Did you know that Gaeltacht means Irish speaking area, which denotes any area in Ireland where the language is spoken by at least 25% of the citizens? The Gaeltacht classification system started to be widely used around 1926, set forth by the first Coimisiún na Gaeltachta. While the boundaries of the Gaeltacht were never officially defined, the system helped later generations to gain a more in depth understanding of the state of the Irish language, and further helped revival efforts. While the 25% marker is used to define any Gaeltacht area, there are many examples of official Gaeltacht regions with a much small percentage of actual native speakers. At the time that the Free Irish State came into being, they recognized 15 out of 26 of their counties as being at least partially Irish Gaelic speaking. Most of these figures have rapidly declined since then, however there is hope that the language can still be revived.
