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Irish is a main household and/or community language for approximately 1% of the population of the Republic of Ireland〔Government of Ireland, .〕 (the population of the Republic of Ireland shown to be 4,581,269 in the 2011 census). The 2011 census in Northern Ireland showed that over 10% of people spoke Irish or had "some ability in Irish" (see Irish language in Northern Ireland). At least one in three people (~1.8 million) on the island of Ireland can understand Irish to some extent. Estimates of fully native speakers range from 40,000 up to 80,000 people. Areas in which the language remains a vernacular are referred to as ''Gaeltacht'' areas. Irish speakers outside the Gaeltacht include both second-language speakers and native speakers who were raised and educated through Irish. They are sometimes known as ' and constitute an expanding minority, though of uncertain size. They are predominantly urban dwellers. Present trends make it likely that they represent the future of the language and a guarantee of its survival. Recent research suggests that urban Irish is developing in a direction of its own and that Irish speakers from urban areas can find it difficult to understand Irish speakers from the Gaeltacht. This is related to an urban tendency to simplify the phonetic and grammatical structure of the language.〔 The written standard remains the same for both groups, and urban Irish speakers have made notable contributions to an extensive modern literature. It has been argued that ' tend to be more highly educated than monolingual English speakers and enjoy the benefits of language-based networking, leading to better employment and higher social status. Though this initial study has been criticised for certain assumptions, the statistical evidence supports the view that such bilinguals enjoy certain educational advantages and the 2011 Republic of Ireland census noted that daily Irish speakers were more highly educated than the population generally. Of those daily Irish speakers who had completed their education, 44 per cent had a third level degree or higher. This compared to a rate of 26 per cent for the state overall.〔http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/census2011profile9/Profile,9,What,we,know,Press,Statement.pdf〕 While the number of fluent urban speakers is rising (largely because of the growth of urban Irish-medium education), Irish in the Gaeltacht grows steadily weaker. The 2011 census showed that inhabitants of the officially designated Gaeltacht regions of Ireland numbered 96,628 people up from 91,862 in the 2006 census. Of these, 68.5% over three and over spoke Irish down from 70.8% in 2006 and only 24% of these or 23,175 people said they spoke spoke Irish daily outside the education system.〔http://www.gaelport.com/uploads/documents/Census%202011%20An%20Ghaeilge.pdf〕 It was estimated in 2007 that, outside the cities, about 17,000 people lived in strongly Irish-speaking communities, about 10,000 people lived in areas where there was substantial use of the language, and 17,000 people lived in "weak" Gaeltacht communities. In no part of the Gaeltacht was Irish the only language.〔()〕 Complete or functional monolingualism in Irish is now restricted to a handful of the elderly in isolated regions and some children under school age. A comprehensive study published in 2007 on behalf of Údarás na Gaeltachta found that young people in the Gaeltacht, despite their largely favourable view of Irish, use the language less than their elders. Even in areas where the language is strongest, only 60% of young people use Irish as the main language of communication with family and neighbours, and English is preferred in other contexts. The study concluded that, on current trends, the survival of Irish as a community language in Gaeltacht areas is unlikely. A follow-up report by the same author published in 2015 concluded that Irish would die as a community language in the Gaeltacht within a decade. The Irish government has adopted a twenty-year strategy designed to strengthen the language in all areas and greatly increase the number of habitual speakers. This includes the encouragement of Irish-speaking districts in areas where Irish has been replaced by English.〔() 〕 The 2015 independent report on the Gaeltacht commissioned by Údarás na Gaeltachta, however, does not regard this strategy as likely to be successful without a radical change in policy at national level. On 13 June 2005, the EU foreign ministers unanimously decided to make Irish an official language of the European Union. The new arrangements came into effect on 1 January 2007, and Irish was first used at a meeting of the EU Council of Ministers, by Minister Noel Treacy, T.D., on 22 January 2007. ==Republic of Ireland== The vast majority of Irish in the Republic are, in practice, monolingual English speakers. Habitual users of Irish fall generally into two categories: traditional speakers in rural areas (a group in decline) and urban Irish speakers (a group which is expanding). The number of native Irish-speakers in Gaeltacht areas of the Republic of Ireland today is a smaller fraction of the population than it was at independence. Many Irish-speaking families encouraged their children to speak English as it was the language of education and employment; by the nineteenth century the Irish-speaking areas were relatively poor and remote, though this very remoteness helped the language survive as a vernacular. There was also continuous outward migration of Irish speakers from the Gaeltacht (see related issues at Irish diaspora). A more recent contributor to the decline of Irish in the Gaeltacht has been the immigration of English speakers and the return of native Irish speakers with English-speaking partners. The Planning and Development Act (2000) attempted to address the latter issue, with varied levels of success. It has been argued that government grants and infrastructure projects have encouraged the use of English: "only about half Gaeltacht children learn Irish in the home... this is related to the high level of in-migration and return migration which has accompanied the economic restructuring of the Gaeltacht in recent decades".〔〔''The Irish Language in a Changing Society: Shaping The Future'', p. xxvi.〕 In a last-ditch effort to stop the demise of Irish-speaking in Connemara in Galway, planning controls have been introduced on the building of new homes in Irish-speaking areas. New housing in Gaeltacht areas must be allocated to English-speakers and Irish-speakers in the same ratio as the existing population of the area. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Status of the Irish language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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