http://www.cso.ie/gaeilge/census/census2006results_ga/census_2006_volume_9_ga.ht m


Ca 72,000 daily speakers of Irish outside the education system: 3 out of 4 of them outside the gaeltacht.

Dhaibhail! Ní líonfaimis Páirc an Chrócaigh!

How did you arrive at this figure?

I get 85 076 daily speakers (from table 30)

Ok, I see - table 30+31 - makes for 72k. But this is very rigorous definition. So finally we can put to dustbin non-sense about only 10000-20000 speakers.

tá 1.6 milliún cainteoirí ann ach ní labhraíonn ach 72,000 go laethúil.

Easpa deiseanna is muiníne chun í a labhairt is ea an fhadhb.
Tá an daonáireamh againn ach tá gá againn freisin chun iad a spreagadh

Previous censuses never asked about Irish outside of educational system, did they? So we can't compare the data, can we?

Cé mhéad daoine a insíonn bréaga sna daonáirimh meas sibh?

abair 600,000 mar tomhas.

This is the first year the question was put about the educational system. It was necessary due to the continuous questioning of the figures.

If the gaeltacht sociolinguistic survey ever gets published, and if we get a similar study of teh galltacht, we might know something!

"abair 600,000 mar tomhas."

Moladh don chéad daonáireamh eile:

Cad iad na bréaga a d'inis sibh ar an daonáireamh seo ( an cheist seo san áireamh ) ? ;-)

Interesting, but let's not forget that that 72,000 is a maximum figure. Speaking daily is not as Róman said a very rigorous definition. Someone who says "Dia dhuit" once a day speaks Irish daily. I would like to know how many people in Ireland are fluent enough to watch films without subtitles and read books without a dictionary...

It's a census, not a scientific survey.

A (non school) book in Irish sells about 1000 copies to break even. Good books sell 500 or so in the first year.

Foinse and Lá Nua each have a distribution of about 5000.

Unfortunately, the listenership survey does not cover RnaG - because it is advertising free. I saw a figure of 100K listeners at one point.


We have very little data. And those of us in the galltacht, and outside core gaeltacht areas have to create opportunities to speak Irish.

Irish speaking non educational employment is the key!

(Tá éad orm le Michal!)

"(Tá éad orm le Michal!)"

sea, maith thú Mechúra

"
Moladh don chéad daonáireamh eile:

Cad iad na bréaga a d'inis sibh ar an daonáireamh seo ( an cheist seo san áireamh ) ? ;-)"

thar cionn a fhirn :)

I tried to find the figures for daily speakers of Irish over 3 years of age in the Cork Gaeltacht, but the figures are not published in such a way that you can work that out. Figures for each Gaeltacht would be good, if available somewhere.

Now: I am being very exacting here. Where there a 5 people in a household with one Irish speaker, I am assuming their daily/family life is not in Irish. There are 1 psn households or households with 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6+ people in tables 50 and 51. I generously assumed the 1 person households were managing to find someone to speak Irish with in a more meaningful way than just "Dia Dhuit", but I have excluded Irish speakers from households with 2 or more people in where not every member of the household spoke Irish. My results:

Table 51 Daily Irish speakers in Gaeltacht outside the education system over 3 years of age: 21795, but only 13598 where every member of the household speaks it every day.

Table 50 Daily Irish speakers in Ireland outside the education system over 3 years of age: 68,685, but only 25,178 where every member of the household speaks it every day.

Conclusion: there are lot of people in the Galltacht who claim to speak Irish every day but live in households where 1 or more members don't speak Irish every day!! The real hardcore of the Gaeltacht - households where all members speak Irish every day outside the school system - is 13,598 people, with a slightly smaller number of similar households in the Galltacht, bringing the total to 25,178 people.

Labhródh níos mó daoine Gaeilge go laethúil dá mbeadh an deis acu, ach tá sé an-deacair muna bhfuil tú i do chónaí sa Ghaeltacht.

Táim tar éis gaeilge a staidéir san ollscoil, agus tá sé suimúil mar níl ach cúpla duinne sa rang as an nGaeltacht. Tá sé an-deacair í a úsáid go laethúil mar nach mbainim triall aisti de gnach.

I am looking at the Cork Gaeltacht.

Population: 2860
Daily, speaks Irish within education system only: 581
Speaks Irish also outside the education system: 271
Daily: 622
Weekly: 490
Less often: 742
Never: 111
Not stated: 43

I was initially confused, as the 581+271 did not add to 622. Then I realised - although it is not stated - that the 622 related to speakers who are not in the education system. To that extent the presentation is not very clear at all.

Assuming the 581 refers to daily speakers only within the education system, the 271 refers to daily speakers within the education system who also speak outside schook, and the 622 to refer to people who speak it daily but are not in the education system, then the Cork Gaeltacht has 271+622 daily speakers outside the education system, ie 893 speakers.

The Statistics Board of Ireland should hire me to explain to THEM what their statistics mean :-)

People who move to Ireland will send their children to school in Ireland. To that extent children of ethnic minorities will get some exposure to Irish. But it is highly misleading to claim ethnic minority people are taking interest in Irish in large numbers. Look at these numbers:

Adults over the age of 20, usually resident in Ireland, who speak outside the education system on a daily basis:

Total: 56,153 (10980 who speak it both inside and outside the education system daily and 45173 who speak it only outside the education system). The total of people over 20 usually resident in Ireland is 3,024,396, so 56,153 is 1.86%.

But of this total Black Africans account for just 41 (out of a total of 21,904, meaning 0.19%). Other Black background: just 15 (out of a total of 2,141, meaning 0.70%). Chinese: just 26 (out of a total of 13,716, meaning 0.19%). Other Asian background: just 53 (out of total of 26,791, meaning 0.20%).

In fact the largest category of "non-white Irish" (I hate the labels too!) in this table is "any other white background": 1,141 (out of a total of 241,910 who fit the definition, meaning 0.47%).

Africans and Asians in Ireland are **extremely unlikely** to speak Irish outside of the education system.

The wikipedia entry on the Irish language (yes, always take it with a grain of salt.....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language), claims 85,076 people speak Irish daily OUTSIDE the education system. Something doesn't add up. Another report I read said Irish is the first language of 3% of the population. Can't find the link though.

I think the Census questions re: Irish are improving, but what we really need is a census that differentiates between native speakers and those who have attained fluency later in life. In addition to the daily/weekly/less often and inside/outside the education system options.

That is not the task of the census. A census is self reported. What you are looking for requires a scientific socio linguistic survey. One has been carried out for the Gaeltacht, but not yet published since it has not been seen by the full Cabinet. Bits were leaked, and made grim reading.

We need something similar for the rest of the country.

Could there not be an option on the census that allows people to report whether or not they grew up in an Irish speaking home? A section that deals with levels of fluency etc?

"Bits were leaked, and made grim reading."

Which bits were leaked? Do you have a link?

The story was covered by Foinse, whose online site is not very up to date. I don't have a link, but basically they were giveing teh language another generation before the Gaeltacht is dead.

Ouch.


On a different note, Daingean certainly made a strong showing - 62% with Irish?
Granted, only about 1/4 of those are daily speakers (so 15% of the total population) - but even so, that's by far the highest percentage reported for any town of its size. It surprised me, after some of the griping I've read about Irish being "dead" there, its not belonging in the Gaeltacht, etc. etc.



Josh, I think your reckoning may be a bit harsh. Take a 5-person household where 4 people speak Irish every day outside the educational system. What are the chances that Irish is not - in full or in part - the household language? It seems more likely to me that the one person who doesn't is (A) an English-speaking parent/grandparent (maybe someone who understands enough to get by, but isn't comfortable speaking it) or (B) a disaffected teenager. In either case Irish could still well be the majority language in that house.