No, I didn't mean to imply that.
I'm not sure if any community outside of Ireland can be called vibrant. I know that in Canada at least, Gaelic is dying out.
When does this date from?

Ok I went through the first page real quick to remind myself of which exactly were Goidelic and which were Brythonic and I'll recap here.

Brythonic:

Welsh/Cymraeg
Cornish/Kernewek
Breton/Brezhoneg

Goidelic:

Scottish/Gàidhlig
Irish/Gaeilge
Manx/Gaelg

Ok allow me to propose my theory on why Goidelics are more popular:

Looking at the list of the Goidelic languages, two of what I would think the three most well known-about languages are there. Gàidhlig, Gaeilge and Cymraeg. Obviously everyone knows about Ireland and Scottland and the fact they have their own languages. And most people know Wales has a language. But what about the Isle of Man with Manx, and Brittany with Breton (who really even knows much about either the Isle of Man or Brittany itself?). So I would think it to be because of the fact that people learn what they know about?

To add to the whole why learn Celtic languages discussion, this is why I personally decided to learn Gaeilge:

1. Heritage. I am Irish and VERY proud of it.

2. I wish interested in studying an out-of-the-ordinary/exotic language. Gaeilge isn't something you hear a lot about when people are talking about learning a language.

3. I was looking for a linguistic challenge. Everything else I've worked on, Spanish, French, German,Russian, etc I didn't find to be too difficult. But Gaeilge is, at least at the moment.

No I didn't mean to imply it dead. I've read the stats on Wikipedia stating ~350,000 fluent speakers, ~540,000 daily speakers and ~1.8 million who consider themselves proficient in some capacity. But you must admit, those figures are pretty low.

No, as Talib stated, I was referring to making Irish a widely known language, especially as a first language (or even second) for the Irish.

That was second-hand. The Gaeltachts in Ireland at least aren't shrinking, which in the case of Irish, is positive for the moment. But there are a good few societies for Irish, all university, Irish speaking pubs in Dublin, that sort of thing.


About now. It was published this year. Some information about it.


Actually I'd say they are far too high. That would be 1/8 of the population of Ireland speaking Irish every day, which I would say would have to include education to be accurate.

Actually, maybe someone here would have reliable figures. I have heard that Irish has fewer native speakers but more fluent speakers than Welsh, is that so?

I'm not so sure about that. Everyone knows what French and German sound like, but I don't think many could identify Gaelic just by looking at it.

But they are at least far better known than Breton and Manx and there are more materials and speakers for both.
You didn't think Russian was hard? Really?

Later in the post I extrapolated on that, explaining that I meant that the fact that the languages themselves exist.

Cyrillic, yes. What language I've learned so far, no.

Okay, pet peeve time here: Gàidhlig and Gaeilge mean exactly the same thing, just in different languages. The former generally refers to Scottish Gaelic and the latter to Irish only because the former is what you use when speaking Scottish Gaelic and the latter when speaking Irish. But the inherent ambiguity is the same as for English Gaelic. If I need to distinguish the two varieties when speaking Irish, I say Gaelainn na hAlbain (lit. "Gaelic of Scotland") and Gaelainn na hÉireann ("Gaelic of Ireland"), respectively. (I don't speak Scottish Gaelic, but if I did I would distinguish them as Gàidhlig na h-Alba and Gàidhlig na h-Èireann.)

[Note: Yes, Gaelainn not Gaeilge because I speak Munster Irish, not Connacht Irish or Standard Irish. And it really gets on my tits when people assume I must mean specifically Munster Irish when I write "Gaelainn". If that's what I mean, I write Gaelainn na Mumhain. See how this works?]

When I'm not speaking Irish, I say "Scottish Gaelic" and "Irish", of course. Anything else would be pretentious. I don't go around saying "Deutsch", "castellano", or "한국말" when what I mean is "German", "Spanish" , or "Korean". Why should the principles suddenly be different when speaking of the Celtic languages?


It's difficult to say in the absence of an objective assessment of "fluency". Pretty much all the data we have on language use is self-reported. It's fairly safe to assume that native-speakers who use the language regularly will be "fluent", but what about non-native speakers? IME, enthusiasts often have pretty generous opinions of their own level of "fluency".

I shall make note of the distinction

But hey now!! You left out something! There are THREE regional dialects, not two don't forget about those of us learnin the Ulster Irish

Yes, but the Ulster Irish version of the word isn't "Gaeilge" either; it's "Gaeil(i)g" or "Gaedhlag" depending on your pronunciation.

Can I ask you for a big favour?
I would like that somebody translate me the following in all six celtic languages.

The Society of Slovenian - Celtic Friendship

Thank you so very much for your efforts!

Slán