The future of the Irish language is unsure and controversial. Hear our three long-term predictions for the Irish language.

What you’ll hear

* The Connemara dialect will dominate, because of TG4 television station being based there (there are three main dialects of Irish Gaelic)

* The general Irish language accent will change, gravitating towards the English language, because of non-native speakers speaking it

* The language will drastically simplify, losing many of its word mutations. And this, arguably, is already happening.

Mentioned in the show

* Try Bitesize Irish Gaelic for free. It’s our online program of lessons for you to speak the Irish language in easy Bitesize portions

Get the next episode as soon as it’s up

* Subscribe on iTunes

* Alternatively, subscribe on Android to this RSS feed

* Use the audio player in this post. The player also has a download link to grab the episode’s MP3 file.

* List all our past episodes

The show comes out each fortnight on Thursdays at 8am EST. Thanks for listening.

We’d love to hear from you about this episode. Just leave a comment below.

Do you have a suggestion for a future guest? Then please do contact us.

Eoin