Is Irish a Language?
Irish, also referred to as Irish Gaelic, is the first and national language of the Republic of Ireland. Of Celtic origin, Irish was once the dominant language of Ireland and spoken by the majority of the population until the 18th century when a shift to English occurred. The increased use of English eventually led to Irish becoming an endangered language with much of the population becoming either bilingual, or fully English speaking over time.
Today, both English and Irish are spoken in Ireland with large counties even speaking Irish as a first language in Cork, Galway, and Kerry. In 2021, Conradh na Gaeilge’s annual study showed that an estimated 1.5 million people in Ireland are confident in their ability to speak Irish, with almost 2 million people stating they are positive they can understand the language, even if they may not be able to speak it.
The Preservation of the Irish Language
Efforts to halt the erosion of Irish has been an on-going focus of the government, putting into place a 20-year strategy to help Ireland become a more bilingual country. The legislation encourages the use of Irish in all aspects of life and has been actively supporting the language since its start in 2010.
As one of the of the national languages of Ireland, Irish is taught in public schools and is a requirement for certain civil-service posts in the country. In 2021, Irish overtook French to become the second most popular language at A-level education in Ireland. Belfast also saw a rise in the number of students attending Irish language schools.
Why Filter Irish?
As the first and official language of Ireland citizens are encouraged to both learn and actively speak Irish. Educational settings where it is taught and used in schools need a filtering solution that supports both English and Irish. This provides seamless protection from inappropriate or harmful online content, regardless of the language that is being used in the classroom. As Irish continues to be a focus in education, with more of the population speaking the language fluently, providing online safety tools that meet specific language needs is essential.
Netsweeper Filters Irish
Irish is just one of the 47 languages the Netsweeper platform supports. Using AI technology, the Netsweeper solution provides the most effective real-time content monitoring, classification, and filtering tools. This ensures users are always protected from inappropriate and malicious content no matter what language is being utilized.
There are no static lists, all categories are populated dynamically by AI. Netsweeper is consistently adding new URLs, including those in Irish, through our Category Name Service (CNS) with over 100 million categorizations per day. Our dynamic CNS is constantly being refined to improve the relevance of what we filter. See our latest category updates here, that have been shared with every single Netsweeper deployment globally.
Learn More
An internet filtering solution that can handle multiple languages is vital, especially in a bilingual setting. Netsweeper ensures that no matter what language is used you remain protected.
Check out our Live Stats page to see our filtering of Irish in action, or to learn more about Netsweeper’s filtering solutions, meet with one of our solutions specialists today!