Modern Irish

Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century. Irish is still spoken as a first language in a small number of areas of certain counties such as Cork, Donegal, Galway, and Kerry, as well as smaller areas of counties Mayo, Meath, and Waterford. It is also spoken by a larger group of habitual but non-traditional speakers, mostly in urban areas where the majority are second-language speakers. Daily users in Ireland outside the education system number around 73,000 (1.5%), and the total number of persons (aged 3 and over) who claimed they could speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, representing 39.8% of respondents.

For most of recorded Irish history, Irish was the dominant language of the Irish people, who took it with them to other regions, such as Scotland and the Isle of Man, where Middle Irish gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx. It was also, for a period, spoken widely across Canada, with an estimated 200,000–250,000 daily Canadian speakers of Irish in 1890. On the island of Newfoundland, a unique dialect of Irish developed before falling out of use in the early 20th century.

With a writing system, Ogham, dating back to at least the 4th century AD, which was gradually replaced by Latin script since the 5th century AD, Irish has the oldest vernacular literature in Western Europe. On the island, the language has three major dialects: Munster, Connacht and Ulster. All three have distinctions in their speech and orthography. There is also a "standard written form" devised by a parliamentary commission in the 1950s. The traditional Irish alphabet, a variant of the Latin alphabet with 18 letters, has been succeeded by the standard Latin alphabet (albeit with 7–8 letters used primarily in loanwords).

Irish has constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland, and is also an official language of Northern Ireland and among the official languages of the European Union. The public body Foras na Gaeilge is responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island. Irish has no regulatory body but the standard modern written form is guided by a parliamentary service and new vocabulary by a voluntary committee with university input. The modern-day areas of Ireland where Irish is still spoken daily as a first language are collectively known as the .

Names

In Irish

In ("The Official rittenStandard") the name of the language is , from the South Connacht form, spelled prior the spelling reform of 1948, which was originally the genitive of , the form used in Classical Gaelic. The modern spelling results from the deletion of the silent in . Older spellings include in Classical Gaelic and in Old Irish. Goidelic, used to refer to the language family, is derived from the Old Irish term.

Endonyms of the language in the various modern Irish dialects include: in Galway, // in Mayo and Ulster, and / in Munster, as well as in Waterford to reflect local realisation of word final as .

also has a wider meaning, including the Gaelic of Scotland and the Isle of Man, as well as of Ireland. When required by the context, these are distinguished as , and respectively.

In English

In English (including Hiberno-English) the language is usually referred to as ''Irish'', as well as ''Gaelic'' and ''Irish Gaelic''. The term ''Irish Gaelic'' may be seen when English speakers discuss the relationship between the three Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx). ''Gaelic'' is a collective term for the Goidelic languages, and when the context is clear it may be used without qualification to refer to each language individually. When the context is specific but unclear, the term may be qualified, as Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic or Manx Gaelic. Historically the name "Erse" was also sometimes used in Scots and then in English to refer to Irish; as well as Scottish Gaelic.

''Goidelic'' is a synonym of Gaelic, used mainly in linguistic typology and historical linguistics. Goidelic and Brittonic together constitute the Insular Celtic languages.

History

Written Irish is first attested in inscriptions from the 4th century AD, a stage of the language known as Primitive Irish. These writings have been found throughout Ireland and the west coast of Great Britain. Primitive Irish underwent a change into Old Irish through the 5th century. Old Irish, dating from the 6th century, used the Latin alphabet and is attested primarily in marginalia to Latin manuscripts. During this time, the Irish language absorbed some Latin words, some via Old Welsh, including ecclesiastical terms: examples are (bishop) from , and (Sunday, from ).

By the 10th century, Old Irish had evolved into Middle Irish, which was spoken throughout Ireland, Isle of Man and parts of Scotland. It is the language of a large corpus of literature, including the Ulster Cycle. From the 12th century, Middle Irish began to evolve into modern Irish in Ireland, into Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, and into the Manx language in the Isle of Man.

Early Modern Irish, dating from the 13th century, was the basis of the literary language of both Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland. Modern Irish, as attested in the work of such writers as Geoffrey Keating, may be said to date from the 17th century, and was the medium of popular literature from that time on.

From the 18th century on, the language lost ground in the east of the country. The reasons behind this shift were complex but came down to a number of factors:
* Discouragement of its use by the Anglo-Irish administration.
* The Catholic church supported the use of English over Irish.
* The spread of bilingualism from the 1750s onwards.

The change was characterised by diglossia (two languages being used by the same community in different social and economic situations) and transitional bilingualism (monoglot Irish-speaking grandparents with bilingual children and monoglot English-speaking grandchildren). By the mid-18th century, English was becoming a language of the Catholic middle class, the Catholic Church and public intellectuals, especially in the east of the country. Increasingly, as the value of English became apparent, the prohibition of Irish in schools had the sanction of parents.Ó Gráda 2013. Once it became apparent that emigration to the United States and Canada was likely for a large portion of the population, the importance of learning English became relevant. This allowed the new immigrants to get jobs in areas other than farming. It has been estimated that, due to the emigration to the United States because of the Great Famine, anywhere from a quarter to a third of the immigrants were Irish speakers.

Irish was not marginal to Ireland's modernisation in the 19th century, as is often assumed. In the first half of the century there were still around three million people for whom Irish was the primary language, and their numbers alone made them a cultural and social force. Irish speakers often insisted on using the language in law courts (even when they knew English), and Irish was also common in commercial transactions. The language was heavily implicated in the "devotional revolution" which marked the standardisation of Catholic religious practice and was also widely used in a political context. Down to the time of the Great Famine and even afterwards, the language was in use by all classes, Irish being an urban as well as a rural language.

This linguistic dynamism was reflected in the efforts of certain public intellectuals to counter the decline of the language. At the end of the 19th century, they launched the Gaelic revival in an attempt to encourage the learning and use of Irish, although few adult learners mastered the language. The vehicle of the revival was the Gaelic League (), and particular emphasis was placed on the folk tradition, which in Irish is particularly rich. Efforts were also made to develop journalism and a modern literature.

Although it has been noted that the Catholic Church played a role in the decline of the Irish language before the Gaelic Revival, the Protestant Church of Ireland also made only minor efforts to encourage use of Irish in a religious context. An Irish translation of the Old Testament by Leinsterman , commissioned by Bishop Bedell, was published after 1685 along with a translation of the New Testament. Otherwise, Anglicisation was seen as synonymous with 'civilising' the native Irish. Currently, modern day Irish speakers in the church are pushing for language revival.

It has been estimated that there were around 800,000 monoglot Irish speakers in 1800, which dropped to 320,000 by the end of the famine, and under 17,000 by 1911. Seán Ó hEinirí, of Cill Ghallagáin, County Mayo, who died 26 July 1998, was possibly the last monolingual Irish speaker.

Status and policy

Ireland

Irish is recognised by the Constitution of Ireland as the national and first official language of Ireland (English being the other official language). Despite this, almost all government business and debates are conducted in English. In 1938, the founder of (Gaelic League), Douglas Hyde, was inaugurated as the first President of Ireland. The record of his delivering his inaugural ''Declaration of Office'' in Roscommon Irish is one of only a few recordings of that dialect.

In the 2016 census, 10.5% of respondents stated that they spoke Irish, either daily or weekly, while over 70,000 people (4.2%) speak it as a habitual daily means of communication.

From the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 (see History of the Republic of Ireland), a degree of proficiency in Irish was required of all those newly appointed to the Civil Service of the Republic of Ireland, including postal workers, tax collectors, agricultural inspectors, Garda Síochána (police), etc. By law if a Garda was stopped and addressed in Irish he had to respond in Irish as well. Proficiency in just one official language for entrance to the public service was introduced in 1974, in part through the actions of protest organisations like the Language Freedom Movement.

Although the Irish requirement was also dropped for wider public service jobs, Irish remains a required subject of study in all schools within the Republic which receive public money (see Education in the Republic of Ireland). Those wishing to teach in primary schools in the State must also pass a compulsory examination called . The need for a pass in Leaving Certificate Irish or English for entry to the Garda Síochána was introduced in September 2005, and recruits are given lessons in the language during their two years of training. The most important official documents of the Irish government must be published in both Irish and English or Irish alone (in accordance with the Official Languages Act 2003, enforced by , the Irish language ombudsman).

The National University of Ireland requires all students wishing to embark on a degree course in the NUI federal system to pass the subject of Irish in the Leaving Certificate or GCE/GCSE examinations. Exemptions are made from this requirement for students born outside of the Ireland, those who were born in the Republic but completed primary education outside it, and students diagnosed with dyslexia. NUI Galway is required to appoint people who are competent in the Irish language, as long as they are also competent in all other aspects of the vacancy to which they are appointed. This requirement is laid down by the University College Galway Act, 1929 (Section 3). The university faced controversy, however, in 2016 when it was announced that the next president of the university would not have any Irish language ability, staged a number of protests against this decision. It was announced in September 2017 that Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, a fluent Irish speaker, would be NUIG's 13th president.

For a number of years there has been vigorous debate in political, academic and other circles about the failure of most students in mainstream (English-medium) schools to achieve competence in the language, even after fourteen years of teaching as one of the three main subjects. The concomitant decline in the number of traditional native speakers has also been a cause of great concern. In 2007, filmmaker Manchán Magan found few speakers and some incredulity while speaking only Irish in Dublin. He was unable to accomplish some everyday tasks, as portrayed in his documentary ''No Béarla''.

There is, however, a growing body of Irish speakers in urban areas, particularly in Dublin. Many have been educated in schools in which Irish is the language of instruction: such schools are known as at primary level. These Irish-medium schools send a much higher proportion of pupils on to third-level education than do "mainstream" schools, and it seems increasingly possible that, within a generation, non-Gaeltacht habitual users of Irish will typically be members of an urban, middle class and highly educated minority.

Parliamentary legislation is supposed to be available in both Irish and English but is frequently only available in English. This is notwithstanding that Article 25.4 of the Constitution of Ireland requires that an "official translation" of any law in one official language be provided immediately in the other official language, if not already passed in both official languages.

In November 2016, it was reported that many people worldwide were learning Irish through the Duolingo app. Irish president Michael Higgins officially honoured several volunteer translators for developing the Irish edition, and said the push for Irish language rights remains an "unfinished project".

Gaeltacht

There are rural areas of Ireland where Irish is still spoken daily to some extent as a first language. These regions are known individually and collectively as the '' Gaeltacht'' (plural ). While the fluent Irish speakers of these areas, whose numbers have been estimated at 2030,000, are a minority of the total number of fluent Irish speakers, they represent a higher concentration of Irish speakers than other parts of the country and it is only in ''Gaeltacht'' areas that Irish continues to be spoken as a community vernacular to some extent.

According to data compiled by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, ''Gaeltacht'', Sport and Media, only 1/4 of households in ''Gaeltacht'' areas are fluent in Irish. The author of a detailed analysis of the survey, Donncha Ó hÉallaithe of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, described the Irish language policy followed by Irish governments as a "complete and absolute disaster". ''The Irish Times'', referring to his analysis published in the Irish language newspaper , quoted him as follows: "It is an absolute indictment of successive Irish Governments that at the foundation of the Irish State there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi Irish-speaking areas, but the number now is between 20,000 and 30,000."

In the 1920s, when the Irish Free State was founded, Irish was still a vernacular in some western coastal areas. In the 1930s, areas where more than 25% of the population spoke Irish were classified as ''Gaeltacht''. Today, the strongest ''Gaeltacht'' areas, numerically and socially, are those of South Connemara, the west of the Dingle Peninsula, and northwest Donegal, where many residents still use Irish as their primary language. These areas are often referred to as the (true ''Gaeltacht''), a term originally officially applied to areas where over 50% of the population spoke Irish.

There are larger ''Gaeltacht'' regions in County Galway (), including Connemara (), the Aran Islands (), Carraroe () and Spiddal (), on the west coast of County Donegal (), and on the Dingle () and Iveragh Peninsulas () in County Kerry ().

Smaller ones also exist in counties Mayo (), Meath (), Waterford (), and Cork (). Gweedore (), County Donegal, is the largest ''Gaeltacht'' parish in Ireland. Irish language summer colleges in the ''Gaeltacht'' are attended by tens of thousands of teenagers annually. Students live with Gaeltacht families, attend classes, participate in sports, go to ' and are obliged to speak Irish. All aspects of Irish culture and tradition are encouraged.

Policy

Official Languages Act 2003

The Act was passed 14 July 2003 with the main purpose of improving the amount and quality of public services delivered in Irish by the government and other public bodies. Compliance with the Act is monitored by the '' An Coimisinéir Teanga'' (Irish Language Commissioner) which was established in 2004 and any complaints or concerns pertaining to the Act are brought to them. There are 35 sections included in the Act all detailing different aspects of the use of Irish in official documentation and communication. Included in these sections are subjects such as Irish language use in official courts, official publications, and placenames. The Act was recently amended in December 2019 in order to strengthen the already preexisting legislation. All changes made took into account data collected from online surveys and written submissions.

Official Languages Scheme 2019-2022

The Official Languages Scheme was enacted 1 July 2019 and is an 18-page document that adheres to the guidelines of the ''Official Languages Act 2003''. The purpose of the Scheme is to provide services through the mediums of Irish and/or English. According to the ''Department of the Taoiseach,'' it is meant to "develop a sustainable economy and a successful society, to pursue Ireland's interests abroad, to implement the Government's Programme and to build a better future for Ireland and all her citizens."

20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language 2010-2030

The Strategy was produced on 21 December 2010 and will stay in action until 2030; it aims to target language vitality and revitalization of the Irish language. The 30-page document published by the Government of Ireland details the objectives it plans to work towards in an attempt to preserve and promote both the Irish language and the Gaeltacht. It is divided into four separate phases with the intention of improving 9 main areas of action including:

* "Education"
* "The ''Gaeltacht''"
* "Family Transmission of the Language - Early Intervention"
* "Administration, Services and Community"
* "Media and Technology"
* "Dictionaries"
* "Legislation and Status"
* "Economic Life"
* "Cross-cutting Initiatives"

The general goal for this strategy is to increase the amount of speakers from 83,000 to 250,000 by the end of its run.

Northern Ireland

Before the partition of Ireland in 1921, Irish was recognised as a school subject and as "Celtic" in some third level institutions. Between 1921 and 1972, Northern Ireland had devolved government. During those years the political party holding power in the Stormont Parliament, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), was hostile to the language. The context of this hostility was the use of the language by nationalists. In broadcasting, there was an exclusion on the reporting of minority cultural issues, and Irish was excluded from radio and television for almost the first fifty years of the previous devolved government. After the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the language gradually received a degree of formal recognition in Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, and then, in 2003, by the British government's ratification in respect of the language of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In the 2006 St Andrews Agreement the British government promised to enact legislation to promote the language and in 2022 it approved legislation to Irish an official language alongside English, the bill is currently awaiting Royal assent.

The Irish language has often been used as a bargaining chip during government formation in Northern Ireland, prompting protests from organisations and groups such as .

European Parliament

Irish became an official language of the EU on 1 January 2007, meaning that MEPs with Irish fluency can now speak the language in the European Parliament and at committees, although in the case of the latter they have to give prior notice to a simultaneous interpreter in order to ensure that what they say can be interpreted into other languages.

While an official language of the European Union, only co-decision regulations were available until 2022, due to a five-year derogation, requested by the Irish Government when negotiating the language's new official status. The Irish government had committed itself to train the necessary number of translators and interpreters and to bear the related costs. This derogation ultimately came to an end on January 1, 2022, making Irish a fully recognised EU language for the first time in the state's history.

Before Irish became an official language it was afforded the status of treaty language and only the highest-level documents of the EU were made available in Irish.

Outside Ireland

The Irish language was carried abroad in the modern period by a vast diaspora, chiefly to Great Britain and North America, but also to Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.
The first large movements began in the 17th century, largely as a result of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, which saw many Irish sent to the West Indies. Irish emigration to the United States was well established by the 18th century, and was reinforced in the 1840s by thousands fleeing from the Famine. This flight also affected Britain. Up until that time most emigrants spoke Irish as their first language, though English was establishing itself as the primary language. Irish speakers had first arrived in Australia in the late 18th century as convicts and soldiers, and many Irish-speaking settlers followed, particularly in the 1860s. New Zealand also received some of this influx. Argentina was the only non-English-speaking country to receive large numbers of Irish emigrants, and there were few Irish speakers among them.

Relatively few of the emigrants were literate in Irish, but manuscripts in the language were brought to both Australia and the United States, and it was in the United States that the first newspaper to make significant use of Irish was established: . In Australia, too, the language found its way into print. The Gaelic revival, which started in Ireland in the 1890s, found a response abroad, with branches of being established in all the countries to which Irish speakers had emigrated.

The decline of Irish in Ireland and a slowing of emigration helped to ensure a decline in the language abroad, along with natural attrition in the host countries. Despite this, small groups of enthusiasts continued to learn and cultivate Irish in diaspora countries and elsewhere, a trend which strengthened in the second half of the 20th century. Today the language is taught at tertiary level in North America, Australia and Europe, and Irish speakers outside Ireland contribute to journalism and literature in the language. There are significant Irish-speaking networks in the United States and Canada; figures released for the period 2006–2008 show that 22,279 Irish Americans claimed to speak Irish at home.

The Irish language is also one of the languages of the Celtic League, a non-governmental organisation that promotes self-determination, Celtic identity and culture in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man, known collectively as the Celtic nations.

Irish was spoken as a community language until the early 20th century on the island of Newfoundland, in a form known as Newfoundland Irish.

Usage

The 2016 census data shows:

The total number of people who answered 'yes' to being able to speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, a slight decrease (0.7 per cent) on the 2011 figure of 1,774,437. This represents 39.8 per cent of respondents compared with 41.4 in 2011... Of the 73,803 daily Irish speakers (outside the education system), 20,586 (27.9%) lived in Gaeltacht areas.

Daily Irish speakers in Gaeltacht areas between 2011 and 2016

In 1996, the 3 electoral divisions in the State where Irish has the most daily speakers were An Turloch (91%+), Scainimh (89%+), Min an Chladaigh (88%+).

Dialects

Irish is represented by several traditional dialects and by various varieties of "urban" Irish. The latter have acquired lives of their own and a growing number of native speakers. Differences between the dialects make themselves felt in stress, intonation, vocabulary and structural features.

Roughly speaking, the three major dialect areas which survive coincide roughly with the provinces of Connacht (), Munster () and Ulster (). Records of some dialects of Leinster (') were made by the Irish Folklore Commission and others. Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, had a form of Irish derived from the Munster Irish of the later 18th century (see Newfoundland Irish and the Aran Islands. Much closer to the larger Connacht Gaeltacht is the dialect spoken in the smaller region on the border between Galway () and Mayo (). There are a number of differences between the popular South Connemara form of Irish, the Mid-Connacht/Joyce Country form (on the border between Mayo and Galway) and the Achill and Erris forms in the north of the province.

Features in Connacht Irish differing from the official standard include a preference for verbal nouns ending in , e.g. instead of , "weakening". The non-standard pronunciation of the area with lengthened vowels and heavily reduced endings gives it a distinct sound. Distinguishing features of Connacht and Ulster dialect include the pronunciation of word-final as , rather than as in Munster. For example, ("mountain") is pronounced in Connacht and Ulster as opposed to in the south. In addition Connacht and Ulster speakers tend to include the "we" pronoun rather than use the standard compound form used in Munster, e.g. is used for "we were" instead of .

As in Munster Irish, some short vowels are lengthened and others diphthongised before , in monosyllabic words and in the stressed syllable of multisyllabic words where the syllable is followed by a consonant. This can be seen in ' "head", ' "crooked", ' "short", ' "sledgehammer", ' "foreigner, non-Gael", ' "a wonder, a marvel", etc. The form , when occurring at the end of words like '', tends to be pronounced as ː

In South Connemara, for example, there is a tendency to replace word-final with , in word such as ', ' and ' (pronounced respectively as "shiv," "liv" and "" in the other areas). This placing of the B-sound is also present at the end of words ending in vowels, such as ' () and ' (). There is also a tendency to omit in ', ' and ', a characteristic also of other Connacht dialects. All these pronunciations are distinctively regional.

The pronunciation prevalent in the Joyce Country (the area around Lough Corrib and Lough Mask) is quite similar to that of South Connemara, with a similar approach to the words ', ' and ' and a similar approach to pronunciation of vowels and consonants but there are noticeable differences in vocabulary, with certain words such as ' (difficult) and ' being preferred to the more usual ' and '. Another interesting aspect of this sub-dialect is that almost all vowels at the end of words tend to be pronounced as ː ' (other), ' (feet) and ' (done) tend to be pronounced as ', ' and ' respectively.

The northern Mayo dialect of Erris () and Achill () is in grammar and morphology essentially a Connacht dialect but shows some similarities to Ulster Irish due to large-scale immigration of dispossessed people following the Plantation of Ulster. For example, words ending - have a much softer sound, with a tendency to terminate words such as ' and ' with , giving ' and ' respectively. In addition to a vocabulary typical of other area of Connacht, one also finds Ulster words like ' (meaning "to look"), ' (painful or sore), ' (close), ' (hear), ' (difficult), ' (new), and ' (to be able to – i.e. a form similar to ').

Irish President Douglas Hyde was possibly one of the last speakers of the Roscommon dialect of Irish.

Munster

Munster Irish is the dialect spoken in the Gaeltacht areas of the counties of Cork (), Kerry (), and Waterford (). The Gaeltacht areas of Cork can be found in Cape Clear Island () and Muskerry; and those of Waterford in Ring () and Old Parish (), both of which together form Gaeltacht na nDéise. Of the three counties, the Irish spoken in Cork and Kerry is quite similar while that of Waterford is more distinct.

Some typical features of Munster Irish are:

# The use of synthetic verbs in parallel with a pronominal subject system, thus "I must" is / in Munster, while other dialects prefer ( means "I"). "I was and you were" is / in Munster but more commonly in other dialects. Note that these are strong tendencies, and the personal forms ''bhíos'' etc. are used in the West and North, particularly when the words are last in the clause.
# Use of independent/dependent forms of verbs that are not included in the Standard. For example, "I see" in Munster is , which is the independent form – Ulster Irish also uses a similar form, ', whereas "I do not see" is , ' being the dependent form, which is used after particles such as ' ("not"). ' is replaced by ' in the Standard. Similarly, the traditional form preserved in Munster "I give"/ is / in the Standard; I get/ is /.
# When before and so on, in monosyllabic words and in the stressed syllable of multisyllabic words where the syllable is followed by a consonant, some short vowels are lengthened while others are diphthongised, in ' "head", ' "crooked", ' "short", ' "sledgehammer", ' "foreigner, non-Gael", ' "a wonder, a marvel", ' "companion, mate", etc.
# A copular construction involving "it" is frequently used. Thus "I am an Irish person" can be said ' and ' in Munster; there is a subtle difference in meaning, however, the first choice being a simple statement of fact, while the second brings emphasis onto the word ''Éireannach''. In effect the construction is a type of " fronting".
# Both masculine and feminine words are subject to lenition after ' ('/') "in the", ' "of the" and ' "to/for the" : ', "in the shop", compared to the Standard ' (the Standard lenites only feminine nouns in the dative in these cases).
# Eclipsis of after ': ', "in the farm", instead of '.
# Eclipsis of and after preposition + singular article, with all prepositions except after ', ' and ': ' "on the house", ' "at the door".
# Stress is generally on the second syllable of a word when the first syllable contains a short vowel, and the second syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong, or is -, e.g. is pronounced iəˈɾˠaːn̪ˠopposed to �ciəɾˠaːn̪ˠin Connacht and Ulster.

Ulster

Ulster Irish is the dialect spoken in the Gaeltacht regions of Donegal. These regions contain all of Ulster's communities where Irish has been spoken in an unbroken line back to when the language was the dominant language of Ireland. The Irish-speaking communities in other parts of Ulster are a result of language revival – English-speaking families deciding to learn Irish. Census data shows that 4,130 people speak it at home.

Linguistically, the most important of the Ulster dialects today is that which is spoken, with slight differences, in both Gweedore ( = Inlet of Streaming Water) and The Rosses ().

Ulster Irish sounds quite different from the other two main dialects. It shares several features with southern dialects of Scottish Gaelic and Manx, as well as having many characteristic words and shades of meanings. However, since the demise of those Irish dialects spoken natively in what is today Northern Ireland, it is probably an exaggeration to see present-day Ulster Irish as an intermediary form between Scottish Gaelic and the southern and western dialects of Irish. Northern Scottish Gaelic has many non-Ulster features in common with Munster Irish.

One noticeable trait of Ulster Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx is the use of the negative particle in place of the Munster and Connacht . Though southern Donegal Irish tends to use more than ''cha(n)'', ''cha(n)'' has almost ousted ' in northernmost dialects (e.g. Rosguill