What languages are spoken in Ireland? Well, there's Irish (a Gaelic language), English (a Germanic language with a lot of Latin and French mixed in), and Hiberno-English (a dialect of English with some Gaelic elements mixed in). There also used to be a language called Yola, which was spoken in parts of County Wexford until the nineteenth century.

When the Anglo-Norman warlord Strongbow invaded Ireland nearly nine hundred years ago, most of his followers spoke a form of English- but it was a very different form of English from the language we speak today. Strongbow's followers spoke “Middle English,” the language of Chaucer's “Canterbury Tales.” As the centuries went by, Middle English in England itself developed into modern English. In rural areas of Ireland where the descendents of the Norman invaders neither “went native” by adopting Gaelic culture nor were exposed on a daily basis to new developments in the language, their version of Middle English kept developing on its own. It ended up becoming a distinct language known as Yola, which was definitely not mutually comprehensible with “English” as such. For one thing, it kept using “thee” and “thou” long after those words dropped out of regular English usage- but that's really only a small part of it. Many Yola words bear only a faint resemblance to their English equivalents, such as “fade” for “what,” “zo” for “so,” and “teil” for “ails.” Here's a verse of song in Yola with its English translation:

“Fade teil thee zo lournagh, co Joane, zo knaggee?

Th' weithest all curcagh, wafur, an cornee.

Lidge w'ouse an a milagh, tis gaay an louthee:

Huck nigher; y'art scuddeen; fartoo zo hachee?

What ails you so melancholy, quoth John, so cross?

You seem all snappish, uneasy, and fretful.

Lie with us on the clover, 'tis fair and sheltered:

Come nearer; you're rubbing your back; why so ill tempered?”

As you can see, Yola was far from a mere dialect of English- it was a completely separate language. Unfortunately for the linguistic diversity, it died out in the 1800s as Hiberno-English became standard even in the previously Yola-speaking areas of County Wexford.

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