Babel Átha Cliath is a three part series funded by the
Broadcasting Authority of Ireland
Airing on Wednesday August 14th, 21st and 28th at 6pm.
Dublin has been a city with a multilingual population for many years,
medieval Dublin was already a city where several languages coexisted, the
Vikings spoke Old Norse, Latin would have been present (monks) and also
Irish, Norman and Anglo-Saxon (Old English) were spoken. But it has not been
until the 1990s, when Ireland became a net receiver of immigration, that
Irelands capital city became a true multilingual metropolis with a huge
number of languages from all over the world spoken in Dublin every day.
In this new 3 part series, Babel Atha Cliath, will touch on the history and
remnants of the older languages that were once spoken in Dublin, such as
Fingalian, Norman French, Cant, middle English, Leinster Irish and this
examination will place emphasis on the way we use English today and the
preservation of local accents, sayings and the idiosyncracies of Northside
Dublinese. We will also meet native speakers of Spanish, Mandarin, Polish,
Arabic, German, Lugandan & Irish.
