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Exploring the Irish Language and Its Heritage

Test your knowledge of the Irish language, its history, and its cultural significance with this engaging quiz.

#Irish language #Gaeltacht #Celtic languages #Irish culture #Linguistics #Language history

1 ________ (Gaoth Dobhair), County Donegal is the largest Gaeltacht parish in Ireland.

2 There are parts of Ireland where Irish is still spoken as a traditional, ________ used daily.

3 What family does the Irish language belong to?

4 Old Irish, dating from the sixth century, used the ________ and is attested primarily in marginalia to Latin manuscripts.

5 There are many more small sayings that have crept into ________.

6 Letters with the buailte are available in ________ and Latin-8 character sets (see Latin Extended Additional chart).

7 Irish President ________ was one of the last speakers of the Roscommon dialect of Irish.

8 ________

9 Who of the following spoke at the Irish language?

10 Written Irish is first attested in ________ inscriptions from the fourth century AD; this stage of the language is known as Primitive Irish.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • the Gaelic Journal, first published in 1882, was described as being "the first journal devoted to the living Irish language".
  • the Permanent North American Gaeltacht (pictured) is an officially designated Irish speaking area in English/French speaking Ontario, Canada, the first of its kind outside of Ireland.
  • the medieval Irish narrative The Sickbed of Cúchulainn gave its name to the first song on The Pogues' 1985 album Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash.
  • one version of the 8th-century Irish text The Expulsion of the Déisi contains a passage claiming the Irish group known as the Déisi founded the royal dynasty of Dyfed, Wales.
  • an explanation for the derivation of Aughanduff, a townland in Armagh, is that it means ford of the ox or Áth an Daimh in Irish.
  • "Ceol An Ghrá" was the first and only time that Ireland entered the Eurovision Song Contest with a song in Irish.
  • Breandán Ó Buachalla was considered "the leading authority on Gaelic poetry and writing in early modern Ireland" and "one of the most prominent Irish language academics of his generation".
  • Nollaig Ó Gadhra's biography of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley is regarded as one of the most comprehensive biographies ever written in the Irish language.
  • Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx have separate dependent and independent verb forms.
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