Contact Irish English

In present-day Ireland there are only a few small remaining enclaves scattered along the western seaboard where Irish is still spoken as a native language in a situation of unbroken historical continuity. Apart from this there is an increasing number of language enthusiasts who speak Irish as a second language and attempt to keep the language alive by using it as much as they can, frequently in an urban environment which is completely English-speaking. In principle, the rural setting just mentioned should be the one in which the language shift scenario of previous centuries (Hickey 1995) is replicated, thus enabling linguists to view the process of language contact and transfer in vivo. Despite this fact there are few studies of contact Irish English today although the Irish language in contact areas has repeatedly been the subject of investigation, e.g. Stenson (1991). This study was carried out on seven informants from the north west of Ireland (Co. Donegal) to see what kinds of /l/ sounds they showed in English. To this end their Irish was investigated. This variety of Irish shows three types of /l/-sounds: a velarized  , a palatalized   and a (lenited) neutral [l]. It turned out that the speakers used the last sound as the realization of English /l/ in all positions (bar before /j/ as in million  ) which tallies with the realization of /l/ in the rest of the country where this was decided a century or two ago.