Mind Your Language: Explaining the Retreat of the Irish Language Frontier

Alan Fernihough, Christopher Colvin and Eoin McLaughlin

No 19300, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Why do we choose one language over another? Rival views see language frontiers as exogenous, driven by policy, or endogenous, determined by social, cultural and economic forces. We study language loss in nineteenth-century Ireland's bilingual society using individual-level data from the 1901 census. Our analysis highlights the intergenerational influence of the education received by a community’s elders on subsequent generations’ language use. This is consistent with an endogenous demand for English driving language choice because the elder generation's literacy was acquired by attending privately financed voluntary primary schools in a period that predates state-funded compulsory schooling.

Keywords: Ireland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I28 N33 N93 R12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07
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Working Paper: Mind your language: Explaining the retreat of the Irish language frontier (2024)
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