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Abstract Both Ireland and Taiwan are island countries. They share the same situation of having strong neighboring countries right across a straight. Most countries have their own native languages while Ireland and Taiwan's native languages had been deracinated by their colonial rulers, so that both of these countries' current main languages are no longer their original native languages.
Irish language has become the national language, first official language of Ireland since it had gained independence from the United kingdom in 1922. Irish government has been working on language reservation and education. Students have to take one hour of Irish language course a day from Monday to Friday. The Irish citizens, no matter the government officers, bank employees, police officers, or students who want to graduate from schools, all must pass Irish language exams. Moreover, the government officers will get more credit if they attend the government exam by using Irish language.
The Irish language signboards have been appearing in the public areas of Ireland island-wide. However, the Irish language is not widely used, not even spoken on streets while only limited in gaeltachtaí (Irish language areas) or language courses at schools. Statistics shows that Irish language has now become the ranking number 4 speaking language in Ireland.
Taiwan Ministry of Culture is currently gathering opinions from locals. It starts to study and plan campaigns to urge all the ethics' native languages to be more inclusive, diversified and equal. “The Law of National Language Develop” is critical to continuously supporting these works. The footprints of Irish Language renaissance progress indeed is a good example to Taiwan.
This study is to investigate the difficulties, developing strategies and the future directional opportunities of Irish and Taiwan language via interviewing Irishmen, Taiwanese and Taiwan dialect language teachers.
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