Brendan Gleeson, a well-known Gaeilgeoir, or fluent Irish speaker, also gave an interview in Irish, while Colin Farrell, his co-star in “Banshees of Inisherin,” slowly backed away and was relieved to quickly find someone who would ask him questions in English.
Somewhere between 1.76 million and 2 million people speak Irish today. However, only around 78,000 are native speakers. Most Irish speakers today learned it as a second language.
Brendan Gleeson is a beloved actor, but you might have heard of some of his sons, too. Brendan — who was nominated for best actor at the 2023 Oscars for his performance in "The Banshees of Inisherin," though he lost to Brendan Fraser — is dad to Domhnall, Brian, Rory, and Fergus.
Farrell and Gleeson met some 17 years ago but cemented their mutual admiration alliance onscreen first in McDonagh's raucous and fresh 2008 film In Bruges, of which Gleeson explained, “These characters are unlikely hit men, but they had to be believable as hit men.”
Brendan Gleeson, a well-known Gaeilgeoir, or fluent Irish speaker, also gave an interview in Irish, while Colin Farrell, his co-star in “Banshees of Inisherin,” slowly backed away and was relieved to quickly find someone who would ask him questions in English.
Irish is a Celtic language (as English is a Germanic language, French a Romance language, and so on). This means that it is a member of the Celtic family of languages. Its “sister” languages are Scottish, Gaelic, and Manx (Isle of Man); its more distant “cousins” are Welsh, Breton, and Cornish.
This is a new trend: even today, many Irish people don't speak the native language as a result of the country's long history of British rule from 1169-1922. They don't speak Irish because for many years they did not want to speak it. This attitude led to it falling into almost total disuse for a long time.
Open in Excel: The total number of persons (aged 3 and over) who could speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, representing 39.8 per cent of the population. This is a decrease of 13,017 on the 2011 figure of 1,774,437.
However, the mid to late-19th century saw a shockingly steep drop in the number of speakers as a result of the Famine, massive waves of emigration, and increasingly systematic suppression by the British government.
He was a teacher for 10 years before becoming an actor. He is a fine fiddle player and can be seen playing it in Michael Collins (1996), Cold Mountain (2003) and also in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). He taught English, Irish & Physical Education at Belcamp College Secondary School in Dublin.
The Banshees Of Inisherin was filmed on Achill Island. Situated off the west coast of Ireland, the Aran Islands were also used for filming – contrary to the film's single island setting. This compilation of destinations was part of director Martin McDonagh's vision for the film.
Calvary was filmed on location in Sligo in 2012 and the film is enhanced by the beautifully wild backdrop that Yeats Country provides. You can take a day trip to visit some of the filming locations around Sligo include Streedagh Beach, Benbulben Mountain, Lissadell, Rockwood Parade, Easkey, Ballisodare and Strandhill.
They're assured a warm welcome. Among the Irish hospitality professionals I spoke to, American holidaymakers are regarded as friendly and spendy, an agreeable reputation that's borne out by research from Tourism Ireland, the body that manages tourism across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Yes. If you are fluent in English then working in Ireland won't be a problem. English is used in many of the professional institutes and companies as a working language.
For some, it may take a few months while for others it could take years to become fluent. Of course, there are ways to speed up the process such as having conversations with Irish Gaelic speakers, using online and offline resources to learn the language, attending classes or taking part in immersion programs.
In the whole world, there are an estimated 1.2 million speakers of the Irish language. Of this number, only about 170,000 speak it as a first language. The great majority — about 98 percent — of Irish speakers live in Ireland itself.
Some 6,000 people (0.3%) in Northern Ireland claim to use Irish as their main home language according to the 2021 UK Census with 71,900 people being able to speak Irish (circa 4% of population) and 228,600 people overall in the state (12.4%) having some knowledge of the language.
It has been estimated that there were around 800,000 monoglot Irish speakers in 1800, which dropped to 320,000 by the end of the famine, and under 17,000 by 1911. Seán Ó hEinirí, of Cill Ghallagáin, County Mayo, who died 26 July 1998, was possibly the last monolingual Irish speaker.
