To summarise: Ulster Gaelic is the variety of the Gaelic Language spoken in the northern part of Ireland and the southern part of Scotland (ancient Dalriada). It occupies a central position in the Gaelic-speaking world made up of Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Ulster Gaelic thus has more in common with Scottish Gaelic and Manx than other varieties of the language. In our Ullans Academy, which promotes Common Identity, we call it Northern Irish or Ulidian.  Within Ulster there has historically been two main varities: West Ulster Gaelic (Northern Irish) and East Ulster Gaelic (Ulidian). The Western variety was spoken in County Donegal and parts of neighbouring counties, hence the name Donegal Gaelic. The Eastern dialect was spoken in most of the rest of Ulster and northern parts of counties Louth and Meath, where it is now extinct, as well Islay (a pre-Celtic or Pretanic word), and Argyll in Scotland, where it has survived in a modified form, as well as Arran (a Brittonic word), Ayrshire (also a Brittonic word) and Galloway, where it has not. What is known as Scottish Gaelic today seems to have evolved from the Gaelic spoken in The Outer Hebrides and on Skye. Generally speaking, the Gaelic spoken across The Western Isles (with the exception to the Ulidian of Islay and Argyll) is similar enough to be classed as one major language group of dialects. Ullans or Ulster Scots is also spoken in South Argyll and western Galloway, where it is known as Galloway Irish.

Gaelic was the main language spoken in Ulster from the earliest recorded times until the advent over the centuries of English and Scots speakers. Ulster Gaelic was thus steadily replaced by English and Scots. The Eastern dialect died out in Ulster itself in the 20th century, to survive in Islay and Argyll, but the Western lives on in the Gaeltacht region of County Donegal. In 1808, County Down natives William Neilson and Patrick Lynch (Pádraig Ó Loingsigh) published a detailed study on Ulster Gaelic called An Introduction to the Irish Language. Both Neilson and his father were Gaelic-speaking Presbyterian ministers. When the recommendations of the first Comisiún na Gaeltachta were drawn up in 1926, there were regions qualifying for Gaeltacht recognition in the Sperrin mountains and the northern Glens of Antrim and Rathlin Island. The report also makes note of small pockets of Gaelic speakers in northwest County Cavan, southeast County Monaghan, and the far south of County Armagh. However, these small pockets vanished early in the 20th century while Gaelic in the Sperrins survived until the 1950s and in the Glens of Antrim until the 1970s. The last native speaker of Rathlin Gaelic died in 1985.

In the 1960s, six families in Belfast formed the Shaw’s Road ‘Gaeltacht’, which has since grown. The Gaelic-speaking area of the Falls Road in West Belfast has recently been designated the ‘Gaeltacht Quarter” In 2010 the Ultach Trust, of which I was a founder member, published Ulster Gaelic Voices, based upon recordings made by the linguist Wilhelm Dögen in the 1930s. These include examples of Antrim, Armagh, Londonderry, Donegal, and Tyrone Gaelic, and the recordings have been digitally re-mastered to appear on accompanying CDs. Presbyterians and the Irish Language by our esteemed Academy member Ruairi O Bleine (Roger Blaney), originally published in 1996, is the first to establish the rightful place of the Gaelic language in the Presbyterian heritage in Ireland. It traces the Presbyterian Gaelic-speaking tradition from its early roots in Gaelic Scotland, where 80% of Gaelic speakers are Protestants, through the Plantation and Williamite War periods to its successive revivals in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

An Caighdeán Oifigiúil (“The Official Standard”), often shortened to An Caighdeán, is a standardised nationalist “Irish” , which is taught in most schools in Ireland, though with strong influences from local varieties. It was published by the translators in Dáil Éireann in the 1950s. Its development in the 1950s and 1960s had two purposes. One was to simplify “Irish” spelling, which had retained its Classical spelling, by removing many silent letters, and to give a standard written form that was mutually intelligible by speakers with different dialects.Though many aspects of the Caighdeán are essentially those of Connacht Irish, this was simply because this is the central dialect which forms a “bridge”, as it were, between the North and South of Ireland. In reality, dialect speakers pronounce words as in their own dialect, as the spelling simply reflects the pronunciation of Classical Irish. On the other hand, in some cases the Caighdeán retained classical spellings even when none of the dialects had retained the corresponding pronunciation.

Another purpose was to create a grammatically regularised or “simplified” standard “Irish” which would make the language more accessible for the majority English speaking school population. In part this is why the Caighdeán is not universally respected by native speakers, in that it makes simplified language an ideal, rather than the ideal that native speakers traditionally had of their dialects (or of the Classical dialect if they had knowledge of that). Of course, this may not have been the original aim of the developers, who rather saw the “school-version” Caighdeán as a means of easing second-language learners into the task of learning “full” “Irish”. The Caighdeán, in general is used by non-native speakers, frequently from the  capital of the Irish Republic, so it is sometimes also called “Dublin Irish” or “Urban Irish”. As it is taught in many Irish-Language schools (where “Irish” is the main, or sometimes only, medium of instruction), it is also sometimes called ” Gaelscoil Irish”. The so-called “Belfast Irish”, spoken in our city’s Gaeltacht Quarter, and one of its off-shoots in Turas, East Belfast, is the Caighdeán heavily influenced by Ulster Gaelic and Belfast English. But what we really need is a standardised version of Ulster Gaelic which is true to its native origins. The learning of “Belfast Irish” is but one stage in its development.

Concluded