How much Irish do the Irish actually speak?
Irish became an official language of the EU on January 1st, but writer and travel documentary maker Manchán Magan was taken aback by reactions as he travelled the country speaking only its official native tongue. “In the last census a quarter of the population claimed they spoke it regularly. I’ve always suspected this figure, and to test its accuracy I decided to travel around the country speaking only Irish, to see how I’d get on. … they [some people encountered] were willing to engage with me, to string together the few stray words of school Irish that arose from the darkest recesses of their minds … I got given the wrong directions, and served the wrong food, and given the wrong haircut … By the end of the trip I was feeling pretty battered, but I had seen some signs of hope. In parts of Northern Ireland, where Irish was effectively banned until the early 1990s, there was a tremendous resurgence taking place.
