Languages do not 'fade away.’ They are pushed out, banned, beaten out of children, mocked out of schools. For Irish people, their existence and their language were punished by one thing: Colonization.
Irish is often described as a dying language. Forty per cent of the population in Ireland knows how to speak it, but this is only a slight .06 per cent rise since 2016, according to the 2022 Census of Population by the Irish Language and Education.
The Irish language did not die, it was killed – systematically, deliberately and often violently.
Scottish Gaelic sociolinguist, Paul Meighan-Chiblow, in his work, Languages do not die, they are persecuted, argues that language loss is never natural.
The Irish language proves that clearly with decades of persecution, the resurgence of the language today is not a miracle of preservation; it is the vox populi – literally, the voice of the people, with a resurgence due to the new Irish government support and later on music, specifically the band Kneecap who is a trio from Belfast using the Irish language mixed with English in their songs which has influenced more groups.
The suppression of Irish and other Celtic languages was cruel, calculated and sadistic under British rule, which lasted until the Anglo-Irish treaty was signed in 1921and created the Irish Free State, now known as the Republic of Ireland.
The Penal Laws, adopted in 1660, forced people not to speak Irish, revoked property rights, and funnelled them into hard labour. Irish names were anglicized. Irish speakers were also shut out of education and political positions.
But when have the English ever cared about the lands it pillaged and claimed? Not in the past 400 years or so it hasn't done anything to help those countries from the lasting effects of its rule.
But the British government did not do this alone.
This is the part people are too nervous or scared to admit. For generations, the Anglican Church played a central role in suppressing the Irish people, especially after the famine.
Formally known as the Church of England, the Anglican Church did not protect Irish identity but often reinforced its suppression. Many church-run schools actively discouraged the use of the Irish language, promoting English as the language of morality, opportunity and salvation.
Punishments for speaking Irish were common, and children learned to associate their mother tongue with shame and inferiority.
As the Decolonized Minds, an anti-colonial newsletter and organization, notes, “British colonization systematically targeted Irish, and Catholic institutions played a significant role in maintaining these systems of oppression.”
Language loss was not accidental; it was enforced.
Even after independence in 1921, the state ensured control of education by the clergy, continuing ineffectual revival measures. Compulsory Irish lessons became inane memorization exercises, removed from daily life, culture, and conversation.
Students learned to endure rather than speak. The same institutions that had aided in its oppression were now trying to revive it, and predictably, it failed.
Yet, the language survived, and it was revived by the people, not by the hands of the church and government trying to wipe themselves clean of their sins.
The first movements gave birth to Gaelscoileanna, schools entirely in Irish, because communities refused to wait for institutions that had historically oppressed them to fix their issues properly, but by actual people who cared.
Media, music and social platforms now reflect a new generation of Irish speakers reclaiming their heritage.
This revival is the people in action. Ordinary people refuse to let colonial and religious systems dictate their culture.
The story of the Irish language shows why ‘dying language’ is a dangerous lie. It masks deliberate harm; it frames persecution as natural decline. It erases the historical role of British colonialism and the Church in destroying communities' cultural and linguistic life.
The Irish language did not fade. It was actively erased, and it survives through resistance.
Irish people survived the Penal Laws, the Cromwellian Settlement, where Oliver Cromwell seized Eastern Ireland and beyond, the Great Famine between 1845 and 1852, the Anglo-Irish War in 1916, and the Troubles, which was a conflict between 1968 and 1998 with paramilitary groups.
Today, every word spoken in Gaeilge, every single school that teaches it, and every single news station, radio station, music network screams one thing: languages can be reclaimed.
The Irish language did not die. It was exterminated, and now it is being revived by those who refuse to surrender it.
