ireland.
Also, if anyone from the Republic (or Northern, although my report is smaller, so I'm just using Republic info) could tell me their day-to-day thoughts on the use of Irish, is it on a rise or fall, is it the official language, and if not, should it be? What's the general sentiment surrounding it's use?

THANK YOU so much for your time and contributions to this query. Please let me know whatever you can within the next week.

Cheers,

Brienne Ruel

(feel free to email me info)

Brienne, try searching the archives here, this is a subject which comes up again and again on this forum.

However, it is likely to cause a flame war, because many people here have strong opinions on the subject.

For legal stuff/government policy see

http://www.gaeilge.ie
and
http://www.pobail.ie

For statistics see
http://www.cso.ie

Good luck.

http://www.skoool.ie/skoool/examcentre_sc.asp?id=701

You will find a lot of information here. It is in Irish but there are headings in English which might be helpful.

Try typing Stair na Teanga into google and see what you come up with.

Good luck with your report.