The Unique Development of Ireland and its Impact on Irish English

  Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus

  Minsk State Linguistic University 
 

  Department of Stylistics of the English Language 
 
 

  Course Project

The Unique Development of Ireland and its Impact on Irish English 
 
 
 
 

  Ann Balashevich

  Group 435

  English Department

  Scientific Supervisor –

   professor  D. D. Kozikis

  Department of Translation 

  Minsk - 2011 

  Contents

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………….3

1. A socio-historical survey of the history of Ireland……………………………………….5
1. The first English presence in Ireland and its impact on the development of the country……………………………………………………………..5
2. The religious issue. The introduction of the Penal Code…………………….6
3. Revolutionary movement in Ireland. The Act of Union………………………9
4. Irish Nationalism and Gaelic Revival………………………………………………….9
2. The language issue in Ireland…………………………………………………………………….13
1. Irish and English in Ireland and their interaction……………………………..13
2. Linguistic features of Irish English……………………………………………………17

      Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………….27

References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………28

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  The importance of knowing English nowadays is indisputable. English is spoken the length and breadth of the world and this shows how important the English language is. If the English language is to become the basic language of communication then the consequences are obvious: the cultures of English speaking countries will dominate the world.

  English is becoming the first world universal language. It is the vernacular for 500 millions of people, but the greatest number speaks English as their second language. And another million have some knowledge of the English language, which has official or unofficial status in 62 countries. One can say that there are millions of people speaking Chinese and there also exist different variants of the Chinese language, but English is more widely geographically spread and its popularity is growing surprisingly fast.

  There are approximately 1.5 billion people speaking English in the world today. It is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and most provinces of Canada. It is the official language of Wales, Scotland, in Gibraltar and on the island of Malta.

   Modern linguistics distinguishes territorial variants of a national language and local dialects. British English, or RP – the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Nevertheless its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialectisms belonging to various local dialects. Local dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form.  There exist a great number of them: Lowland , Scottish, Northern, Western, Midland, Eastern, Southern. The local population uses these varieties in oral speech. Only the Scottish dialect has its own literature - R. Burns. [5, 5-8]

  Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. The second in popularity variant of English after the British one is American, here are several other variants where difference from the British standard is normalized. Besides the Irish and Scottish variants there are Australian English, Canadian English, Indian English. Each of these has developed a literature of its own, and is characterized by peculiarities in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.

  Thus taking into consideration the number of speakers, its scale, the number of existing local and regional varieties, one can say that English is a language which has a complex system which should be explored and analyzed by linguists. However the main focus of our research is to analyze the Irish variant of the English language, the peculiarities of its phonetics, grammar and vocabulary. 

  In order to carry out this purpose, different methods of research have been used:

• Historical method has been used to determine the historical peculiarities of origin and development of the language which includes the history of development of the English and Irish languages.
• The descriptive method has been used in our research to attain objectivity in the description of all levels of the phenomena of the variety of the language, they are: phonetic, syntactical, semantical and lexical.
• The comparative method has been used to compare the Irish and English languages on the bases of similarities or dissimilarities of their usage in speech.
• The method of internal and external interpretation has been used to disclose to the most extent the sense of acquired linguistic results.
• The contrastive method has been used for the systematic study of the Irish and English languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1. A socio-historical survey of the history of Ireland

  1.1. To understand the factors which influenced the development of the Irish variant of English, it is necessary to be aware of the historical background which determined its emergence. We must note that the relationship between these two countries   was nothing else but a constant struggle for independence of Ireland from Britain and the eagerness of the Irish people to free themselves of English rule.

  The first English presence in Ireland occurred under King Henry the second of England who invaded the island on the conditions of the bull obtained by him in 1155 from Pope Adrian IV. The bull gave the English king power to take possession of the island.

  Henry the second arrived in Ireland in October 1171 and imposed his effective rule there. During subsequent years the Anglo-Norman sphere was extended. Henry received homage from several minor Irish chiefs and from the principal Norman leaders, and granted to the latter charters authorizing them, as his subjects, to take possession of portions of the island. The government was entrusted to a viceroy, and the Norman legal system was introduced into such parts of the island as were reduced to obedience to England.

  Here we should notice the fact that during the 13th century various Anglo-Norman adventurers succeeded in firmly establishing themselves in Ireland, either by assisting or suppressing native clans. The 13^th century may be called a century from which the interaction of two languages began because since that time the descendants of the most powerful Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland gradually became identified with the native Irish, whose language, habits, and laws they adopted to an increasing extent. To prevent this, the Anglo-Irish Parliament passed, in 1366, the Statute of Kilkenny, decreeing excommunication and heavy penalties against all those who followed the custom of, or allied themselves with, the native Irish. This statute, however, remained inoperative; and although Richard II, king of England, later in the 14th century made expeditions into Ireland with large forces, he failed to achieve any practical result. The increase in power and influence of the natives was so great that the authority of the English crown was limited to the area known as the English Pale, a small coastal district around Dublin and the port of Drogheda.

   In 1459 Sir Edward Poynings was appointed by the king the viceroy of Ireland. He is known for his tough policy which compelled English and Irish to live apart and prohibited Irish law and customs in the Pale. It finally separated Pale as the territory of purely English interest. All state offices were filled by the English king instead of by the viceroys, and the entire body of English law was declared to hold for the Pale.

  So we can see that as on the territory beyond the English Pale one could observe the influence of Irish culture on Anglo-Norman’s, while on the territory of Pale there was a completely different situation: relics and images of Irish culture were destroyed and replaced by the English ones. Moreover the native chieftains were conciliated by a share of the spoils and received English titles, their lands being regranted under English tenure. Although the late 16^th century saw the destruction of Gaelic civilization in the upper levels of society, still it was preserved for more than the next two centuries among the ordinary people of the northwest, west and southwest, who continued to speak Irish and who maintained a way of life remote from that of the new landlord class.

         But the separation between the Pale and the rest of Ireland happened to be not only on the political level – under the rule of Elizabeth and James I in the 16-17^th centuries the religious situation in the country began to become contradictory.

   1.2. The power of the Anglican state church was extended over Ireland. The Church of England obtained all that belonged to the church of the Pale and was invested with the establishment belonging to the Celtic church as well. An ancient feud existed between these two Irish churches, and they were intensely hostile to each other. The Church of the Pale-that is, in and near Dublin-was affected by the Reformation, but the Celtic church had become increasingly Roman Catholic. Nearly the entire Celtic population of Ireland and the majority of the inhabitants of the Pale remained Roman Catholic, and the Anglican church served as a political instrument for the English rulers in Dublin Castle.

  In the early seventeenth century the English government began a policy of colonization by importing English and Scottish immigrants, a policy that often necessitated the forcible removal of the native Irish. Today's nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland has its historical roots in this period, when New English Protestants and Scottish Presbyterians moved into Ulster. William of Orange's victory over the Stuarts at the end of the seventeenth century led to the period of the Protestant Ascendancy, in which the civil and human rights of the native Irish, the vast majority of whom were Catholics, were repressed. By the end of the eighteenth century the cultural roots of the nation were strong, having grown through a mixture of Irish, Norse, Norman, and English language and customs, and were a product of English conquest, the forced introduction of colonists with different national backgrounds and religions, and the development of an Irish identity that was all but inseparable from Catholicism.

  The situation had become more difficult when in 1649 the English statesman Oliver Cromwell landed at Dublin, which the Roman Catholic lords had been unable to take. It was vital for the Roman Catholics because the majority of them who owned land was deprived of it and were removed to the barren province of Connacht. Catholic boys and girls were shipped to Barbados and sold to the planters as slaves. The land taken from the Catholics by Cromwell was given to the Protestant soldiers who had taken part in the campaign. Before the rebellion in 1641, Catholics owned 59% of the land in Ireland. By the time Cromwell left in 1650 the proportion had shrunk to 22%. [4,104-105]Thus Ireland became subject to two different religions, Oliver Cromwell became the man whom the Irish hated deeply. The English Protestant soldiers brought with themselves not only the English language which soon would influence Irish but their event made a start to a long-lasting struggle between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

  As a consequence of Oliver Cromwell’s invasion people living on the territory near Dublin, and in the county of Ulster, began to be primarily Protestants, and people in the southern territory of Ireland remained Roman Catholics which contributed to the further division of the country. It should be also noticed that after the invasion of Oliver Cromwell the northern part of Ireland began to be mostly Protestant. Besides the soldiers, which owned the land in Ireland, there were also Scottish planters who had arrived in Ulster earlier and who were mainly Presbyterian. Returning to the land of their ancient forefathers many of them intermarried with those in Ulster as comparison of surnames and religion today testifies.

  The English Government continued its policy against the Roman Catholic Church and as a result of it, the Penal Code was introduced in 1689. Its aim was to crush and degrade most of the inhabitants of the country who were mostly Roman Catholics. We should mention that it was a policy of discrimination which presupposed a tough political and social persecution of those Irish people who remained to be Catholics.  We will give you the examples of the most important of them. [11]

  Catholic landowners now retained only one-eighth of the land of Ireland, and, in order to prevent their obtaining any further hold, no Irish Catholic was allowed to purchase land, but only to hold a short leasehold. With the idea of breaking up the estates, a Catholic father had to portion out his property among his various children. Not only that, but if the eldest son proclaimed himself a Protestant, he obtained the entire property, an encouragement to family dissensions. Should a wife or younger child desert the Catholic faith, they could at once claim a separate share of the parental estates and an entire freedom from parental control. Deprived of all share in the government of the country, no longer being allowed to sit in Parliament or to exercise a vote, the Catholics were also unable to enter the army or navy, to become magistrates or barristers, or to sit on juries. Catholic orphans had to be brought up by Protestant guardians, and there were no schools in which a Catholic child could be educated. Intermarriage between Catholic and Protestant was rendered almost impossible. It seems to have been thought that by this method of treatment—the humiliation of a whole nation—the Catholics would either disappear or become Protestant. The Catholic Church services were not entirely forbidden, but none of the higher dignitaries of the Church were allowed to live in Ireland, and the village priests were obliged to register themselves and to take an oath impossible for any Catholic. [10, 1009-1010]

  The Protestant minority suffered from the poverty of the Catholics, whom they treated with harshness and insolence. It seems almost incredible that, at a time removed by more than a century from the fighting period of Protestantism, the Irish Protestants should have disgraced themselves by such a mean and despicable code of laws. No doubt that the operative cause of the persecution was the desire to maintain the lands of the Catholics, only possible when they were rendered politically and socially impotent.

  Of course the decline of the Catholic Church meant to some extent the decline of Irish culture and language. Gradually the English language had become the predominant language - especially in Ulster, the northern part of Ireland. Nevertheless we can see that the influence of English language began to become obvious by the end of the seventeenth century, because Ireland was a thoroughly conquered country. It can be surprising but for nearly a hundred years there was no stirring among the people. The desperate struggle for independence of the Irish people began only by the end 18^th century and was connected with the rebellion of 1798.

  1.3. As the late 18th century saw the spread of the ideas of enlightenment and the radical reforms implemented by revolutionaries in France, Irishmen also demanded reforms. In the fall of 1791, the United Irishmen were organized in Belfast and Dublin, demanding parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation. In 1792 a Catholic convention met, addressing its demands to the London government, which, anxious to avoid the French Revolution spreading across the Channel, met all demands except the right for Catholics to sit in parliament.

  This Catholic victory was accompanied by a number of acts which were repressive, most of all the Militia Act which placed Catholic Irish militias under protestant officers; a number of Irish activists were persecuted and jailed. The Irish Catholic lead by Theodor Tone, were ready to revolt. France which was an archenemy of Britain for a long time was ready to help Ireland in its struggle, but a first French attempt to land 16,000 troops in Ireland failed in 1796.

  The rebels were strong in two regions - Ulster in the northeast and South Leinster. They opposed government forces and both were defeated. A French force came too late and was also a failure. The rebellion ended with a victory of Britain and as a result of it in 1801 the Act of Union was passed, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

  It was a law that made Britain and Ireland one state. The 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion and the threat of a French invasion convinced William Pitt that this was crucial for national security. The Act was passed in August 1800 and came into force on 1 January 1801. It created the United Kingdom, abolished the Irish parliament and united the Church of Ireland and Church of England. Thirty-two Irish peers entered the UK House of Lords and 100 Irish MPs the House of Commons.

  1.4. But as later it would be seen The Act of Union did not solve the problem of Irish dissent, as most of the Irish were Catholics, which were excluded from taking seats in parliament (until 1829), as most of the estates were owned by Protestants, who dominated positions in administration, judiciary and education. The discrimination continued but we should notice that it was inseparable from the development of Irish identity which was closely connected with Catholicism. The cultural nationalism that succeeded in gaining Ireland's independence had its origin in the Catholic emancipation movement of the early nineteenth century, but it was galvanized by Anglo-Irish and other leaders who sought to use the revitalization of Irish language, sport, literature, drama, and poetry to demonstrate the cultural and historical basis of the Irish nation. This Gaelic Revival stimulated great popular support for both the idea of the Irish nation, and for diverse groups who sought various ways of expressing this modern nationalism. The intellectual life of Ireland began to have a great impact throughout the British Isles and beyond, most notably among the Irish Diaspora who had been forced to flee the disease, starvation, and death of the Great Famine of 1846–1849, when a blight destroyed the potato crop, upon which the Irish peasantry depended for food. Estimates vary, but this famine period resulted in approximately one million dead and two million emigrants who being in a foreign country often suffered from religious, ethnic, and racial bigotry. [4,202]

  We should notice that after the Great Famine, the bright flight of nationalism of the Irish people calmed down. People were occupied with such problems as how to feed their family and escape the death from hunger rather than about how to keep their language and culture. The decline continued until the late 19^th century when a strong wave of the Gaelic revival began again with the appearance of such foundations as the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language (SPIL) and later the Gaelic Union and the Gaelic League. Groups such as Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican brotherhood, the Irish volunteers and the Irish citizen army had been formed.

  There also appeared press printed in Gaelic - “An Gaodhal”   and the most important “The Gaelic Journal” which  published original works, manuscript material, folklore, and news about Gaelic and Celtic movements in Ireland and abroad. Significantly, in 1894 it became the property of the most important organization associated with the revival, the Gaelic League.

  The Gaelic Revival aimed at extension of the use of Irish Gaelic as a spoken language and a literary medium. It was at the height of its popular influence in the first decade of the twentieth century and reached its artistic peak during the 1920s and 1930s. The revival drew together older men and women whose first language was Gaelic, and younger intellectuals, primarily from urban Ireland and from communities in Britain and the United States, who hoped to learn Gaelic because of a romantic notion of their linguistic heritage. Among this latter group were many who became leaders in the campaigns for independence from the United Kingdom between 1916 and 1922, and the cultural programs they instituted in the Irish Free State reflected one significant line of thought that emerged out of the revival.

  In 1922 leaders of the Irish Free State fostered the language through sometimes misdirected initiatives. The government imposed compulsory Gaelic instruction in schools, set up the publication office, and endowed theatrical enterprises. Irish literature began to develop with its main genres such as novel and autobiography.

  In fact we may say that the Gaelic revival had a symbolic character for Ireland and Irish people (especially those who lived in the southern part of Ireland). It strengthened the nation, revived the consciousness of self-identity in Irish people and showed the importance of being an independent country.