- Chapter Forty-One -
incidence of competence to speak the language and the incidence of actual use.
It is fairly reliably estimated that no more than 25,000 of the Gaeltacht popu-
lation now use Irish consistently in day-to-day communication.
Territorially, Irish has long been in an even worse situation than that which is
feared for Welsh, should a wedge be driven between the northern and southern parts
of Welsh-speaking Wales. The three main Gaeltacht areas are to be found in Donegal
in the north-west, in Co. Mayo and Connemara in the west, and in the Dingle and
Inveragh peninsulas in south-west Munster. These three areas are separated from one
another by extensive English-speaking areas and, furthermore, are themselves to
some extent fragmented.
Questions as to linguistic competence have never been put in French censuses. A
number of private surveys, on differing methodological bases and with varying
degrees of reliability, have, however, been made for Breton. One of the most recent
is by H.Ll. Humphreys who, by taking the population figures provided by the 1962
French census and making carefully judged assumptions, based on close personal
knowledge of Brittany, about the likely extent of Breton speaking in different areas,
arrives at an estimate of 686,000 speakers, which, as he says (1991: II3), is 'more or
less in line with other estimates'. More recently still, another estimate based on an
audience research survey carried out by Radio Bretagne Ouest in 1983 gives a total
of some 615,000, 'of whom 40% were very frequent speakers and 40% occasional
speakers' (ibid.: 115). It is, however, possible that these figures overestimate the
numbers of those who have a good spoken competence in Breton.
Taking the most optimistic realistic figures for native speakers of any form
of Celtic speech at the present time, we may conclude that they almost certainly
number in excess of a million.
The future of these languages depends on a number of factors, including their
role in official and administrative life, in education and in the media. We shall return
to these topics below. The crucial factor, however, though one that is inevitably
conditioned by other factors such as those we have just mentioned, is the attitude
towards the language of its own native speakers. 6 Murchu, for example, immedi-
ately after his comment quoted above on the situation of Irish in the Gaeltacht, adds
(1985: 29) that 'a new decline appears to have set in over the last 15 years [i.e. since
about 1970]' and that 'many Irish-speaking parents in Gaeltacht areas have been
using English only with their children'.
Two recent questionnaire-based surveys (Lyon and Ellis 1991; Roberts 1991) of
parental attitudes towards the teaching of Welsh and Scottish Gaelic respectively in
areas where the language is still in widespread use indicate a high degree of support
for such a policy. Lyon and Ellis's survey relates to the parents of all children born
in Anglesey in the year ending February 1989. Of those (45 per cent of the total) who
responded, 86 per cent wished their children to learn Welsh in school and 62 per cent
wished them to be 'fluent in Welsh' (defined as a step beyond learning Welsh at
school). It is noteworthy that, though the level of enthusiasm was predictably high-
est among parental couples both of whom were Welsh-speaking, positive attitudes
predominated even among couples of whom neither was Welsh-speaking (71 per cent
in favour of Welsh at school, with 26 per cent wishing for fluency in Welsh). There
does, however, seem to be some difference in motivation between groups, in that