The Language of Farmers and Intellectuals

1
The Language of Farmersand Intellectuals

• Irish in Ireland
• and
• Ukrainian in Ukraine

2
Minority national languages?

• Both languages are now the official languages of
  their respective states, but their true status
  remains ambiguous
• Most people are bilingual in the colonizing
  languages English and Russian and fewer are
  monolingual in the titular language

3
The Numbers

• Ireland
• Total population 4,015,676
• Irish speakers 1,570,894 4
• 339,541 use Irish every day
• Ukraine
• Total population 46,996,765
• Ukrainian speakers 31,4 87,833 67

4
Similarities

• Irish and Ukrainian date from long before the two
  countries were overtaken politically
• Both languages have long literary traditions, but
  suffered from a lack of standardized education
  for years
• Both languages are strongly tied to nationalist
  movements

5
Differences

• Modern Irish derives from the Celtic language
  group and has a structure that is unique to
  almost every known language
• -while-
• Ukrainian and Russian are very similar, and
  people even speak Surzhyk, a pidgin version of
  both languages

6
Will Irish and Ukrainian survive?

• Dónall Ó Riagáin, director of the European Bureau
  for Lesser Used Languages, defines three vital
  things a language needs to survive
• speakers who teach their children
• education for those children to reinforce the
  language
• institutions that function in the language for
  the families to utilize

7
Failte nÉireann
Co. Clare, near the Cliffs of Moher
8
Defining Irish

• Irish is the official language of Ireland, as of
  the 1937 Constitution
• Irish will become an official language of the EU
  in 2007
• But Irish is not the primary language of mass
  media or daily communication

9
Irelands mythical glory

• "To say tradition is to say language and while
  this is true of every national tradition it is
  overwhelmingly true of ours. So that it is not
  wise for anyone to attempt to write our history
  unless he adequately equip himself with a
  knowledge of the language.
• Daniel Corkery (1968)

10
Irelands more global outlook

• Monglot myths have often bedeviled our attempts
  to discuss language in Ireland. There is either
  the notion of a Gaelic Golden Age when everyone
  spoke Gaelic in splendid isolation or the
  Anglophone shibboleth that Ireland is solely
  English-speaking...
• Michael Cronin (2000)
• Cronin argues that Irish was influenced by Viking
  and Roman invasions and the French-speaking
  English nobility there was no height of Gaelic
  civilization

11
Moving into modernity

• The British controlled and imposed the use of
  English Ireland until the 1920s the 1937
  constitution made Irish the official state
  language and the common language of trade
• Irish was relegated to the Gaeltacht rural and
  coastal areas that interacted mainly with one
  another. This area was hit hardest by the Potato
  Famine created a stigma against the language of
  the uneducated and provincial classes

12
Map of the Gaeltacht
13
Modern setbacks

• Early Irish nationalists Daniel OConnell and
  Charles Parnell had little interest in Irish,
  but the modern revolutionaries rallied around
  Irish as means to unify the country
• Today, Irish is spoken natively by few. The
  region with the highest native-speaking
  population more than 5 percent is Co. Donegal
  (Dhún na nGall)

14
Modern Challenges

• If globalization is expanding the world, can
  languages be similarly expanded?
• Official Language Act (2003) All govt. documents
  must be available in Irish, speakers may request
  that govt. jobs be moved to the Gaeltacht, Irish
  must be a subject in all state schools

15
Media

• RTÉ, the publicly owned provider, runs Raidió na
  Gaeltachta and TG4
• Raidió na Gaeltachta began broadcasting in 1972
• TG4 Irelands Irish language station launched
  in 1996 claims about 730,000 daily viewers
• The daily newspaper, Lá, started publishing in
  2003 and sells 5,000 copies daily

16
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A Carmelite monastery in Berdychiv
17
Defining Ukrainian

• Ukrainian is the official state language
• Ukraine was the second most populous Soviet
  Socialist Republic
• Today, Ukrainian is spoken more often than
  Russian, but only slightly

18
History of Empires

• Areas of Ukraine came under the control of the
  Ottoman, Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) and Tsarist
  Russian empires
• Russians considered Ukrainian to be a dialect of
  Russian (Russky or Rus)
• The Habsburgs allowed the Ruthenians some
  cultural and organizational power in the late
  1800s
• Eastern Galicia was added after World War II,
  following years of conflict

19
Ukrainian under Russian rule

• In 1876, Tsar Alexander II prohibited Ukrainian
  in schools and public arenas, but later relaxed
  the policy
• In November 1919, Lenin issued a policy allowing
  the free development of Ukrainian and schools
  were allowed to develop
• Stalins purges of intelligentsia effectively
  halted language policy development

20
Later Soviet policy

• Khrushchev relaxed Stalinist policies and
  Ukrainian language journals were revived
• However, the continued availability of a choice
  between Russian and Ukrainian primary language
  education for children let the regular use of
  Ukrainian decline

21
Dialect map of Ukraine
22
Ukraine independent

• A striking feature about many contemporary
  Ukrainians is their cultural inferiority complex.
  Ukrainian culture was not banned by the Soviet
  Union the way it was by Tsarist Russia. Instead
  it was allowed to exist but discriminated against
  structurally so that people would choose Russian
  over Ukrainian. The best examples of this are the
  education system and mass media. Marta Dyczok

23
The choice

• In Ukraine a national filter was attached to the
  ideological lens. Ukrainian culture was portrayed
  as a peasant culture in contrast to the
  sophisticated Russian culture. This worked so
  effectively that many Ukrainians do not know
  their cultural heritage beyond folk songs, dances
  and Shevchenko, who was glorified by Soviet
  authorities for his social criticism of Tsarism.
  Dyczok

24
Modern Issues

• Ukraines population is not only shrinking, but
  also aging rapidly
• Primary schools are increasingly using Ukrainian
  as their principal language
• Only about 30 of books published and 11 of
  newspapers in Ukraine are in Ukrainian

25
Will Irish and Ukrainian survive?

• Ukrainian, by virtue of its population size and
  non-institutionalized support, is meeting Ó
  Riagáins criteria better than Irish
• Both governments are working to assert their
  respective languages on a global scale and make
  their languages globally accessible