Gaeltacht (plural:
Gaeltachtaí): a district in
Ireland where
Irish language is used as a traditional
native language. The most important
Gaeltachtaí are found in
Donegal,
Connemara, the
Aran Islands and
Kerry, but there are minor and weaker ones in
Mayo,
Cape Clear, County
Waterford (the so-called
Ring of Waterford near
Dungarvan) and in
Meath - the last one is not, strictly speaking, a traditional survival, but a colony - its inhabitants came from Connemara in the 1930s.
The native speakers of the Irish language in Ireland number about 80,000 today. However, it seems only 30,000 of these live in the Gaeltacht districts, and native dialects spoken in them are, consequently, threatened by extinction. Attempts to establish new, "artificial" Gaeltachtaí have been successful only in Belfast, where the so-called Shaw's Road Gaeltacht has been developing since more than thirty years: it was established by a handful of young Gaeilgeoir families, but has since been able to produce one generation of new native speakers.