This groundbreaking book shatters historical stereotypes, demonstrating that, in the century before 1870, Ireland was not an anglicized kingdom and was capable of articulating modernity in the Irish language. It gives a dynamic account of the complexity of Ireland in the nineteenth century, developments in church and state, and the adaptive bilingualism found across all regions, social levels, and religious persuasions.

On an Irish Island tells the remarkable story of a remote outpost nearly untouched by time in the first half of the twentieth century, and of the adventurous men and women who visited and were inspired by it. In a love letter to a vanished way of life, Robert Kanigel brings to life this wildly beautiful island, notable for the vivid communal life of its residents and the unadulterated Irish they spoke well into the twentieth century. With the Irish language rapidly disappearing, Great Blasket became a magnet for scholars, linguists, and writers during the Gaelic renaissance. As we follow these visitors—among them John Millington Synge, author of The Playboy of the Western World—we are captivated both by the tiny group of islanders who kept an entire country’s past alive and by their complex relationships with those who brought the island’s story to the larger world.

Island Cross-Talk, first published in 1928, was the first book to come out of the Blasket Islands, that remote, tiny community off the West Kerry coast speaking a dying language. In these pages from his diary, Ó'Crohan jotted down snatches of conversation, anecdotes, descriptions of the landscape and the sea.

Proverbs in Irish grants the reader a look into the vast and rich world of aphoristic Irish folk-wisdom, as vibrant today as they were then. Chosen on the basis of relevance in the modern context, universality, frequency of usage, and cultural relevance, the book is organised by an array of themes, from Anger, Beauty and Marriage to Foolishness, Silence and Treachery. A must have at home or abroad. Garry Bannister attended Trinity College Dublin where he studied Irish and Russian. On receiving a scholarship, he went to Moscow State University where he graduated with an MA in Russian language and literature and subsequently helped set up the first Department of Modern Irish. Bannister's main interest today is the Irish language and its literature. He has many publications in this area and teaches at St Columba's College, Dublin. He is an acknowledged expert of 20th Century Irish and the editor of Tesaras Gearr Gailge-Bearla and the English-Irish Learner's Dictionary. Kiss my... A Dictionary of Irish-English Slang (97818480405202) was published by New Island in paperback in March 2016.

This volume is the first full-length publication to systematically unpack and analyze the linguistic practices and ideologies of "new speakers" specifically in an Irish language context. The book introduces the theoretical foundations of the new speaker framework as it manifests itself in the Irish setting, describes its historical precedents, and traces its evolution to today. The book then draws upon a rich set of data and research methods, including participant observation and ethnographic fieldwork to examine the new speaker phenomenon in Irish in greater detail. Areas of analysis include new speakers’ language practices and usage and the ways in which they position their linguistic identities both within their respective communities and in juxtaposition with "native" speakers. While the book’s focus is on Irish, the volume will contribute to a greater understanding of new speaker practices and ideologies in minority language contexts more generally, making this key reading for students and scholars in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, language policy and planning, anthropology, and Irish studies.