I remembered this thread from awhile back.
http://www.daltai.com/discus/messages/13510/15497.html?1144298775

Here's a tidbit that I found interesting. It's from "Advancing the Language: Irish in the Twenty-First Century" A.J. Hughes, University of Ulster, Belfast
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/new_hibernia_review/v005/5.1hughes.html#FOOT43

One of the footnotes includes the following:

"In my fieldwork travels around most of the Gaeltacht regions of Ireland in the 1990s, the only places where I found people who could *not* speak English were the islands, of Tory, County Donegal, and Inismaan, County Galway."

This seems to match up with some of the replies you received in your monoglot thread. Inis Meáin and Oileán Thorai would have been my top guesses for a place where you might find adult monoglots, if they do in fact exist. Followed closely by Ceantar na nOileán ('The Islands' region, Conamara) and around Gaoth Dobhair (the only place mentioned here that I've visited so far).

Le gach beannacht

A Danny a chara,

I'm so pleased that you remembered me and my endeavors. I appreciate your attention and helpfulness.

the only trouble is that, though the book says people who can not speak English it doesn't preface this statement by specifying ages. He could very well be talking about little ones who are taught only Irish because they havn't gone to school yet. All the same I do feel glad of your consideration and recalling of my perculiar interests. Go raibh mile maith agat.

Beir bua agus beannacht

Anybody read the whole article? Fantastic observations regarding validation of "student Irish" as well as globalization of the language and a role for Irish-Americans to play!

"the only trouble is that, though the book says people who can not speak English it doesn't preface this statement by specifying ages. He could very well be talking about little ones who are taught only Irish because they havn't gone to school yet."

That's certainly possible. Although, I assume you'd still find plenty of youngsters throughout fíor gaeltacht areas who have no English.

I don't think so. They go to school and watch TV in English...

There could have been Irish Monoglot speakers in the 70s/80s, but I'm not too certain in 2007.

I heard by other Irish speakers that there could be a possibility that there are a few Irish monoglot speakers in the islands Gaeltacht very old farmers, who has no reason to speak English because they have been in the Gaeltacht all there life.

An acquaintance of mine is an Irish woman who didn't speak a word of English until she was four -- a conscious choice by her parents to Ensure that Irish was firmly established as her mother language. I believe she grew up in rural Galway and they may not have had a television.

Of course, she's in her mid-thirties (time marches on...) and with the prevalence of satellite television, who knows what the state of affairs is.

Well my friend of mine he comes from the Connemara Gaeltacht, his mum couldn't speak a word of English.

But hes in his sixties now.

I know an old woman in Donegal who had begun to speak English when she was 18. I think many old people (like John Ghráinne) were not young either when they began to learn/speak English.

Yeah but there are many and I mean many Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht feel more comfortable speaking Irish, like in the fíor Gaeltacht.

It's a bit tricky. If a person can speak English this doesn't necessarily mean that he or she is really bilingual. For example, I can say almost whatever I want in English, but I don't consider myself to be really bilingual. I started learning English when I was nine, and now I'm 30. I don't speak English in my everyday life, but I hear it virtually every day, on TV, and I read books in English quite often. Still, I don't feel myself to be bilingual - I'm far more comfortable and relaxed when I speak my own language.

So if there are people somewhere in Ireland who don't need to use English all the time...

Daithí

I guess it depends on how you define bilingual. Most definitions I've heard relate to functionality and not comfort.

I would think that a minority of people who use more than one language are equally comfortable with all of them. But the definitions of "bilingualism" are just as varied as the definitions of "fluency." I would never come close to classifying myself as fluent in Spanish, but the Spanish speakers (monoglotish) I work with didn't hesitate to put me into the "bilingual" category ... so you see how fluid these terms are. :-P

A Trigger a chara,

could you tell me when your friend's mother died? I have a data base of sorts with all the accounts of Irish speakers with limited English I have found. This archive covers instances from the 70s to now. Now granted all the accounts are not completely scientific, most are anicdotal in nature and some make more sense than others, but I'm cataloging them all because I care about this issue.

When I was on Inis Mor I met a few men who didn't learn English until they went abroad to work in England. I think that this situation is not uncommon among the older people. However interesting it is, it isn't the situation I'm looking at.

As to bilingualism, I would agree with Antaine that functionality is the criteria on which it is generally based, not comfort in the language.

Beir bua agus beannacht

Riona, I don't know when she died and I don't know when next I'll be seeing him.

You reminded me, when I was in a pub in London I met a man who is from the Cork Gaeltacht he learned English when he came over to England, when he started to do building work. :-)

"For example, I can say almost whatever I want in English, but I don't consider myself to be really bilingual."

Sean-Daithí, your post is more fluently written the many native speakers of English. I'll defer to your own assessment of yourself but I daresay you're bilingual. :)

A Chairde,
About bilinguism; I would like to tell you what I think about it ...
2 or 3 months ago I had a discussion about this.
One of you said, though the discussion was not running about this at all, that I had given myself away because I had made 2 or 3 mistakes in English . (now I am French and English is my mother language !?).So what?
I had then answered him what I felt about his way of thinking about me ... Let's forget it .
What I mean is that - for me - bilinguism means :
-(of course) a certain level of fluency in 2 languages .
- But I think these 2 languages are generally unequally employed (unless you live in a country with 2 *very* vivid languages, but does such a thing exist? One of them both is always dominant, isn't it?). And as far as I am concerned I don't use English in my work very often . On the other hand, I use it at home everyday . So that, time going on and years passing by, my range of vocabulary in English is not the same as in French .
But as I had said before, I think bilinguism means a certain way of "feeling" the words.
English was my first language and I can "feel" some words better in English than in French , and... vice-versa , (for other words).
I learned Russian when I was 11 years old and even if I have a good level in Russian and keep on using it sometimes , I am far from bilingual, because, Russian words don't come up to my mind as easily in English or in French.
As I had said before too, my fluency in one of these 2 languages depends on my way of being at the moment .
So, as a whole, I think bilinguism means a high level in 2 languages associated with a great feeling of the sounds of the words and their meanings.
What do you think about that? I mean this *feeling*, which is not an intellectual thing but a sensitive one.
I'd like to know your opinion and if some of you have the same experience .

Perhaps part of the difficulty is that there is no term for a language that is a mother tongue in which one is not completely fluent.

That may sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but such a phenomenon does exist. A good friend of mine from college days can prattle on with his family in Tagalog so long as the discussion never veers away from the ordinary, everyday, household talk. But start talking about politics, or business, or science, or theology, or any vaguely specialized area of knowledge, and he simply lacks the vocabulary and has to substitute English words.

There is no doubt that he thinks and dreams in Tagalog -- it's been hardwired into his brain, as it were -- but it hasn't been fleshed out because all of his learning was conducted in English-speaking schools and the popular culture he grew up in is English-speaking America.

Yeah. I remember in my classroom there was a girl from Gweedore (so: native speaker of Irish) and our teacher asked her how she'd say "furniture" in her dialect, and she didn't know...

Some people can forget completely their mothertongue, if they live in a place where they can't use it at all during many years. I knew a native Breton-speaker who had completely forgotten his Breton, he wouldn't even understand any word of it, even words like "mother" or "house". But he's the only person I know who has completely forgotten his first language, so far. Most people remember it more or less quickly if you speak it with them.

Like everything human, fluency has a spectrum, and polyglots defy easy categorisation.

I have spoken Irish and English since I can speak; there is no denying that my vocabulary in different fields is more developed in one language than the other - usually in English, due to opportunity - but some things are easier to say in Irish - or German which was my working language for 10 years and is the language I speak to my wife.

It's odd to think that a language that served as a medium of communication during one's earliest years can be entirely lost, but apparently it does happen.

I have a cousin who, when she was a very young girl, spent a great deal of time with her Welsh uncle and aunt, and Welsh (along with English, of course) was her daily language for her formative years, at least at home.

After they died, when she was a pre-teen, I believe, there was no more cause to speak Welsh and now that she's in her sixties she remembers practically nothing aside from a few words, mainly food of course, etc.

It never ceases to amaze me, but there it is.

(Message edited by domhnall_Ó_h_aireachtaigh on October 31, 2007)