A question mark hangs over the development of the Irish language in Northern Ireland if the Republic "continues with policies of rhetoric rather than implementation", a conference on endangered languages has been told.
Mr Eoghan McKendry, of the graduate school of education, Queen's University, Belfast, said the Belfast Agreement "has placed the Irish language firmly within the political agenda".
Despite difficulties arising from an official policy since partition to marginalise Irish in Northern Ireland, the language had retained a relatively strong presence within the maintained (Catholic) education sector, he said.
"Indeed, when one considers the policy of `diversification in modern languages' which central government in London and the Department of Education for Northern Ireland have been promoting, Irish is one of the very few successes in the United Kingdom."
Mr McKendry said the task of the Irish language lobby now "is to recognise those aspects of policy where it can claim success, such as diversification and the EU's policy towards linguistic richness and diversity, rather than succumbing to the negative policy goals of a previous political enmity or to simplistic views emerging from unsophisticated utilitarianism".
The current Nuffield Inquiry on Languages in the UK provided an opportunity to reappraise the role and position of Irish in Northern Ireland, he said.
But the question was: "What can the Irish language become in Northern Ireland if the Republic continues with policies of rhetoric rather than implementation?"
Mr McKendry was addressing the third annual conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) - a UK-based non-governmental organisation - at St Patrick's College, Maynooth.
The conference, on the theme "Endangered Languages and Education", was held amid expert predictions of the death of at least half of the world's 4,000 languages within 50 years, with Irish among those under threat.
"Right now, every week, another language falls silent for ever," a foundation spokesperson said. "With each one a living culture ends, a unique way of life almost thousands of years old."
The FEL had taken up the challenge "to lessen the ignorance which sees language loss as inevitable when it is not, and does not properly value all that will go when a language itself vanishes".
The conference, sponsored by Bord na Gaeilge, heard international experts tell of efforts to save minority languages.
