In yesterday's Tribune there was an article about the resurgence of the Irish language, or Gaeilge (how is that pronounced?). Currently Welsh and Irish are the only Celtic languages thriving, according to this article. For you Brits, is this accurate? What exactly makes a language Celtic? Have you seen that renaissance of the Irish language?

If by thriving you mean 200K (for Gaelic) and 500K speakers (for Welsh: in 1981 and 1991 respectively), then yes, they're thriving.

Gaeilge is pronounced roughly "gayling".

Because Gaelic was geting close to a dead language in Ireland in the first half of the last century, the Republic's government made it a compulsory subject in schools. However, it is still not used as a first language by many people. I would hardly describe it as thriving.
There are apparently 260,000 speakers (but only 40,000 use it as their first language).

Around 58,000 speak Scots Gaelic as their first language.

Around 20% of people in Wales (580,000) speak Welsh.

My understanding from the article was that this is an upsurge and that it is becoming "cool and trendy." That's what piqued my interest, really.

We don't have any members that I know of based in Ireland, and for all I know it may be becoming "cool and trendy" in some circles in the Republic. The Irish government keeps trying to mount rescue missions to get more people to spesk the Irish language, but they have all failed. Perhaps this is another attempt?

Perhaps this is another attempt?

You very well may be right, arnie. How interesting. I met a few people from Ireland when I was at that Palermo conference; I will e-mail them and see if they agree that the Irish language is becoming popular.

I believe that both Manx and Cornish have been revived, although the last true Manx speaker died late in the 20th century and the last Cornish speaker well before that.

I believe that both Manx and Cornish have been revived

Not sure about Manx, but Cornish is being promoted rather vigorously in Cornwall. When I was there I picked up some grammars and a dictionary. The official last speaker of Cornish died around the turn of the 19th century. I've read a monograph that suggested that it may have survived a bit longer into the late 19th century, but that is a minority view. Interestingly, many words that didn't exist in the published, earlier dictionaries have been borrowed from Welsh (to which it is rather similar) and adapted to Cornish pronuciation and orthography. Welsh, Breton, and Cornish are rather closely related and are the remnants of the Celtic language spoken throughout most of England, Wales, and lowland Scotland before the Romans arrived.

Cornwall reminded me a lot of California: you meet very few people from there there. One funny thing, people kept asking me if I had Cornish ancestors because my last name and a village were spelled similarly, Bissoe.