a HIBERNO-ENGLISH Archive

The History of Hiberno-English

The history as it is outlined here is not meant to be comprehensive. It is a very brief overview. Also it deals only with external events that influenced languages spoken in Ireland.

Two languages dominate any discussion of Language of Ireland – Irish and English. Although Hiberno-English is now the national Standard Language of Ireland, the Irish language was the principal language of most of the population until well into the nineteenth century. In many ways the history of the interplay between the two languages reflects the external history of the country. English has won the battle of dominance but only to a certain extent and from a certain point of view. The title of Hiberno-English with its two components clearly describes the relationship between the two tongues.

English has been used in Ireland since the twelfth century. The Anglo-Normans began arriving in Ireland from about 1167 onwards, bringing with them the Norman-French and English languages. This meant that there were three languages current in Ireland at that time – Irish, Norman-French, and English. In addition Latin was used by senior clerics. Norman-French was spoken by commanders of the invading forces, who had been sent to Ireland by Henry II to conduct (allegedly) a moral mission to reform the Irish. The King had been authorized to do so by the only English Pope, Nicholas Breakspear, who had taken the name Hadrian IV.

In England, Norman-French was used for diplomatic correspondence up to the reign of Henry IV (1399-1413). In Ireland, use of this language declined much earlier, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, but not before it had contributed a number of words to the lexicon of Irish (for example, dinnéar from Norman-French diner, buidéal from botel, and so forth).

English continued in use, but such was the power of the Irish language that the authorities in England began to worry about the resurgence of Irish culture and linguistic influence. The authorities were especially concerned about this resurgence in that part of the country, to the north and south of Dublin, which came to be known as The Pale (I think more clarity in how the Pale is defined). To counteract this trend, a son of Edward III, Lionel, Duke of Clarence was sent over to preside at an assembly in Kilkenny. This parliament issued the famous ‘Statute of Kilkenny’, written in Norman-French (more as a gesture, than as an indication that Norman-French was still generally understood). This document prohibited the ruling class and their retainers from becoming more Irish than the Irish themselves. It was directed at the settlers. Hurling was banned, as was entertainment of Irish minstrels, and other notably Irish pastimes. For us, the main interest is the ban it placed on the use of the Irish language and on the adoption of Irish names by the English. People breaking this rule would have their lands and property seized. This would not be returned until the ‘culprits’ had relearned English.

This statute was ineffectual, and the Irish language continued to make inroads into the Pale. Change only came about with the adoption of a new scheme for governing and administering Ireland – the Plantations which took effect from 1549 onwards. This resulted in speakers of English being ‘planted’ at various places far beyond the Pale. The immediate effect was that for the first time Irish people away from the main population-centres, especially Dublin, had to face and mix with users of the English Language. Those who employed them spoke English, and they had consequently to learn English, just to receive instructions. Where the rules of the Statute of Kilkenny failed, sheer practicality ensured the eventual success of the English Language in Ireland.

The English language benefited from the symbolical prestige attached to its being used by the people who had the power. In addition, Irish people began to emigrate to England in greater and greater numbers from the end of the sixteenth century. They had to learn English as quickly as possible. Understandably, they had to learn it through the lexicon, grammar, and syntax, pronunciation, and idiom of their vernacular language, Irish, which is substantially different from English – for example, in its verbal forms, which have no equivalent of ‘have’ in English, and in its prepositional range. Thus an Irish person then, and now, may say ‘He’s been dead with years’, corresponding to British English ‘He has been dead for years’, with the Irish preposition ‘le’ (=with) being translated and incorporated into the English sentence, making it typically Hiberno-English.

Use of the English language became further established from the late seventeenth century in Ireland. The Penal Laws from (1695) ensured that Irish people were denied formal education, and the informal education provided by the Hedge Schools played its part in the formation of modern Hiberno-English. English continued to flourish here throughout the eighteenth century. The great Seminary at Maynooth was established in 1795. Priests graduating from this college addressed their congregations in English whenever they could. From the 1780’s the Penal Laws had been eased, thus helping to eradicate the polarization, on political and religious lines, of those who spoke English and those who spoke Irish.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century the rise of English was unstoppable. The Act for the Legislative Union of Ireland with Great Britain (1800) strengthened the need for aspiring politicians to learn and use English efficiently for putting the Irish case in Westminister. When they came back to Ireland to address their own people they spoke in English and further enhanced its prestige. Many other events helped this process. A system of Primary Education was introduced in 1831, and the medium for instruction was English. Children were punished for using the Irish Language.

A decade later, the Famine had a catastrophic effect on the poorest, Irish-speaking members of the population. Since then, in spite of efforts of The Gaelic League and many Government enactments in education – in spite, too, of the brilliant work of many writers in Irish – the position of the Irish language has become weaker and weaker. However, it also has another life, so to speak, in Hiberno-English, as instanced already with the example of ‘He’s been dead with years’.

Much of the literary effect of Anglo-Irish literature depends on the author's use of Hiberno-English vocabulary, idiom and sentence-structure. From the earliest usages in the fourteenth-century "Kildare Poems" to the great nineteenth and twentieth century writers, George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, John Millington Synge, and of course James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and on to the most recent, Edna O'Brien, Roddy Dolye, Seamus Heaney, Jamie O'Neill, Maeve Binchey, Tom Paulin and Gerard Stembridge, to name just a few. Hiberno-English provides the linguistic resources which identify their culture as Irish.

Hiberno-English is a singularly rich member of the family of Englishes and owes much of its vivacity and inventiveness to the underlying influence of the Irish Language and also to the turbulent history of the Irish and the English.