Why do people say, when talking about language: Irish and Gaelic are interchangeable?
It’s a good question, and you are correct, there is a difference. The reason people might say so is that there is a lot of similarity between Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic and Manx. Really, they are just dialects of the same core language. They all have the same root, and use roughly the same words and grammar. Even in Ireland, Irish is spoken quite differently in different regions of the country. Donegal Irish is very different to Kerry Irish, for instance, and two Irish speakers would have some difficulty communicating with each other. Also, the Irish word for the Irish Language is “Gaelige” (Gaelic), so even in our own native language there is not a specific definition.
