A few questions from an Irish Irish speaker to the American Irish speakers, if you get my drift.....

I'm just curious as to how Irish speakers in America might make themselves known offcially. Can you declare a proficiency in Irish in the US census?

Also I notice there are various organisations across the US to promote Irish but is there any national umbrella group to push the interests of Irish speakers in the US, or at least to let the rest of the country know that you exist?

Duine, a chara,
Heigh! As to your first question,
I received the long-form US census, which asked what languages other than English was spoken at home.
I put down "Irish." I'd be interested to see when and if they crunch those numbers
where Irish will show up in that list.

Le meas,
Paul

Hello,

I only have a minute to write this, there's somewhere I need to be right now, so please forgive the sloppyness.

somewhat-detailed language info:
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t20/tab05.pdf

the census itself, if anyone is interested: (big file)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/socialpolicy/census2000/lon gform.pdf

official census info:
http://ask.census.gov/cgi-bin/askcensus.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=726& p_created=1099079112&p_sid=n_TAPxKh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dy aWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTAmcF9wcm9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MSZw X3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PWxhbmd1YWdl&p_li=&p_topview=1

official census info about specific languages
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t20.html

the census home page:
http://www.census.gov

Aaron

(Message edited by aaron on July 15, 2005)

FYI

The 1920 US census in cities like Brooklyn, NY, San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Maine, etc. records 10s of thousands of Irish speakers in scattereed breac-Ghaeltachta, urban neighborhoods and rural towns. 1920 census is sadly the first US census to ask that key question. If they had done so 1850-1880s and it was recorded accurately there would may have been more Irish speakers in the US than in Ireland.

Predictably Irish is elided from languages listed.

If that's the case, would it be a big task for the various groups in America to lobby the federal government to have it included?

how about here:

www.usenglish.org/foundation/research/lia/languages/irish_gaelic.pdf

Antaine:

Go raibh mi/le maith agat.

Amazin'. Nice to see Queens with almost 1300. I'll bet most are in Sunnyside and Woodside. This is so cool. Thanks again.

Beannacht,

dc

Yep aontaím leatsa Dancas sin ar fheabhas!! Fair play..
The total number of speakers is around the amount of Gaeilgeoirí who live sna Gaeltachta in Eirinn..

Maith sibh!

Be sure and keep in mind this "disclaimer" from the usenglish.org site:

quote:

The figures in this report refer solely to the language stated as being spoken at home by the residents of the
United States. They make no effort to determine whether this language is a first language or a second language,
whether this language is spoken at home 51 percent of the time or 100 percent of the time, or whether the individual
is fluent in this or any other language. It is quite likely that a portion of those who report speaking a language other
than English at home are fluent in English, as it is also quite likely that a portion of those who speak English at home
are fluent in a language other than English. No attempt has been made to include any information other than the self reported
language spoken at home as recorded by Census 2000.

The full text is here:
http://www.usenglish.org/foundation/research/lia/disclaimer.pdf

Unfortunately, the census doesn't count people who speak Irish, but don't speak it at home. Still, it is really interesting to see this.



Incidentally, and this is off subject, but it seems that nearly half of the 300+ languages spoken in the US are native... I've counted 5 different variations of Apache...

Aaron

(Message edited by aaron on July 19, 2005)

(Message edited by aaron on July 19, 2005)