Ireland’s New and Unexpected Polish-Language Community
Dec 22, 2019 13:49:55 GMT -7
pieter likes this
Post by kaima on Dec 22, 2019 13:49:55 GMT -7
Here is a link to a scholarly paper on
www.academia.edu/21948168/Migration_or_Immigration_Ireland_s_New_and_Unexpected_Polish-Language_Community_pp_205-232_._2013._In_M_Moser_and_M_Polinsky_eds._Slavic_Languages_in_Migration_Ser_Slavische_Sprachgeschichte_Vol_6_._M%C3%BCnster_Lit?auto=download
The excerpts presented here are almost random and unlikely to properly represent the ideas and balance of the paper, so please refer to the original if this is of interest!
Tomasz Kamusella
Migration or Immigration?
Ireland’s New and Unexpected Polish-Language Community.....................205
1. Abstract
Since Poland’s accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004, an estimated two to three million Polish citizens have left for other EU states. Britain, Ireland and Sweden opened their employment markets to them immediately in 2004; other states of the Old Fifteen took advantage of various derogation periods to postpone the opening of their labor markets to the citizens of Poland and of some other new member states. As a result, the vast majority of Polish (im)migrants arrived in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, at two hundred thousand, they constitute around five per cent of the population, rising to ten per cent in Dublin and its vicinity. I argue that one cannot construe them in a traditional manner as an immigrant group, who will lose their native language in the next generation and thus become a linguistically and culturally indistinguishable part of Ireland’s English-speaking population. Firstly, their move is within the EU’s common political-cum-administrative space, which is similar to moving within the boundaries of a single state. Secondly, cheap flights, the internet, and satellite television and radio allow them to remain part of the main-stream Polish-language community, mostly concentrated in Poland. In light of this, I predict that part of Ireland’s population will remain permanently Polish-speaking (though largely bi- and multilingual), making it likely that Polish will become another one of Ireland’s languages, taking its place beside English, Irish and Ulster Scots. (It is also possible that Lithuanian, Russian and Slovak will achieve the same status.)
Roughly speaking, half of all the immigrants who arrived in Ireland after 2004 have been Polish citizens
as of 2008 and 2009, the first cohorts of the children began entering Irish elementary schools. Unfortunately, their arrival in the schools coincided with the current economic downturn. Still dazed by the unexpected speed with which Ireland became a multicultural and multiethnic country during the past decade, Dublin does not have a plan, let alone a policy, for how to manage this new multiculturalism.
Ireland’s Poles almost invariably speak uniformly standard Polish. In contrast, however, the Polish language of the pre-2004 Polish immi-
grant communities in the United States and Western Europe tends to be (sometimes highly) dialectal. This is because their core groups arrived there before World War II from the multilingual Poland of those times, when only a narrow group of elites had a command of standard Polish.
Polish minorities in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine (minorities that are close in size to Ireland’s Polish-language community) are highly
dialectal. In Belarus their Polish is often the same as the Belarusian of their Belarusian neighbors, the actual difference being rather ethnoreligious than ethnolinguistic, though for ideological reasons the difference is couched in terms of language difference. In a Belarusian village with Polish minority inhabitants, both Poles and Belarusians tend to speak the local Slavic dialect and prefer to switch to Russian for official business. But the local dialect, when committed to paper in the Latin letters of the Roman Catholic faith, becomes the Polish language; the same dialect, when reduced to writing in the Cyrillic letters associated with Orthodox Christianity or Uniatism (Greek Catholicism), becomes the Belarusian language.
Polish speakers in Dublin are clearly visible (and audible) because they account for 10 per cent of the inhabitants. A monolingual Polish speaker might live his or her life without using a word of English in certain specific, singularly Polish quarters of Chicago or New York, but not elsewhere in those cities.
As a result, in purely numerical terms, Polish is now the second largest language of everyday communication, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland.
Slovak- and Russophones also make an effort to understand Polish, and when communicating difficulties arise, English takes its place. On weekends, many Poles, longing for Central European cuisine and beer, make a beeline to the Czech Inn in Dublin’s Temple Bar area for dinner with friends and to watch an exciting soccer match. And, indeed, the malleability of language is further emphasized here: Slovak staff now work in the Czech Inn, taking the place of people who came from the poorer eastern half of the Czech Republic.
www.academia.edu/21948168/Migration_or_Immigration_Ireland_s_New_and_Unexpected_Polish-Language_Community_pp_205-232_._2013._In_M_Moser_and_M_Polinsky_eds._Slavic_Languages_in_Migration_Ser_Slavische_Sprachgeschichte_Vol_6_._M%C3%BCnster_Lit?auto=download
The excerpts presented here are almost random and unlikely to properly represent the ideas and balance of the paper, so please refer to the original if this is of interest!
Tomasz Kamusella
Migration or Immigration?
Ireland’s New and Unexpected Polish-Language Community.....................205
1. Abstract
Since Poland’s accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004, an estimated two to three million Polish citizens have left for other EU states. Britain, Ireland and Sweden opened their employment markets to them immediately in 2004; other states of the Old Fifteen took advantage of various derogation periods to postpone the opening of their labor markets to the citizens of Poland and of some other new member states. As a result, the vast majority of Polish (im)migrants arrived in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, at two hundred thousand, they constitute around five per cent of the population, rising to ten per cent in Dublin and its vicinity. I argue that one cannot construe them in a traditional manner as an immigrant group, who will lose their native language in the next generation and thus become a linguistically and culturally indistinguishable part of Ireland’s English-speaking population. Firstly, their move is within the EU’s common political-cum-administrative space, which is similar to moving within the boundaries of a single state. Secondly, cheap flights, the internet, and satellite television and radio allow them to remain part of the main-stream Polish-language community, mostly concentrated in Poland. In light of this, I predict that part of Ireland’s population will remain permanently Polish-speaking (though largely bi- and multilingual), making it likely that Polish will become another one of Ireland’s languages, taking its place beside English, Irish and Ulster Scots. (It is also possible that Lithuanian, Russian and Slovak will achieve the same status.)
Roughly speaking, half of all the immigrants who arrived in Ireland after 2004 have been Polish citizens
as of 2008 and 2009, the first cohorts of the children began entering Irish elementary schools. Unfortunately, their arrival in the schools coincided with the current economic downturn. Still dazed by the unexpected speed with which Ireland became a multicultural and multiethnic country during the past decade, Dublin does not have a plan, let alone a policy, for how to manage this new multiculturalism.
Ireland’s Poles almost invariably speak uniformly standard Polish. In contrast, however, the Polish language of the pre-2004 Polish immi-
grant communities in the United States and Western Europe tends to be (sometimes highly) dialectal. This is because their core groups arrived there before World War II from the multilingual Poland of those times, when only a narrow group of elites had a command of standard Polish.
Polish minorities in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine (minorities that are close in size to Ireland’s Polish-language community) are highly
dialectal. In Belarus their Polish is often the same as the Belarusian of their Belarusian neighbors, the actual difference being rather ethnoreligious than ethnolinguistic, though for ideological reasons the difference is couched in terms of language difference. In a Belarusian village with Polish minority inhabitants, both Poles and Belarusians tend to speak the local Slavic dialect and prefer to switch to Russian for official business. But the local dialect, when committed to paper in the Latin letters of the Roman Catholic faith, becomes the Polish language; the same dialect, when reduced to writing in the Cyrillic letters associated with Orthodox Christianity or Uniatism (Greek Catholicism), becomes the Belarusian language.
Polish speakers in Dublin are clearly visible (and audible) because they account for 10 per cent of the inhabitants. A monolingual Polish speaker might live his or her life without using a word of English in certain specific, singularly Polish quarters of Chicago or New York, but not elsewhere in those cities.
As a result, in purely numerical terms, Polish is now the second largest language of everyday communication, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland.
Slovak- and Russophones also make an effort to understand Polish, and when communicating difficulties arise, English takes its place. On weekends, many Poles, longing for Central European cuisine and beer, make a beeline to the Czech Inn in Dublin’s Temple Bar area for dinner with friends and to watch an exciting soccer match. And, indeed, the malleability of language is further emphasized here: Slovak staff now work in the Czech Inn, taking the place of people who came from the poorer eastern half of the Czech Republic.