Has anyone come across articles which paint a picture of the Irish speaking situation in the 1600 and 1700s?

When did the language really start to lose ground?

Based on the article below...certainly some areas saw a heavy decline by the 1770s...if not earlier...


http://www.ria.ie/cgi-bin/ria/papers/100195.pdf
(mostly deals with the 1911 census and the Irish speaking population before the Famine)

See this map from Wikipedia:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/Irishin1871.jpg

So I think from brief glance at the map, one would say that Irish had a substantial presence in about half the country even towards the latter part of the 19th century.

Maybe read this page:

http://www.fiosfeasa.com/bearla/language/fortunes.htm

Some years ago Garret Fitzgerald published a paper with maps showing the incidence of monoglot Irish speakers in each area for each decennial cohort based on information drawn from the census. I think the Royal Irish Academy published it and I am not sure if it is still available. Towards the end of the 19th Century there were many areas where Irish had been spoken which had only recently experienced the change-over to English. By the 1940s most of these "breac-Ghaeltachtaí" had disappeared and only English was spoken or understood. Many of these areas suffered a dramatic depletion of population also so it was not just a language shift. My parents remembered Irish being spoken in their area and learning prayers in Irish from grandparents etc.

Ouch! Apologies! Gabh mo leithscéal. I should have clicked on the link in your post, Dan, before joining in. The link you give http://www.ria.ie/cgi-bin/ria/papers/100195.pdf leads to an abstract from the study I remembered reading long ago.

Brian Ó Cuiv published a book "Irish Dialects and Irish-speaking Districts" which may contain some of the information you require. I don't know the date or the publisher.

Between 1600 and 1700, I'd say Irish was spoken everywhere except maybe in the biggest towns and in parts of Dublin area. But you have to verify this, it's just the impression I have.

The rate of decline would have been very steep during this period. I mean up until the end of the first decade in 1600's ulster Na Gaeil were still running the show, thereafter the British invaders came, the penal laws and of course "to hell or connaught"

1840 is reckoned to be the turning point - just before the famine.

Prior to the plantations of the 17th century, English was spoken along the coast of east Antrim and Down from Carrickfergus to Downpatrick (the remnant of the medieval Lordship of Ulster), in most of Co. Dublin (except for the north-western corner, adjacent to Co. Meath), in Co. Kildare, in the 16th-century plantations of Leix and Offaly, in the south of Co. Wexford, and in some major towns inhabited by those of Old English descent (especially Drogheda, Wexford, Kilkenny, Waterford, Limerick and Galway).

The 17th century saw the extension of English throughout the planted areas of Ulster (Co. Antrim, excluding the Glens and Rathlin; Cos. Derry and Tyrone, excluding the Sperrins; the Lagan district of Co. Donegal, most of Co. Fermanagh, and the northern halves of Cos Armagh and Down), and throughout south Leinster (Co. Wicklow, most of north Wexford, Co. Carlow).

The 18th century was a fairly stable period linguistically: while knowledge of English as a second language increased continually throughout the period, the areas in which Irish was the community language didn't contract significantly (reflecting the fact that there were no new plantations or population transfers), but the language more or less became extinct in the formerly bilingual region of south Leinster, apart from Co. Kilkenny and a few neighbouring parts of Leix and Wexford.

In the early 19th century the geographical shrinkage resumed and Irish began to die out in north Leinster and south Ulster (Cos. Meath, Westmeath, Louth, Cavan, Monaghan, and the southern parts of Armagh and Down), an area which had been bilingual for a couple of generations.

On the eve of the famine, Irish was still generally spoken throughout all of Munster and Connacht, in Co. Kilkenny, and in most of Co. Donegal. There was a big breacghaeltacht stretching across north Leinster and south Ulster, but the likelihood is that Irish would have died out in this region even without the impact of the famine because the younger people there tended to speak English only by the 1840s.

On the other hand, without a famine which targeted the poorest section of the rural population in the south and west, it is virtually certain that the bulk of the population in both Munster and Connacht would still have been Irish speaking by the time the language revival began in the 1890s.

As it was, the famine killed off or exiled the monoglot Irish speakers. There were still a great many bilinguals alive in the 1850s, but without either a reserve of monoglot speakers below them on the social pyramid or an ideology of language preservation they had no incentive to transmit it to the next generation.

Very interesting.

Where did you get this information?


I've always wondered what the chances are that my own Irish ancestors spoke Irish. We'll never know but it's fun to wonder.

They left Ireland in 1825. The father was a Doran (married a Moynihan) and was a "reduced farmer".

They came from the village of Ballyporeen, which is in southwest Co. Tipperary...almost on the border with County Cork.

http://www.roscreaonline.com/images/maps/tipperary2.gif

Leaving that area in 1825, meaning they must have been born close to 1800, they were most probably Irish speakers.

The head of the household was 40 years old according to the ship records and other documents we have. So that would be 1785. His wife was also 40 and some of the children were 20 and 21.