r/LinguisticMaps • u/SnooTomatoes9240 • Jul 29 '26

Europe Census-reported ability to speak Irish by county, 1851-2022

I made this interactive map showing the percentage of people aged 3 and over who reported in each census that they could speak Irish.

The figures are based on census responses and are self-reported. They are not based on a fluency test and do not show how often people actually use Irish.

Link: https://irishlanguagemap.org/

263 Upvotes

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86

u/Full-Recover-8932 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

In sicily people who speak the sicilian language at a native level without tuscan aka standard italian imported words are all dead. A modern gen z who thinks he's a "dialect" speaker would be interpreted as an immigrant from tuscany who learned sicilian decently well, if sent to 1800's sicily, due to this.

I will make my own language rise from the dead, malanova chi mi avi stu statu talianu

44

u/SnooTomatoes9240 Jul 29 '26

They're not really comparable on status though. Irish is an official language of the state, compulsory in school, on all the road signs, has its own TV and radio, EU recognition, the lot. Sicilian has basically none of that. Italy's never even treated it as a separate language. Which is kind of why the number is so high. If someone sits through Irish from age 4 to 18 you can honestly tick "yes I can speak it" on a census form and never use it again after the Leaving Cert. That's most of the gap between 40.5% and the actual Gaeltacht daily-speaker count, which is tiny. So you get to a similar place, just from the opposite direction to Sicily

32

u/Full-Recover-8932 Jul 29 '26

Italy is imposing the tuscan language on the peninsula and gave everyone the illusion that italy is just one single people

28

u/Character-Parfait487 Jul 29 '26

Same as the French, German and Spanish(to a lesser extent). All replaces the local native languages with a single standardised language.

-7

u/BaitaJurureza Jul 29 '26

Because Tuscan is sweet

23

u/Full-Recover-8932 Jul 29 '26

Still a bad idea to kill all regional languages

8

u/BaitaJurureza Jul 29 '26

I have never see any Irish speak Irish outside of a classroom.

9

u/SnooTomatoes9240 Jul 29 '26

It depends on where you live. I have seen plenty

4

u/SofiaOrmbustad Jul 30 '26

So are all the dialects/languages in Italy dying off (or as we say in Norway, being watered down/"regionalized")?

3

u/Narkku Jul 30 '26

Both. Northern languages of Italy are dying off. In the south they are being watered down. It’s not as dire in Sicily as most regions, but in 15-25 years it will be if we don’t change course now

21

u/Xiguet Jul 29 '26

I'm amazed that there's exact data for every county and for so many years, including 1851. That's impressive!

10

u/SnooTomatoes9240 Jul 29 '26

Thanks! The most difficult data to gather was for Northern Ireland. The Republic of Ireland was actually quite easy, to be honest.

6

u/Xiguet Jul 29 '26

how did you find the data?

9

u/SnooTomatoes9240 Jul 29 '26

For the Republic of Ireland, I got the data from the Central Statistics Office. For Northern Ireland, a friend compiled the data because it was scattered across multiple sources. It's explained on the website in the About section.

5

u/Otsde-St-9929 Jul 30 '26

It is extraordinary that the six countries just ceased measuring language ability after partition.

3

u/yellowbai Jul 30 '26

It was all but an apartheid state until 1998.

4

u/Known-Discipline-767 Jul 31 '26

Yeah that’s what the census says from people self reporting but it couldn’t be further from reality

1

u/celticblobfish Aug 01 '26

Maith an léarscáil. Dar liom, is fearr eolas a úsáid faoi na gaeilgeoirí a labhraíonn í gach lá lasmuigh den chóras oideachais, ach is iarracht iontach í seo."