The Revival of Irish Gaelic

This blog intends to be a Webography on The Revival of Irish Gaelic. Here you can find several links to webpages discussing the historical and cultural effects of The Revival of Irish Gaelic movement, the use of Irish language and its importance nowadays, and others subjects of interest.
Ireland is officially a bilingual country, where both English and Irish are official languages.

The Revival of Irish Gaelic

There was a historical and political movement in order to give to Irish language its power, specially after Republic of Ireland's Independence in 1923. This struggle to give power to their own language was a way of establishing their national identity. Below you can find pages with some information on this historical happening. This Revival includes not just a Language one, but also a musical revival, a literature revival, a cultural revival...

http://anghaeltacht.net/ctg/altveritas.htm
This is a bit long, but a good and simple text to read on the Revival of Irish, talking about historical and political facts of the period.

http://www.multilingual-matters.net/cils/002/0223/cils0020223.pdf
I found this a good article on the subject, a bit too dense maybe, specially because deals with other themes. But interesting anyway.

http://www.ireland-information.com/reference/revival.html
This article concentrates on the Irish Literature Revival, but it is also connected to language somehow.

http://www.ucc.ie/en/ace/Publications/DocumentFile,19893,en.pdf
This link has some figures on the Revival of Irish, how people in Ireland reacted to this, and how it is being assimilated.

http://www.visitireland.com/aboutireland/gaelicrevival.asp
This is a brief and simple explanation of the historical motivations and immediate consequences of the Revival of Irish Gaelic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_League

This Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge in Irish) is an organization dedicated to keep the Irish Language spoken in Ireland.

http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Conradh+na+Gaeilge

Another short explanation about the Gaelic League, from some other source that not Wikipedia.

Irish Gaelic nowadays

Here you can find some information of how Irish Gaelic is finding its place, and is increasing its importance.

www.irishlanguage.net/
There is a lot of information about the culture, studies and manifestations in Irish Language nowadays.

http://dooku.miun.se/mats.deutschmann/New%20B/B-Essay/Karin%20Jaderyd.pdf
This is a nice essay on the use of Irish nowadays when compared to English.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/dwp.linguistics/resources/DWPVOL8/DWP8Antonini.pdf
This is another essay, a bit more complicated, but also interesting, about the Irish language use in their community - a comparative analysis.

http://www.stpatricksociety.com/Nuacht_May_2006.pdf
This is an essay on the defence of Irish Gaelic, and an analysis of how its use is growing in Ireland. Nicer to read than the previous one!

http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/19931
This is an article with a more pessimistic opinion on the subject.

History of the Language

Below you can find some information of Irish Language History, its origins, uses, places where it was (and is) spoken, etc.

http://www.irishlanguage.net/
This main site provides you a lot of information on Irish Language, and shows how it is acquiring a great importance in Ireland's culture. The website itself is a proof of its increasing importance to that society.

http://www.irishgaelictranslator.com/travelireland/gaeltachtstatistics.php
This is a brief and more simplification text about the origins of the language.

http://www.weareirish.ca/dynpage/492
This is a more accurate explanation on the language's origins.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Irish/History

Another site with a lot of information on the history of Gaelic (and some general information on Celtic languages)

Studying Irish on-line

In the links below you can find some useful ways to learn or improve your knowledge of Irish!!!!

http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/gaelic.html
This is a kind of on-line course. There are some sentences in Irish and the phonetic pronounciation.

http://www.irishgaelictranslator.com/
This is an interesting forum, where you can find some tips and many people who would kindly help you with some translation doubt, for instance (they helped me a lot!!)

http://www.learnirishgaelic.com/
Here you can find some tips on how to start a self-learning taught of Irish.

Gaelic languages

Through these links you can find some information on the classification and differences between Gaelic Languages. Gaelic can be a word to refer to some celtic family languages. As I found out, the word isolated in general refers to Scottish Gaelic - but officially we have Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic and Manx Gaelic (spoken mainly in the Island of Man).

Below, a didactic explanation provided by someone in a forum:

Normally the Irish language is called "Irish", not "Gaelic" (although some people do use that word.) The word "Gaelic" tends to be reserved for the language spoken in Scotland. If you buy a book called "Teach Yourself Gaelic", it will teach you Scottish Gaelic, not Irish. At one point, there was a language that language historians call "Celtic". Over time, that language split up into two languages, called Gaelic and Brythonic. The Gaelic language then split up into Irish, Manx, and Gaelic (Scottish), while the Brythonic language split up into Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. So there are six Celtic languages: Breton, Welsh, Cornish, Manx, Irish, and Gaelic (Scottish), but only the last three are Gaelic languages. More information on the history here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Irish/History

To check this topic in the forum, check the link

http://www.irishgaelictranslator.com/translation/viewposth.460980-highlight-revival.html#460980

http://www.ibiblio.org/gaelic/
On this website you can find a general explanation for Gaelic Language, its varieties, countries where they are spoken and the differences between them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
Although wikipedia is a site where we cannot be sure if all information we find there are from reliable sources, they have a general and easy explanation on Gaelic.

http://www.omniglot.com/
In this site, through its main page you can find information on several laguages, including the differents ones related to Gaelic.

http://www.foreign-languages-school.com/Gaelic-Languages.html
In this website you can find very didactic information on languages, and this link directs you straight to the page explaining Gaelic. There is a option to translate the page into Portuguese. It has some mistakes after translation, but is possible to understand if you want a Portuguese version.

Irish Literature and Celtic Culture

Here you can find some information on Irish Literature and Culture in General - (not exactaly written in Irish Gaelic), that can help you to understand their culture, if you became curious.

http://www.luminarium.org/mythology/ireland/

Site with links to Irish Literature, Celtic mythology and Ireland's culture.

http://www.ireland-information.com/irishliterature.htm

Free e-books from Irish Literature.

http://au.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761566508_2/Irish_Literature.html

A general information on Irish Literature - you can find some information about books written in Irish, specially from The Revival of Irish period.