Irish (Standard Irish: ), or Gaelic ( ), also sometimes known outside Ireland as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century.
Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in areas of Ireland collectively known as the Gaeltacht, in which only 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2016.
It is also spoken by a larger group of habitual but non-traditional speakers, mostly in urban areas where the majority are second-language speakers. A large number of Irish-Americans, over 22,000, reported speaking Irish as their first language at home in the United States, with several times that number claiming "some knowledge" of the language.

The total number of persons (aged 3 and over) in Ireland who claimed they could speak Irish in April 2022 was 1,873,997, representing 40% of respondents, but of these, 472,887 said they never spoke it, while a further 551,993 said they only spoke it within the education system. Linguistic analysis of Irish speakers is therefore based primarily on the number of daily users in Ireland outside the education system, which in 2016 was 20,586 in the Gaeltacht and 53,217 outside it, totalling 73,803. In 2021, in response to the Northern Ireland census, 43,557 said they spoke the language on a daily basis, 26,286 spoke it on a weekly basis, 47,153 spoke it less often than weekly, and 9,758 said they could speak Irish, but never spoke it.

For most of recorded Irish history, Irish was the dominant language of the Irish people, who took it with them to other regions, such as Scotland and the Isle of Man, where Middle Irish gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx. It was also, for a period, spoken widely across Canada, with an estimated 200,000–250,000 daily Canadian speakers of Irish in 1890. On the island of Newfoundland, a unique dialect of Irish developed before falling out of use in the early 20th century.

With a writing system, Ogham, dating back to at least the 4th century AD, which was gradually replaced by Latin script since the 5th century AD, Irish has one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Western Europe. On the island, the language has three major dialects: Munster, Connacht and Ulster. All three have distinctions in their speech and orthography. There is also a "standard written form" devised by a parliamentary commission in the 1950s. The traditional Irish alphabet, a variant of the Latin alphabet with 18 letters, has been succeeded by the standard Latin alphabet (albeit with 7–8 letters used primarily in loanwords).

Irish has constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland, and is also an official language of Northern Ireland and among the official languages of the European Union. The public body Foras na Gaeilge is responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island. Irish has no regulatory body but the standard modern written form is guided by a parliamentary service and new vocabulary by a voluntary committee with university input.

Names

In Irish
In  ("The Official [Written] Standard") the name of the language is , from the South Connacht form, spelled  prior the spelling reform of 1948, which was originally the genitive of , the form used in Classical Gaelic. The modern spelling results from the deletion of the silent  in . Older spellings include   in Classical Gaelic and   in Old Irish. Goidelic, used to refer to the language family, is derived from the Old Irish term.

Endonyms of the language in the various modern Irish dialects include:   in Galway, //  in Mayo and Ulster, and /  in West/Cork Kerry Munster, as well as  in mid and East Kerry/Cork and Waterford Munster to reflect local pronunciation.

 also has a wider meaning, including the Gaelic of Scotland and the Isle of Man, as well as of Ireland. When required by the context, these are distinguished as ,  and  respectively.

In English
In English (including Hiberno-English), the language is usually referred to as Irish, as well as Gaelic and Irish Gaelic. The term Irish Gaelic may be seen when English speakers discuss the relationship between the three Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx). Gaelic is a collective term for the Goidelic languages, and when the context is clear it may be used without qualification to refer to each language individually. When the context is specific but unclear, the term may be qualified, as Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic or Manx Gaelic. Historically the name "Erse" was also sometimes used in Scots and then in English to refer to Irish; as well as Scottish Gaelic.

Goidelic is a synonym of Gaelic, used mainly in linguistic typology and historical linguistics. Goidelic and Brittonic together constitute the Insular Celtic languages.

History

Written Irish is first attested in  inscriptions from the 4th century AD, a stage of the language known as Primitive Irish. These writings have been found throughout Ireland and the west coast of Great Britain. Primitive Irish underwent a change into Old Irish through the 5th century. Old Irish, dating from the 6th century, used the Latin alphabet and is attested primarily in marginalia to Latin manuscripts. During this time, the Irish language absorbed some Latin words, some via Old Welsh, including ecclesiastical terms: examples are  (bishop) from , and  (Sunday, from ).

By the 10th century, Old Irish had evolved into Middle Irish, which was spoken throughout Ireland, Isle of Man and parts of Scotland. It is the language of a large corpus of literature, including the Ulster Cycle. From the 12th century, Middle Irish began to evolve into modern Irish in Ireland, into Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, and into the Manx language in the Isle of Man.

Early Modern Irish, dating from the 13th century, was the basis of the literary language of both Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland. Modern Irish, as attested in the work of such writers as Geoffrey Keating, may be said to date from the 17th century, and was the medium of popular literature from that time on.

From the 18th century on, the language lost ground in the east of the country. The reasons behind this shift were complex but came down to a number of factors:
 Discouragement of its use by the Anglo-Irish administration.
 The Catholic Church's support of English over Irish.
 The spread of bilingualism from the 1750s onwards.

The change was characterised by diglossia (two languages being used by the same community in different social and economic situations) and transitional bilingualism (monoglot Irish-speaking grandparents with bilingual children and monoglot English-speaking grandchildren). By the mid-18th century, English was becoming a language of the Catholic middle class, the Catholic Church and public intellectuals, especially in the east of the country. Increasingly, as the value of English became apparent, parents sanctioned the prohibition of Irish in schools. Increasing interest in  emigrating to the United States and Canada was also a driver, as fluency in English allowed the new immigrants to get jobs in areas other than farming. An estimated one quarter to one third of immigrants during the Great Famine were Irish speakers.

Irish was not marginal to Ireland's modernisation in the 19th century, as is often assumed. In the first half of the century there were still around three million people for whom Irish was the primary language, and their numbers alone made them a cultural and social force. Irish speakers often insisted on using the language in law courts (even when they knew English), and Irish was also common in commercial transactions. The language was heavily implicated in the "devotional revolution" which marked the standardisation of Catholic religious practice and was also widely used in a political context. Down to the time of the Great Famine and even afterwards, the language was in use by all classes, Irish being an urban as well as a rural language.

This linguistic dynamism was reflected in the efforts of certain public intellectuals to counter the decline of the language. At the end of the 19th century, they launched the Gaelic revival in an attempt to encourage the learning and use of Irish, although few adult learners mastered the language. The vehicle of the revival was the Gaelic League (), and particular emphasis was placed on the folk tradition, which in Irish is particularly rich. Efforts were also made to develop journalism and a modern literature.

Although it has been noted that the Catholic Church played a role in the decline of the Irish language before the Gaelic Revival, the Protestant Church of Ireland also made only minor efforts to encourage use of Irish in a religious context. An Irish translation of the Old Testament by Leinsterman , commissioned by Bishop Bedell, was published after 1685 along with a translation of the New Testament. Otherwise, Anglicisation was seen as synonymous with 'civilising' the native Irish. Currently, modern day Irish speakers in the church are pushing for language revival.

It has been estimated that there were around 800,000 monoglot Irish speakers in 1800, which dropped to 320,000 by the end of the famine, and under 17,000 by 1911. Seán Ó hEinirí, of Cill Ghallagáin, County Mayo, who died 26 July 1998, was possibly the last monolingual Irish speaker.

Status and policy

Ireland
Irish is recognised by the Constitution of Ireland as the national and first official language of Ireland (English being the other official language). Despite this, almost all government business and legislative debate is conducted in English.

In 1938, the founder of  (Gaelic League), Douglas Hyde, was inaugurated as the first President of Ireland. The record of his delivering his inaugural Declaration of Office in Roscommon Irish is one of only a few recordings of that dialect.

In the 2016 census, 10.5% of respondents stated that they spoke Irish, either daily or weekly, while over 70,000 people (4.2%) speak it as a habitual daily means of communication.

From the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 (see History of the Republic of Ireland), new appointees to the Civil Service of the Republic of Ireland, including postal workers, tax collectors, agricultural inspectors, Garda Síochána (police), etc., were required to have some proficiency in Irish. By law, a Garda who was addressed in Irish had to respond in Irish as well.

In 1974, in part through the actions of protest organisations like the Language Freedom Movement, the requirement for entrance to the public service was changed to proficiency in just one official language.

Nevertheless, Irish remains a required subject of study in all schools in the Republic that receive public money (see Education in the Republic of Ireland). Teachers in primary schools must also pass a compulsory examination called .  As of 2005, Garda Síochána recruits need a pass in Leaving Certificate Irish or English, and receive lessons in Irish during their two years of training. Official documents of the Irish government must be published in both Irish and English or Irish alone (in accordance with the Official Languages Act 2003, enforced by , the Irish language ombudsman).

The National University of Ireland requires all students wishing to embark on a degree course in the NUI federal system to pass the subject of Irish in the Leaving Certificate or GCE/GCSE examinations. Exemptions are made from this requirement for students who were born or completed primary education outside of Ireland, and students diagnosed with dyslexia.

NUI Galway is required to appoint people who are competent in the Irish language, as long as they are also competent in all other aspects of the vacancy to which they are appointed. This requirement is laid down by the University College Galway Act, 1929 (Section 3). In 2016, the university faced controversy when it announced the appointment of a president who did not speak Irish.  staged protests against this decision.  The following year the university announced that Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, a fluent Irish speaker, would be its 13th president.

For a number of years there has been vigorous debate in political, academic and other circles about the failure of most students in English-medium schools to achieve competence in Irish, even after fourteen years of teaching as one of the three main subjects. The concomitant decline in the number of traditional native speakers has also been a cause of great concern.

In 2007, filmmaker Manchán Magan found few Irish speakers in Dublin, and faced incredulity when trying to get by speaking only Irish in Dublin. He was unable to accomplish some everyday tasks, as portrayed in his documentary No Béarla.

There is, however, a growing body of Irish speakers in urban areas, particularly in Dublin. Many have been educated in schools in which Irish is the language of instruction. Such schools are known as  at primary level. These Irish-medium schools send a much higher proportion of pupils on to third-level education than do English-medium schools. In 2009, a paper suggested that within a generation, non-Gaeltacht habitual users of Irish might typically be members of an urban, middle class, and highly educated minority.

Parliamentary legislation is supposed to be available in both Irish and English but is frequently only available in English. This is notwithstanding that Article 25.4 of the Constitution of Ireland requires that an "official translation" of any law in one official language be provided immediately in the other official language, if not already passed in both official languages.

In November 2016, RTÉ reported that over 2.3 million people worldwide were learning Irish through the Duolingo app. Irish president Michael Higgins officially honoured several volunteer translators for developing the Irish edition, and said the push for Irish language rights remains an "unfinished project".

Gaeltacht

There are rural areas of Ireland where Irish is still spoken daily to some extent as a first language. These regions are known individually and collectively as the Gaeltacht (plural ). While the fluent Irish speakers of these areas, whose numbers have been estimated at 2030,000, are a minority of the total number of fluent Irish speakers, they represent a higher concentration of Irish speakers than other parts of the country and it is only in Gaeltacht areas that Irish continues to be spoken as a community vernacular to some extent.

According to data compiled by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, only 1/4 of households in Gaeltacht areas are fluent in Irish. The author of a detailed analysis of the survey, Donncha Ó hÉallaithe of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, described the Irish language policy followed by Irish governments as a "complete and absolute disaster". The Irish Times, referring to his analysis published in the Irish language newspaper , quoted him as follows: "It is an absolute indictment of successive Irish Governments that at the foundation of the Irish State there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi Irish-speaking areas, but the number now is between 20,000 and 30,000."

In the 1920s, when the Irish Free State was founded, Irish was still a vernacular in some western coastal areas. In the 1930s, areas where more than 25% of the population spoke Irish were classified as Gaeltacht. Today, the strongest Gaeltacht areas, numerically and socially, are those of South Connemara, the west of the Dingle Peninsula, and northwest Donegal, where many residents still use Irish as their primary language. These areas are often referred to as the  (true Gaeltacht), a term originally officially applied to areas where over 50% of the population spoke Irish.

There are larger Gaeltacht regions in County Galway (), including Connemara (), the Aran Islands (), Carraroe () and Spiddal (), on the west coast of County Donegal (), and on the Dingle () and Iveragh Peninsulas () in County Kerry ().

Smaller ones also exist in counties Mayo (), Meath (), Waterford (), and Cork (). Gweedore (), County Donegal, is the largest Gaeltacht parish in Ireland. Irish language summer colleges in the Gaeltacht are attended by tens of thousands of teenagers annually. Students live with Gaeltacht families, attend classes, participate in sports, go to  and are obliged to speak Irish. All aspects of Irish culture and tradition are encouraged.

Policy

Official Languages Act 2003

The Act was passed 14 July 2003 with the main purpose of improving the amount and quality of public services delivered in Irish by the government and other public bodies. Compliance with the Act is monitored by the An Coimisinéir Teanga (Irish Language Commissioner) which was established in 2004 and any complaints or concerns pertaining to the Act are brought to them. There are 35 sections included in the Act all detailing different aspects of the use of Irish in official documentation and communication. Included in these sections are subjects such as Irish language use in official courts, official publications, and placenames. The Act was recently amended in December 2019 in order to strengthen the already preexisting legislation. All changes made took into account data collected from online surveys and written submissions.

Official Languages Scheme 2019–2022
The Official Languages Scheme was enacted 1 July 2019 and is an 18-page document that adheres to the guidelines of the Official Languages Act 2003. The purpose of the Scheme is to provide services through the mediums of Irish and/or English. According to the Department of the Taoiseach, it is meant to "develop a sustainable economy and a successful society, to pursue Ireland's interests abroad, to implement the Government's Programme and to build a better future for Ireland and all her citizens."

20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language 2010–2030

The Strategy was produced on 21 December 2010 and will stay in action until 2030; it aims to target language vitality and revitalization of the Irish language. The 30-page document published by the Government of Ireland details the objectives it plans to work towards in an attempt to preserve and promote both the Irish language and the Gaeltacht. It is divided into four separate phases with the intention of improving 9 main areas of action including:

 "Education"
 "The Gaeltacht"
 "Family Transmission of the Language – Early Intervention"
 "Administration, Services and Community"
 "Media and Technology"
 "Dictionaries"
 "Legislation and Status"
 "Economic Life"
 "Cross-cutting Initiatives"

The general goal for this strategy was to increase the amount of speakers from 83,000 to 250,000 by the end of its run.

Northern Ireland

Before the partition of Ireland in 1921, Irish was recognised as a school subject and as "Celtic" in some third level institutions. Between 1921 and 1972, Northern Ireland had devolved government. During those years the political party holding power in the Stormont Parliament, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), was hostile to the language. The context of this hostility was the use of the language by nationalists. In broadcasting, there was an exclusion on the reporting of minority cultural issues, and Irish was excluded from radio and television for almost the first fifty years of the previous devolved government. After the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the language gradually received a degree of formal recognition in Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, and then, in 2003, by the British government's ratification in respect of the language of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In the 2006 St Andrews Agreement the British government promised to enact legislation to promote the language and in 2022 it approved legislation to recognise Irish as an official language alongside English. The bill received royal assent on 6 December 2022.

The Irish language has often been used as a bargaining chip during government formation in Northern Ireland, prompting protests from organisations and groups such as .

European Parliament
Irish became an official language of the EU on 1 January 2007, meaning that MEPs with Irish fluency can now speak the language in the European Parliament and at committees, although in the case of the latter they have to give prior notice to a simultaneous interpreter in order to ensure that what they say can be interpreted into other languages.

While an official language of the European Union, only co-decision regulations were available until 2022, due to a five-year derogation, requested by the Irish Government when negotiating the language's new official status. The Irish government had committed itself to train the necessary number of translators and interpreters and to bear the related costs. This derogation ultimately came to an end on 1 January 2022, making Irish a fully recognised EU language for the first time in the state's history.

Before Irish became an official language it was afforded the status of treaty language and only the highest-level documents of the EU were made available in Irish.

Outside Ireland

The Irish language was carried abroad in the modern period by a vast diaspora, chiefly to Great Britain and North America, but also to Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.
The first large movements began in the 17th century, largely as a result of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, which saw many Irish sent to the West Indies. Irish emigration to the United States was well established by the 18th century, and was reinforced in the 1840s by thousands fleeing from the Famine. This flight also affected Britain. Up until that time most emigrants spoke Irish as their first language, though English was establishing itself as the primary language. Irish speakers had first arrived in Australia in the late 18th century as convicts and soldiers, and many Irish-speaking settlers followed, particularly in the 1860s. New Zealand also received some of this influx. Argentina was the only non-English-speaking country to receive large numbers of Irish emigrants, and there were few Irish speakers among them.

Relatively few of the emigrants were literate in Irish, but manuscripts in the language were brought to both Australia and the United States, and it was in the United States that the first newspaper to make significant use of Irish was established: . In Australia, too, the language found its way into print. The Gaelic revival, which started in Ireland in the 1890s, found a response abroad, with branches of  being established in all the countries to which Irish speakers had emigrated.

The decline of Irish in Ireland and a slowing of emigration helped to ensure a decline in the language abroad, along with natural attrition in the host countries. Despite this, small groups of enthusiasts continued to learn and cultivate Irish in diaspora countries and elsewhere, a trend which strengthened in the second half of the 20th century. Today the language is taught at tertiary level in North America, Australia and Europe, and Irish speakers outside Ireland contribute to journalism and literature in the language. There are significant Irish-speaking networks in the United States and Canada; figures released for the period 2006–2008 show that 22,279 Irish Americans claimed to speak Irish at home.

The Irish language is also one of the languages of the Celtic League, a non-governmental organisation that promotes self-determination, Celtic identity and culture in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man, known collectively as the Celtic nations.

Irish was spoken as a community language until the early 20th century on the island of Newfoundland, in a form known as Newfoundland Irish. Certain Irish vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features are still used in modern Newfoundland English.

Usage
The 2016 census data shows:The total number of people who answered 'yes' to being able to speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, a slight decrease (0.7 per cent) on the 2011 figure of 1,774,437. This represents 39.8 per cent of respondents compared with 41.4 in 2011... Of the 73,803 daily Irish speakers (outside the education system), 20,586 (27.9%) lived in Gaeltacht areas.

Daily Irish speakers in Gaeltacht areas between 2011 and 2016

In 1996, the three electoral divisions in the State where Irish had the most daily speakers were An Turloch (91%+), Scainimh (89%+), Min an Chladaigh (88%+).

Dialects
Irish is represented by several traditional dialects and by various varieties of "urban" Irish. The latter have acquired lives of their own and a growing number of native speakers. Differences between the dialects make themselves felt in stress, intonation, vocabulary and structural features.

Roughly speaking, the three major dialect areas which survive coincide roughly with the provinces of Connacht (), Munster () and Ulster (). Records of some dialects of Leinster () were made by the Irish Folklore Commission and others. Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, had a form of Irish derived from the Munster Irish of the later 18th century (see Newfoundland Irish).

Connacht

Historically, Connacht Irish represents the westernmost remnant of a dialect area which once stretched from east to west across the centre of Ireland. The strongest dialect of Connacht Irish is to be found in Connemara and the Aran Islands. Much closer to the larger Connacht Gaeltacht is the dialect spoken in the smaller region on the border between Galway () and Mayo (). There are a number of differences between the popular South Connemara form of Irish, the Mid-Connacht/Joyce Country form (on the border between Mayo and Galway) and the Achill and Erris forms in the north of the province.

Features in Connacht Irish differing from the official standard include a preference for verbal nouns ending in , e.g.  instead of , "weakening". The non-standard pronunciation of the  area with lengthened vowels and heavily reduced endings gives it a distinct sound. Distinguishing features of Connacht and Ulster dialect include the pronunciation of word-final  as , rather than as  in Munster. For example,  ("mountain") is pronounced  in Connacht and Ulster as opposed to  in the south. In addition Connacht and Ulster speakers tend to include the "we" pronoun rather than use the standard compound form used in Munster, e.g.  is used for "we were" instead of .

As in Munster Irish, some short vowels are lengthened and others diphthongised before , in monosyllabic words and in the stressed syllable of multisyllabic words where the syllable is followed by a consonant. This can be seen in   "head",   "crooked",   "short",   "sledgehammer",   "foreigner, non-Gael",   "a wonder, a marvel", etc. The form , when occurring at the end of words like '', tends to be pronounced as [iː].

In South Connemara, for example, there is a tendency to replace word-final  with , in word such as ,  and  (pronounced respectively as "shiv," "liv" and "" in the other areas). This placing of the B-sound is also present at the end of words ending in vowels, such as  () and  (). There is also a tendency to omit  in ,  and , a characteristic also of other Connacht dialects. All these pronunciations are distinctively regional.

The pronunciation prevalent in the Joyce Country (the area around Lough Corrib and Lough Mask) is quite similar to that of South Connemara, with a similar approach to the words ,  and  and a similar approach to pronunciation of vowels and consonants but there are noticeable differences in vocabulary, with certain words such as  (difficult) and  being preferred to the more usual  and . Another interesting aspect of this sub-dialect is that almost all vowels at the end of words tend to be pronounced as [iː]:  (other),  (feet) and  (done) tend to be pronounced as ,  and  respectively.

The northern Mayo dialect of Erris () and Achill () is in grammar and morphology essentially a Connacht dialect but shows some similarities to Ulster Irish due to large-scale immigration of dispossessed people following the Plantation of Ulster. For example, words ending - have a much softer sound, with a tendency to terminate words such as  and  with , giving  and  respectively. In addition to a vocabulary typical of other area of Connacht, one also finds Ulster words like  (meaning "to look"),  (painful or sore),  (close),  (hear),  (difficult),  (new), and  (to be able to – i.e. a form similar to ).

Irish President Douglas Hyde was possibly one of the last speakers of the Roscommon dialect of Irish.

Munster

Munster Irish is the dialect spoken in the Gaeltacht areas of the counties of Cork (), Kerry (), and Waterford (). The Gaeltacht areas of Cork can be found in Cape Clear Island () and Muskerry (); those of Kerry lie in  and Iveragh Peninsula; and those of Waterford in Ring () and Old Parish (), both of which together form Gaeltacht na nDéise. Of the three counties, the Irish spoken in Cork and Kerry is quite similar while that of Waterford is more distinct.

Some typical features of Munster Irish are:

 The use of synthetic verbs in parallel with a pronominal subject system, thus "I must" is  in Munster, while other dialects prefer  ( means "I"). "I was" and "you were" is  and  in Munster but more commonly  and  in other dialects. These are strong tendencies, and the personal forms bhíos etc. are used in the West and North, particularly when the words are last in the clause.
 Use of independent/dependent forms of verbs that are not included in the Standard. For example, "I see" in Munster is , which is the independent form; Ulster Irish also uses a similar form, , whereas "I do not see" is ,  being the dependent form, which is used after particles such as  ("not").  is replaced by  in the Standard. Similarly, the traditional form preserved in Munster  "I give"/ is / in the Standard;  I get/ is /.
 When before  and so on, in monosyllabic words and in the stressed syllable of multisyllabic words where the syllable is followed by a consonant, some short vowels are lengthened while others are diphthongised, in   "head",   "crooked",   "short",   "sledgehammer",   "foreigner, non-Gael",   "a wonder, a marvel",   "companion, mate", etc.
 A copular construction involving  "it" is frequently used. Thus "I am an Irish person" can be said  and  in Munster; there is a subtle difference in meaning, however, the first choice being a simple statement of fact, while the second brings emphasis onto the word Éireannach. In effect the construction is a type of "fronting".
 Both masculine and feminine words are subject to lenition after  (/) "in the",  "of the" and  "to/for the" : , "in the shop", compared to the Standard  (the Standard lenites only feminine nouns in the dative in these cases).
 Eclipsis of  after : , "in the farm", instead of .
 Eclipsis of  and  after preposition + singular article, with all prepositions except after ,  and :  "on the house",  "at the door".
 Stress is generally on the second syllable of a word when the first syllable contains a short vowel, and the second syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong, or is -, e.g.  is pronounced [ciəˈɾˠaːn̪ˠ] opposed to [ˈciəɾˠaːn̪ˠ] in Connacht and Ulster.

Ulster

Ulster Irish is the dialect spoken in the Gaeltacht regions of Donegal. These regions contain all of Ulster's communities where Irish has been spoken in an unbroken line back to when the language was the dominant language of Ireland. The Irish-speaking communities in other parts of Ulster are a result of language revival – English-speaking families deciding to learn Irish. Census data shows that 4,130 people speak it at home.

Linguistically, the most important of the Ulster dialects today is that which is spoken, with slight differences, in both Gweedore ( = Inlet of Streaming Water) and The Rosses ().

Ulster Irish sounds quite different from the other two main dialects. It shares several features with southern dialects of Scottish Gaelic and Manx, as well as having many characteristic words and shades of meanings. However, since the demise of those Irish dialects spoken natively in what is today Northern Ireland, it is probably an exaggeration to see present-day Ulster Irish as an intermediary form between Scottish Gaelic and the southern and western dialects of Irish. Northern Scottish Gaelic has many non-Ulster features in common with Munster Irish.

One noticeable trait of Ulster Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx is the use of the negative particle  in place of the Munster and Connacht . Though southern Donegal Irish tends to use  more than cha(n), cha(n) has almost ousted  in northernmost dialects (e.g. Rosguill and Tory Island), though even in these areas  "is not" is more common than  or . Another noticeable trait is the pronunciation of the first person singular verb ending  as , also common to Man and Scotland (Munster/Connacht  "I walk", Ulster ).

Leinster
Down to the early 19th century and even later, Irish was spoken in all twelve counties of Leinster. The evidence furnished by placenames, literary sources and recorded speech indicates that there was no Leinster dialect as such. Instead, the main dialect used in the province was represented by a broad central belt stretching from west Connacht eastwards to the Liffey estuary and southwards to Wexford, though with many local variations. Two smaller dialects were represented by the Ulster speech of counties Meath and Louth, which extended as far south as the Boyne valley, and a Munster dialect found in Kilkenny and south Laois.

The main dialect had characteristics which survive today only in the Irish of Connacht. It typically placed the stress on the first syllable of a word, and showed a preference (found in placenames) for the pronunciation  where the standard spelling is . The word  (hill) would therefore be pronounced . Examples are the placenames Crooksling () in County Dublin and Crukeen () in Carlow. East Leinster showed the same diphthongisation or vowel lengthening as in Munster and Connacht Irish in words like  (hole),  (monastery),  (wood),  (head),  (crooked) and  (crowd). A feature of the dialect was the pronunciation of , which generally became [eː] in east Leinster (as in Munster), and [iː] in the west (as in Connacht).

Early evidence regarding colloquial Irish in east Leinster is found in The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge (1547), by the English physician and traveller Andrew Borde. The illustrative phrases he uses include the following:

The Pale

The Pale () was an area around late medieval Dublin under the control of the English government. By the late 15th century it consisted of an area along the coast from Dalkey, south of Dublin, to the garrison town of Dundalk, with an inland boundary encompassing Naas and Leixlip in the Earldom of Kildare and Trim and Kells in County Meath to the north. In this area of "Englyshe tunge" English had never actually been a dominant language – and was moreover a relatively late comer; the first colonisers were Normans who spoke Norman French, and before these Norse. The Irish language had always been the language of the bulk of the population. An English official remarked of the Pale in 1515 that "all the common people of the said half counties that obeyeth the King's laws, for the most part be of Irish birth, of Irish habit and of Irish language".

With the strengthening of English cultural and political control, language change began to occur but this did not become clearly evident until the 18th century. Even then, in the decennial period 1771–81, the percentage of Irish speakers in Meath was at least 41%. By 1851 this had fallen to less than 3%.

General decline
English expanded strongly in Leinster in the 18th century but Irish speakers were still numerous. In the decennial period 1771–81 certain counties had estimated percentages of Irish speakers as follows (though the estimates are likely to be too low):

Kilkenny 57%
Louth 57%
Longford 22%
Westmeath 17%

The language saw its most rapid initial decline in counties Dublin, Kildare, Laois, Wexford, and Wicklow. In recent years, County Wicklow has been noted as having the lowest percentage of Irish speakers of any county in Ireland, with only 0.14% of its population claiming to have passable knowledge of the language. The proportion of Irish-speaking children in Leinster went down as follows: 17% in the 1700s, 11% in the 1800s, 3% in the 1830s, and virtually none in the 1860s. The Irish census of 1851 showed that there were still a number of older speakers in County Dublin. Sound recordings were made between 1928 and 1931 of some of the last speakers in Omeath, County Louth (now available in digital form). The last known traditional native speaker in Omeath, and in Leinster as a whole, was Annie O'Hanlon (née Dobbin), who died in 1960. Her dialect was, in fact, a branch of the Irish of south-east Ulster.

Urban use from the middle ages to the 19th century
Irish was spoken as a community language in Irish towns and cities down to the 19th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was widespread even in Dublin and the Pale. The English administrator William Gerard (1518–1581) commented as follows: "All English, and the most part with delight, even in Dublin, speak Irish," while the Old English historian Richard Stanihurst (1547–1618) lamented that "When their posterity became not altogether so wary in keeping, as their ancestors were valiant in conquering, the Irish language was free dennized in the English Pale: this canker took such deep root, as the body that before was whole and sound, was by little and little festered, and in manner wholly putrified".

The Irish of Dublin, situated as it was between the east Ulster dialect of Meath and Louth to the north and the Leinster-Connacht dialect further south, may have reflected the characteristics of both in phonology and grammar. In County Dublin itself the general rule was to place the stress on the initial vowel of words. With time it appears that the forms of the dative case took over the other case endings in the plural (a tendency found to a lesser extent in other dialects). In a letter written in Dublin in 1691 we find such examples as the following:  (accusative case, the standard form being ),  (accusative case, the standard form being ) and  (genitive case, the standard form being ).

English authorities of the Cromwellian period, aware that Irish was widely spoken in Dublin, arranged for its official use. In 1655 several local dignitaries were ordered to oversee a lecture in Irish to be given in Dublin. In March 1656 a converted Catholic priest, Séamas Corcy, was appointed to preach in Irish at Bride's parish every Sunday, and was also ordered to preach at Drogheda and Athy. In 1657 the English colonists in Dublin presented a petition to the Municipal Council complaining that in Dublin itself "there is Irish commonly and usually spoken".

There is contemporary evidence of the use of Irish in other urban areas at the time. In 1657 it was found necessary to have an Oath of Abjuration (rejecting the authority of the Pope) read in Irish in Cork so that people could understand it.

Irish was sufficiently strong in early 18th century Dublin to be the language of a coterie of poets and scribes led by Seán and Tadhg Ó Neachtain, both poets of note. Scribal activity in Irish persisted in Dublin right through the 18th century. An outstanding example was Muiris Ó Gormáin (Maurice Gorman), a prolific producer of manuscripts who advertised his services (in English) in Faulkner's Dublin Journal. There were still an appreciable number of Irish speakers in County Dublin at the time of the 1851 census.

In other urban centres the descendants of medieval Anglo-Norman settlers, the so-called Old English, were Irish-speaking or bilingual by the 16th century. The English administrator and traveller Fynes Moryson, writing in the last years of the 16th century, said that "the English Irish and the very citizens (excepting those of Dublin where the lord deputy resides) though they could speak English as well as we, yet commonly speak Irish among themselves, and were hardly induced by our familiar conversation to speak English with us". In Galway, a city dominated by Old English merchants and loyal to the Crown up to the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1653), the use of the Irish language had already provoked the passing of an Act of Henry VIII (1536), ordaining as follows:

Item, that every inhabitant within oure said towne [Galway] endeavour themselfes to speake English, and to use themselfes after the English facon; and, speciallye, that you, and every one of you, doe put your children to scole, to lerne to speke English...

The demise of native cultural institutions in the seventeenth century saw the social prestige of Irish diminish, and the gradual Anglicisation of the middle classes followed. The census of 1851 showed, however, that the towns and cities of Munster still had significant Irish-speaking populations. Much earlier, in 1819, James McQuige, a veteran Methodist lay preacher in Irish, wrote: "In some of the largest southern towns, Cork, Kinsale and even the Protestant town of Bandon, provisions are sold in the markets, and cried in the streets, in Irish". Irish speakers constituted over 40% of the population of Cork even in 1851.

Modern urban usage
The late 18th and 19th centuries saw a reduction in the number of Dublin's Irish speakers, in keeping with the trend elsewhere. This continued until the end of the 19th century, when the Gaelic revival saw the creation of a strong Irish–speaking network, typically united by various branches of the , and accompanied by renewed literary activity. By the 1930s Dublin had a lively literary life in Irish.

Urban Irish has been the beneficiary, from the last decades of the 20th century, of a rapidly expanding system of , teaching entirely through Irish. As of 2019 there are 37 such primary schools in Dublin alone.

It has been suggested that Ireland's towns and cities are acquiring a critical mass of Irish speakers, reflected in the expansion of Irish language media. Many are younger speakers who, after encountering Irish at school, made an effort to acquire fluency, while others have been educated through Irish and some have been raised with Irish. Those from an English-speaking background are now often described as  ("new speakers") and use whatever opportunities are available (festivals, "pop-up" events) to practise or improve their Irish.

It has been suggested that the comparative standard is still the Irish of the Gaeltacht, but other evidence suggests that young urban speakers take pride in having their own distinctive variety of the language. A comparison of traditional Irish and urban Irish shows that the distinction between broad and slender consonants, which is fundamental to Irish phonology and grammar, is not fully or consistently observed in urban Irish. This and other changes make it possible that urban Irish will become a new dialect or even, over a long period, develop into a creole (i.e. a new language) distinct from Gaeltacht Irish. It has also been argued that there is a certain elitism among Irish speakers, with most respect being given to the Irish of native Gaeltacht speakers and with "Dublin" (i.e. urban) Irish being under-represented in the media. This, however, is paralleled by a failure among some urban Irish speakers to acknowledge grammatical and phonological features essential to the structure of the language.

Standardisation

There is no single official standard for pronouncing the Irish language. Certain dictionaries, such as , provide a single pronunciation. Online dictionaries such as Foclóir Béarla-Gaeilge provide audio files in the three major dialects. The differences between dialects are considerable, and have led to recurrent difficulties in conceptualising a "standard Irish." In recent decades contacts between speakers of different dialects have become more frequent and the differences between the dialects are less noticeable.

 ("The Official Standard"), often shortened to , is a standard for the spelling and grammar of written Irish, developed and used by the Irish government. Its rules are followed by most schools in Ireland, though schools in and near Irish-speaking regions also use the local dialect. It was published by the translation department of  in 1953 and updated in 2012 and 2017.

Phonology

In pronunciation, Irish most closely resembles its nearest relatives, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. One notable feature is that consonants (except ) come in pairs, one "broad" (velarised, pronounced with the back of the tongue pulled back towards the soft palate) and one "slender" (palatalised, pronounced with the middle of the tongue pushed up towards the hard palate). While broad–slender pairs are not unique to Irish (being found, for example, in Russian), in Irish they have a grammatical function.

Diphthongs: .

Syntax and morphology

Irish is a fusional, VSO, nominative-accusative language. Irish is neither verb nor satellite framed, and makes liberal use of deictic verbs.

Nouns decline for 3 numbers: singular, dual (only in conjunction with the number  "two"), plural; 2 genders: masculine, feminine; and 4 cases: nomino-accusative (), vocative (), genitive (), and prepositional-locative (), with fossilised traces of the older accusative. Adjectives agree with nouns in number, gender, and case. Adjectives generally follow nouns, though some precede or prefix nouns. Demonstrative adjectives have proximal, medial, and distal forms. The prepositional-locative case is called the dative by convention, though it originates in the Proto-Celtic ablative.

Verbs conjugate for 3 tenses: past, present, future; 2 aspects: perfective, imperfective; 2 numbers: singular, plural; 4 moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; 2 relative forms, the present and future relative; and in some verbs, independent and dependent forms. Verbs conjugate for 3 persons and an impersonal form which is actor-free; the 3rd person singular acts as a person-free personal form that can be followed or otherwise refer to any person or number.

There are two verbs for "to be", one for inherent qualities with only two forms,  "present" and  "past" and "conditional", and one for transient qualities, with a full complement of forms except for the verbal adjective. The two verbs share the one verbal noun.

Irish verb formation employs a mixed system during conjugation, with both analytic and synthetic methods employed depending on tense, number, mood and person. For example, in the official standard, present tense verbs have conjugated forms only in the 1st person and autonomous forms (i.e.  'I praise',  'we praise',  'is praised, one praises' ), whereas all other persons are conveyed analytically (i.e.  'he praises',  'you  praise'). The ratio of analytic to synthetic forms in a given verb paradigm varies between the various tenses and moods. The conditional, imperative and past habitual forms prefer synthetic forms in most persons and numbers, whereas the subjunctive, past, future and present forms prefer mostly analytical forms.

The meaning of the passive voice is largely conveyed through the autonomous verb form, however there also exist other structures analogous to the passival and resultative constructions. There are also a number of preverbal particles marking the negative, interrogative, subjunctive, relative clauses, etc. There is a verbal noun and verbal adjective. Verb forms are highly regular, many grammars recognise only 11 irregular verbs.

Prepositions inflect for person and number. Different prepositions govern different cases. In Old and Middle Irish,
prepositions governed different cases depending on intended semantics; this has disappeared in Modern Irish except in fossilised form.

Irish has no verb to express having; instead, the word  ("at", etc.) is used in conjunction with the transient "be" verb :

 "I have a book." (Literally, "there is a book at me", cf. Russian У меня есть книга, Finnish minulla on kirja, French le livre est à moi)
 "You (singular) have a book."
 "He has a book."
 "She has a book."
 "We have a book."
 "You (plural) have a book."
 "They have a book."

Numerals have three forms: abstract, general and ordinal. The numbers from 2 to 10 (and these in combination with higher numbers) are rarely used for people, numeral nominals being used instead:

 "Two."
 "Two books."
 "Two people, a couple",  "Two men",  "Two women".
,  (free variation) "Second."

Irish has both decimal and vigesimal systems:

10:

20:

30: vigesimal – ; decimal –

40: v. ; d.

50: v. ; d.  (also:  "half-hundred")

60: v. ; d.

70: v. ; d.

80: v. ; d.

90: v. ; d.

100: v. ; d.

A number such as 35 has various forms:

 "15 and 20"

 "5 and 30"

 "15 on 20"

 "5 on 30"

 "15 of 20 (genitive)"

 "5 of 30 (genitive)"

 "20 and 15"

 "30 and 5"

The latter is most commonly used in mathematics.

Initial mutations

In Irish, there are two classes of initial consonant mutations, which express grammatical relationship and meaning in verbs, nouns and adjectives:

 Lenition () describes the change of stops into fricatives. Indicated in Gaelic type by a  (an overdot) written above the consonant, it is shown in Roman type by adding an .
  "throw!" –  "I threw" (lenition as a past-tense marker, caused by the particle , now generally omitted)
  "requirement" –  "lack of the requirement" (lenition marking the genitive case of a masculine noun)
  "John" –  "John!" (lenition as part of the vocative case, the vocative lenition being triggered by , the vocative marker before )
 Eclipsis () covers the voicing of voiceless stops, and nasalisation of voiced stops.
  "Father" –  "our Father"
  "start",  "at the start"
  "Galway" –  "in Galway"

Mutations are often the only way to distinguish grammatical forms. For example, the only non-contextual way to distinguish possessive pronouns "her", "his" and "their", is through initial mutations since all meanings are represented by the same word .

 his shoe –  (lenition)
 their shoe –  (eclipsis)
 her shoe –  (unchanged)

Due to initial mutation, prefixes, clitics, suffixes, root inflection, ending morphology, elision, sandhi, epenthesis, and assimilation; the beginning, core, and end of words can each change radically and even simultaneously depending on context.

Orthography

A native writing system, Ogham, was used to write Primitive Irish and Old Irish until Latin script was introduced in the 5th century CE. Since the introduction of Latin script, the main typeface used to write Irish was Gaelic type until it was replaced by Roman type during the mid-20th century.

The traditional Irish alphabet () consists of 18 letters: ; it does not contain . However contemporary Irish uses the full Latin alphabet, with the previously unused letter used in modern loanwords;  occurs in a small number of (mainly onomatopoeic) native words and colloquialisms.

Vowels may be accented with an acute accent (; Irish and Hiberno-English:  "long (sign)"), but it is ignored for purposes of alphabetisation. It is used, among other conventions, to marks long vowels, e.g.  is  and  is .

The overdot ( "dot of lenition",  "struck", or  "lenition") was used in traditional orthography to indicate lenition; An Caighdeán uses a following  for this purpose.

The use of Gaelic type and the overdot today is restricted to when a traditional style is consciously being used, e.g.  on the Irish Defence Forces cap badge (see above). Extending the use of the overdot to Roman type would theoretically have the advantage of making Irish texts significantly shorter, e.g.  "you (pl.) will get" would become .

Spelling reform
Around the time of the Second World War, Séamas Daltún, in charge of  (The Translation Department of the Irish government), issued his own guidelines about how to standardise Irish spelling and grammar. This de facto standard was subsequently approved by the State and developed into , which simplified and standardised the orthography and grammar by removing inter-dialectal silent letters and simplifying vowel combinations. Where multiple versions existed in different dialects for the same word, one was selected, for example:
  →  "cook"
  →  "food"
  /  /  /  /  /  /  →  "Irish language"

 does not reflect all dialects to the same degree, e.g.   "hard",   "bed", and   "beach" were standardised as , , and  despite the reformed spellings only reflecting South Connacht realisations , failing to represent the other dialectal realisations  (in Mayo and Ulster) or  (in Munster), which were previously represented by the pre-reformed spellings. For this reason, the pre-reform spellings are used by some speakers to reflect the dialectal pronunciations.

Other examples include the genitive of  "food" (; pre-reform ) and  "life, world" (; pre-reform ), realised  and  in Munster, reflecting the pre-Caighdeán spellings  and , which were standardised as  and  despite not representing the Munster pronunciations.

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

See also

 , Anglicisms in Irish
 , a course in basic spoken Irish
 Comparison of Scottish Gaelic and Irish
 , Irish language Society
 Dictionary of the Irish Language
 Fáinne, a lapel pin for Irish speakers
 Goidelic substrate hypothesis
 Hiberno-Latin, a variety of Medieval Latin used in Irish monasteries. It included Greek, Hebrew and Celtic neologisms.
 Irish language outside Ireland
 Irish name and Place names in Ireland
 Irish words used in the English language
 Irish, a subject of the Junior Cycle examination in Secondary schools in Ireland
 List of artists who have released Irish-language songs
 List of English words of Irish origin
 List of Ireland-related topics
 List of Irish-language given names
 List of Irish-language media
 Modern literature in Irish
 Status of the Irish language, a detailed account of the current state of the language.

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

 Caerwyn Williams, J.E. & Ní Mhuiríosa, Máirín (ed.). . An Clóchomhar Tta 1979.
 McCabe, Richard A.. Spenser's Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference. Oxford University Press 2002. .
 Hickey, Raymond. The Dialects of Irish: Study of a Changing Landscape. Walter de Gruyter, 2011. .
 Hickey, Raymond. The Sound Structure of Modern Irish. De Gruyter Mouton 2014. .
 De Brún, Pádraig. Scriptural Instruction in the Vernacular: The Irish Society and its Teachers 1818–1827. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 2009.
 Doyle, Aidan, A History of the Irish Language: From the Norman Invasion to Independence, Oxford, 2015.
 Fitzgerald, Garrett, 'Estimates for baronies of minimal level of Irish-speaking amongst successive decennial cohorts, 117–1781 to 1861–1871,' Volume 84, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 1984.
 Garvin, Tom, Preventing the Future: Why was Ireland so poor for so long?, Gill and MacMillan, 2005.
 Hindley, Reg (1991, new ed.). The Death of the Irish Language: A Qualified Obituary. Routledge.
 McMahon, Timothy G.. Grand Opportunity: The Gaelic Revival and Irish Society, 1893–1910. Syracuse University Press 2008.
 Ó Gráda, Cormac. '' in Dublin Review of Books, Issue 34, 6 May 2013:
 Kelly, James & Mac Murchaidh, Ciarán (eds.). Irish and English: Essays on the Linguistic and Cultural Frontier 1600–1900. Four Courts Press 2012.
 Ní Mhunghaile, Lesa. 'An Eighteenth Century Irish scribe's private library: Muiris Ó Gormáin's books' in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Volume 110C, 2010, pp. 239–276.
 Ní Mhuiríosa, Máirín. '' in , ed. Seán Ó Mórdha.  1981.
 Ó hÓgáin, Dáithí. Labhrann Laighnigh: Téacsanna agus Cainteanna ó Shean-Chúige Laighean. Coiscéim 2011.
 Ó Laoire, Muiris. Language Use and Language Attitudes in Ireland in Multilingualism in European Bilingual Contexts : Language Use and Attitudes, ed. David Lasagabaster and Ángel Huguet. Multilingual Matters Ltd. 2007.
 Shibakov, Alexey. Irish Word Forms / Irische Wortformen. epubli 2017.
 Williams, Nicholas. 'Na Canúintí a Theacht chun Solais' in , ed. Kim McCone and others. Maigh Nuad 1994.

External links

 Discover Irish
 "Learning Irish?," BBC
  programmes
 Irish Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)

Grammar and pronunciation
 Learn Irish Grammar with audio and pronunciation
  Magazine – Irish Gaelic Arts, Culture, And History Alive Worldwide Today
 Trinity College Dublin The Irish Language Synthesiser

Dictionaries
  – Dictionaries and terminology resource
 General Gaelic Dictionaries

Languages attested from the 4th century
Fusional languages
Goidelic languages
Languages of Northern Ireland
Languages of Ireland
Verb–subject–object languages
Vertical vowel systems
Languages of the Republic of Ireland


User model may refer to:
User modeling
User interface modeling

See also
Adaptive hypermedia
Web personalisation
 User modeling
 User profile


Gordon Chin or Chin Shi-wen (; born 1957) is a Taiwanese composer and conductor. He is a member of the faculty of National Taiwan Normal University. He earned his doctoral degree at the Eastman School of Music under Christopher Rouse and Samuel Adler. As one of Taiwan's most prolific composers, his works have been performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, as well as by ensembles in Tokyo (Euodia Orchestra), France (Ensemble 2e2m), the International Sejong Soloists (United States), and many others. The Los Angeles Times has called him a "confident master of the Western modernistic large orchestral idiom used for dramatic rather than abstract purposes." Chin is now the music director of the Yinqi Chorus & Orchestra.

References

External links
Official bio at his university
Bio from the Naxos Website

Living people
Taiwanese composers
People from Yunlin County
Eastman School of Music alumni
Academic staff of the National Taiwan Normal University
1957 births
20th-century classical composers
20th-century conductors (music)
20th-century Taiwanese musicians
20th-century male musicians
21st-century classical composers
21st-century conductors (music)
21st-century Taiwanese musicians
21st-century male musicians


Saint-Urbain is a parish municipality located in the Charlevoix Regional County Municipality, in Capitale-Nationale region, in Quebec, Canada.

The municipality lies along Quebec Route 381 at the intersection with Quebec Route 138.

History
Saint-Urbain was one of the localities affected by the 1925 Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake.

Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Saint-Urbain had a population of  living in  of its  total private dwellings, a change of  from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of  in 2021.

Population trend:
 Population in 2011: 1474 (2006 to 2011 population change: 1.8%)
 Population in 2006: 1448
 Population in 2001: 1430
 Population in 1996: 1528
 Population in 1991: 1599

Mother tongue:
 English as first language: 0%
 French as first language: 100%
 English and French as first language: 0%
 Other as first language: 0%

People born in Saint Urbain
 Onésime Gauthier (1834-1886), a Canadian politician
 Joseph-Arsène Bonnier (1879–1962), a Canadian politician
Alice Vinette / Sister Marie-Jocelyne (1894-1989), composer

Media
Television :
 CIMT-DT
 CKRT-DT

See also
 Rivière du Gouffre
 Rivière du Gouffre Sud-Ouest
 Le Petit Bras (Le Gros Bras)
 Rivière des Monts
 Le Gros Bras (Gouffre River tributary)
 Remy River
 List of municipalities in Quebec

References

External links

Parish municipalities in Quebec
Incorporated places in Capitale-Nationale


Solar longitude, commonly abbreviated as Ls, is the ecliptic longitude of the Sun, i.e. the position of the Sun on the celestial sphere along the ecliptic. It is also an effective measure of the position of the Earth (or any other Sun-orbiting body) in its orbit around the Sun, usually taken as zero at the moment of the vernal equinox. Since it is based on how far the Earth has moved in its orbit since the equinox, it is a measure of what time of the tropical year (the year of seasons) the planet is in, but without the inaccuracies of a calendar date, which is perturbed by leap years and calendar imperfections. Its independence from a calendar also allows it to be used to tell the time of year on other planets, such as Mars.

Solar longitude does not increase linearly with time, the deviation being larger the greater the eccentricity of the orbit. For instance, here are the dates for multiples of 90° solar longitude on Mars in the mid 1950s:

Of meteor showers
Solar longitude is especially used in the field of meteor showers, because a particular meteor shower is caused by a stream of small particles very close to the elliptical orbit of a comet, or former comet. This means that the shower occurs when Earth reaches a particular point in its own orbit, designated by the solar longitude. For example, after passing the March equinox, the solar longitude (λ☉) of the April Lyrids is 32°.

The value of the solar longitude, like any ecliptic longitude, depends on the epoch being used. The solar longitude for a given meteor shower would therefore not be constant if the current date were used as the epoch. For this reason, a standard epoch is used, usually J2000.

Of Mars

The Martian year can be divided into 12 Martian months of unequal duration, with the breakpoints being at solar longitudes that are multiples of 30°.

See also
 Celestial coordinate system
 Ecliptic
 Ecliptic pole, where the ecliptic latitude is ±90°
 Equinox

References

Astronomy
Astronomical coordinate systems


Faecalibacterium is a genus of bacteria. The genus contains several species including Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Faecalibacterium butyricigenerans, Faecalibacterium longum, Faecalibacterium duncaniae, Faecalibacterium hattorii, and Faecalibacterium gallinarum. Its first known species, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (renamed as Faecalibacterium duncaniae) is gram-positive, mesophilic, rod-shaped, and anaerobic, and is one of the most abundant and important commensal bacteria of the human gut microbiota. It is non-spore forming and non-motile. These bacteria produce butyrate and other short-chain fatty acids through the fermentation of dietary fiber. The production of butyrate makes them an important member of the gut microbiota, fighting against inflammation.

History
Formerly considered to be a member of Fusobacterium, the bacterium is named in honor of German bacteriologist Otto Prausnitz. In 2002, it was proposed to be reclassified as its own genus, Faecalibacterium, containing the species Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, as phylogenetic analysis from isolates showed it to be only distantly related to Fusobacterium, and a closer member of Clostridium cluster IV. The bacterium is a gram-negative bacteria, as first classified to the Fusobacterium, however it stains as a gram-positive bacteria. This can be alluded to the fact that it lacks lipopolysaccharides on its outer membrane, so it stains more closely to gram-positive bacteria, than to gram-negative.

Genetics
Faecalibacterium prausnitzii has a genome 2,868,932 bp long and has a GC-content of 56.9%. The bacterium has been found to have 2,707 coding sequences, including 77 RNAs encoding genes. 128 metabolic pathways have been reconstructed, as well as 27 protein complexes and 64 tRNAs. Phylogenetically, the strains of F. prausnitzii compose phylogroups I and II. Most of the new isolates of this species isolated by Muhammad Tanweer Khan belong to phylogroup II. A protein produced by this bacterium has been linked to anti-inflammatory effects.

Faecalibacterium prausnitzii in laboratory conditions
Faecalibacterium prausnitzii is strictry anaerobic, making it a very difficult bacteria to culture in laboratory conditions. However, there are certain conditions and media, which make it possible to culture even outside of the intestine. The rich medium YCFA is very suitable for the growth of this bacteria in anaerobic conditions. Another media suitable for the growth of F. prausnitzii is YBHI. Any liquid media or agar plates should be pretreated beforehand for 24 hours in an anaerobic chamber, to ensure they are completely anaerobic.

Clinical relevance
In healthy adults, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii represent more than 5% of the bacteria in the intestine, making it one of the most common gut bacteria. It has anti-inflammatory properties and may improve the imbalance in intestinal bacteria that leads to dysbiosis. It is one of the main producers of butyrate in the intestine. Since butyrate inhibits the production of NF-kB and IFN-y, both involved in the pro-inflmmatory response, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii acts as an anti-inflammatory gut bacterium. By blocking the NF-kB pathway, F. prausnitzii indirectly inhibts the production of the pro-inflammatory IL-8, secreted by the intestinal epithelial cells. Other research has shown that there is a correlation between high populations of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, low IL-12 abundance, and higher IL-10 production. The upregulated IL-10 inhibts the secretion of IFN-y, TNF-alpha, IL-6, and IL-12, which are all pro-inflammatory cytokines. Apart from butyrate, F. prausnitzii produce formate and D-lactate as byproducts of fermentation of glucose and acetate. Lower than usual levels of F. prausnitzii in the intestines have been associated with Crohn's disease, obesity, asthma and major depressive disorder, and higher than usual levels have been associated with psoriasis. Faecalibacterium prausnitzii can improve gut barrier function. Supernatant of F. prausnitzii has been shown to improve the gut barrier by affecting the permeability of epithelial cells. Another way that F. prausnitzii improves the gut barrier is by improving the permiability and the expression of tightly bound proteins - e-cadherin and occludin. Both of them increase the tight junctions between cells, strengthen the gut barrier and alleviate inflammation.

Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and other bacteria
Studies show that F. prausnitzii interacts with other bacteria, which affects its butyrate production, and survival. When F. prausnitzii is cultured with Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, it produces more butyric acid than standing alone, F. prausnitzii also benefits from growing with certain other bacteria. For example, in order to survive in the gut environment, it requires certain bacteria to be preexisting. B. thetaiotaomicron and Escherichia coli are needed to create a suitable environment for F. prausnitzii by reducing the redox potential and alter the composition of the nutrients.

Inflammatory bowel disease
In Crohn's disease, as of 2015 most studies (with one exception) found reduced levels of F. prausnitzii; this has been found in both fecal and mucosal samples. The lower abundance of these bacteria is not only associated to the chance of developing IBD, but also to the chance of relapsing after a successful therapy. People with lower abundance are six times more likely to relapse in the future. However, it is a fastidious organism sensitive to oxygen and difficult to deliver to the intestine.

Exclusive enteral nutrition, which is known to induce remission in Crohn's, has been found to reduce F. prausnitzii in responders. This could be due to the lack of specific nutrients, that the bacteria need to survive.

Biomarker relevance
F. prausnitzii can also serve as a biomarker discriminating between different intestinal inflammatory conditions. It is a good biomarker to diffferentiate between Crohn's disease and colorectal cancer. An even better biomarker is F. prausnitzii in comparison to E. coli as a complementary indicator (F-E index). This index serves really well in differentiating between colorectal cancer and ulcerative colitis.

Combining both the host serological data plus microbiological indicators could serve as good biomarker, since it has been reported that Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis can be differentiated based on monitoring of F. prausnitzii in conjunction with leukocyte count.

References

Eubacteriales
Monotypic bacteria genera


Hamsterley Hall is an 18th-century English country house at Hamsterley, Rowlands Gill, County Durham, England. It is a Grade II* listed building.

The estate at Hamsterley was given, in 1762, by Sir John Swinburne Bt to his younger brother Henry Swinburne. In 1769, Henry carried out substantial alterations to the then existing house to create the present two-story, four-bayed castellated Gothic Revival-style mansion.

Swinburne died in 1803 and in 1806 the property was sold to Anthony Surtees. His son Robert Smith Surtees, a novelist, acquired the estate in 1838. He was High Sheriff of Durham in 1856. He died in 1864, leaving his estate to his daughter Eleanor, who married John Gage Prendergast Vereker, 5th Viscount Gort in 1885. Their first son John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort VC was succeeded in 1946 by his brother Standish Vereker, 7th Viscount MC who lived at Hamsterley until his death in 1975.

References
  Newcastle University:SINE, photographs and English Heritage description of listed building
 A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland' Sir Bernard Burke 4thEd, Pt2(1863) p1460 Surtees of Hamsterley. Google Books

Grade II* listed buildings in County Durham
Country houses in County Durham
History of County Durham


Wallal is the location of a bore in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
The bore is located  from the Great Northern Highway between  Port Hedland and Broome and has an elevation of . The nearest town is Marble Bar,  south of the bore.

The bore falls within the boundaries of Wallal Downs Station, a historical pastoral lease, that operates in the area. The station also has a caravan park situated in close proximity to the bore and Eighty Mile Beach. An airstrip suitable for light planes is also located nearby.

The station is the most southerly cattle station in the Kimberley. With a size of approximately , the Wallal Downs property stretches from the coastal flats into the Great Sandy Desert. Cattle reared in the area are mostly sent to market in Port Hedland or Broome and are occasionally sent to Darwin after being fattened up in the Northern Territory in lean seasons. The property is family owned and run along with Warrawagine Station. Wallal was stocked with 8,000 head of Brahman in 2015.

Wallal is also of historical interest as the location of an international effort to observe the solar eclipse on 21 September 1922, to validate Einstein's theory of relativity.

See also
List of ranches and stations

References

Kimberley (Western Australia)
Pastoral leases in Western Australia


Alfred Putnam (September 8, 1836 – October 12, 1904) was a ship builder and political figure in Nova Scotia, Canada. He represented Hants in the House of Commons of Canada from 1887 to 1896 as a Conservative member.

He was born in Noel, Hants County, Nova Scotia, of Scottish descent. He married Maggie Fleming in 1866. Putnam was president of the Hants County Marine Insurance Company. He ran unsuccessfully for reelection to the House of Commons in 1896 and 1900.

Electoral record

References

The Canadian parliamentary companion, 1891, JA Gemmill

1836 births
1904 deaths
Progressive Conservative Association of Nova Scotia MLAs
Conservative Party of Canada (1867–1942) MPs
Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Nova Scotia


Scrap Metal were a band from Broome, Western Australia who played rock music with elements of country and reggae. The members had Aboriginal, Irish, Filipino, French, Chinese, Scottish, Indonesian and Japanese heritage.

The band toured nationally as part of the Bran Nue Dae musical and with Midnight Oil, and were the first Aboriginal band to sign an international publishing deal. An ABC TV documentary From Broome to the Big Smoke was made about them. Scrap Metal won the 'Best Indigenous Act' award at the 1992 West Australian Music Industry Awards.

After Scrap Metal Alan, Stephen and Phillip Pigram joined up with their brothers David, Colin, Gavin and Peter to create The Pigram Brothers.

In 2006 Stephen and Alan Pigram were inducted into the Western Australian Music Hall of Fame.

Discography

Albums
 Just Looking (1987)
 Broken Down Man (1988) – Jigil Records
 Scrap Metal (1990) – ABC Records
 Pub Sweat 'n' Tears (1992) – Jigil Records

Singles
 "Somewhere in the Distance / Magdalene" (1988)
 "Broken Down Man" / "Caught in the Wheel" (1988)
 "Nimunburr" / "In the Night" (1989)
 "Make It Work" (1990)
 "Howling at the Moon" (1991)

References

External links
[ Scrap Metal at allmusic]

Western Australian musical groups
Indigenous Australian musical groups
Musical groups established in 1983
Musical groups disestablished in 1995


Jason Henry Hitz (born 20 February 1980) is a former Zimbabwean cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a right-arm medium-fast bowler who played for Matabeleland. He was born in Bulawayo.

Hitz made three appearances during the Logan Cup competition of 1999/2000, debuting against Manicaland. Batting as a tailender, 24 of Hitz's 28 career runs came in the same innings, against Mashonaland.

Hitz took four wickets in 27 overs of bowling.

Hitz later played rugby union in the United Kingdom, at Aldeburgh & Thorpeness Rugby Club, in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, making eight appearances in the 2013/14 season.

References

External links
Jason Hitz at Cricket Archive

1980 births
Living people
Zimbabwean cricketers
Matabeleland cricketers


Stuart Walker (born November 25, 1976) was a Zimbabwean cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a right-arm off-break bowler and wicket-keeper who played for Matabeleland. He was born in Bulawayo.

Walker made his first cricketing appearances for Queens Sports Club in the Dunlop National League in 1998 and 2000.

Walker represented Matabeleland on three occasions in the 2001-02 Logan Cup as an opening batsman. His highest total with the bat came in his second match, in which he scored 75 runs in partnership with Wisdom Siziba.

External links
Stuart Walker at Cricket Archive

1976 births
Living people
Zimbabwean cricketers
Matabeleland cricketers


Darren Douglas Weber (born 5 February 1972) is a Zimbabwean former cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a right-arm off-break bowler who played for Matabeleland. He was born in Bulawayo.

Weber made two first-class appearances for the team, during the Logan Cup competition of 1994-95. Batting in the tailend, he was mostly ineffective, making a top score of just 5 in four innings.

References

1972 births
Living people
Zimbabwean cricketers
Matabeleland cricketers


Brian Clark (born 3 September 1964) was a Zimbabwean cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a leg-break bowler who played for Matabeleland. He was born in Bulawayo.

Clark made three appearances in the Logan Cup competition of 1993-94, scoring a half century in his debut innings. His second first-class match was slightly more successful still, as he scored a career-best 56 runs in an innings victory, in which he partnered four-time Test cricketer Wayne James to James' highest first-class score of 215 runs.

Clarke was an upper-middle order batsman and an occasional bowler, though he failed to secure a single wicket in 18 overs of bowling.

External links
Brian Clark at Cricket Archive

1964 births
Living people
Zimbabwean cricketers
Matabeleland cricketers


Graham Edwards (born 19 September 1970) is a former Zimbabwean cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and right-arm medium-pace bowler who played for Matabeleland. He was born in Bulawayo.

Edwards made a single first-class appearance for the team, during the 1994/95 Logan Cup competition, against Mashonaland Under-25s. Batting in the lower order, Edwards scored 20 runs in the first innings and 32 in the second innings of the match, 32 being the highest individual score of the second innings.

External links
Graham Edwards at Cricket Archive

1970 births
Living people
Cricketers from Bulawayo
Zimbabwean cricketers
Matabeleland cricketers


The Vac-u-form, was a toy invented by Eddy Goldfarb and released by Mattel in the 1960s around 1961 with the trademark filed on October 8, 1962.

Based on the industrial process of vacuum forming, a rectangular piece of plastic was clamped in a holder and heated over a metal plate. When the plastic was soft, the holder was swung to the other side, over a mold of the object to be formed. Then quickly and repeatedly pressing down on a spring-loaded handle on the side of the unit created a vacuum, sucking the plastic down over the mold and shaping it to it. When the plastic cooled it solidified, making an impression of the item.

Various molds came with the kit. Several expansion kits were also available for molding various other shapes. In actual use almost any small object that could withstand the temperature of the heated plastic sheet for a few seconds could be used as a mold. Plastic refill sheets came in a variety of colors.

Mattel's VAC-U-FORM toy is well made and many are still in use today both as a toy and for small size part production in conjunction with other hobbies such as making R/C aircraft cowling and other parts.

Because very hot surfaces were easily accessible to a child (or adult) playing with the toy, it probably could not be sold today due to safety restrictions.

ToyMax (Cedarhurst, NY) produced a similar product called the "VAC-U-FORMER" in the early 1990s with the trademark filed on April 24, 1992.  The ToyMax product is similar in concept to the Mattel product.  In an attempt to conform to more modern safety concerns of the period several product changes were incorporated  to improve safety over the Mattel product.  The hotplate was replaced with a light bulb in style similar to an Easy-Bake Oven.  The mold and forming area was covered so the hot plastic was protected from direct touch during the molding and cooling stage.

Both the Mattel and ToyMax products, as well as refill plastic sheets, can easily be found on eBay and Amazon, as well as other vintage toy web sites.

References

External links

Art and craft toys
1960s toys
Mattel


Plowman's Railroad operates the collection of  gauge American outline steam and diesel locomotives from the former Dobwalls Adventure Park and is located at Plowmans Garden Nursery & Plant Centre Ltd, West Parley, Ferndown, Dorset. The rolling stock has since been sold and shipped to Australia and the railway is now run by the West Parley Miniature Engineering Society. This railway has now closed following the complete collapse of the Garden Centre.

Locomotives & Rolling Stock

The locomotives from the Dobwall's Collection are as follows:

Live Steamer

Diesel

Other Rolling Stock

There is a set of 'sit-astride' coaches, built to a high standard these are also part of the original Dobwall's collection.

Railroad Tracks
Phase One of this railroad was a simple loop with a siding running to/ from the passenger station and storage tracks, trains start at the main station, run round the loop twice and then reverse back into the main station. There is approximately  of track including 2 storage tracks.

The station - behind Plowman's Garden Centre, Christchurch Road, West Parley - is now of the "through" type, with a platform line, a bypass line and a storage siding.  The main route is from the station into the large field behind the Plowman's Garden Centre plant polytunnels and back to the station through a short "tunnel".  The usual journey takes the main route into the field, then a set of facing points diverts the train onto an internal loop past the polytunnels and back onto the main route.  On the second circuit of the main route, the facing points are reset and the train runs through the "tunnel" and onto the station bypass line, then out onto the main route again.  On the third circuit the train is brought back to the platform and the journey ends.

The railway normally operates running up to Christmas, in conjunction with the garden centre's Santa Claus visits for young children.  Then at Bank Holidays from Easter (Easter Sunday excluded) to August Bank Holiday.  And the last weekend of the months between Easter and the end of August.

Steam and petrol-hydraulic locos are used.  Search on-line for West Parley Miniature Railway.

See also
Ridable miniature railway

Dobwalls Adventure Park

References

External links
 Dobwalls in Dorset Official Press Release
 West Parley Miniature Railway

7¼ in gauge railways in England
Miniature railways in the United Kingdom
Tourist attractions in Dorset


Institutionalized Volume 2 is Ras Kass' mixtape, commercially released by Babygrande Records.

Track listing

Bonus tracks

Samples
John Is Real
"Im A Hustla" by Cassidy
B.I.B.L.E.
"He's Working It Out for You" by Shirley Caesar
Ups & Downs
"(I Just) Died in Your Arms" by Cutting Crew
"I Need Love" by LL Cool J

References

Babygrande Records albums
Ras Kass albums
2008 albums


In computing, language primitives are the simplest elements available in a programming language. A primitive is the smallest 'unit of processing' available to a programmer of a given machine, or can be an atomic element of an expression in a language.

Primitives are units with a meaning, i.e., a semantic value in the language. Thus they are different from tokens in a parser, which are the minimal elements of syntax.

Machine-level primitives
A machine instruction, usually generated by an assembler program, is often considered the smallest unit of processing although this is not always the case. It typically performs what is perceived to be one operation such as copying a byte or string of bytes from one computer memory location to another or adding one processor register to another.

Microcode primitives
Many of today's computers, however, actually embody an even lower unit of processing known as microcode which interprets the machine code and it is then that the microcode instructions would be the genuine primitives. These instructions would typically be available for modification only by the hardware vendor's programmers.

High-level language primitives
A high-level programming language (HLL) program is composed of discrete statements and primitive data types that may also be perceived to perform a single operation or represent a single data item, but at a higher semantic level than those provided by the machine. Copying a data item from one location to another may actually involve many machine instructions that, for instance,
 calculate the address of both operands in memory, based on their positions within a data structure,
 convert from one data type to another
before finally
 performing the final store operation to the target destination.

Some HLL statements, particularly those involving loops, can generate thousands or even millions of primitives in a low-level programming language (LLL), which comprise the genuine instruction path length the processor has to execute at the lowest level. This perception has been referred to as the abstraction penalty.

Interpreted language primitives
An interpreted language statement has similarities to the HLL primitives, but with a further added layer. Before the statement can be executed in a manner very similar to an HLL statement: it must first be processed by an interpreter, a process that may involve many primitives in the target machine language.

Fourth and fifth-generation language primitives
Fourth-generation programming languages (4GL) and fifth-generation programming languages (5GL) do not have a simple one-to-many correspondence from high-to-low level primitives. There are some elements of interpreted language primitives embodied in 4GL and 5GL specifications, but the approach to the original problem is less a procedural language construct and are more oriented toward problem solving and systems engineering.

See also
 Primitive type
 Hardware-software codesign

References

Programming language topics


The fear of ghosts in many human cultures is based on beliefs that some ghosts may be malevolent towards people and dangerous (within the range of all possible attitudes, including mischievous, benign, indifferent, etc.). It is related to fear of the dark. The fear of ghosts is a very common fear.

A persistent fear of ghosts is sometimes called phasmophobia, a type of specific phobia. It derives from Greek , , meaning "apparition" and , , meaning "fear". It is often brought about by experiences in early childhood and causes sufferers to experience panic attacks.

Typical character
The fear of ghosts is widespread even in post-industrial societies. Philosopher Peter van Inwagen wrote:
"...I am perfectly aware that the fear of ghosts is contrary to science, reason and religion. If I were sentenced to spend a night alone in a graveyard, <...> I should already know that twigs would snap and the wind moan and that there would be half-seen movements in the darkness. And yet, after I had been frog-marched into the graveyard, I should feel a thrill of fear every time one of these things happened..."

In many traditional accounts, ghosts are often thought to be deceased people looking for vengeance, or imprisoned on earth for bad things they did during life. The appearance of a ghost has often been regarded as an omen or portent of death. Seeing one's own ghostly double or doppelgänger is a related omen of death.

Wari'
Wari', an Amazon rainforest tribe, believe that the spirits of dead people may appear as scaring specters called jima. The jima is said to grab a person with very strong, cold and poisonous hands and try to pull the person's spirit away.

Papuans
A 19th-century missionary describes the fear of ghosts among Papuans as follows:
"That a great fear
of ghosts prevails among the Papuans is intelligible. Even
by day they are reluctant to pass a grave, but nothing
would induce them to do so by night. For the dead
are then roaming about in their search for gambier and
tobacco, and they may also sail out to sea in a canoe.
Some of the departed, above all the so-called Mambrie or
heroes, inspire them with especial fear. In such cases for
some days after the burial you may hear about sunset a
simultaneous and horrible din in all the houses of all the
villages, a yelling, screaming, beating and throwing of sticks;
happily the uproar does not last long: its intention is to
compel the ghost to take himself off: they have given him
all that befits him, namely, a grave, a funeral banquet, and
funeral ornaments; and now they beseech him not to thrust
himself on their observation any more, not to breathe any
sickness upon the survivors, and not to kill them or "fetch"
them, as the Papuans put it."

Japanese
Onryō (怨霊) is a  Japanese ghost (yurei) who is able to return to the physical world in order to seek vengeance. While male onryō can be found, mainly in kabuki theatre, the majority are women, powerless in the physical world, they often suffer at the capricious whims of their male lovers. In death they become strong. Goryō are vengeance ghosts from the aristocratic classes, especially those who have been martyred.

Literature and arts
Fear of ghosts, their vengeance and mischief is a common base for a plot in the ghost story literary genre and in ghost movies.
In cartoons and comics, Casper's efforts to make friends is hampered by humans, animals and even inanimate objects irrationally panicking, screaming and running away at the sight of him.  It may be said that the characters Shaggy and Scooby from the TV and movie franchise Scooby-Doo suffer from phasmophobia, with the added joke that the ghosts they encountered were usually criminals masquerading as ghosts, specifically preying on people's phasmophobia as a cover for their criminal activities.

See also
 List of phobias

References

Ghosts
Phobias
Superstitions


First Australians is an Australian historical documentary series produced by Blackfella Films over the course of six years, and first aired on SBS TV in October 2008. The documentary is part of a greater project that further consists of a book, a community outreach program and a substantial website featuring over 200 mini-documentaries.

Description
The series chronicles the history of contemporary Australia, from the perspective of its first people, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. The series is essentially a synthesis of well-documented historical information. It relies heavily on archival documents and interpretations from historians and members of both the Aboriginal and European community and leaders. The story begins in 1788 in Sydney, with the arrival of the First Fleet and ends in 1993 with Koiki Mabo's legal challenge to the foundation of Australia.

The series comprises seven episodes in which it explores what unfolded when the oldest living culture in the world was confronted by the British Empire. It explores the lives of particular individuals and uses their stories as a vehicle to explain the larger situations of the time. It explains violent aspects of European settlement of Australia, such as killings, battles, wars, as well as acts of friendship and decency between the early European settlers and Aboriginal Australians. Aboriginal Australian history has until recently been clouded by the "great Australian silence", referring to ignorance of the real history of Australia seen as a way for non-Aboriginal Australians to hide shame for their own history.

The series was the winner of multiple awards, remains the highest-selling educational title in Australia , and was also sold overseas.

Episodes
A total of seven episodes were filmed. The series was first transmitted in Australia from 12 October to 2 November 2008.

Production
The series was made by Film Australia and the Film Finance Corporation in conjunction with SBS Independent and the New South Wales Film and Television Office. It was written, produced and directed by Rachel Perkins, daughter of outspoken Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins, with episode writing and directing credits including Beck Cole and Louis Nowra. The series was produced by Darren Dale.

The series featured writer Bruce Pascoe and historians Marcia Langton and Janet McCalman.

Community consultation
A significant part of the production of the series involved consultation with the descendants of the individuals portrayed in the documentary. According to the First Australians Documentary website, this involved; checking the content of scripts, usually face to face, seeking permission to film in particular locations, showing the rough cut of the film for comment and showing the film at fine cut. The series was made in accordance with Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) rights, to ensure the cultural content and the rights of Indigenous people.

Awards and nominations
2009: AFI Award: Best Documentary Series for Darren Dale, Rachel Perkins, Helen Panckhurst – Won
2009: Logie Award: Outstanding Documentary or Documentary Series – Won
2009: New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Script Writing Award for Louis Nowra, Rachel Perkins & Beck Cole – Won
2009: Australian Directors' Guild Awards: Outstanding Direction for a Television Documentary – Series – (Freedom for Our Lifetime) for Rachel Perkins – Won
2009: Australian Writers' Guild Award: Outstanding Writing in a Documentary (Episode 1) for Louis Nowra, Rachel Perkins – Won
2009: Australian Writers' Guild Award: Outstanding Writing in a Documentary (Episode 3) for Louis Nowra, Beck Cole – Nominated
2009: Deadly Awards: Outstanding Achievement in Film – Rachel Perkins – Nominated

References

External links

First Australians website on SBS
First Australians at Creative Spirits
First Australians launch, on the Minister for Indigenous Affairs website

2000s Australian documentary television series
Special Broadcasting Service original programming
Television shows set in New South Wales
Documentary films about Aboriginal Australians
2008 Australian television series debuts
Indigenous Australian television series


K. Raghavan (2 December 1913 – 19 October 2013), also fondly called Raghavan Master, was a Malayalam music composer and Carnatic Vocalist. Along with G. Devarajan, V. Dakshinamoorthy and Baburaj, Raghavan is often credited for the renaissance of Malayalam film music. He is regarded as the pioneer in contributing Malayalam film songs with its own tunes and styles. Till then, Malayalam film songs were in the tunes of popular Hindi and Tamil film songs and old classical kritis. Raghavan gave a new direction and identity to Malayalam film music. He composed around 400 songs in Malayalam cinema and was active in the Malayalam film industry for nearly four decades. In 1997, he was honoured with the J. C. Daniel Award, Kerala government's highest honour for contributions to Malayalam cinema.

Personal life
Raghavan was born to folk singer M Krishnan and Narayani in Tellicherry in North Malabar on 2 December 1913.  He had a younger brother named Lakshmanan, who predeceased him. He was married to (late) Yashoda and had five children, including three daughters and two sons. He died at the age of 99 on 19 October 2013 in Tellicherry.

Early life
Raghavan was born in Tellicherry near Kannur in the erstwhile Madras Presidency (present-day Kerala) to M. Krishnan and Narayani in 1913. He started studying classical music from his childhood and was also a good football player. His professional career was started as a tambura player in All India Radio, Madras. In 1950 he got transferred to Calicut and there he got involved with film artists.

Career
Raghavan set a new trend in Malayalam film music with the release of the 1954 movie Neelakuyil. Renowned lyricist and Raghavan's
friend P. Bhaskaran had penned the songs in Neelakkuyil. Raghavan himself has rendered his voice for one of the songs in Neelakkuyil. The song
Kayalarikathu valayerinjappol went on to become an instant hit.

Music career
In a career spanning over four decades, he has scored music for more than sixty Malayalam films and many of his compositions remain ever green classics in Malayalam. Raghavan infused the folk element into Malayalam film music and his rustic melodies replaced the then prevailing trend of imitations of popular Hindi tunes of the day. He also composed songs for plays like Kerala People's Arts Club and All India Radio. Most of his songs were written by P. Bhaskaran. And he dared try out a variety of voices to Malayalam film music, many of them were new. K. J. Yesudas, P. Jayachandran, P.Susheela,Mehboob, K. P. Brahmanandan, M. Balamuralikrishna, M. L. Vasanthakumari, A. P. Komala, Gayathri Srikrishnan, Santha P. Nair, A. M. Rajah, K. P. Udayabhanu, M.G. Radhakrishnan, P. B. Sreenivas, Vani Jayaram, Jikki, V. T. Murali, M. G. Sreekumar, K. S. Chithra and Sujatha Mohan - they have all sung for him.

As a musician
First Movie	Pullimaan in (1951).
Number of Movies	65
Number of Songs	405
State Awards	2

Songs

 Kayalarikathu...
 Ellarum chollanu...
 Nazhiyuripalu kondu...
 Hrudaythin romancham...
 Ekantha Kaamuka Ninte Manoratham ...
 Shyamasundara pushpame...
 Aattinakkareyakkare...
 Poornendumukhiyodambalathil...
 Nalikerathinte nattilenikkoru...
 Manjani poonilavil...
 Kathu sookshichoru...
 Appozhe paranjille...
 Manathe Mazhamukil malakale...
 Anuragakkalariyil angathinu vannavale...
 Pambukalkku maalamundu...  (KPAC drama song)
 Thalayku meethe...  (KPAC drama song)

Awards
Civilian Awards by Govt. of India
 2010 – Padma Shri

Kerala State Film Awards
 1973 – Best Music Director for Nirmalyam
 1977 – Best Music Director – Poojakedukkatha Pookkal.
 1997 – J. C. Daniel Award from the Government of Kerala

Other Awards
 1981 – Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi Fellowship
 2000 – Best Lifetime Achievement Award
 2006 – Swaralaya Yesudas Award
 2011 – M. G. Radhakrishnan Award

References

External links

Complete Listing of K Raghavan's Movie Songs

Raghavan the folk master

Malayalam film score composers
Kerala State Film Award winners
People from Thalassery
Recipients of the Padma Shri in arts
1913 births
2013 deaths
20th-century Indian composers
Film musicians from Kerala
21st-century Indian composers
Indian male film score composers
20th-century Indian male singers
20th-century Indian singers
21st-century Indian male singers
21st-century Indian singers
Male Carnatic singers
Carnatic singers
J. C. Daniel Award winners
Recipients of the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi Fellowship