Thanks Dr. Drake. Very helpful.
Thank you all.
Yeah, I was referring to Gaeilge - rather than Gaelic. I’ve used the wrong spelling. As a plastic Paddy, it just sounds the same to me - but the spelling is defiantly different.
The “National Council for Curriculum and Assessment” (NCCA) calls it Gaeilge.
Cite or this one Seachtain na Gaeilge
The pronunciation is also different. Gaeilge, the word in the Irish language which means “the Irish language”, is pronounced something like “gwayl-geh”.
“Seachtain na Gaeilge” is a phrase in the Irish language which means “week of Irish”. (It’s an annual festival held to promote the use of the language.) What you’ve got here is an Irish language phrase being dropped into an otherwise English text, in much the way that you might refer to, say, the Académie française in an otherwise English sentence.
Let me refer you directly to opening line of the Irish language wiki article
In the section Names
First I was thinking, maybe I didn’t here it right, but after confirming with several native Irish Corkonians, the answer is a sound YES, Irish is being referred to as Gaelic [ˈɡeːlʲɪc] in Ireland by Irish people.
This may not be the absolute technical scientific proper way of the calling the language, but Gaelic is one version of what the Irish call their own language.
Even in the Gaelic revival the language is referred to as Gaelic:
This Irish guy does a pretty good job explaining the terms in this Youtube video and clearly using the word Gaelic to describe Gaeilge.
So the statement, that NO Irish person in Ireland is calling the Irish language Gaelic - is wrong.
I have to point out that your own cite says that Gaeilge, Gaedhlag, Gaelainn etc are forms of the name found in modern Irish dialects, which is correct. In English the language is called “Irish”. It was formerly often called “Gaelic”, but this would now be considered archaic.
I can’t comment on your native Corkonians, but I was born in Ireland, I was educated there, I speak the language, I lived in Ireland until I was in my 40s, and I return regularly. I have never heard anyone Irish call the language “Gaelic”, other than jocosely. “Gaeilge”, very occasionally, but only by people who are regularly in the habit of dropping Irish words into English sentences, or of switching from one language to the other.
It’s the other way round. ‘Gaelic’ is absolutely a proper word for the language, but Irish people just don’t use it when speaking to other Irish people.
If you’re making a YouTube video that’s intended for worldwide viewing, sure, you might well use ‘Gaelic’, on the assumption that that would be more comprehensible to non-Irish people. If you’re starting a language revival movement that you hope will be heard of outside Ireland, same thing. But - same as UDS - I have never, ever heard an Irish person speaking to another Irish person call the language ‘Gaelic’.
I’m not arguing the case, that the Irish name of the Irish language in Irish is Gaeilge, since it is. That much I’ve learned in the process of this.
From what I gathered, so far, the native Irish people I’ve asked refer to the language as: Irish, Gaelic and Gaeilge.
Depending on who I asked, I got all these answers in a different order.
Older people answered with Gaeilge, younger once with Gaelic and Irish, two weirdly never heard of Gaeilge.
The ones that refer to it as Gaeilge, I’ve asked if they heard it called Gaelic as well and they answered was something like that: “Yes, some call it Gaelic, but in school or Irish it’s called Gaeilge”
It’s just weird, that nobody ever called it Gaelic where you’re from - might be a Cork thing, but they’re defiantly 100% native pure breed Irish from the Rebel County.
My mother grew up in Kerry, juuuuust inside the Gaeltacht. I shan’t say when beyond noting that I was born in 1972. 
When she went to elementary school (National School), everything but the English class was taught in Gaelic. But when she went to high school (Carnegie School) in the nearest large-ish town, everything but the Irish class was taught in English. She did well in school despite the language adjustment and she still mutters in Gaelic when she does math in her head. Usually faster than I can pull up the calculator on my phone.
To get right in the middle of the ongoing debate she personally refers to the language as Gaelic but her leaving certificates refer to the school course as Irish.
This might be a Dublin vs the rest of Ireland thing.
Many things that have a to happen a certain name in some areas are called something entirely different in another area or are completely unknown.
Like “Champ” - aka “poundies” - it’s a potato mash or salad, that can be hot or cold, contains spring onions, buttermilk, butter or not or any variation - depending on where you are in Ireland
Boxty- potato pancake (or something like a Roesti or Hash brown) that is almost exclusive to Dublin
Langer - all sorts of meanings in and only Cork, but not fully understood outside of the Cork area.
In 1904, Joyce tells us in Ulysses, an Irish milk-seller has a transaction at the breakfast of two Dublin University intellectuals and their English guest, who is interested in the quaint ways of the indigenous people:
She bows her old head to [Mulligan, one student’s] voice that speaks to her loudly […] And to [the English Haines’s] loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.
-
Do you understand what he says? Stephen [the third young intellectual] asked her.
-
Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines. Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
-
Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
-
I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west, sir?
-
I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
-
He’s English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in Ireland.
- Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I’m ashamed I don’t speak the language myself. I’m told it’s a grand language by them that knows.
-
Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely.
When I was little I was already interested in learning other languages. I asked my Irish-American mother what “Erin go bragh”* meant and what language it was. I was expecting it was called “Irish language” and was taken aback when my mother called it “Gaelic.” Later I looked in an encyclopedia and found that Irish actually is the correct name of it in Hiberno-English.
*Back in the 1960s, Erin go bragh was pretty much the entire extent of Gaedhilge you’d encounter in America. This was before the Second Celtic Revival.
This makes sense to me: “The term Irish Gaelic is often used when English speakers discuss the relationship between the three Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx)” because context. It’s best to call it Irish as a rule, though it can be referred to as one among the three Goidelic or Gaelic tongues.
Just whatever you do, don’t call it Erse! Just don’t! Erse is completely deprecated and is no longer supported.
It’s gotten a little better, but not by much. Nowadays, your average Irish-American likely knows a few more phrases such as Póg mo thóin, but encountering any level of fluency is rare.
You mean like Windows 98? I knew there was something in that song about the “Name of '98”.
Back in WW2, the 303rd Bomb Group had a bomber named Pogue Ma Hone. No doubt an incorrect spelling–but what do you expect from Irish Americans?
That was my father’s bomb group but not his plane. Census documents show his immigrant parents as speaking English *and *Irish–but I don’t think the language was passed on except for a few choice phrases. My mother learned “praties” from her time visiting his family.
When I listen to the native Irish talking about their school days and being forced to learn Irish in “Irish Class” (not Gaelic class) I think it’s safe to say they use the term Irish much more than the term Gaelic.
Johanna, why is Erse now deprecated?
Too close to arse, perhaps?
And, amusingly, “Erse” is etymologically the same word as “Irish.”
This is so far outside my experience as to be bizarre - particularly the claim that there are native Irish people living in Ireland who don’t know the the word Gaeilge. It’s mandatory to learn in school, most people aren’t fluent or anything but they’ll certainly know the word for Irish is Gaeilge.
Referring to “learning Gaelic” or anything like that sounds very foreign to me. In my experience as a native Irish person having lived in several different counties in Ireland (including Cork for 4 years) it’s always referred to as Irish when speaking in English. Sometimes Irish Gaelic if it was a conversation involving other Gaelic languages.
That said, if I was being asked by someone foreign if I knew what Gaelic is I’d say yes, because I do know what they mean. But it’s never used in common conversation like that by Irish people in my experience
I disagree. Although it is perhaps less common in Ireland to use the term Gaelic for the Irish language than it is to just use Irish, there are plenty of people who use the term. In recent years people have made a big song and dance about Gaelic not referring to the language but to the culture or games but I think it reflects the regionalised complexity of Hiberno-English that there is no strict rule on it one way or another.