A history of the Irish language: From the Norman invasion to independence by Aidan Doyle (review)

When writing language histories for academic audiences, whether for teaching or research purposes, scholars still appear to follow two well-established traditions: that a language history will dedicate the majority of space to the explanation of system-internal matters, and that a language history will describe the history of only one language in a given geographical area. Doyle’s History of the Irish language departs from these principles in significant and refreshing ways, without, however, ignoring them altogether. He offers a comprehensive explanation of the fate of the Irish language in Irish society from the Middle Ages to Irish independence in 1922. While he provides some description of system-internal changes in phonology, morphology, and syntax, D is much more concerned with the role of Irish in the formation, retention, and suppression of individual and communal identity in Irish society or, rather, in society in Ireland. He states that the book aims to contribute to the current debate on Irish identity (272) and summarizes the success of the Irish revival since the late nineteenth century thus: ‘Irish is part of Irish life’ (266). What seems a trivial statement actually recognizes the vast effort that went into promoting the language, especially from the late nineteenth century, and this book lucidly explains what internal and external difficulties had to be overcome. Crucially, D’s history does not speak about Irish as if the language existed in isolation. In fact, it makes the important point that writing the external history of a language ‘without saying much about other languages’ is ‘simply not possible’ (3). Instead, D devotes time and space to the correlation between the Irish and English languages, and the Irish- and English-speaking communities. He even suggests that an ‘alternative title for the book might be: A history of the Irish and English languages in Ireland’ (3). This approach not only acknowledges that the history of Irish ‘is the result of a complex array of political, cultural, religious, educational, and sociological factors’ (3), but also that most geographical spaces in the world are not monolingual. D’s deliberate integration of multilingual dimensions—at individual, communal, and geographical levels—is in line with a new way of writing language histories. This aspect of historical sociolinguistics is still rarely found in university textbooks on many languages, and D is to be applauded for crossing disciplinary boundaries to look beyond strictly Irish philology.

Despite the title, A history of the Irish language, D does not cover—and does not pretend to cover—the entire textual history of the language. The subtitle, From the Norman invasion to independence, narrows the chronological scope to the period when Irish was joined by English, the second native language on the island. Thus the periods of Primitive Irish (before 600 ad), Old Irish (c. 600–900 ad), and Middle Irish (900–1200 ad) are given no serious attention (but for brief comment, see pp. 4ff.) As D maintains, a proper treatment of Old and Middle Irish would require a separate study (8). Instead, he begins his account with Early Modern Irish, as the end of the twelfth century ‘is regarded as a defining moment in Irish history, witnessing … the arrival of a new group of invaders, who brought with them a language that was eventually to dislodge the one spoken until then’ (7).

D divides the book into eight chronologically ordered chapters but of differing lengths: Chs. 7 and 8 make up some 40% of the book and cover the period 1870–1922, focusing on the revival and the modernization of Irish respectively. The extraordinary changes to the written language during this period and the nationalist use of Irish in the struggle for independence are ample justification for this authorial decision. As with many sociolinguistic histories of European languages (this reviewer is not qualified to make similar claims about other languages), broad developments can be attested across centuries, involving similar agents...