Irish in Northern Ireland
The Irish language can be a controversial and contentious issue in Northern Ireland. Through its cross-community work, the Trust seeks to stimulate interest in Irish across the political and religious divide, and to provide opportunities to learn and use the language in areas and among communities which are not normally associated with it.
The experiences of contemporary Protestant learners of the language are recorded on the website. Some of the results of this research are available on-line at the trust's website. Other board and staff members have explored the hidden tradition of Protestant involvement with Irish in the past. The Trust seeks to identify obstacles to Protestant and unionist engagement with the language and to raise awareness within the Catholic and nationalist community to the difficulties experienced by learners from other traditions.
Read more about this topic: ULTACH Trust
Famous quotes containing the words northern ireland, irish, northern and/or ireland:
“... in Northern Ireland, if you don’t have basic Christianity, rather than merely religion, all you get out of the experience of living is bitterness.”
—Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
“There is no topic ... more soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)