Hi all, two hypothetical questions for you-- and please flag if this isn’t appropriate for the forum, it’s not translations but does correlate somewhat. Here’s the backstory:

In the early 1880s, several families from a lobster fishing village in Connemara immigrate to Portland, Maine in America. They settle there for a short time, working as longshoremen on the wharves, then move up the coast to a remote island to take advantage of the lobster fishing there. Fast forward to present day, and the island is still inhabited mainly by descendants of these fishermen. They are bilingual, being taught in English at the island school run by the State of Maine, but speak Irish primarily, although it’s only a spoken language (not read or written). Now my questions:

- Coming from coastal, western Connemara in the 1880s, would they have spoken Irish only or would they have also spoken English? Would they have been literate in Irish (or English if that was also spoken)?

- Assuming they only spoke Irish when they came to the US, as they learned English (in a highly Irish-inhabited area of Portland and then through the island’s state-run school), would they speak English with an Irish accent or would they sound more like their New England neighbors (I guess I’m questioning whether the accent would come from speaking English with a tongue that is used to speaking a very different language)?

Many thanks for any insight any of you can give!

I'm no expert, but as I had family who immigrated to the US in the 1880's and then later in the 1900's-1910's who were all Irish speaking when they came here, my thoughts:

Since the National Schools were up and running in most places by the 1840's, and they were operated in English, people coming in the 1880's would probably have been bilingual, except perhaps for those over 50 or so. There were a number of monolingual Irish immigrants to the US earlier on, closer to famine days (Irish-speaking priests had to be sent to serve them in several places). However, I know there were people in Donegal (and probably other places) well into the 20th century who, though they could speak some English, were fluent only in Irish.

Since the National Schools discouraged (or actively punished) the use of Irish, I suspect that many fluent speakers would have had difficulty writing in Irish, at least until the language movement started up late in the 19th century, and even after that in many places, until the switch to Irish after independence.

A strong Irish accent is said to have survived in Newfoundland for a long time, even after several generations had been born there (it no longer survives,or so I'm told), so your theoretical group could arguably have maintained their accent for generations as a fairly insular community. There are also people today on Tangier Island in the Chesapeake, and in some other island and coastal communities around there, who still have the accent of their Cornish, Devonian, and Exonian ancestors (they "tawk laik poi-rits"), after hundreds of years, although the accent is waning with the advent of cars, TV, etc.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Thanks so much for your insights! There are some in Newfoundland who do actually still speak with a very Irish-sounding accent. Here's a clip from YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xmqb4W2 ... re=related

Very cool! Thanks again!

That link isn't working for me.



I think most of them would have little or no English. And like Caoimhín said probably not literate in Irish.
My grandfather was alive that time. He was exceptional as he was fluent in English and very literate in both languages. He used to help other locals filling forms etc in English.
Up until the late in the last century there were a few monolingual speakers of Irish.
An uncle of mine never spoke English (he did understand some alright but refused to speak it). Even today there some people who would be uncomfortable speaking English.
It does depend on the individual circumstances. When my aunt went to America she had a good bit of English as she had worked for an English speaking family. She was 16 when she emigrated. When she came back to Ireland 60/70 years later she had totally lost her Irish.


I don't know about accent. That is more a linguistics question. People's accents depend on their native language. The sounds they have learnt in their own language make it harder for them as adults to learns the new sounds of another language. That's why Japanese people will speak English with a Japanese accent, French accent etc. And living in a community where people speak with the same accent will preserve it much longer. But I've heard native Irish people, after years spent in America, speaking Irish with an American English accent, the sounds perfect but that way of talking.

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It is recommended that you always wait for three to agree on a translation.
I speak Connemara Irish, and my input will often reflect that.
I will do an mp3 file on request for short translations.
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I think we can draw, in some ways, from other immigrant cultures for some of the answers.

Accents can come from two places. When an adult learns a new language, he or she will definitely have an accent (it's not entirely impossible to learn a new language without elements of your native language coming through, but it's very difficult, and most language learners, no matter how fluent they become, will retain something of the "flavor" of their native tongue).

Accents also come from hearing them from other people around you during your formative years. So children who grow up in an area where the only English they hear on a daily basis is accented will also have that accent, even if they DON'T speak the language that produced the accent in the first place.

If you look at Mexican immigrant groups in California, how long the accent is retained depends greatly on whether children are raised in an almost exclusively Spanish-speaking environment or whether they're raised in a more "mainstreamed" environment. Children who are raised in an almost exclusively Spanish-speaking environment (i.e., so-called "bilingual" schools, friends and neighbors who speak only Spanish, etc.) tend to retain a Mexican accent, even if they're fluent in English. In their schools, homes, and neighborhoods, even when English is used, it is Mexican-accented English, so that's what they learn (they're also considerably less likely to become truly fluent in English, which is one of the arguments raised against the so-called "bilingual" schools, but that's another story). Children who are raised in a more "mainstream" environment (i.e., educated through English, with friends and neighbors from a variety of backgrounds) tend to have a mainstream "California" accent, even if Spanish is still spoken in their homes (these kids tend to be truly bilingual, speaking like native speakers in both languages, and comfortably flipping back and forth between them).

Given that immigrants tend, at first, to remain in communities of others of their own culture (and that sounds like the case with your hypothetical situation), I'd guess that the Irish accent would be retained for several generations. In fact, rather than fade into the mainstream, it might morph into something that is unique to that area...neither something that a person in Ireland would recognize as "Irish," nor exactly like the English of other speakers in that general area. That's how a lot of American regional accents and dialects came to be.

Redwolf

Thanks so much, Brid and Redwolf. This definitely gives me more information to build on!

I'm not sure why the YouTube link wasn't working, but you should also be able to find it by typing Irish Newfoundland Connection - 2 in the search field on YouTube. The clip is actually from an Irish TV program (I believe) called "An Boithrín Glas" with subheadings in English.

Again, thanks so much for th insights!

What is the island called? Thats amazing they still speak Irish 130 years on.

Conamara still has a lot of Irish today so considering it was one of the strongholds of the Irish language, the last places to get touched by English id say there was more chance that people from the 1880s had very little English.

With accent, its difficult to tell as they clearly kept to themselves and kept the language I am sure they kept the accent like those people in Newfoundland, but it depends who they learn English from, if they learn English from outsider teachers with American accents and only speak Irish with their community (ie never hear anyone speaking English with an Irish accent) then they probably have heavier American accents with hints from their native tounge.

You need to go there and get a video for us

That might be a little difficult. This is a hypothetical situation and research for ChristyD's novel.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

My guess is that they would probably not have even spoken English on such an Island until the 1930's to perhaps the 1940's when men would have gone off to the second world war etc. and learned it from other GI's, and those many rural communities were "incorporated" into US culture, etc. Most of my neighbors here in Whitehall didn't know English until they were forced to go to "English" school in their early teens. They are all Germans around me who were forced to learn English around the time of WWII.

There were quite a few mono-lingual French speakers in Louisiana in the generation of my grandparents (born 1890- 1900). They were the grandparents of my contemporaries (I am 56). They are all pretty much deceased now. Those people had lived in the United States for 200 years and were not able to speak English. That's pretty incredible. I have met several people (a neighbor I have now) who didn't even know much English till he left for World War II to fight. He grew up on a farm in the countryside of Louisiana. I have met several Navajo people around 70 now (say born in 1940) who only know a few words (maybe 50) of English. They have lived in the USA for ....... maybe 10,000 years? Most Americans are shocked to learn that Lawrence Welk was born and raised in N. Dakota. His accent was so heavy that I always assumed he was from Europe somewhere.

Anyway....I don't think it would be far fetched to say your lobstermen didn't have real exposure to English till a few of them volunteered for the war effort in WWII. They probably could get along in it a bit, but no real fluency. The video is pretty incredible to watch. Is blas an bhean an-suimiúil é!

Thanks again! So far, my research and thinking has had me on a close track to what I'm learning here. I'm still not completely decided on the time period where the English language is emerging. It's certainly possible some English was picked up in Portland before they reached the island, but there's also been research showing that Portland had a fair amount of monolingual Irish the second half of the 19th century. I've done some research on Monhegan and Matinicus (also islands off the coast of Maine where lobster fishing is the chief industry) in keeping with the whole Maine Island aspect of the story, but I can't for the life of me find information on when the State of Maine opened schools on these islands. When I get that figured out, that'll give me a better idea of time period for when the hypothetical island school would have probably opened and English would have been started being taught. And then the other English influence I have to take into consideration is the priest from the nearest inshore parish who comes to the island to perform Mass on Sundays, give last rites, etc. (originally, I had the elderly residents on the island being almost completely monolingual Irish speakers, but I'm thinking that hearing Mass in English every week would have them retain some English even if they're otherwise speaking Irish).

Anyway, thanks again for letting me pick all of your brains-- and helping me scratch out the thoughts in my own head! You've all been an excellent help!