County Cork is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns are Mallow, Macroom, Midleton, and Skibbereen. As of 2022, the county had a population of 584,156, making it the third-most populous county in Ireland. Cork County Council is the local authority for the county, while Cork City Council governs the city of Cork and its environs. Notable Corkonians include Michael Collins, Jack Lynch, Roy Keane, Sonia O'Sullivan, Cillian Murphy and Graham Norton.
Cork
Carrigaline
Cobh
Pulleen Strand, on the Beara peninsula
Irish, also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language group, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century.
Today, Irish is still commonly spoken as a first language in areas of Ireland collectively known as the Gaeltacht, in which only 2% of Ireland's population lived in 2022.
The distribution of the Irish language in 1871
Bilingual sign in Grafton Street, Dublin
Bilingual road signs in Creggs, County Galway
Dublin airport sign in both English and Irish languages