Bilingualism: a Double-Edged Sword

It goes without saying that the proportion of English speakers in the Gaeltacht includes English-speaking parents (Ó Giollagáin et al. 2007: 10), who probably raise their children through the medium of English, or only partially through Irish. Hence, large numbers of native speakers of English participate in the education system in core Gaeltacht areas together with Irish-speaking pupils, which introduces a further issue pointed out by research belonging to the community-oriented strand of thought:

one fourth of the school-going population of the contemporary Gaeltacht was born or raised outside the Gaeltacht. When this group is combined with the numbers who live outside Gaeltacht districts but attend Gaeltacht schools and with those who are being raised with English as a home language, 46% of school-going children in the core Gaeltacht areas start school with little or no Irish (Mac Donnacha et al. 2005 cited in Ó Giollagáin et al. 2007: 11).

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Research on the Gaeltacht has shown that this has a dramatic effect on the vitality of Irish as a language spoken by natives, especially in the socialisation process of younger generations, which is now dominated by English, despite the schools producing speakers with reasonably good ability in Irish. Indeed, as reported in the CLS, only a handful of young people in the Gaeltacht claim to use Irish to communicate with their peers, namely 9% in total and 24% in Category A districts (Ó Giollagáin et al. 2007: 26–27).

Another study, the Analysis of bilingual competence: language acquisition among young people in the Gaeltacht (Péterváry et al. 2014), provides further data that underscore the severity of the problem. The study looked at the linguistic abilities of 50 children aged 7-12 (whose home language was Irish exclusively) from a core Category A Gaeltacht area, namely Cois Fharraige and South Conamara, in County Galway. This setting was chosen as a ‘best case scenario’, in that at the time of the study it was the strongest Irish-speaking region left and around 60% of all native speakers of Irish in the Gaeltacht lived there (Péterváry et al. 2014: 16–18). The authors found that all children had a higher degree of ability in English and spoke

‘reduced Irish’ (Péterváry et al. 2014: 236–237). Furthermore, in an evaluation of their abilities, the language level of the pupils with the lowest scores in English was comparable to that of the pupils with the highest scores in Irish: that is to say, the best level of Irish among these children was only as good as the worst level of English. (Péterváry et al. 2014: 212). More generally, Irish-speaking pupils in the Gaeltacht have also been reported to have a lower level of ability in Irish – in some measures – than their peers attending Gaelscoileanna, Irish immersion schools in the Galltacht where most students are native speakers of English (Harris et al.

2006: 159–162).

Hence, there is consistent evidence for a negative correlation ‘between the proportion of English speakers in a school and both Irish achievement and bilingual achievement’ (Péterváry et al. 2014: 242). The presence of English speakers negatively influences the acquisition of Irish for Irish-speaking pupils, who end up having levels of proficiency that do not correspond to what is normally expected of native speakers (Ó Giollagáin et al. 2007: 11). Subtractive and unidirectional

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bilingualism, which I have previously hinted at (see Section 4.4), therefore come into play: the social and demographic dynamics in the Gaeltacht, as well as the mixed levels of Irish among children attending schools in these areas, have led to a situation in which English bilingualism creates a huge disadvantage for Irish-speaking children, while it is beneficial for English-Irish-speaking pupils. In other words, it is subtractive for the former and additive for the latter: learning Irish can represent a professional advantage for English-speaking pupils and does not impair their ability in their first language; but the acquisition of English damages the abilities of native speakers of Irish in their L1 (Ó Giollagáin 2014c, Péterváry et al.

2014). In practical terms, this takes the form of what Montrul (2008: 21) calls incomplete L1 acquisition: ‘some specific properties of the language do not have a chance to reach age-appropriate levels of proficiency after intense exposure to the L2 begins’. Ó Curnáin (2007 cited in Hornsby 2015: 120) describes this phenomenon as the ‘lowest common denominator effect’, whereby the presence of non-native speakers of Irish affects the ability of native speakers as ‘the most extreme instances of reduction or non-traditional usage become prominent’, with dismal consequences for the language in the long run.

Through this process of marginalisation, Irish has, in a way, become a stranger in its own land. To solve this issue, community-oriented arguments have emphasised the need for a Gaeltacht education system specifically designed to cater to the needs of native Irish speakers in these areas, rather than a situation in which there is no differentiation between learners and natives and the national curriculum is taught in all Gaeltacht schools (Ó Giollagáin 2014a: 37–38). With regard to this particular point, the Policy on Gaeltacht Education 2017-2022 introduced a certain degree of differentiation at primary and Junior Cycle level, with an L1 Irish curriculum for Irish-medium schools and an L2 Irish curriculum for English-medium schools in the Gaeltacht. Although this improves the provision of education for native speakers, Irish-medium schools in the Gaeltacht remain mixed (Department of Education and Skills 2016: 17 and 33–34). Thus, the problems highlighted in the literature are only solved in part. The authors of the CLS conclude that if language use patterns are not to change, it is unlikely that Irish will remain the community and family language in

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Category A districts for more than another 15-20 years (Ó Giollagáin et al. 2007: 27).

Considering that – at the time of writing – 13 years have passed since the publication of the report and census data indicate that the erosion of communities of native speakers is continuing, the situation in the Gaeltacht appears to be critical. The forecasts made in the CLS have been confirmed over time and, in fact, an update report published, somewhat ironically, solely in Irish in 2015 recorded an acceleration in this pattern of decline⁵⁰.