{"id":382773,"date":"2026-04-05T06:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T06:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/382773\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T06:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T06:38:10","slug":"fadas-on-forms-does-ireland-have-a-problem-with-its-own-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/382773\/","title":{"rendered":"Fadas on forms: Does Ireland have a problem with its own language?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Academic Caoimh\u00edn de Barra agrees.<\/p>\n

The historian and author said that when Ireland was set up as an independent state in 1922, “its raison d’\u00eatre was that Ireland was different – different language different culture, different state”.<\/p>\n

Irish was once spoken right across the island but by the 19th Century had become the minority language, superseded by English. <\/p>\n

That process was a long one kicked off by the Anglo-Norman invasion almost 900 years ago and featured a number of events and factors – plantation, economic upheaval, the Famine<\/a> – that fill many a history module syllabus. <\/p>\n

But when it came to reviving the language, de Barra argues that the fledgling state did not do enough.<\/p>\n

“They set it up in schools and didn’t do much more than that but language shift is more complicated.<\/p>\n

“The Irish state assumed that the people would revive the language, the Irish people assumed that the government would revive the language – and nobody revived the language.”<\/p>\n

This translates to the fadas-on-forms issue, he said, as an “indifference” that has often been “the position of the government”.<\/p>\n

Now, he added: “We are part of the English-speaking world whether we like it or not, and all the kind of indifference and sometimes hostility to foreign languages comes out so if there’s an accent it just gets left off.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Academic Caoimh\u00edn de Barra agrees. The historian and author said that when Ireland was set up as an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-382773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}