Talk:Irish literature

Changes in style
I have made a number of changes to the opening section with a view to tightening paragraphs and getting rid of sentences which are too chatty in tone.

To reinforce a point made above: we need to see more women in the info box - and it wouldn't hurt to also see some writers in Irish.

Colin Ryan (talk) 08:25, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Decline of the Irish language / rise of the English
This point has come back up for debate, with some newer academic work cited. And it's not a simple thing to assess, with the lack of hard data. It's also important that there was probably a gap between primacy as spoken languages, and primacy in literature, with English taking over the latter first, due to biases in adoption patterns. As far as I recall my studies, the usage situation, crudely put, was that by 1800, we had reached: Mostly or exclusively speaking (and writing where relevant) in Irish - 40% (>2 million), bilingual - 30% (>1.5 million), mostly or exclusively English - 30% (>1.5 million)... but by the census of 1851, this had shifted to just 1.5 million using Irish to any significant degree, and by 1901, just 0.6 million. What this article could use is a solidly-based academic input on the points in this area relevant to the topic, and projection back before 1800... SeoR (talk) 23:42, 24 September 2023 (UTC)