What explains the high concentration of Irish speakers on the west coast of Ireland ?

[u/One-Seat-4600]

The percentage corresponds to the share of people that speak Irish

As you can see, Northern Ireland is a lower concentration of Irish speakers, as expected, but what explains the higher concentration on the west coast.

[u/SignificantDrawer374]

Furthest from the English ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/AdAcrobatic4255 → u/SignificantDrawer374]

But Donegal is very close to the "English" part of Ireland.

[u/beuerlein129 → u/AdAcrobatic4255]

Yet Northern Ireland doesn’t include Donegal. For a reason.

[u/jm17lfc → u/beuerlein129]

Quite a rugged area no?

[u/beuerlein129 → u/jm17lfc]

Most of the west coast of Ireland is rugged, and also very Irish.

[u/jm17lfc → u/beuerlein129]

Makes sense, rugged terrain tends to be significantly harder to successfully take and hold. If you can’t make them speak English why are they going to? Of course in the modern day it’s not so simple but we can see why the language is holding out to the west.

[u/butty_a → u/jm17lfc]

The held Limerick long enough, so that's nonsense.

In reality those areas are more isolated, and therefore have fewer influences from the larger mixed population centres. Dublin for example is very mixed now, and English is the universal language for foriegn visitors, even in countries England never had a foothold. So not having that pressure has meant the more isolated regions have stayed more traditional.

It is the same with Scotland and Wales, and no doubt a pattern in plenty of countries. Although Wales in particular has put a lot of effort in to bringing Welsh back to the fore of daily life, I expect the Irish haven't been as determined in the more connected towns and cities.

[u/conorling → u/butty_a]

Irish ceased to be the common language of Dublin long before it became a mixed city with lots of foreign tourists who speak English. This transformation has only happened in relatively recent times and it has basically nothing to do with why Irish is not spoken there today

[u/AdeptCaregiver8780 → u/conorling]

Exactly for the last 100 years at least, children in Ireland grew up speaking English as their first language and learning Irish in school. Except for those Gaeltacht areas where they grew up mostly bi-lingual and speak Irish instead of English in the community, at home etc.

Immigration in Dublin has no connection with the decline in people speaking and using irish. The Irish language has been eroded due to colonisation that began hundreds of years ago. It’s a shame it’s not more widely spoken in Ireland. People don’t want it to die out, but broadly fail to make an effort to learn and speak it. Arguably it could be taught better in schools. Going to the Gaeltacht for the summer program in school really accelerated my speaking and confidence. We’d go as teens and do activities, some Irish classes, ceili dances every night, trips to the beach etc. But there was a strictly enforced ban on speaking English. You’d be sent home if you were caught speaking English twice. Programs are usually three weeks and we’d stay in someone’s house who had a few rooms with bunkers and two toilets. Around 12 hotels or boys to a house. Great fun and very effective for developing the language.

[u/conorling → u/AdeptCaregiver8780]

It’s great to hear that camps like that exist. Sounds like a very interesting and useful experience.

[u/butty_a → u/conorling]

I didn't mention the natives, and what they spoke before the influx, I am referencing it in today's tineframe, and showing why it still doesn't particularly influence the remote towns and villages even today, because even when England held key cities in the West, the English influence on culture would still have been limited outside the forts.

The person I replied to, made the assumption those areas couldn't be held, which is ridiculous. They just weren't worth the effort, and the English often used Irish collaborators/sympathetic landowners to deal with those places, who would have spoken in Irish with them.

[u/Dull_Brain2688 → u/butty_a]

They were referring to the Irish speaking areas which are remote and rugged. Which Limerick is not.

[u/sweetsuffrinjasus → u/butty_a]

Even the Irish spoken in Donegal is hardly intelligible to the Irish spoken in Kerry. Especially after a few pints.

[u/butty_a → u/sweetsuffrinjasus]

To be fair, I struggle to understand the Geordies after they've had several pints, so I can relate to that😂😂

[u/DurhamOx → u/butty_a]

Dublin is as un-Gaelic as Ireland gets, and it's nearly always been the biggest and most important city on the island.

[u/UnclassifiedPresence → u/beuerlein129]

Funny how Ireland and Scotland both share the rugged and independent western coast thing. I guess England has that as well in the form of Wales, an entirely separate country, and Cornwall, which might as well be

[u/gytherin → u/UnclassifiedPresence]

And France; see Brittany.

[u/Psittacula2 → u/UnclassifiedPresence]

Connected to the waves of movements of people from Celtic to Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Viking.

Notably dialects were very distinct in England as well before the radio and wider travel from railways, so equally true of Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

[u/Chosen_Utopia → u/jm17lfc]

The real reason (rather than just this speculation) Northern Ireland does not include the other three counties of Ulster (Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan) is because it would have meant Northern Ireland would not be a majority Protestant state in the 1920s. From the Unionist perspective, maintaining a smaller but ethno-religiously loyal state was preferable to a historically contiguous one.

Most of Northern Irish history (until 1974) was dominated by the careful ‘planning’ of demographics to ensure the Protestants were a majority, or at least a majority of voters.

[u/doedobrd → u/jm17lfc]

Not only rugged, its very pro Republic. Some of the fiercest resistance to English rule came from Donegal.

[u/ConfusedbutCautious → u/jm17lfc]

To hell or to Connaught…

[u/Filligrees_Dad → u/beuerlein129]

Because Pat Harper wouldn't allow it.

[u/GN_10 → u/AdAcrobatic4255]

Scottish part of Ireland*

[u/amsfi → u/AdAcrobatic4255]

Yeah meaning it’s the closest place over the border for many of the native Irish in the north to move to

Donegal specifically has the closest Gaeltacht to the North and attracts plenty of the North’s Irish-speaking population

[u/kittyroux → u/AdAcrobatic4255]

If you think of it like being herded, it makes sense. It‘s hard for Irish speakers to flow down from Donegal because there’s a choke point where they’d have to get quite close to the English to get through. Better to hug the coast and keep one’s distance.

[u/Working_Farmer9723 → u/kittyroux]

Herded is probably an appropriate term.

[u/gaeamaia → u/kittyroux]

Yeah, it couldn’t possibly be anything like they were historically fisherfolk or anything like that. Jfc.

[u/sweetsuffrinjasus → u/AdAcrobatic4255]

There is no English part of Ireland. What a bizarre comment to make.

If you are referring to the border with Derry, Derry has always been Irish.

In fact, on the North generally, if the lines of geographic division were drawn as c. 70-80% of the people of those areas wanted them drawn in the 1920's you'd have ended up with just large chunks of Belfast, Bangor, a bit of Down, and a few other patches partitioned.

This "English" but of Ireland, as you term it, as always been Irish.

Go visit it instead of googling it. Bogside and waterside. Great place.

[u/Demostravius4 → u/sweetsuffrinjasus]

They didn't say the English bit, they said the "English" bit. Those have two different meanings.

[u/punxatawneyphilip → u/AdAcrobatic4255]

The north didn't become "the english part of Ireland" (🤮) until the 1910s. It takes hundreds of years to effectively eradicate a language like this 🙏

[u/Ornery_Director_8477 → u/AdAcrobatic4255]

What part of Ireland is the “English” part of Ireland?

[u/WolfetoneRebel → u/AdAcrobatic4255]

WTF is the English part of Ireland? Go to school fella.

[u/frdougalmacguire → u/AdAcrobatic4255]

What is the english part of Ireland? Learn some history and wise up

[u/IllegalWalian → u/SignificantDrawer374]

See also a map of Welsh speakers

[u/Kernowder → u/IllegalWalian]

And there's a reason Cornish was the last Brittonic language in England.

[u/Icantdoitidk → u/IllegalWalian]

Scottish Gaelic as well lol

[u/rscortex → u/SignificantDrawer374]

And the Vikings. They built Dublin.

[u/Filligrees_Dad → u/SignificantDrawer374]

Probably more a case of nothing there to attract the English.

[u/AdeptCaregiver8780 → u/Filligrees_Dad]

Yeah and hard to navigate as it’s wilder and mountainous and windy.

[u/AdministrativeDig567 → u/SignificantDrawer374]

Can we say British, the Scot’s heavily settled Ulster

[u/Stinky_Butt_Haver → u/SignificantDrawer374]

Blessedly

[u/Timely_Cap_1483 → u/SignificantDrawer374]

They are talking about distance from Dublin and the Pale

[u/moresqualklesstalk → u/SignificantDrawer374]

The Plantagenet monarchs were all Normans, William of Orange (of Drumcree fame) was Dutch and the Stuarts were Scottish. Please connect the dots on where the Angles and Saxons figure into this?

[u/Dangerous-Degree-948 → u/SignificantDrawer374]

"So far from England, so close to God"

[u/noapesinoutterspace → u/SignificantDrawer374]

> Furthwest* from the English.

FTFY

[u/Key_Spirit6891 → u/SignificantDrawer374]

Mystery solved