 The Irish language has a vast treasury of written texts from many centuries and is divided by linguists into [[Old Irish]] from the 6th to 10th century, [[Middle Irish]] from the 10th to 13th century, Early Modern Irish until the 17th century, and the Modern Irish spoken today.It remained the dominant language of Ireland for most of those periods, having influences from [[Latin Language|Latin]], [[Old Norse]], [[Anglo-Norman language|French]] and English.It declined under British rule but remained the majority tongue until the early 19th century, and since then has been a minority language.