Is Gaelic still widely spoken in Ireland?

Answer

I am not Irish, but I have lived there for the past year, so this answer is based on my personal experience. First of all, the Irish don't refer to speaking 'Gaelic' like the rest of the world does, they say they are speaking 'Irish'. The word for their language in Irish is 'Gaeilge'

Whatever you choose to call it, there has been a revival of the language in Ireland in recent years. It is taught in the elementary and high schools; most children can speak it quite well, and most young people I know, under, say, age 30-35 can get by. (But I live in Galway, on the west coast -- I hear it's different in Dublin.) Speaking Irish is a requirement for many government jobs. On some of the islands off the west coast (the Aran Islands, for instance) you hear it spoken everywhere. There is a huge amount of national pride invested in keeping this ancestral language alive and promoting its use. I once heard an Irish-speaking poet refer to English as "the language of the oppressor" and although he was joking (sort of) this gives you some idea of the depth of feeling the language issue brings up there today.

Unfortunately, Gaelic is only the first language of the majority of the population in the so-called Gaeltacht regions which are relatively small and whose population is about 85,000 people.

Additionally:

I live in Dublin, and it is rarely spoken here. It's taught in schools to children and a required school subject. After leaving school, many stop using it. In order to get into many programmes in university however, you do need to have passed a leaving cert in Gaelige. It is not as widely spoken as English, but neither is it dying out.

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