Translator: Lorcan Walsh Reviewer: Denise RQ
Ireland - a land of myths and legends.
Here in Ireland, we love telling stories.
Legends such as The Children of Lir or The Salmon of Knowledge.
Here's another story: the Irish language is dead.
This same myth has been circulating around the world
for many minority languages.
And this particular one about Irish, or Gaelic as it's known,
started off somewhat as a rumor,
something along the lines of "Irish is a dying language".
And then some scaremongers jumped on board.
They thought this version wasn't sensational enough
and that they'd turn it into a real thriller.
And this is the problem with storytelling.
There's a certain element of poetic license involved.
You can add in a character here and there, maybe kill one off,
and what happens is people latch onto the new version of the story
and it grows wings and travels fast.
And this is why I've received really strange reactions worldwide
when I tell people my PhD studies
were on technology for the Irish language;
because this completely contradicts
their beliefs of Irish being a dead or a dying language.
So many people are caught up in old beliefs
of what the Irish language is about.
That it's only associated with older people in the west of Ireland.
Only spoken by people living in the Gaeltacht, or by language activists.
And this is exactly the myth that I am talking about.
So when people cock their heads sideways and say,
"Irish language technology?
But isn't Irish a dead language?"
I say, "No, it's not,"
and I tell them
about how Irish has jumped onto the social media bandwagon.
That Irish speakers are online,
on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter,
and are being creative and having fun with their language.
That there's been over 1 million tweets in Irish to date.
Here's a heat map
of the Irish language activity on Twitter in Ireland.
So already we can put a stop to this myth of it only being in the west of Ireland.
And what about this map?
These are Irish language conversations on Twitter spanning across continents.
And the same true story can be told
for many minority languages around the world.
So now you might be considering joining in with these conversations,
but what if you're nervous about your writing standards in your language?
Should you let that hold you back?
Well, is doesn't seem to hold people back from tweeting in English,
or French, or any other language for that matter.
And that's the thing about social media:
it's social, and it's relaxed.
The spelling rules are relaxed. Grammar rules are relaxed.
You can shorten words. Spell them phonetically.
And this is often seen on Twitter, where the current 140-character limit
encourages people to be creative and economical with their language.
Which brings me to my research.
So as a computational linguist,
I'm interested in looking a little more closely at languages
with the help of computers.
So last year, while on a Fulbright research visit
to St. Louis University, in the U.S.,
I worked with Professor Kevin Scannell.
And together we looked more closely at Irish tweets.
We wanted to find out just how Irish is being used online.
So what did we do?
Well, we took language processing tools
that have been designed for use with grammatical well-structured Irish text,
and we tested them out on Irish tweets.
And what we wanted to find out was where these tools would fall over.
What challenges would arise?
Here's an example of an Irish tweet
that would pose problems for such technology.
This tweet is from an Irish Gaelic football supporter, and it says,
"an t-am seo an tseachtain seo chugainn,
beidh tú Ag partyáil Le muintir Ráth Daingin!
Hope you're not too scared #upthevillage."
(Laughter)
And what the Irish means is,
"This time next week, you'll be partying with the people of Rathdangan."
So what's going on here?
Basically, people are having fun with their language,
they are being creative.
Digits are being used instead of words or parts of words.
Commas dropped, the verb 'beidh' is spelt b-e-i
because dropping that 'dh'
doesn't actually affect the pronunciation of the word.
And a new word is made up: 'partyáil'.
'áil' is the verbal noun ending in Irish.
If you add this to an English word as a root,
you've got a new verbal form: partying.
And of course, there's the language switching
or code switching at the end.
Now, this of course is just one example tweet.
But we did in fact do an analysis of 1,500 Irish tweets
to get a more comprehensive idea of what's actually going on.
And what we've found is Irish is behaving just like any other language online,
and any other language analyzed in this way.
It's evolving.
Online usage is leading to new linguistic trends emerging.
It's really important to note that we're not talking about a new Irish.
We're talking about a new written variety of the language.
It's a version of Irish that's more accessible
to a broader range of speakers and in particular to learners.
And a recent report shows that the same patterns are emerging
for our neighboring minority languages:
Scots Gaelic, Ulster Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Jèrriais
where established speakers and learners
are coming together and connecting socially online.
And if you think about it, it makes sense.
If you're a speaker of a minority language,
maybe there's nobody in your family who speaks it,
maybe your friends don't speak it,
or maybe you live hundreds, possibly thousands of kilometers away
from that nearest linguistic community.
How do you connect with other speakers?
Well, it's simple. You just go online.
You find a social media platform that suits you better,
and you start to engage with the other linguistic community speakers.
Be creative with your language, have fun with it, and be proud of it.
Finally, the website indigenoustweets.com
provides statistics on minority languages on Twitter, worldwide.
Many of these languages listed on this website
are often referred to as outdated or dying
when in fact, the statistics tell a completely different story.
They show a reality that debunks the myths.
And this is where I feel
that technology and minority languages can go hand in hand.
I strongly believe that technology can be a huge contributing factor
to the survival of minority languages,
and in some cases, maybe even a revival.
So what's the moral of this story?
Don't believe every story that you hear
because it may in fact be a legend.
(Applause)