Irish

1.3M people can hold a conversation in Irish across 3 countries; official in 1.

Data as of 28 Oct 2026 · ISO 639-3 gle · Glottolog iris1253 · Indo-European · CLDR 49, Glottolog 5.3, States sheet

Where Irish is spoken

Share of each country's people who can hold a conversation in it.

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Small territories are not drawn at this scale.

Countries

Share of the population and people who can hold a conversation in it, by country.

How this is measured
Most figures are CLDR's estimates of speakers. CLDR lists only each country's larger languages, so where it has no figure a national census or official survey fills in, and the Figure column says which and what it counts. A home-language figure is a floor: more people can speak the language than use it at home.
1
official
22%
1.2M
2
0.1%
104K
3
none · Census, mother tongue
0.0%
0

Family

Where it sits in the Glottolog tree, root to language.

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Celtic
  4. Nuclear Celtic
  5. Core Celtic
  6. Insular Celtic
  7. Goidelic
  8. Modern Goidelic
  9. Irish

Indo-European: 216 languages, 5.95B speakers.

Where these numbers come from

Definitions are on the Method page.