On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Not widely used as an L2 in all parts of the country. This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Many people who speak Irish can understand some Irish doodle Gaelic but not Welsh because the Celtic languages are divided into two groups.

One group is called the p-Celtic languages, and the other is called the q-Celtic languages. Irish and Scottish Gaelic are q-Celtic languages, and Welsh is a p-Celtic language. Irish has no “yes” or “no” words. There were great poets who wrote in Irish. Their poems became the songs of the people. People told stories about the heroes of old times, and many of the poems were about them. Queen Elizabeth I of England tried to learn Irish, and Christopher Nugent, 9th Baron of Delvin, gave her an Irish primer.

Until the 19th century, most people in Ireland spoke Irish, but that changed after 1801 when Ireland joined Great Britain to form the United Kingdom. Ireland’s state schools then became part of the British system and had to teach or even to allow only English. The Catholic Church also began to discourage Irish. Today, Irish is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, but in practice, English still has a dominant position in government. It is not spoken by most Irish people In day-to-day life outside the Gaeltacht, where it is still the first langage. Howewer, many speak the langage among friends or family, and it must be taught in all schools in the Republic of Ireland. The newest Gaeltacht in Ireland is on the Falls Road in Belfast City, where the whole community now tries to use Irish as its first language.