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The study of sport amongst the Irish abroad is a relatively recent phenomenon. Its neglect to date is surprising given the central role sport plays in the lives of the Irish Diaspora and the broad agendas it serves. What little work has been undertaken has centred on Irish emigrants in North America, despite the fact that mainland Europe has proved to be the destination of choice for many Irish men and women in recent times. Aside from their qualifications and skills, some of these individuals have brought long standing cultural interests and pastimes with them on their travels. Foremost amongst these have been the indigenously Irish games organised and promoted by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). Despite the popularity of Gaelic sports in Europe, historically they have been organised on an informal basis. Indeed it was only recently that they came under the control of a formal governing body, Coiste Chonate na hEorpa (European County Board). The games attract a cross section of followers but the administration and management of GAA activities remains the preserve of young, well educated Irish professionals, the embodiment of the so-called 'Ryanair generation' of the late 1980s. The dominant ethos underpinning Gaelic games on mainland Europe is inclusiveness and is defined by a policy of equal opportunities for all. That said, one of the most noteworthy aspects of the GAA scene in Europe is the way its presence allows opportunities for indigenous sub-groups to further underline their separation from established states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Language acquisition in preschool children in Brittany, Sociolinguistics in Ireland: A profile 223 SOCIOLINGUISTICA 24/2010 Ireland, Scotland and Wales' project is funded by the European Commission and directed by Dr. Janig Stephens, University of Wales Institute, and Jeffrey Kallen has been responsible for directing the Irish component of the project. Language policy certainly emerges as a key strength in sociolinguistics in Ireland, and, in particular, with reference to the Irish language and other autochthonous minority languages in a European context, with comparative work going on in relation to Welsh, Gallic, Breton, Catalan and Basque. The reason for the division is that I felt that readers would be particularly interested in the Irish language aspect of the sociolinguistics of Ireland, and also the sheer volume of work going on in Irish language sociolinguistics, which is growing all the time, made the division seem sensible. SOCIOLINGUISTICA 24/2010 BERICHTE ÜBER LÄNDER, FORSCHUNGSZENTREN UND KONFERENZEN REPORTS ON COUNTRIES, RESEARCH CENTRES AND CONFERENCES REPORTS SUR LES PAYS, CENTRES DE RECHERCHE ET CONFERENCES Helen Kelly-Holmes Sociolinguistics in Ireland: A profile Before beginning this report on the current situation of sociolinguistics in Ireland, I would like to provide some contextual information, which may help the reader to understand the role of sociolinguistics as a discipline in Ireland. [Extracted from the article]

The article examines ways in which the Irish Gaelic League helped to form a definition of national and cultural identity for the Irish in Ireland and explores how the group used reforms to the educational system of the country to promote this identity in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It explains how English political rule over Ireland and demands for the use of the English language lead to the decline of Irish speaking citizens in the country and describes how the promotion of Irish language education was used by the Gaelic League to attract citizens wishing to form a national identity and overthrow English rule.

This article examines the linguistic ideological work entailed in the analyses of Irish by the "revolutionary scholar" and cofounder of the Gaelic League, Eoin MacNeill. It does so to discern one central way in which the essentialized link between the Irish language and a unified Irish people became an efficacious political construction during the armed struggle for independence in the early 20th century. It shows how MacNeill used authoritative linguistic science to engender nationalist sentiment around Irish through semiotic processes even as he challenged a dominant conception of language prevalent in European nationalist movements and social thought. The essay argues that MacNeill wrote against the unilateral valorization of codified linguistic homogeneity and embraced the heterogeneous variation of spoken discourse even as he sought to consolidate Irish national identity through sameness claims. This critical examination suggests that scholars of nationalism reconsider the taken-for-granted homogenizing efforts of nationalist endeavors that are ubiquitously presumed to negatively sanction linguistic variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irish is characterized by a process of lenition, by which (among other changes) the coronals t, d, s become h, ɣ, h under certain morphosyntactically determined circumstances. Lenition of coronals is blocked (i.e., t, d, s remain unchanged) after other coronal consonants in certain domains, a phenomenon known as coronal blocking (CB). In a subset of CB domains s changes to t rather than remaining s, a phenomenon known as s-Fortition. In this article, it will be shown that the domain of CB and s-Fortition is the (recursive) prosodic word, as these two processes are found in right-headed as well as left-headed compounds, but not in other (noncompound) left-headed complex NPs. An optimality-theoretic analysis reveals that CB and s-Fortition are motivated by the same constraint ranking: the phonological requirement that coronal consonants be followed by other coronal consonants is more important than the selection of the morphologically correct mutation grade of a word. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New legislation in Ireland and Scotland is expected to stimulate a significant increase in the provision of public services in Irish and Gaelic in coming years. This article considers the implications of these enactments for language revitalisation, by examining the measures which public bodies are expected to implement in order to increase their bilingual service provision. Drawing on Strubell’s ‹Catherine Wheel’ language planning framework, it identifies weaknesses in the measures and suggests way of overcoming them. It is argued that, for this legislation to have a significant linguistic impact, careful strategies are needed to equip speakers of Irish and Gaelic to use their languages in relation to public services, given the dominance of English in these domains. In particular, strategies are needed to recruit and deploy bilingual staff in an effective manner. Without careful planning, there is a risk that these enactments will not bring about meaningful changes in language practice and may become largely symbolic rather than functional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most prominent features of the Irish landscape is the great multitude of megalithic sites which date back to the Neolithic. In this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate that the understanding of these sites in Ireland can be enhanced by referencing the native tradition, including the Irish word for the sites,sí, and thesí’s powerful cultural tradition attested to throughout native Irish folklore, literature, onomastics, and traditional knowledge. In doing so, I will explore the difficulties and the potentials of interdisciplinary communication between archaeology and folkloristics, and the related issues regarding communication between official and unofficial discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines largely neglected evidence for women's education in Irish saints’ Lives and integrates it with findings from other medieval Irish texts, such as chronicles, devotional works and poetry. The sources attest that education was available to at least some girls and women under male and female teachers in mixed and single–sex schools from the earliest days of the Irish church until the mid–fifteenth century. Their history points to the power, agency and authority open to medieval Irish women and the respect, affection, and admiration their brothers felt for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Irish language and English have been in contact in Ireland, under varying conditions and in varying relations, for over 800 years. The resulting systems of cross-linguistic phonological influence have yet to he studied in detail, but it is generally assumed that some kind of transfer has taken place. Looking at studies of traditional dialect from the mid-twentieth century, it becomes possible to test a hypothesis that cross-linguistic convergence has taken place through local, cross-dialectal convergence, with the assumption that the patterns of Irish dialect geography would be reflected in the dialectal patterns of Irish English. On this assumption, though the historical province of Ulster plays a distinct role in Irish dialectology, the state border that separates the Republic of Ireland from the six counties of Northern Ireland would have little relevance for dialect distribution, since this border postdates the establishment of Irish dialectal patterns and does not follow any natural border that coincides with a dialect border. Examination of phonological variables in Irish and English shows relatively little direct transfer of Irish dialect patterns into English, and still less of a role for the political border. It is suggested, however, that the difference in status of the Irish language on both sides of the border may in time have a divergent effect at the level of standard language and second-language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details the procedures and performance philosophy of music performing group Altamar in medieval Ireland. Explanation on the process of performance; Application of the process to the creation of the Crossroads of the Celts program and recording; Division of the process into four stages; Artistic goal of the group.

During the past decade, the number of institutions of higher education in North America that offer courses in modern Irish has multiplied. However, there is still no standard college level textbook available for Irish language students. This article will provide a brief review of the literature and share results of a survey of Irish language instructors at third level institutions in North America. In the first part of the paper, the author identifies Irish language textbook use, assesses student needs and goals, and refers to research articles involving syllabus design, all within the context of learning Irish in North America. The second part shares findings of the author's current investigations. Three research questions were posed: (1) Do instructors of Irish prefer a course textbook to be in standard Irish or one of the regional dialects? (2) On what language learning approach should such a course textbook be based? (3) How should culture be depicted in such a textbook? Twenty-seven instructors of Irish who have taught at institutions of higher education participated in the survey. The analysis of their questionnaires provided rich data that will serve to inform future textbook designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Ireland's agriculture has been shaped by Celts, Romano-British Christians, Norse-Vikings, Anglo-Normans, and subsequent migrants. Who introduced hemp ( Cannabis sativa ) to Hibernia? We addressed this question using historical linguistics, fossil pollen studies (FPSs), archaeological data, and written records. Methods: Data gathering utilized digital resources coupled with citation tracking. Linguistic methods separated cognates (words with shared etymological origins) from loanwords (borrowed from other languages). Cannabis pollen in FPSs was identified using the "ecological proxy" method. Archaeological reports were ranked on a "robustness" scale. Results: Words for "hemp" in Celtic languages are loanwords, not cognates. The Irish word cnáib is first attested in texts written 1060 and 1127-1134 CE. Old Breton coarcholion, corrected to coarch , is attested in a text from the 9th century. Pollen consistent with cultivated Cannabis appears in the Middle Ages, ca. 700 CE, at sites in the vicinity of monasteries. Archaeological finds (hemp seeds and fiber) date to later Norse-Viking and Anglo-Norman sites. Discussion: People of the Hallstatt Culture in Central Europe have long been considered speakers of the "Proto-Celtic" language. The lack of "hemp" cognates means a Proto-Celtic word cannot be reconstructed, which implies that Hallstatt people (with robust archaeological evidence of hemp) did not speak Proto-Celtic. Cnáib is absent in Old Irish glossaries, epics, and mythologies (600-900 CE). FPS data suggest that the onset of hemp cultivation correlated-chronologically and spatially-with the founding of Romano-British monasteries. Irish cnáib was likely borrowed from Clerical Latin canapis or canabus.