Kevin Barry, a graduate student in history at the University of Delaware, has sent me a paper he has written that compares the successful revival of Hebrew as a spoken language in 20th-century Palestine/Israel to the failed attempt to revive Gaelic in 20th-century Ireland. Although I once touched on this subject years ago, I did so from a Jewish perspective, with little knowledge of the Irish experience. Mr. Barry has kindly shared some of his knowledge with me, and I, in turn, am passing on a bit of it.
Gaelic, the native language of Ireland before English arrived in the 13th century with the island’s British conquerors, belongs to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family, whose two other living representatives are Welsh and Breton. As late as the 18th century, it was still the native language of a majority of Ireland’s population; thereafter, however, its decline was swift. By 1860, according to Mr. Barry, it was the first language of only 1 million out of 4 million Irishmen. By 1900, the number had dropped to 600,000.
These same years saw not only the growth of a strong Irish nationalist movement that sought independence from Great Britain, but also the revival of Gaelic as Ireland’s national tongue. And yet while independence was won in 1922, a mere 70,000 Irish remain native speakers of Gaelic today. (Nearly half of all Irish, however, have some knowledge of the language from their education.) What went wrong? Why, by contrast, does Hebrew, which had no native speakers in 1860, now have millions?
Although on the face of it, Irish should have had a great advantage over Hebrew, Mr. Barry points to several factors that worked in the latter’s favor. The first, he writes, was “the fact that Jews in Palestine had a great measure of independence in shaping the schools of their children.” Under both Turkish and British rule, the authorities left the language of elementary school education entirely up to the Jewish community, and once Zionist ideology and pressure made that language Hebrew, Jewish children, from kindergarten age and up, naturally started to speak it to one another. In Ireland, on the other hand, the schools were controlled by the British, who of course favored the promulgation of English, and by the Catholic Church which, more concerned with religion than with language, was lukewarm to the Gaelic revival, fearing that it would drive English-speaking Catholics into the arms of the Protestants. Hence, the battle for Irish centered mainly on teaching it as a second language in high schools and universities, and this did little to promote its daily use.
In addition, Hebrew was a high-prestige language in Jewish eyes, associated with learning and cultivation, whereas Gaelic in Ireland was low prestige. Its speakers were largely illiterate rural inhabitants who associated it with their own backward condition and who wanted their children to speak English in order to get ahead in life. Moreover, as Mr. Barry observes, “The poverty within Irish speaking areas, combined often with a belief that this poverty was a consequence of speaking Irish, encouraged parents to teach their children English so they could escape by immigrating to England or the United States.” Thus, Irish nationalism and pro-Gaelic sentiment did not always go hand in hand. Although many Irish who wanted independence from Great Britain may have been for Gaelic in theory, practically speaking, they wanted the window on the wider world that English gave them.
Finally, as Mr. Barry puts it, “Palestine was a polyglot environment.” Hebrew was able to serve as a common language among the Jews of Palestine, who were divided into Yiddish-speaking, Ladino-speaking and other linguistic communities. The first language of none of them, Hebrew was the second language of all and was used widely for communication among them. But “in Ireland,” Mr. Barry writes, “a diglossia existed in which English was the hegemonic language.” Nearly all Gaelic speakers knew some English, and when an English-speaking Irishman and a Gaelic-speaking Irishman met, it was in English, not Gaelic, that they spoke.
And so Hebrew’s battle was won and Gaelic’s battle was lost. Yet, though English is today the near-universal language of Ireland, Gaelic, with the support of the Irish government, continues to hang on. It is still spoken, though diminishingly, in the Gaeltacht, the Gaelic preserves of Western Ireland; it is taught as a second language in all schools; some knowledge of it is required for civil service examinations, and it is broadcast and widely listened to over state radio and television stations. Perhaps most encouragingly for its partisans, it is now the language of instruction in a growing number of elementary schools, called gailscoileanna, outside of the Gaeltacht, in which some 31,000 students are enrolled. Who knows? Perhaps from the mouths of babes it will begin to spread again as a first language, just as Hebrew did in Palestine. Its tenacity, in any case, is impressive, even if its victories so far have not been.
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The success of Hebrew in the Land of Israel was a result of a number of factors, all mentioned in this very interesting article. However, the most important factor of all was a very determined ideology - including a willingness for self-sacrifice. The vast majority of Jewish immigrants in those days went to America, but the eccentric few who chose to come to the Land of Israel represented a phenomenon of idealists, wishing to create a new kind of Jewish identity. Indeed, ideology was mentioned in the article, but it is worthy to note that a commitment to this ideology was ultimately the central factor of Hebrew's miraculous rebirth.
The relative success of Esperanto also shows what can be achieved by ordinary people determined to create that success. Take a look at http://www.esperanto.net Esperanto works! I’ve used it in speech and writing - and sung in it - in a dozen countries over recent years.
Interesting comparison...the language of the natives outside the walls of Protestant Jerusalem (Derry) compared to the language of the people inside the walls of Jerusalem, Holy Land.
Thanks for an informative column, as usual. One factor that Barry probably stressed in his original paper: the negative mindset associated with the pre-independence British-imposed school punishment that punished the Irish-speaking children with wearing a "tally stick" that'd be passed on to the next child caught talking in Irish (a similar "Welsh not" was the norm in Wales at this time). Such methods inculcated further the notion in parents and their offspring that Irish needed to be eliminated so that English, and progress, could advance. It's also noteworthy that mid-19c, it was estimated only about fifty people could write in Irish; contrast this with the rich oral-- and recorded-- traditions of Hebrew.
I wonder where Bill Chapman was spoken, written, and sung Esperanto... other than Esperanto conventions?
Not three, but FOUR. Gaelic is also spoken in the Western Highlands and Outer Isles of Scotland, particularly in the Hebrides. As to Esperanto, some 50 years ago I was wandering around Sweden and came upon a family that didn't speak any English. One of its members was an Esperantist, though; and despite my previous ignorance of Esperanto, my prior but meager knowledge of both Spanish and French enabled us to communicate very well and not just at the "please pass the bread" level.
The Irish comic writer Brian O'Nolan once overheard an Irish girl traveling in Europe say how glad she was to see someone wearing the badge that you get for a certain level of knowledge of Irish -- because it meant that she had found someone who could speak English. James Friedlander, if your Esperantist had instead studied English, French, or Spanish, your communication with him would have been even easier, and so would that of hundreds of millions of other people.
This is a superb piece of writing about a fascinating subject.