Irish on the World Wide Web: Searches and sites

This paper reports on the process of searching with Irish words on the Irish language version of the Google Internet search engine. Five words from ‘typical’ and ‘non-typical’ domains for Irish are used, and the results are analysed in terms of the “authenticity” of the search process and results, the language usage in the sites found through the search process, and the domains represented by the results. The study identifies a number of problems encountered when searching for results in a ‘small’ language. It also indicates that the ‘official’ sector and other sectors closely related to language policy and planning are the main providers of monolingual Irish texts on the Internet, with a variety of mixed Irish and English approaches favoured by other providers.