The lesser of two stupids
Let’s start off by losing some more friends. This site has no time for the Gaelic lobby. The obsolete language spoken by just 0.9% of Scotland’s population might be part of the nation’s “cultural heritage”, but so were burning witches and replacing Highlanders with sheep and we don’t do those any more either.
Being multilingual is an excellent thing, but the significant amount of time and effort taken to learn a literally-pointless second language (because everyone you can talk to in Gaelic already understood English) would be vastly better directed to picking up one that was actually of some use, and every extra fraction of a second spent scanning a road sign trying to find the bit you can read is a fraction of a second spent with your eyes off the road.
Non-primary native languages are a tool whose main utility in practice is at best the exclusion of outsiders, and at worst an expression of dodgy blood-and-soil ethnic nationalism. They’re a barrier to communication and an irritation to the vast majority of the population, who are made to feel like uncultured aliens in their own land.
But we’d still rather put up with Gaelic than complete idiots making our laws.
Jackson Carlaw is the Deputy Leader of the Scottish Conservatives, the party’s health spokesman, and its former chairman. He was castigated for making a series of racist jokes at a party event in 2005, but also objected to the golden eagle being made Scotland’s official bird last year because it was a “fascist” symbol.
Last night he tweeted the picture above, which is taken from a Facebook page called “SMASH the SNP” and populated by the sort of demented knuckle-draggers that you’d expect to populate a Facebook page called “SMASH the SNP”.
Its central allegation – that the Scottish Government has spent £26 MILLION painting Gaelic names on road signs in some parts of the country, presumably using paint made from crushed diamonds and unicorn fur – is so fatuously, obviously stupid that you wouldn’t even expect to see it in the Daily Record.
Oh.
£26m is in fact roughly £3m more than the entire annual budget for ALL Gaelic-related activities in Scotland under the six-year Gaelic National Language Plan, including the TV station BBC Alba (which accounts for almost half of the sum – £12.8m – by itself and does a valuable job even for English speakers, broadcasting lower-league football and minority sports like shinty, albeit most viewers can’t follow the commentary).
The government body charged with promoting the language, the Bòrd na Gàidhlig, has an annual budget of just £5.1m. Independent research suggests that such investment actually pays for itself in terms of various benefits to the economy.
Bilingual roadsigns weren’t instigated by the SNP as part of its dastardly obsession with inculcating separatism, but by the first Labour/Lib Dem administration in 2003 in the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act, which set out “the status of the Gaelic language as an official language of Scotland commanding equal respect to the English language”. It was passed by the second Labour/Lib Dem government in 2005, and subsequently enthusiastically backed by many of Carlaw’s Tory colleagues.
“I come from a party that, as Ted Brocklebank rightly said, has given considerable support to Gaelic in the past. The Scottish Conservatives have always understood that Gaelic is an essential part of our heritage and, indeed, our social fabric.” – Liz Smith MSP (Mid Scotland and Fife)
Alasdair Morrison was right. I am proud of previous Conservative ministers, such as Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Forsyth, who knew the value of the Gaelic heritage and wanted not to lose it but to encourage it.” – Jamie McGrigor MSP (Highlands and Islands)
Indeed, Carlaw stood for election on a manifesto in 2011 which said that the Scottish Tories “remain committed to the promotion of the Gaelic language and culture”.
The actual total budget for “Gaelic road signs” is not £26m but £2m, and in reality is just the budget for roadsigns generally – Gaelic names will only be added when signs are due to be replaced anyway, making the real cost effectively zero. (The same thing previously happened with railway-station signs.)
We might not be fans of Gaelic, but we’re a great deal more concerned that honking buffoons prone to parroting idiotic drivel from internet nutcases should somehow have found themselves in senior positions in the Scottish Parliament.
Should Scottish Labour implode any further (as well they might) and should – Heaven forbid, of course – some dreadful accident befall Ruth Davidson, Jackson Carlaw could plausibly be the leader of the Holyrood opposition this time next year.
That fact that that important job could be in the hands of a thunderingly witless moron is a far more serious problem for Scotland than spending a couple of quid on a small (and actually self-financing) cultural indulgence for a minority.
And an arse was handed his on a plate!
Journalism, don’t you just love it.. ;D
Rev.
As sad as it is to me to see another attack on Gailic it’s no worse than the state sponsored beatings of children that I had and witnessed as a child. Growing up in the highlands in the 70/80’s school was a tirade of English. Now I come from the ‘non’ Gaelic speaking East Highlands one of the parts we are told does not speak the language.
And I have to say that with the hard work done by the church and education system all the way up until recent times they’ve almost succeeded in killing off the language.
But how much when I returned recently did it warm my very being to hear adults and children talking in Gaelic in shops again.
English has always felt like an uncomfortable necessity to me and I understand I am very much in the minority.
I am raising my own bairns speaking as I was, a mixture of languages at all times and I teach them that their language is not english even if they need to speak it.
The Scotrail side of things is just as interesting
link to scot-rail.co.uk
I now think I know why Kilwinning is a bit of a blue-nose area too. (about half-way down the list)
Not losing a friend, but intrigued – should migrants who learn English stop speaking their native language once they’ve learned English? Why belittle those for whom Gaelic is the native language? And if you accept its place in culture and history, then is there not an argument that consigning it to history loses the true understanding/nuance of that language? there are people more eloquent than I at explaining the importance of Scots and Gaelic in current culture and the two I know best speak neither as their first language. Presumably neither are welcome here now?
I’m more sympathetic to learning Gaelic. The amount of people who speak it is somewhat irrelevant, it is part of Scottish culture and history and if people wish to explore that then I wish them success and personal satisfaction in the pursuit.
Learning a langauge can be an enjoyable experience and although I have no intention of learning Gaelic myself, to those who do I wish good luck.
This £26m spent on translating seems a bit steep. (Yes, I know, I know, its the Daily Record).
Could they not just have used this website?
link to gaelicplacenames.org
If the objection is to spending money on larger bilingual sign, let’s just make them monolingual, with community councils, or full councils deciding which language to be used.
Now what’s the Doric for Balmoral?
It’s good to see consistency in the Unionist strategy “trow enough mud and some will stick”
Keep it up guys and gals you’re doing a great job.
Come on Stu. You make some valid points in the second half of your article so why spoil it by a deliberate and unnecessary anti-Gaelic rant that feeds into what effectively amounts to the anti-Gaelic racism of the British state, first instituted in response to the 17th century Jacobite rebellions?
Many people in the Highlands and Islands regard Gaelic as their first language and use it that way.
Like it or not it is part of our national heritage.
To say that is should just be killed off and forgotten about (which is what would happen if all funding for it was withdrawn) is no better than what has happened to the temples of Palmyra – after all those were built for people whose language, religious belief and way of life are long gone so what’t the problem with blowing them up?
The logic is no different to saying that Gaelic should just shut up and die.
A hae naethin agin Gaelic, but, whilst ah canna speak it richt, ah can unnerstaun Lallans or Lowland Scots,the auld Scots leid.
If the Tuechters are to be mollified by Gaelic road signs, why cannot we Lowlanders have a wee bit more attention paid to th language of Burns?
As for Jackson Carlaw – his native language is surely Erse, or, is that what he speaks out of?
While this article is good to see [anything which dispels the myths of Gaelic expenditure is always good] it is sad to see that you are of the mindset that Gaelic is a waste of time, money and air.
Gaelic is much more than just words on a road sign [which, by the way, have been found to be 100% safe by a 2 year long study by Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government]. Gaelic may only be spoken by around 1% of the population [some 2% have Gaelic language abilities], but that doesn’t make it any less important than French or German.
To pick up directly on the bilingualism point, children who learn Gaelic at school are much more likely to learn other languages and actually succeed, in comparison to those who only speak English. Plus, speaking Gaelic opens up lots of opportunities in Scotland that would otherwise not be accessible. Foreign languages are great, but only if you will actually go abroad to speak them – otherwise *they* are a waste of learning time. At least you can conduct your life in Gaelic in Scotland – whether that be in a social, official or other capacity. As someone who did study 3 foreign languages at school/Uni I haven’t had the opportunity to use them in Scotland. At all. That, you may say, was a waste of learning time…
“Gaelic is much more than just words on a road sign [which, by the way, have been found to be 100% safe by a 2 year long study by Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government]”
That’s not quite true, as you know. They were found to add to the burden of driving by causing extra distraction, but it was found that people compensated for that by going slower and therefore there ultimately weren’t more accidents. You could say the same thing about making tyres out of lard.
I am a non Gaelic speaker and I have to disagree with you Stu. Scotland is an ancient country and G
I think the language should be maintained. The Gaelic immersion schools have great results and are oversubscribed. But the road signs are a simple and cost effective way to tie us back to our history.
What do I mean by that? Quite simply we get to remember where these names come from before they were “anglizised” and lost their meaning. To add to that for tourists and locals alike it adds a certain sense of the exotic. And since it is free lets keep them. Add to that the fact that parts of the language survive on in the spoken word here and are used for marketing and naming of Scottish products.
Yes it is a fringe, yes it is on life support, but it is our heritage and it can enrich our culture in many ways.
link to facebook.com
Well written, thoughtful, and I have to agree, children with two (or more) languages do better. My daughter being one…
Scottish journalism is p*sh and sh*te mixed together in an old sweaty wool sock and whirled around your head at great speed. You don’t want to be around when that is let go.
“A thunderingly witless moron.” I think you do Jackson Carlaw a disservice with this description, RevStu. Witless he is not, rather he is a reasonably intelligent but typically devious politician.
Just like his colleagues on the Tory benches, Murdo Fraser, Alex Johnstone and Ruth The Merciless, to name but a few, his sole aim is to decry the SNP Government and especially its excellent leader, by any means possible. They never allow facts to interrupt a good SNP-Bad rant.
This is exactly the sort of myth-busting article that made this site such a valuable and well-respected resource. Good work.
@ Jim Thomson 11:16 am
O/T “I now think I know why Kilwinning is a bit of a blue-nose area too. ”
Also home of one who sold Scotland The Earl of Eglington
My grandfather was a native Gaelic speaker with English as his second language; my grandmother was from Glasgu and didn’t have the Gaelic.
However, when my mother was growing up it wasn’t the done thing to speak Gaelic and so my mother never learned the language.
Its a shame that the good Rev takes the view that our native language should be forced out of existence.
There is a vibrant Gaelic culture and I hope that it continues to thrive despite the detractors.
Now, if I only had the gift myself…
On that “smash” page, read the part that says leave the nasty comments to the cybernats, and then go and read their comments on anything.
You know what the really annoying thing is, every single day we have to take this pish knowing there’s F all we can do about it.
[…] The lesser of two stupids […]
‘This site has no time for the Gaelic lobby. The obsolete language spoken by just 0.9% of Scotland’s population might be part of the nation’s “cultural heritage”, but so were burning witches and replacing Highlanders with sheep and we don’t do those any more either.’
Living in a Gaelic speaking part of Scotland, namely the isle of Skye, I spend time every day with native Gaelic speakers for whom the language is most certainly not obsolete – for many of these people, it was their first tongue and they only learned English when they went to school. I don;t think you can compare our national language to burning witches or replacing Highlanders with sheep. The former was generally bad and ill informed practice and now obsolete for good reason and the latter was something that was done to the Highland people along with deliberately quashing and attempting to stamp out their language, culture and music by the same sorts of people who nowadays still wish to keep Scotland under imperial UK rule.
I like Wee Ginger Dug’s take on this:
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
“English has always felt like an uncomfortable necessity to me and I understand I am very much in the minority.”
I’m going to assume that a little-known feature of written Gaelic is NOT HAVING ANY SODDING PARAGRAPH BREAKS.
And the question arises re Mr Carlaw, whit the fuck are we paying his usless researchers for,are these people qualified to do the job.
Hi Stuart. The real enemy is down south at Westminster. I have as little interest in your bigoted rants about the worth of Gaelic as I do in anything you might have to say about the value of golf, the Scottish scenery, whisky, or the architecture in Bath. You are absolutely right to point out the absurdity of the anti-Gaelic funding rants by Jackson Carlaw and others, but in your opening comments you were effectively doing their work for them.
Please keep on message – you are still one of the most effective online forensic critics of the unionist cause, and lang may yer lum reek on that one (that was in Scots by the way, I hope you don’t equally have an issue with that also) – but whilst you have not lost a reader, you did just lose a little bit of this reader’s respect.
Sharing a message is one thing, but how you share it is equally important – and that was quite frankly unnecessary.
It’s a pity that sections of the Labour Libdem lot have suddenly turned on Gaelic because they’ve decided that it doesn’t suit their UKOK agenda and are instead trying to make this into a UK v indy issue instead. Possibly because a hatred of Gaelic was the stance of the London-based tabloid press which they appear to follow blindly or maybe because they can’t stand the fact that Scotland might have some distinct culture of our own that prevents us being an exact replica of rUK.
All they’ve achieved is to create a whole new breed of Britnat zoomers who take great pleasure in displaying utter contempt for Gaelic speakers.
God help you if you were a no voter who supports or speaks Gaelic, you can expect a torrent of abuse from the British Nationalists like Stephen Daisley who are furiously promoting the notion that it’s only Scottish Nationalists who have any interest in the language.
It must be so confusing being a Labour voter in Scotland, a few years ago your party backed Gaelic, now they are telling you that it should be sneered at.
“To say that is should just be killed off and forgotten about (which is what would happen if all funding for it was withdrawn)”
Why? If something’s your first language why do you need money to teach it to your children?
And I didn’t say a thing about withdrawing funding. I made a point of saying, twice, that the expenditure was self-financing.
The main reason English is spoken all over the world, is because one of the first thing the colonists did was to belittle & marginalise the native languages. The same happened in Scotland where Gaelic was the native 1st language. Language is one of the pillars of a nation & why the tories are picking this up again after the referendum. The squashing of our aspirations has started (UK on driving licences for example). I don’t speak Gaelic, but I wish I did.
“The government body charged with promoting the language, the Bòrd na Gàidhlig, has an annual budget of just £5.1m. Independent research suggests that such investment actually pays for itself in terms of various benefits to the economy.”
Or about £1.00 per person per year to help promote and protect a very important part of Scotland’s cultural heritage. And one to which the British state (which Scotland still remains part of for the time being at least) has committed itself to protecting through its adherence to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
Some extracts from the recitations in that Charter:
“Considering that the protection of the historical regional or minority languages of Europe, some of which are in danger of eventual extinction, contributes to the maintenance and development of Europe’s cultural wealth and traditions;
Considering that the right to use a regional or minority language in private and public life is an inalienable right conforming to the principles embodied in the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and according to the spirit of the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”
link to conventions.coe.int
‘Its a shame that the good Rev takes the view that our native language should be forced out of existence.”
Don’t put words in my mouth, whatever language you want to do it in.
All of the place name here (rural Aberdeenshire) are Gaelic. So I’m in favour of supporting the language and encouraging people to understand it. Otherwise we are effectively “deracinated”. The early Irish independence movement started up language and literary societies to preserve their culture.
Nazis, on the other hand, are reported to believe, “Whenever I hear the word culture I reach for my gun”, actually the words of a Nazi playwright and poet laureate.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Strange that Jackson Carlaw is so confused.
One major reason that Gaelic became almost extinct was courtesy of a number of British Acts of Parliament, which exacted custodial sentences upon Scots for the criminal behaviour of wearing tartan.
The Dress Act 1776 came under the Act of Proscription also in 1746, part of a plan to assimilate the Scottish Highlands & crush the Clan system.
I’m not defending the clan system but it is important to understand why English became our dominant language. It was legislated thus & then hammered home at schools for decades that Gaelic was for idiots.
And instead of sitting on your arse munching Space Raider crisps, you might want to pick up an ordnance survey map of any part of highland Scotland.
Most summits, ridges, hollows, slopes, crags, lochans, cliff tops, islands, islets, inlets, rivers, streams, springs are still identified in Gaelic.
And nothing jars the ear more than some half arsed attempt by some day tripper from Surrey trying to describe his epic descent in a blizzard from Stob Coir’an Albannaich or Bràigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain.
Of course, we could just obliterate the language completely to make it easier for Londoners to brag to their chums how spiffy their trip to Scotland was.
Me? I’m for sticking every Gaelic word I can firmly up their arse. As the Irish might say if I’ve got the spelling correct, “bata sé suas do thóin!”
Just because we rightly lose some traditions, such as witch burning, keeping slaves, not giving women the vote for hundreds of years and also until 1999 not having a parliament, doesn’t mean that all traditions have to be lost. A Scotland without traditions such as music, language, dance, art and history would be a rather soul less place. Welcome to 1984. Gaelic, like tourism generates more £’s for the Scottish economy than is invested so it is a net gainer for the economy. Do you not think that having road signs in their original language rather than a corruption is a good thing? How about people having a sense of identity because they understand the cultural roots and foundations of modern Scotland. How about a nation that can actually pronounce its own placenames, hill names, geographic features to a level that isn’t an embarrassment? Noone speaks like Robert Burns either, maybe we should ban him too?
McDuff: I am a non Gaelic speaker and I have to disagree with you Stu. Scotland is an ancient country.
I agree in toto. You can apply the same argument against aborigines, let them have their freedoms … within limits, but who cares about their language or art?
On the gross exaggeration of money spent on Gaelic signs, 26 million will be the myth from now on. That’s how black propaganda works. The other side will keep repeating it until enough of the population think there’s truth in it.
We shouldn’t forget that one major impetus for the The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act was actually the Westminster Government signing up to the EU charter on minority and regional languages.
Also, while we’re on the subject, although I’m a deal more sympathetic to the language and its speakers than the good Rev Stu it appears, any notion that Gaelic is or ever was the one true native language of Scotland is a complete myth – a falsehood with no basis at all in the linguistic history of these lands.
So is he going to get all annoyed about Wales having their road signs in Welsh ?
Yea more SNP bad even on stuff they didnt start lol
I have no problem with Gaelic being used in our road signs even if i have no idea what it means and its not like its new as mountains and lochs still have Gaelic names.
Though i am of the conclusion its a bit of a waste of time trying to teach it in our schools they would be much better teaching the kids Mandarin imo.
And this language we use today is not English its a bastardization of all the languages spoken and written on these islands with some European influence it just kept the name English,though i am surprised the yanks havnt claimed they invented it and it should be called American.
£26 million?
That’s almost as much as the BBC spends on Scottish broadcasting.
Out of the BBC’s annual income of £4000 millions a mere £100 million or so is spent in Scotland and out of that figure £70 million is spent on ”national” TV programmes like Homes under the Hammer and lottery game shows leaving only £30 million available for Scottish programmes.
link to thenational.scot
Surely these Gaelic road signs are of interest to tourists. Anything that can make Scotland a more interesting tourist destination gets my vote it’s not as if we can offer sun, sand sea and sex.
All these fans of Outlander who are flooding to Scotland will love the Gaelic signs.
If the Gaelic signs make people feel like uncultured aliens in their own land and leads them to find out more that must be a good thing.
Parroting the rhetoric of post-colonial monoglots. Thought better of you, Stu. Really did.
The Gaelic language issue has become a bit of a political hot potato, especially with the “United Against Separation” type of reader.
They, UAS, and their ilk, positively and absolutely detest anything that is seen as remotely Scottish.
UAS and many a No supporter are in fact suffering from a chronic dose of The Scottish Cringe.
You just need to view their Facebook page to get the picture. The opposition to Gaelic is yet another manifestation of this malignancy that infests a significant part of the Scottish electorate.
And for that reason, the promotion of Gaelic needs to be encouraged because it serves a very real purpose in highlighting to Scots that they have been the victims of a kind of Cultural Cleansing in their own land.
When I see the bitterness exhibited through social media by the likes of UAS and similar, my immediate reaction is anger, then sadness, because these people are poorly informed, culturally ignorant and angry. They see Scotland, the idea of Scotland and Scottishness as a threat.
Whether it is Gaelic, Lowland Scots, Scottish Music, Art or Literature, it’s met with the same reaction – open hostility, anger, insult and rejection.
Their chosen Britishness, as a cultural trait within Scotland, is a kind of mass brainwashing, deliberately perpetrated by a powerful, London-centric machine. It’s been in operation for centuries. Yet they are lucid enough to see the promotion of all things Scottish as a threat; just look at their reaction to a few road signs. If they were confident in their Britishness and that their British Culture was firmly rooted in Scotland, then you wouldn’t see this bitter reaction to it. Britishness is in fact tissue thin and they, the BritNats, know it.
I’m sure many of my generation (pushing 50) will recall the lack of education in Scottish history and culture in school. Thankfully I had some enlightened history teachers (take a bow The Man from Orkney and The After School Football Coach for the under 15s wherever you are). I like to refer to these people as the “Few”. They were a light in the darkness. Now that light has grown in intensity over the past several years, and very welcome it is as well.
So please support the Gaelic road signs, because if it’s getting this sort of reaction from the BritNats, then you know it has to be a good thing.
Mr Carlaw speaks one language fluently that’s for sure.
Neatly skewered.
I though, would feel sad if we simply allowed a language to die.
Sorry Stu but as an English speaker I have to disagree with you. When Wales started agitating for support for their own national language there were few Welsh speakers. They’ve since made huge strides in it’s use by introducing Welsh lessons into schools. Adverts for teachers etc ask for Welsh speaking candidates. Go anywhere in North Wales & you will hear Welsh being spoken.
Cornwall is another case-when I lived there, Cornish speakers were rare but it has improved since & hopefully will continue to grow.
Language is an integral part of a country’s culture & shouldn’t be allowed to die off or be deliberately crushed into oblivion as the English govt/overlords did.It’s actually a very healthy sign of a vibrant nation to see it being used & lessons advertised for non-speakers of the Gaelic.
Schools are reporting being oversubscribed & that indicates not just a growing interest in the language but also a growing interest in the history & customs/folklore of Scotland which was suppressed for so many years.
I see that as a very good thing to be encouraged. Yes it may cost a bit of money but when you consider that Osbo yesterday chucked £500m at Trident, this is miniscule. I know which I’d rather see happen & it won’t cost £500m.
“And nothing jars the ear more than some half arsed attempt by some day tripper from Surrey trying to describe his epic descent in a blizzard from Stob Coir’an Albannaich or Bràigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain”
Or, indeed, people born and bred in Scotland.
OK Stu you have no time for Gaelic but a lot of people do and I would suggest that the majority of people in Scotland support it. Some of us even take the trouble to learn it.
Please don’t piss on a part of your own culture.
“When Wales started agitating for support for their own national language there were few Welsh speakers. They’ve since made huge strides in it’s use by introducing Welsh lessons into schools. Adverts for teachers etc ask for Welsh speaking candidates. Go anywhere in North Wales & you will hear Welsh being spoken.”
Great. What a total waste of everyone’s time that was.
How fucking dare you tell me that the language of my home, of my young family, of my workplace, of my ancestors for the last 2000 years is obsolete. Just because it’s a linguistic world that you’re not party to doesn’t make it redundant. There are fewer speakers of Irish. Should we just tell all Irish speakers to shut up as they’re wasting their time? Or what about the Netherlands? 95% of them can speak pretty reasonable English. Why not tell them to stop being so obstructive by having the temerity to speak their own language when they could jump aboard the English mono-culture bus. Get a fucking grip.
“How fucking dare you tell me that the language of my home, of my young family, of my workplace, of my ancestors for the last 2000 years is obsolete.”
Because (a) it is, and (b) it’s my website and I dare anything I damn well like on it.
O/T
The ‘The People Versus Carmichael’ team just posted:
1 new Announcement:
STV has announced that it will be carrying the case live next week – you will be able to watch ‘the People versus Carmichael’ as it happens.
Whilst I don’t have the Gaelic, I like the dual place names on roadsigns and so long as it costs next to nothing to add the names when signs are changed then what’s the problem?
Many burns, mountains, crofts and moors bear witness to a vibrant Scottish past and live on despite (or maybe because of) the Ordnance Survey. It is enriching and I hope it does flourish.
In a wider context, perhaps their should be a greater drive to educate our youngsters to take up a second language such as French, German or Spanish but that is not to say that Gaelic does not have a place. Like Welsh, Breton or Catalan these languages provide a rich source of diversity. English is after all a bastard language that quite happily plagerises other languages.
As for the stupid and ill informed comments from Smash the SNP, joyfully repeated by that rag that shall not be named, they can spout all the crap they want. Come the day, we shall be free!
N
Careful now! The British State normally recognises only two languages: English and Welsh.
An attack on Gaelic we do not need!
Then again , if it’s learnt as a parallel language, it doesn’t take any extra time or effort at all. Perhaps that’s why almost all the rest of Europe can speak pretty good english and can adapt to other languages easily while we are so poor at it.
“(because everyone you can talk to in Gaelic already understood English)” You could take Gaelic out of that sentence and replace it with any Language , I mean Why bother learning German when any German you are likely to meet already speaks English.
“who are made to feel like uncultured aliens in their own land”
Aw diddums rev. Who exactly has been made to feel like uncultured aliens in their own land over the centuries Rev? Who has been marginalised, had a propaganda war raged against them where the culture has been deemed archaic, pointless, savage etc.? Who had centrist British legislation passed against their language? Which language was excluded from all officialdom so that those being evicted or whatever have had to get this translated for them in the country they grew up in speaking a language passed on by their mother?
I take it you want rid of all other barriers to communication like regional accent or that other language Scots? Should we all speak the ‘Queen’s English? A type of BBC 1950’s language? Force all immigrants to speaK
“Aw diddums rev. Who exactly has been made to feel like uncultured aliens in their own land over the centuries Rev? Who has been marginalised, had a propaganda war raged against them where the culture has been deemed archaic, pointless, savage etc.?”
It’s remarkable how attached people are to being oppressed hundreds of years ago.
“Whilst I don’t have the Gaelic, I like the dual place names on roadsigns and so long as it costs next to nothing to add the names when signs are changed then what’s the problem?”
Other than the thing mentioned in the second paragraph, nothing. Which is why I went to the trouble of writing an article debunking the myth that £26m had been spent on it.
Rev Stu said: Should Scottish Labour implode any further (as well they might) and should – Heaven forbid, of course – some dreadful accident befall Ruth Davidson, Jackson Carlaw could plausibly be the leader of the Holyrood opposition this time next year.
It is clearly no coincidence that Prof Tomkins is being lined up for a safe list seat in Glasgow then.
Allowing for the inglorious part played by the Campbell’s in suppressing Gaelic & the Gael (even worse than Kaye Adams), one would think that this is a subject best avoided by any Campbell whatsoever. A tribe of Campbell lawyers with their quills & eviction notices eventually managed what their clansmen never could on the field, they were pish wi the claymore anyhow as Inverlochy so eloquently confirmed!
Suas na Gael.
“You could take Gaelic out of that sentence and replace it with any Language , I mean Why bother learning German when any German you are likely to meet already speaks English.”
Because that statement is a load of horsebollocks.
link to en.wikipedia.org
I’m fed up hearing these all these whining Gaelic incomers complaining.
Nobody at all, not even me, speaks Pictish!
Alongside the Irish, the Welsh and Bretons, Scottish Gaelic culture is a glorious worldwide phenomena, through the US, Canada, New Zealand. Naturally here in their Scotland region, red and blue tory britnats now detest all of it.
I totally swallowed Daily Record liars thing on £26 million for road signs but they have been routinely bashing out that one fraud a lot lately.
One hard core ukok unionist misery guts always sticks out from rancid The Guardian
link to theguardian.com
Rancid Graun says it’s all just a lot of Gaelic pish in a more and more annoying region of their UKOK land but patiently, they will allow some it at least-
“More materially, it helps the tourist trade by rewarding visitors with the sense of the difference that all tourists seek; Mackay says the translated Gaelic menus in his local Indian restaurant in Inbhir Nis (Inverness) vanish for this very reason.
But I feel saddened by it. What I remember of Cardonald is the old Flamingo ballroom and council estates that were well thought of. To me, Cair Dhòmhnaill is a kind of instruction to focus on a far more distant history, like one slice of a many-banded core sample pulled from the earth, which has an arguable usefulness, and may very well be false.”
I know its hard to see the value of Gaelic from the central belt, far less from Bath.
The saddest thing I have ever seen is a people unable to pronounce or understand the names of the places, roads, hills, towns and villages that they live amongst because the ethnic and cultural cleansing has been so complete.
Anyone care to dance a spey valley ?
Gaelic may not be the language of all Scotland, but it should not be killed off by either plan nor neglect.
A good time to ask friends of Gaelic to support the campaign for more Gaelic on the Gaelic channel. Sadly BBCAlba is becoming very fond of English broadcasting.
link to twitter.com
I disagree with you on Gaelic, especially as in the second part of your article you point out that investment is actually far lower, is basically neutral economically, and has wider community benefits. I enjoyed Eorpa, a Gaelic language programme on BBC Alba that covered little known events in Europe, and was far superior to the drivel served up by BBC Scotland. Far from being inward looking, Eorpa was quite the opposite and was very informative.
When you learn another language, you enter into the soul or persona of another culture group. This is part of what is important about language learning as a branch of the humanities. Gun canaan, gun ceanteadh – No language, no nation. Gaelic sensibility has thus shaped the mindset of the Scots even if we no longer speak it. Gaelic was spoken over most of central and NE Scotland until relatively recently.
Gaelic has no words for Yes or No, you reply affirmatively or negatively by repeating the verb in the question. It also expresses time and action differently, by use of the verbal noun, which it brought into English, a non-Teutonic feature. There is thus a concept of continuous time and of action as existing abstractly and independently of any actor. If you want to say, I have to wash the floor, you say ‘it is at me to be at its washing’.
Some of the finest poetry ever produced in Scotland is in Gaelic. To cast Gaelic out IS like Isil blowing up Palmyra.
Alistair Carmichael challenge to be broadcast live on internet
link to archive.is
Stu, I think a better analogy from Scottish history to go along with burning witches or replacing Highlanders with sheep, is the relentless campaign to destroy Gaelic.
I believe it began with James VI who insisted the heirs of Highland chiefs were sent to the Lowlands to receive education in English.
Post Culloden proscription, Clearances, the Kirk, the schools, the British State, have taken Scotland in just 250 years from a position where half of Scots spoke Gaelic to where we are today.
WoS shouldn’t get on that particular bandwagon.
Ach c’mon!
Tourists love this stuff.
It all adds to the magic.
The less those daan sath understand us the better!.
Here’s a website I put together dealing with the main anti-Welsh arguments. Disppointed to see so many of them repeated here re: Gaelic, and many of the same responses apply.
link to whywelsh.wordpress.com
Nice bit of debunking there Rev, thanks. Got to disagree on the value of Gaelic though.
I’m all for supporting Gaelic. I don’t think the primary purpose of a language is to exclude others. Rather I think it is an expression of diversity of culture.
If you feel excluded when others around you are speaking a language you cannot understand and that annoys you, then maybe you ought to stop being so damn lazy, open your mind and learn some of it.
Many of the “incomers” to the Highlands and Islands are having their kids taught Gaelic because they understand its significance to their new land. So there’s your “blood and soil” argument shot right there.
The argument that everyone can speak English “so what’s the point in learning Gaelic” doesn’t wash for me either. Every language is a unique way of communicating meaning. Talking to someone in any language is a complex process full of subtleties and those subtleties often cannot be translated into another language.
I’m teaching my kids English and other languages. With every new word their world expands. Anyone who would wish a language dead (including Gaelic) is quite simply anti- civilization.
Lots of us speak Gaelic we just don’t know that we do, many words in common usage are directly from that language and even the English use them today
Now I don’t speak much Gaelic but I also don’t speak any Punjabi or Urdu or Polish, I could go on but you get the point, and by that I mean, we publish many Languages for translations supplied to folk who live in our country for use in the NHS and other services so it would be being a bit much not to supply access to one of our own National languages
In a way, kinda Racist against a minority in, and of our own people
Now wouldn’t the Conservative party just love that, considering that they, in fact are the Racists
” …a literally-pointless second language…”.
That’s the subjective (and, in my opinion, very wrong)statement in an otherwise, as always, excellent article.
How you define whether a language is pointless or not is, I suggest, much more than just whether those using it also understand another language.If that was the case then we might as well do away with Danish and Swedish, as most native users of that language can also communicate in English.
The only thing I want to see made obsolete in Scotland is the Tory party ,.and we are almost there
I do not agree with your view of gaelic, Rev Stu, though many do.
I think the issue is the lies and there was no need to include your view in order to attack those lies. You are entitled to your opinion, and it is admirably transparent to include them. But you are already aware of how that will be reportd, and on your own analysis of what people read (couple of paras) you might profitably have reversed the order. See Twitter
Haste ye nae back then Stu. We can do without bigoted cultural imperialists in the New Scotland after Independence. You sit there in Bath in monoglot ignorance and proud of it.
I’m monoglot too but I’m not a bigot about it. Our eldest’s other half is a Gael frae Skye and he learnt the Gealic as a child. He used to play Shinty too. I bet you consider the televising that to be a pollution of the airwaves.
So Rev your argument regarding languages – that a state central language is usually spoken so ‘local’ languages can be ignored as a waste of time, would apply to many countries
and hundreds of languages.
Each language also represents a culture.
Guess your not adverse to a bit of genocide ?
“Why? If something’s your first language why do you need money to teach it to your children?”
For Christ sake man get a grip. Do you therefore advocate stopping funding for English, French, German, and Latin in our education systems.
As has been said your ill informed opening rant re Gaelic has done the unionists work for them.
America banned the Hawian language in 1896 three years after invading and colonising the place.As a result it is almost extinct as a language.
The banning of Gaelic by the UK was a political act of pure racism, enforced by a fascist dictatorship.
The promotion of Gaelic is an attempt by a pro Scottish instituition to heal some of these wounds.
Travel in the Highlands and Islands and try and understand the place and the people.You will not find much support for your views on our language amongst our people.
It has been shown that children who are fluent in Gaelic and English have no trouble learning other languages and intergrating in to other cultures.
As to you nonsense about wasting time looking at roadsigns for the right name. These signs are made in such a way as to clearly distinguish between the two languages and are easy to read and a source of interest and promotion of our language. If you cannot read the correct information then perhaps you need to consider not driving here as there is obviously something far wrong with your eyesight.
Wales is not far from you, do you have similar views on their culture?
Lots of Welsh language signs in Wales.
Do you have any evidence to support your allegation that multi lingual road signs are a safety issue? Or are you going native?
stu, lad.
we get that you’re not scottish.
but comparing speaking gaidhlig to the clearances is pathetically ignorant.
it may be only 0.9% of the population that speaks it, but didn’t reach such a low number because people were wilfully choosing to switch to english, it reached it because it was policy to actively discourage use of gaelic, at a time where for parents to have the time to teach kids things was becoming less and less common, due to things like the clearances, the industrial revolution, etc.
it’s worth remembering that that 0.9% is start to grow again, we’re starting to see gaelic medium education outside the highlands again, with gaelic highschool available in both edinburgh and glasgow, and gaelic primary schools popping up here and there in the central belt, too.
i’m curious, stu, would you also be telling the catalonians that you think they’re a bit racist for speaking catalonian, or for trying to preserve it?
that is, after all, what you just said about scots who speak gaelic, scots, or doric. that is the implication of saying it’s a tool to exclude outlanders or a facet of blood and soil nationalism, y’know… it’s a sly way to call people racist.
A language spoken by a minority is not “obsolete” – it is a native spoken language. I am use to seeing offensive comments on UKIP sites equating sheep shagging and speaking Welsh, I didn’t expect to see similar sentiments on Wings re the Gaelic language.
What percentage of people in Scotland understand Spanish, French, German, Chinese or any other language that is taught in schools?
I’m all in favour of people learning Gaelic especially if that is something they have chosen to do and where they have the opportunity to speak the language on a daily basis. When you learn a language you also study the history, literature of that language and that must be a good thing or would it be better if people in Scotland didn’t know about Scottish history/literature etc?
Why is money spent on teaching pupils the language of Shakespeare & Chaucer a good thing? What percentage of the population speak/understand the language of Shakespeare? Surely Shakespearean English is a dead language it would be more relevant if pupils were taught the language of Rap.
It doesn’t matter which second language you learn first it makes all subsequent languages a lot easier to learn.
Investing money in people who will have the ability to learn foreign languages with ease is a very good thing.
You can spend 6 years at school learning French but if you never have the opportunity to speak the language you are wasting your time and will probably end up unable to even say ‘Bonjour’ to French tourists.
Do people who learn French make others feel like uncultured aliens in their own land if they don’t speak French.
I have an aunty who is a teacher in Islay and speaks fluent Gaelic. Even her own daughters don’t speak a word of it. We both agree that teaching Gaelic in schools is pointless because there is never any need to use it after the exam. Unless you ban English north of Fort William then Gaelic will never become widely spoken.
Just remembered
Can we not introduce Unionist Burning
They’re Crafty (see what I did there) Crafty, Witches
No, OK I’m off
Steveasaneilean: “You make some valid points in the second half of your article so why spoil it by a deliberate and unnecessary anti-Gaelic rant that feeds into what effectively amounts to the anti-Gaelic racism of the British state, first instituted in response to the 17th century Jacobite rebellions?”
You defend Gaelic, rightly, but then refer to the Jacobite Rising as a Rebellion!!! poor show!
I like to see the signs in gaelic,it costs nil actually as the Rev states,and I’m sure the tourists think it adds something to their experience. It also serves as a reminder that Scotland is diverse.
Most Scots spoke a form of English before the act of union,but feel the language is part of the wider culture just like the music is and the land would be poorer without it. Now gaelic will be popular amongst unionists 🙂
Jackson Carlaw ? Was there not a car sale company in Glasgow called. ” Carlaws ” ? Oh yes, it went bust !
The Rev said “…if it is your first language why do you need money o teach it to your children?”
Yeah well, lets take all the money away from English schooling, pre schooling, books in libraries etc. If English is your first language why should you need any support or money to speak it.
Do you see how this works Rev? Or, is it still one rule for the centrist language and culture…
“Yeah well, lets take all the money away from English schooling, pre schooling, books in libraries etc. If English is your first language why should you need any support or money to speak it.”
How did we manage to pass language down for the thousands of years before schools existed?
I have followed the Wings Over Scotland blogs ever since their inception and have appreciated their sentiment and arguments. However, in the opening paragraph, this racist rant against our native language , which is spoken by all of my family and most of my friends up here in the Highlands,is so reminiscent of the arrogant Philistines who lecture us from London that my faith in WOS is now deeply damaged.I suggest an apology and a bit more experience of parts of your country and its people that you, obviously, know little about.
“I suggest an apology”
Your suggestion is noted.
OT
Didn’t realise this until just now.
link to news.stv.tv
A’ Charaidean,
as Mr. Campbell has no time for Gaidhlig will he anglicise his name to Mr. Squint Mouth?
The purpose of Gaelic signage is to give the language a public presence. Gaelic was once the dominant language of all of Scotland north and west of a line drawn roughly from Gretna to Musselburgh, and was even found in the far south east as well. Gaelic signs remind us all that the English language has never been the only language of Scotland, and make a public statement that the language enjoys respect and support. That’s why they’re there, to remind English speaking Scots that their lazy assumption of English language dominance can and should be challenged, and that’s why members of the Scottish political and cultural establishment object to them.
But more than that, Gaelic and Scots have been marginalised because of the actions of the state, so the state has a duty to ensure that the languages survive. That’s moral restitution, it’s the repayment of a debt. We owe it to our languages, we owe it to ourselves.
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
Watch your language!
To add some further perspective, the UK Government currently spends over a billion pounds a year promoting English language art and culture.
Your first three paragraphs could have been a direct quote from Carlaw, or any other Scottish Unionist.
Recently in the press the Unionists have been demanding that we should move on, and get back to the politics of running Scotland efficiently. Yet Carlaw is backtracking on a Scot Tory commitment to promote the Gaelic language and the other night Ken Macintosh was backtracking on a devolved BBC.
It would appear that the only priority for the Scottish Unionist party’s is to attack the Scottish cultural identity, no doubt under instruction from their London paymasters.
First time commenter.
Being from Aberdeen I feel I was brought up to believe as a kid that Gaelic was some kind of strange language spoken by weird people from the west coast and that we were outsiders etc.
Over the years, with the increased interest and the opening up of Gaelic culture I have become aware of the general historic anglicization of Scotland. But, I was shocked to read a few years ago, via Tommy Weir I think, that the last Gaelic speaker up Deeside died around 1980! I find that incredible.
Generally speaking though, I think speaking Gaelic is a great thing, and Gaelic writing by poets such as Sorley MacLean have an importance on a European level.
Language is a tool, problem is, language controls us rather than us it.
In general Stu, I find your website and writing sharp and vital but sometimes you have a wee bit of a tabloid almost Daily Mail kind of attitude to stuff, but I guess you like that so it’s fine. The commentators also provide good insight.
Keep up the good work!
I’ve heard that Gaelic language classes are flourishing, particularly among the older generation. Apparently, it helps keep the brain cells operating. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten where I came across that claim.
Learn Gaelic for your health’s sake!
“made to feel like uncultured aliens in their own land” – wtf?
What’s not “blood and soil” about that? Is it “their own land”? or just cultural imperialism from “lowland Scots with English habits”?
Cringeworthy
No need to be a dick. I’m a Gaelic speaker, Lowlander and very much a modern internationalist. I use Gaelic with the kids who also speak two other languages. Despite living on the fringe of Edinburgh, there are loads of local Gaelic placenames – point being I can understand and appreciate my heritage while very much living in the here and now.
I’ve paid taxes for decades now and if I want services and status in my language for myself and my kids then why the France should I not get it? Because we’re a minority of 60k? Not a good argument.
It would be better if WoS actually conceded that learning Gaelic gives us all a much better understanding of who we are. You simply cannot divorce Gaelic and Scottish. Whether you want to learn it or not is up to you. I speak five languages to varying degrees of fluency but it’s Gaelic and English that speak the most to me of who I am.
And as I use it daily and with my kids, it’s very much a part of my future too.
“I’ve paid taxes for decades now and if I want services and status in my language for myself and my kids then why the France should I not get it?”
Nobody said you shouldn’t. The article said the exact opposite of that. Please learn to read.
I’d like to see us ( Pro Independence) not falling out with those who have a chance of casting their votes in our favour.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was any from of UK media that could report who the real fascists actually are?
Well Done yet again Rev.
Mr Carlaw, former second hand car dealer at Wylies, Glasgow, will be sickened by your response.
It really isn’t cricket for the working classes to retain and refer to the Pish they have organised and promoted in the past.
Life is so much easier for these guys just to throw out rogue figures safe in the knowledge the Daily Redcoat and the BBC will run with it.
Can you imagine the cost of a newspaper or TV license if they had to employ an investigative journalist to check these things In the same manner that the Rev has done on only £20K per annum?
Why is it there are a lot of English people who cannot pronounce loch and instead say lock?
Learning a language with different sounds has got to be a good thing.
I’m just wondering how people who can’t pronounce lock get on with the Spanish jota for example.
Yes I’m 100% in favour on money being spent on Gaelic.
I’m tempted to start some crowd funding in order to pay for some Gaelic lessons for Stuart I bet he would love it!
Not enough money is spent on Gaelic nor Scots.
Let’s have some more cash for our languages please! 🙂
1. The Scottish Government from 1999 to 2007 consisted of a Slab/LibDem coalition.
2. It was in 2001 that the Slab/LibDem Government announced plans to erect bilingual signage along trunk roads in the Highlands.
3. We have established that the SNP were not in power at that time?
4. The government policy is that bilingual roadsigns are only erected when for example, replacing older, perhaps damaged signs and on new or upgraded roads.
5. Due to this policy, the cost to the taxpayer for the gradual replacement of older signs and signage for the occasional new/upgraded road have been and are negligible.
6. Did you get excited and naively believe someone else’s “SNP bad” propaganda or did you pull that £26M figure for road signs out of your own arsehole?
No “SNP BAD” to see here Jackson, jog on.
Also has some royal support
link to news.bbc.co.uk
All I have to say is in the song.
Suas leis a’ Ghàidhlig
link to google.co.uk
Future President Trump’s mum probably spoke Gaelic and here he is getting usual rule britnatia massive boost from Toryboy BBC. Yes I know, the clue’s in the name
link to bbc.co.uk
Hammer of the Scots The Donald isn’t as big a hammer of the Scots like say JK Rowling but he says he loves Scatland and he’ll be good to to his Scatland too, not in that vote Tump BBC blast obviously.
msean says:
1 September, 2015 at 12:31 pm
I like to see the signs in gaelic,it costs nil actually as the Rev states,and I’m sure the tourists think it adds something to their experience.
I agree with that! I did write a comment earlier about it being a tourist attraction especially for the fans of Outlander but that one seems to have disappeared into cyber-space or perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything about the lack of sun, sand, sea & sex in Scotland.
Is the viewing of Outlander still banned in Scotland?
Too much Gaelic perhaps?
Well I would walk 500 miles (804.67 kilometres), climb 1,066.8 metres (3,500 feet), in the soaring Scottish heat of 15 degrees celcius (59 degrees fahrenheit) to demonstrate there is no acceptance of secondary systems.
What brought that rant on? That’s the first time I’ve shaken my head at you Stu. Normally keep that for the threads themselves. Let’s hope it was a one-off.
Thing about the Gaelic was that it wasn’t just banned from being spoken, but the people who spoke it were belittled and made to feel ashamed of their entire culture. I don’t mean in former centuries, but within living memory.
I’m a lowland Scot, and only spent a few years up North, but it was a pleasure to learn how different communities would know where someone came from by their Gaelic accent, something which is difficult to reconcile with Gaelic taught in a classroom.
I was also introduced to Gaelic choir singing. The sound was frankly more like some tribal African community singing, and I had to double-take that this was once a routine part of our wonderful collective culture. I may be wrong, but such choirs, and indeed communities, are perilously close to disappearing, and once gone, there will be no bringing them back.
It’s not just a language. It’s about having a deeper respect and tolerance between ourselves for our cultural diversity. I was never chastised for speaking Gaelic, because I can’t. I was regularly belittled for speaking Doric Scots, and while my accent still runs deep, so the sense runs deep that I’m not speaking “properly”.
If you heard Gaelic sung you could never be critical or disappointed.
Gaelic is not obsolete.
There’s a whole lot of our culture and history in Gaelic which does not appear in English.
The whole purpose of the govt setting out to destroy Gaelic culture was to destroy our history, and brainwash us with the establishment anglo version.
Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.
‘S i cànain aon de na prìomh phuingean de chòirichean mhic an duine. ‘S ann air a bhun-stèidh sin a thogar ar smuaintean. Tha luach cànain ar dùthcha (nach bi ann ach an seo fhèin), thar luach nam margaidhean ann am Baile Lunnainn uile gu lèir: “Oir ciod an tairbhe a tha ann do dhuine, ged chosnadh e an saoghal uile, agus anam fhèin a chall?”
Sprache ist einer der Schwerpunkte der Menschenrechte. Auf das Fundament der Sprache werden unsere Gedanken alle gebaut. Unsere einheimische Sprache (die nirgendwo anders gesprochen werden) ist mehr Wert als das ganze Zeug auf den Finanzmärkten Londons. ,Was hülfe es dem Menschen, wenn er die ganze Welt gewönne und nähme doch Schaden an seiner Seele?’
As Thomas Paine put it: “Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
???????????????????
Christianity, human rights and Confucian virtues all speak against what you have written about Gaelic. Shame on you!
Ruby says:
1 September, 2015 at 12:46 pm
Why is it there are a lot of English people who cannot pronounce loch and instead say lock?
Learning a language with different sounds has got to be a good thing.
I’m just wondering how people who can’t pronounce lock get on with the Spanish jota for example.
Ooops typo loch not lock.
I’m just wondering how people who can’t pronounce LOCH get on with the Spanish jota for example.
I live in Spain and of course try and learn some Spanish. There are two routes to Spanish…the formal and the informal. The informal comes from road signs, adverts in shop windows, newspaper headlines, leaflets and so on. The formal is head in a book stuff.
Road signs are informal and fit in very well with the regeneration of our old language.
Just to add, coming from a Gaelic background, I found the anti-Gaelic bit extremely offensive. We have a right to our own language in our own country (And that goes for the Doric too).
I want value for money and I understand there are many hungry mouths to be fed but remember, “not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted”.
I wish I could post here in Gaelic – piss GCHQ of big time.
I think I pass as a native Gaelic speaker, my parents and family spoke Gaelic in the house and I learned to speak English to go to School. Sadly there is no one left to speak Gaelic to as my parents are no longer around and I converse with my family in English as it is so long since we have spoken Gaelic properly it has been replaced by English as our first language.
I don’t think the Gaelic road signs are a real issue though I have to say that there is some invention in the Gaelic translations similar to those found in the translation of TV and electricity… stick a “bh” in there and you have it! Perhaps Jackson thinks the road signs are so expensive because they are being painted by Ruth’s “Burly men” in Annan. As there are so few Gaelic speakers left they must be paid a fortune.
I suspect that Gaelic will die out as a language in this country in my lifetime, I don’t even hear it commonly spoken when I go to the Western Isles now. It may survive in Nova Scotia where I understand it is far more commonly spoken in day to day life.
Jackson is very polite but a typical Tory nonetheless, its funny how they don’t like benefits and state funding apart from their own wages, expenses and hobbies. Perhaps if he had been better with his figures there would still be a Fist Ford/Wylie’s and he wouldn’t be living on what I’m sure he would think of as a state hand out if it was going to someone else.
How do these guys who can’t even get the equivalent of the very small numbers of Gaelic speakers to vote for them personally hold so much power and influence. I suppose its another example of the remarkable set of double standards that Jackson and Ruth have frequently displayed.
With English coming 3rd in the list of most spoken languages maybe it is time to get rid of it and all start learning mandarin or Spanish.
It’s all a bastardised dialogue of welsh and irish anyway.
Thing is that whilst it slowly declines in the places where it was spoken it’s been taken up by middle class families as a way to get a slightly better education for their children. It’d be a bit like the americans promoting an “indian” language amongst it’s european language. Kind of the ultimate theft.
On the other hand it may be nothing of the sort as it wasn’t just highlanders on the Stuart side of the ’45. There were lowlanders who chose to adopt tartan as an identifier with the cause.
Add to that the further confusion that, as far as I know, the EU actually gives grants for the promotion of languages and so some of the funding they’re moaning about wouldn’t be available for anything else. If true then replacing road signs becomes far less expensive.
Of course if road signs are that hideously expensive perhaps they’d like to explain why they didn’t give those in charge of them a big heads up before deciding that calling the new mega hospital in Glasgow the Southern General was only a temporary name. Never mind, we can always get someone to come up with the correct title for Liz in the translation.
I have a lot of time for this site, but your anti-Gaelic rant is as ignorant, misinformed and out of order as most of the unionist drivel you spend your days attacking. Get a grip. No one is asking you to support Gaelic, but you don’t have to add fuel to the objectionable forces that opportunities see almost anything related to Scottish culture. You clearly haven’t spent any time living and working in parts of the Highlands and Islands where the language is still spoken on a daily basis at work and at home. Sorry to say, but I may as well have read a copy of the Daily Mail today.
I agree with steveasaneilean (11:24am), Paul Patience (11:15 am) and others.
The attempted annihilation of an entire culture may seem like ancient history and yet it would appear that the strategy of subjugation is very much ongoing, over 250 years later when, in our own lifetime, children have been beaten for using their native tongue.
One of the reasons for banning the language was of course that the English couldn’t understand what the enemy was saying (and wouldn’t countenance the damned inconvenience of learning a subordinate language).
Incidentally, I wasn’t raised in a Gaelic-speaking environment but I do remember being routinely disciplined at school for any deviation from “received pronunciation” – simply for using what I would call “everyday spoken Scottish” – “aye” for example!
That Gaelic (or any other Scots language or dialect for that matter) survives at all is a testament to people’s cultural resilience and it should be celebrated – and built upon.
I’d always thought of learning Gaelic but never quite found the time. Funny, it took a TV drama to finally get me started (Outlander). I’m enthusiastically giving it a go now via: http://www.learngaelic.scot and I’m by no means alone in this adventure (the show has a huge worldwide fanbase). So the argument that it is spoken by so few can so easily be resolved, can’t it?
I watched Danger Mouse In Gaelic.
I feel I’ve done my bit for the culture.
Didn’t they force/blend the Gaelic language on/into the Picts though? Just as English was blended into our more recent (ish) ancestors? How far back do we have to go?
It’s good that people can still talk it but I don’t see it as the rightful language of the Scottish people.
Gaelic is such a beautiful language and when you start learning it, it opens up such a great deal of understanding about place names, hill names and history which you weren’t aware of before. I am a huge supporter, especially since the only reason very few people speak it now is that it was stamped out of the country in the same way that most Scottish culture is treated, by shameful portrayal and replacement with the purer, more ‘British’ version.
Long live gaelic, and may lots more of us take the time to learn it. Long live Wings too though!
I wonder how much is spent on promoting Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Polish in the UK? They must be practically dead languages here as so few people speak them, right?
Gaelic is culturally important to all of Scotland – the place names all over the country attest to that. It may well be a ‘nearly dead’ language but its demise has not been due to natural causes.
I think it is instructive to consider how many millions the British state must have spent trying to make it a dead language over the last 300 years merely for the purposes of cultural imperialism.
Finally, a vibrant Gaelic culture can only encourage the realization that we are different and that Scotland should be independent, and that is what we are all interested in surely.
When’s he changing his name to the widely understood Jackson Rockhill?
Re green_pedant
I have a sister in law and two nieces under 12 who speak it. And they are enriched because of that.
One other thing to be considered is an experience from the 1980/90s where many native Gaelic speakers were unionists (e.g. the ex RunRig singer) and there wasn’t a problem then with Gaelic and Unionism, where they both existed in the same space, with no apparent issues.
Why Gaelic is now seen as a threat or to be ridiculed is because it has quite rightly achieved a higher profile which has (coincidentally?) followed that of the Yes movement. It is part of a greater reawakening of Scotland.
In my own opinion, the counter view to promoting a minority language, whether Welsh or Gaelic is to actively allow it to die out by not putting in place measures that could ensure it’s survival. I would have thought that Scots were an active part of Western thought; we are both inheritors and active participants in The West.
Of course, we can choose not to be, but the other side of the coin is perfectly illustrated by the events in Syria/Iraq where IS are conducting a cultural genocide by destroying cultural artefacts in order to rewrite and reframe their hollow view of the world.
So please support minority languages and, at the same time, reduce Unionist arguments to the rubbish that they are.
“To add some further perspective, the UK Government currently spends over a billion pounds a year promoting English language art and culture.”
Does the British Council spend any significant amount of money on promoting lesser used British languages or does it only spend money on promoting English?
Rev,
You are profoundly wrongheaded in your views regarding Gaelic.
The first three paragraphs of this piece are shallow and simplistic.
We don’t all have to agree on everything – independence is our primary aim – I’ll fast forward to your next piece….
the world is scattered with dead and dying languages and its not because they may have been banned or other conspiracy theories its because they failed to evolve.
Language has been evolving since the first caveman went ugg and that is the way it should be,does anybody in Scotland still speak Pict?
now i have nothing against celebrating a culture of your country and looking into the past to how this used to be.
But it is the past and should be taken in context of it being the past,i am more interested in the future.
thanks for exposing Mr Carlaw’s disinformation, Rev
Scotland has two native languages – Gaelic and Scots – and both need to be safeguarded. Bilingual roadsigns in the Highlands and Islands are to be welcomed. In the Lowlands, can we protect Scots? On the M8, the developers have renamed Harthill Hearthill on the roadsigns.
Unionists have been trying to kill off Gaelic for years so well done Rev for joining our foes
Maybe Wings should start a campaign to have all Gaelic names replaced such as the many mountains and hills that sadly have no English translations on many maps, leaving poor hill walkers with no idea as to the origins of the inclines they climb
Perhaps there are other areas of Scottish culture that we could campaign to kill off as well, I’m sure there must be more than just the minority language?
There would be a spin off as well, the less Scottish we make Scotland the less we would need independence
Aye, oops
Yours…
Meant to say as well, my grandfather spoke Gaelic as his first language, and he grew up in Aberfeldy where everyone spoke it. No longer, because it was frowned upon and he wasn’t allowed to speak it at school. Stamped out. We need to respect it now.
Fuck me, blood and soil Nationalism, is Darling ghost writing for Stu now?
As a matter of interest, we are not alone in dual language signposts.As a close example, in Brittany they were also Celts, they developed their own take on the language but Gaelic was it’s base, it was called Breton.
There is also an independence movement in Brittany, and they speak of French politicions much as we do English ones.
However, the French government and no Breton politicians would dare slag off their native Breton language and so they were free to put up their dual language signs.
Yes,French is the dominant language but there would be outrage at any suggestion of writing off the Breton’s Gaelic as useless, they understand it is a part of Brittany’s heritage.
Here we are now undergoing better together and I include the MSM in that, to belittle anything involving the SNP.
This in order to lie and deceive, to steal votes.
It is all about that.
I don’t think the Rev has helped here in part anyway, as I can read the Unionist Blogs as saying ” Even Wings over Scotland” have no time for Gaelic, why should anyone else.
The Rev’s words will be distorted to suit their agenda.
Shame really.
However, to take apart the costing lies was indeed what the Rev excells at, and needed said.
Just wish the first part was not so negative about our heritage, as part of our heritage and long history, Gaelic must stay even for that alone. They have destroyed so much of what used to be Scottish life, we need to protect the remnants.
Stu,
Good job ripping apart the nonsense being spouted in the papers about this.
However, you completely miss the point.
Gaelic didn’t just go away by itself, the British establishment made sure it went away, just like they did/tried to do with Welsh in Wales and Irish Gaelic in Ireland.
After all, we can’t have some of the people speaking languages that the toffs cant understand, how would they know if we aren’t plotting to overthrow them, etc?
Should we also not wear kilts, tartan or play pipes? (all banned by the English historically)
stu 100% on target.
Commenters tartan wrapped arguments are falling flat.
Putting the words Culture, Heritage, Tradition, and Language in the same sentence doesn’t make them all mean the same thing.
Claiming the minority badge no longer stands-more people have polish as a first language than Gaelic.
That leaves Gaelic with the same argument as the monarchy: “Its for the tourists”. It belongs in a nice museum paid for with sales of novelty mugs and tea-towels.
Disappointing to read such depressingly racist and self-hating comments about Gaelic. Perhaps we should let our historic castles collapse and our endangered animals become extinct too. Come to think of it, why rebuild Glasgow School of Art? It’s a dead building. Why go to all the trouble of reviving Scots independence? It’s a dead state.
I suppose the one advantage of Stu’s otherwise gratuitous rant is that it declines to take Mr. Carlaw’s bait by making Gaelic into a constitutional issue. I live in Northern Ireland, where the Unionist community, many of whom, like Stu, actually have Gaelic surnames, are brainwashed into thinking they should have nothing to do with the language, and consequently — en masse and almost monolithically — spout opinions not much different from his (although they’re usually a bit more polite about it).
The kind of independent Scotland in which we wish to live is a valid question. Personally, I see support for Gaelic as cognate with environmentalism and concern for the rights of other minorities. I don’t think for a minute that the Stus of this world will win, but as a cultural nationalist I have to say I’d far rather have Tory Westminster rule with Gaelic than Holyrood without it.
@Socrates MacSporran says: 1 September, 2015 at 11:25 am
” …As for Jackson Carlaw – his native language is surely Erse, or, is that what he speaks out of?”
Arrrgh! Let’s get a couple of things right, Socrates. Wir ain Lallans leid is my first language. Born in a small hamlet, just a couple of Pluchies Raws and two large farmhouses, (for two different farms), I never heard the English spoken until I went to the nearby village school.
We had no electricity and the battery wireless signal was very bad, so it was not used except by my grandfather on a pair of headphones. The point is there is a great deal of difference between the real Lallans Leid and, “Scottish Standard English”.
The former being a distinct language in it’s own right and having several, “Tunes”, (dialects), of its own. The latter is a Scottish dialect of standard English.
The reason I point this out is that many who think they speak wir ain Lallans Leid are actually speaking Scottish Standard English, or more likely a mixture of both.
The word you used, “Earse”, should not be confused with “Erse”, which owersets, (translates), into the Ingis, (English), as, “Irish”. This was because of a wide held mistaken belief the Scots came from Ireland. Recent archaeological evidence proves that they did not. In fact the Scots were tribes that inhabited both shores of the Irish Sea as the water was the main highways when the land was covered by the dense Caledonian Forest. In fact artefacts found on Scottish islands predate those on the Irish mainland.
The humane body-part, “Earse”, is quite a different matter. I’ll give you an example of the difference between the Lallans and Scottish Standard English.
“Ah gaed ben the yett, ower the causey, an stravaiged doon the gate”, is Lallans Scots.
“Ah gaed through the gate, ower the fitpath, an walked doon the road”, is Scottish Standard English. Both are, though, very much Scots unique languages.
However, I have to agree with you that Jackson does indeed often speak out of his earse and certainly not in either the Scots Lallan or the Erse leid, (but I suspect you knew all that anyway).
I share duine bochd’s disappointment and sadness.
The author of the article sounds awfully like the many monoglots I’ve heard spouting ignorance about what a language is and is not. Does he actually know another language (understand/speak/read/write)?
I currently live and work in a place where the very existence of the major minority language was denied until very recently.Anyone saying otherwise risked prison or sometimes worse.
Sometimes without mentioning that it was Scottish I would recount to people what all had been done to eliminate the Gaelic language in Scotland…and they immediately assumed I was speaking about the situation here. Then when I said the country was Scotland they were speechless.
One of the major ways of colonizing a country is by denigrating its culture or denying that culture’s very existence. Language is a huge part of that – so is contempt for it – voiced or implicit.
Destruction of a language promotes the internal colonization that contributes,as this site so ably points out, to the “Scottish cringe”. Perhaps more thought about the origins of this self-debasing feature is necessary.
A bit OT but one of the popular slogans of the country I live in used to be “Sovereignty is not given – it is taken.” If ever there was a reason to call for unilateral declaration of independence it would be Osborne’s assurance that Scotland will be permanently nuclearized…but with jobs for the peasants.
Again OT How can an Irish aristocrat have become finance minister of the UK?
Before I went to school, I spoke Lanarkshire Scots in my family and among my friends. It was bad Scots, copiously diluted with English. At school we kids were ridiculed by our teachers for speaking this bad Scots, which we were told was bad English. If we spoke it to a teacher we were punished for being cheeky.
I became ashamed of my speech. When I went to university, I did not speak my native language to anyone except when at home with my family. I believe that “the cringe” is partly rooted in the disdain that we working class people experience when we speak the language that is most natural for us. We disdain ourselves for it. This is why I believe that a programme of enhancing the self esteem (not the braggart) of working class Scottish people, must include the teaching of Scots in school, recover the vocabulary that my grandparents had, and more of the vocabulary that they had lost, move, in lowland schools, to teaching in Scots as our first language, with English and Gaelic as required second languages, and the teaching of a third language. I believe that it should be the same for the Highlands and Islands – teaching should be in Gaelic as the first language with English and Scots as second languages, and a third language. Of course this would require a gradual transition.
I served in West Africa for 12 years. My driver had never gone to school. He was amazed when I mentioned that the world is round and that people in North America can see the same moon as people in Africa. Yet he spoke 5 languages fluently.
Our African cousins have much to teach us about educating ourselves and our children to be citizens of our own tri-lingual (quadri-lingual) country with pride in our nation, country,culture and languages. I believe that only when our children are taught in their native languages, with English as the most important second language (that of international communication, commerce and trade), will we loose “the cringe”, and have legitimate pride in ourselves, our culture and our nation.
I’m convinced that only with independence can we begin to achieve anything like it.
Ruby
Outlander was never banned,just delayed I think, and it seems that no channel wanted to show it for some strange reason :). Having viewed it, I don’t think it would have made much difference in the indyref,so don’t know why it was delayed unlike other shows which were shown almost immediately on UK telly after their US airings.
It’s on Amazon instant video. It portrays the redcoats as seemingly entirely English,which was not the case,a lot were lowland Scots I think.
Disappointing to read such depressingly racist and self-hating comments about Gaelic. Perhaps we should let our historic castles collapse and our endangered animals become extinct too. Come to think of it, why rebuild Glasgow School of Art? It’s a dead building. Why go to all the trouble of reviving Scots independence? It’s a dead state.
I suppose the one advantage of Stu’s otherwise gratuitous rant is that it declines to take Mr. Carlaw’s bait by making Gaelic into a constitutional issue. I live in Northern Ireland, where the Unionist community, many of whom, like Stu, actually have Gaelic surnames, are brainwashed into thinking they should have nothing to do with the language, and consequently — en masse and almost monolithically — spout opinions not much different from his (although they usually do so more politely).
What sort of independent Scotland we wish to live in is a valid question. Personally, I see support for Gaelic as cognate with environmentalism and concern for the rights of other minorities (including “non-women”, as I have a friend who was born intersex). I don’t think for a minute that the Stus of this world will win, but as a cultural nationalist I’d far rather have Tory Westminster rule with Gaelic than Holyrood without it.
The second part of the article is fine. Usual standard.
The first part is essentially your opinion and not to your usual standard. None of that really needed to be said, it added nothing to the piece, so beyond that I’m not going to comment on it much further than this.
The second part, that the quoted figure is shite and utterly disingenuous is completely accurate. I suspect they’re either making the number up or taking a figure for replacing all the signs and claiming all the cost is because of the Gaelic parts.
Locals sniggering at outsiders not being able to pronounce place names – the Gaels in Milngavie have a lot to answer for.
You should be more tolerant of Gaelic. I’m only 62, and Gaelic was my father’s first language. My old aunts on Islay spoke Gaelic in the street as their first language, and told quite openly that they had been punished in school for speaking the language, I suppose in the first quarter of the last century, as a kind of cultural “cleansing”.
I recall sitting at a school prizegiving in Speyside in the early 60’s listening to our then “local” MP lecture us on how to live, who had an accent nearly incomprehensible to me it was so “Home Counties”, and a set of assumptions and loyalties that were already at odds with what my parents taught me. I thought at the time…this is rubbish.
Even if we don’t speak Gaelic, or don’t speak it very fluently, the language is still a potent symbol for many Scots, and something, anachronistic or not, that should be protected, it having endured against great odds amongst the brassy anthems of imperial Britain.
Ruby, there are more and more people who are born and bred in Scotland that are unable to pronounce the “ch” in loch etc.
I was incensed recently listening to the Radio Scotregion travel person referring to Lockwinnock.
I sent repeated texts pulling her up each time she did it and eventually, believe it or not, she (obviously) indignantly pronounced the ch x 2.
I don’t think I was the only one pulling her up.
Trivial I know, but Im sick of (this isn’t an anti English comment by the way) the Anglicisation of life here.
What narrow minded nonsense,you don’t know what youre talking about Stu.
You have no idea the work many community Gaelic groups do, to arrest the decline of the language. The social aspect of Gaelic learning, the Gaelic kindergartens, parent and child play groups, adult learning, evening classes or weekend workshops
All these groups provide free valuable learning and are taught by mostly volunteers who give up their free time to help grow the language.
I know, why dont we just allow all minority languages to die, as they are inconvenient? lets walk around our country not knowing where our landscape, place names and even our own surnames derive from?
Lets just look at the Gaelic language and culture as a percentage figure or a cost? No doubt in the coming days you will be posting stories attacking the Scottish cringe and inferiority complex……how ironic.
“lets walk around our country not knowing where our landscape, place names and even our own surnames derive from?”
Sounds good to me. I don’t give a shit where place names came from.
For someone with a Gaelic surname, Mr Crooked Mouth (you’v enever forgiven them, have you), you sometimes are just a cultural philistine.
Keep up the good work, though
I am English through and through, born in London. I have however lived in the Highlands for over 20 years and have no plans to live anywhere else. In short I am now an English Scot (I do not answer to ‘British’). I love the Gaelic language and have taken the Cursa Inntrigidh at Sabhal Mor Ostaig. It is the indigenous language and it has been literally beaten out of generation after generation of highlanders. It is terribly sad that so many native speakers have internalised the racist anti-Gaelic attitudes of so many Lowland Scots and will not pass it on to their children. The language holds a culture and a perception that we would do well to respect and learn from. It deserves our support and it is good to see it on the road signs at last – long overdue. This nonsense about how expensive is just anti-Gael prejudice. Killing off a language is like killing off a rare species. Let’s not encourage any more of it. Luckily people like Mr Carlaw can only damage their own credibility with such horrible, racist abuse. There are only 40,000 Faroese, but they have revived their language and also mostly speak English, Danish, Norwegian, etc too. They are rightly proud of their language – if only we could be proud of ours
@Brus MacGallah
Nice one – I also like pointing this out as ironically the the anti Gaelic lobby quite often have Gaelic fornames and surnames or sometimes even both!
Some Tory councillor MacAskill and another guy with a Kane surname were slagging of Gaelic last night on twitter. No knowledge of their own history and culture.
Even the Dukes of Argyll were at it. They did not like Cam Beul squint mouth – like Cam Sron squint nose.
So the official Campbell clan history tries to claim the Campbell name came from France (via Campo Bello) and they were actually descended from Normans.
The Scottish Cringe in all its glory.
Shocked doesn’t begin to cover how I felt on reading this article. I am a fluent gaelic speaker (first language) from the isle of lewis. I grew up In a household where it was the spoken language and where music and song was also part of my everyday culture. I am proud of my heritage and thank everyday my parents who gave me the gift of being able to embrace it and I now am actively involved in the traditions of that culture. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD PLACE FOR A PARAGRAPH BREAK. My husband is from glasgow and sadly my children were brought up with english. Now both my children said they wished they had been taught the language. They have now taken it upon themselves to learn it and have done very well with it and are now actively involved in the traditions of it. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD PLACE FOR A PARAGRAPH BREAK. I feel deeply offended that someone would suggest that I and others with the language should be frowned upon for wanting the language to strengthen for future generations. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD PLACE FOR A PARAGRAPH BREAK. I do agree that the spending of important resources on gaelic signage is a pointless excerise and the finance could be put to better use. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD PLACE FOR A PARAGRAPH BREAK. In saying that the attitude by some to protect all that is Scottish and banging on about the dangers of the union also seem to refuse to accept that the gaelic culture is part of that sovereignty that they claim to be fighting for. I think its hiarious that they condemn us for being bilingual but yet they declare “Soar Alba” at the end of their comments or blogs. Double standards all round and the complete lack of understanding of the language and the culture with areas of Scotland often comes over in this arrogant manner seen in this article. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD PLACE FOR A PARAGRAPH BREAK. Its funny how so many english people move to the islands, learn the language and become actively involved in its traditions but yet thousands of people in Scotland just mick us and degrade us for being bilingual….AT LEAST WE HAVE A HERITAGESTEEPED IN TRADITION. I would rather that to having a shell suit and a bottle of bucky….. Lath Math duibhe uille 🙂 🙂
Personally, I see no reason to have english phonetic spellings on the road signs for gaelic place names.
I would prefer to have the place name spelt correctly and an english translation. That would at least be a small way of teaching gaelic.
There are still many people around whose first language was gaelic and did not learn english until they went to school, where they were beaten for the temerity of uttering any of their own language.
Graun reports
“Emails to the US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton from a close confidant portrayed the British prime minister, David Cameron, as snobbish, William Hague as disingenuous and the first coalition government budget as draconian.
The messages from Clinton’s unofficial adviser Sidney Blumenthal paint an unflattering picture of the Conservative politicians taking over from the Gordon Brown government in 2010.”
So its hardly surprising we have to endure a complete and utter Jackson Carlaw Deputy Leader of the Scottish Conservatives.
Also creepy to think how that our snobbish, arrogant and disingenuous imperial masters use likes of Pacific Quay creep show to do their dirty work in their Scotland region and we let them dump their nukes here too.
Mind how they all begged and pleaded for a NO?
link to theguardian.com
Then they fcuked us over with EVEL 19th Sept and their historic The Vow fraud.
Spot on rev
A classic case of Scottish government bad ukok good
Exactly what is ended to counter the the slow toxic spread ofanti SG propaganda expect it to be on the BBC shortly
For God’s sake don’t let on there may be some transgender Gaelic speakers out there, we’d never hear the end of Stu’s rants (and libel actions).
Rev,
The highlands were cleared of their inhabitants and their culture.
The population of the central belt exploded relative to these clearances.
“..If you know your history, then you will know where you’re coming from…”
As Bob said…
IF THAT HISTORY
( not just the effect of change, but the identity of the sources of our cultures)
IS PASSED DOWN IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE…MUCH OF THE DEPTH OF UNDERSTANDING WILL BE LOST IN TRANSLATION.
Seriously, I am unable to express my disappointment with your opinions on Gaelic.
“Seriously, I am unable to express my disappointment with your opinions on Gaelic.”
That’s a shame.
For all those that have no time for Gaelic, look at it this way. The humanity we are all part of is only interesting through the varied cultures on the planet. Whilst many use this as a reason to hate, defame and kill others; for so many of the rest of us it is that varied culture and language that ensures that there is interesting experiences for us all. It is important therefore that the peoples all around the world should do their bit to retain the language and culture that they have been brought up with or come from. That means for us in Scotland we need to do our bit for the culture of this planet by ensuring we can retain the culture and language of our lands. So, Gaelic and Lallan’s need to be supported as much as possible by us otherwise the planet loses a little bit more of the culture that has been created, no one else is going to save it.
Look at the horrors we see perpetrated by ISIS, not only do they rape and murder people but also destroy cultural antiquities as well. They hate the beauty of the differences we see across the world, we should do our utmost to help retain what is part of our own lands.
Stu: your first three paragraphs were a great disappointment.
They could have been written by the most crass and ignorant Britnat.
Nobody is forced to speak Gaelic, or learn it, but for the sake of our heritage and national identity we should acknowledge the importance of all aspects of our national culture, even those in which we do not have an active interest. All aspects of the national culture could, in fact, be dismissed as a waste of time and money, as being the token postures of a dead nation which hasn’t even got the guts to govern itself. And we know that that is the attitude of many unionists. It’s our support, our refusal to accept the ‘waste of time and money’ denigration, that keeps Scotland, and the independence movement, alive.
TOTALLY O/T
I’m pretty sure that Ternan was sitting on the table across from me in the Big Slope Glasgow today… Man I felt some pretty big hate while eating a tasty burger.
Perhaps if English was thought of as “non-Gaelic”, we would be more willing to learn it? 😉
link to learngaelic.net
Tried to learn Gaelic once, gave up thinking what’s the point.
Own goal though Rev (as much as I agree), but people should read the piece properly! Twice if you have to.
Gaelic lost the fight…and it ain’t coming back
I might join that Unionist website though…..just for fun
‘this site has no time for the Gaelic lobby’. What a shame. Rev Campbell makes a sad assertion which is a little shocking. He clearly has a blind spot here. Gaelic is anything but pointless and knowledge of it and about it can only broaden the learner and the Gael.
It is my contention that you cannot properly perceive Scotland without some Gaelic awareness. Rev Campbell clearly fails here, at least by my understanding. Wings over Scotland is seriously diminished by this disappointing and ignorant stance.
With some of the hostility aimed at Gaelic and indeed Scots including surprisingly even from these quarters may I humbly suggest, “Nivir trust a campbell!!”
????????????
Besides place names, there are many Gaelic surnames in Scotland. Many of them are evident in the comments here. More prominent is the blog host.
Campbell “the name itself derives from two Scottish Gaelic words. “Cam” and “Béal” meaning “Crooked mouth” or “wry-mouthed”, originally a nickname which over time became used as a surname.”
Handy map of Gaelic distribution too:
link to en.wikipedia.org
Let’s imagine for a few seconds that Gaelic was not a metaphysical concept such as language, but a physical object. Such an object that has been crafted for millennia by thousands upon thousands of artists, scholars and sculptures. A piece with such complexity and beauty that it rivaled any known treasure. An item that was influenced by many cultures and enjoyed daily by the common non-woman.
Would we be so hasty to let it gather in dust or be thrown on the scrap heap?
It would be a fair argument to say that this object would be kept in a museum along with millions of other antiques which have no reasonable modern day application like King Tuts death mask or the Honours of Scotland. However these objects bring happiness and inspiration to millions. Items that, as a civilization, will make us poorer if we were to lose them.
Gaelic isn’t an object but a still living language despite it being regularly called ‘dead’ or ‘useless’. A language that has the possibility to be sculptured for millennia more.
We all own Gaelic (even if we don’t speak it) as it is part of our history and we could be richer as a nation by making it part of our future.
After 308 years of colonial rule, it’s a wonder any Scots Gaelic is spoken at all. But an era of Independence for Scotland would, I’m sure, bring about a resurgence of all things Scots, including the native language.
In the meantime, we can all live with Gaelic roadsigns – and street names – but what we really want to see is a road map to Independence.
Its sad that most negativity and hostility to Gaelic comes from Scots themselves, who you think might celebrate and enjoy one of the distinctive strands of their nation. More than a strand; you could say, its foundation.
As other posters have said, the reasons for this and other symptoms of the ‘Scottish cringe’ are rooted in history. So deeply rooted that even some supporters of Independence are not immune to it.
Thanks for pointing out the media lie about money spent, Stu.
But, REALLY?! The case for supporting and maintaining regional and minority languages isn’t hard to make. The EU puts money into supporting minority languages (and some of the little money for An Ghàidhlig comes from that source), precisely because language is a crucial part of the well-being and self esteem of those who speak it, and for the communities who traditionally spoke it.
By 2100, 90% of the world’s languages are predicted to be dead. We’ll all be speaking mid-Atlantic English, Mandarin or Spanish, and all living on GMO Chicken McNuggets, and all bought into a globalist neo-con agenda, with no tools to think otherwise. Baws tae that!
Linguistic diversity is the cultural immune system of our species. With 90% language loss, we lose 90% of the knowledge of how to live with each other, and within our environments. It’s hard to prove that to a monoglot, with a spreadsheet or a political poll – but any fluent speaker of a traditional language knows it’s true.
I agree that trying to restore Gaelic as a primary national language (like was attempted with Irish or Hebrew) would be enormously stupid. It’s been gone too long from much of the country. But teaching some Gaelic in all our schools from the age of 4 seems perfectly reasonable to me – it’s what any real nation on earth would do! Just getting basic competence in a second language at that age will naturally make acquisition of foreign languages a dawdle – and Scots kids will become cosmopolitan and outward looking as a direct consequence. That’s my experience: I was raised with some Gaelic, in the Lowlands, and picked up French (and other languages later) much quicker than others at school.
A key goal of the ‘Great British’ state, from its earliest roots, has been to extirpate Gaelic cultural identity – from the Statutes of Iona in 1609, to the rantings of Carlaw today – and to impose an anglophone monoculture. Take a look at the grave-slabs in Bath Abbey, dedicated to So-and-so, “born in that part of the United Kingdom called Scotland”. Baws tae that. Vive la différence. Suas leis an Ghàidhlig
Paul Patience describes being at school in the East Highlands in 70/80s and suggests some persecution of non English speakers. Wouldn’t the Doric be more the language of those airts? I was a dominie in the East Highlands 1975 – 85, knew for sure no such thing was going on in our school, nor was I remotely aware of any such activity among neighbouring schools. Quite the contrary in fact.
Sigh.. This post is based around the cost of having Gaelic included on road signs. It contains a personal opinion too. The cheek of it..lol
A lot of the comments seem to focus on your personal opinion to the use of Gaelic too much I think.
The fact that someone has talked shite about it costing £26 million is the point here. The MSM are just playing *country name* whispers (scared to write it in case I’m deemed as anti- *country name*).
They hear a figure multiple it by 9 then divide by 4 and go to print with the story. That’ll do. No one will check that figure. Watch as the little people buy into our false reporting. It’s joyous..
Instead we’ve got people taking personally your opinion and using it as ammunition (I disagree with it, but not through some academic reasoning/approach, purely through heritage, history, plinky plonky Scottishness etc). What ever your opinion is on Gaelic, it doesn’t deflect from the pish being peddled that it cost £26 Million for the road signs non-story.
Anyway. “Ha me ski” (spelling grammar all to hell.. the only Gaelic I know that’s suitable for here (learned in the mid 90’s).. I will be corrected, I’m sure..
Tapadh leibh.
It appears Mr Carlaw has caught a lucky break in this thread.
As a poster above referred, Gaelic education has been a success story in Scotland, as has the flowering of wider Gaelic and Scottish culture (not always inseparable) in recent times. The Feis movement, Celtic Connections Festival and many others, all component parts of a still growing industry which continues to sell records, concerts, hotel beds, and on and on. In commercial terms alone the net worth of this industry is probably attracting tourist spend way out of proportion to that of the Gaelic subsidy, not to mention sustaining an earning, tax-paying population in an area that might otherwise be deserted. That alone is a commercial argument, the cultural one of course runs deeper. Would have expected a much better informed, and much less xenophobic argument on this page than what is written above.
“In commercial terms alone the net worth of this industry is probably attracting tourist spend way out of proportion to that of the Gaelic subsidy, not to mention sustaining an earning, tax-paying population in an area that might otherwise be deserted. That alone is a commercial argument”
Something which was clearly pointed out, twice, in the article you’re so furious about.
BTW learning any second language as an infant provides a mental platform for more easily learning further languages in later life. All these anti Gaelic incomer protesters in Skye should know this fact.One incomer I spoke to in Broadford it turns out was actually Afrikaans and as an infant spoke three languages. I simply asked him whether he wished to deny his own children the advantage he had.
The human brain has almost infinite capacity and talking or thinking shite does not seem to fill it right up Mr Carlaw!.
Its been a while since we heard this sort of attack on Gaelic. Beware attempts to stir it up amongst Scots and divide us against ourselves.
On Outlander, as well as being available on Amazon Prime it is also coming out on DVD on September 28th. Having already watched the first 10 episodes, it is fairly obvious why Cameron sought to prevent its transmission in Scotland before the referendum. Let’s just say his wonderfully Better Together British side does not come across too well in 1743…
Oh, dear, Reverend. At first I thought your comments on Gaelic were a spoof. My heart sank as I discovered otherwise.
I am not a native speaker of Gaelic, alas, but have learned enough to conduct place-name research. Its present plight is not because of some Darwinian law of failed languages but because it has been under sustained attack since the eighteenth century as part of a process to destroy forces dangerous to the British state. Enforced emigration and the effects of the Scottish Education Act of 1872 have continued this process.
You may scoff, like Muriel Gray, at Gaelic signs on roads and stations but I welcome them as a kind of resistance to those who would airbrush the language out of our history and culture. Both Gaelic and Scots have to be “othered” for the British Project to succeed and it is part of the Scottish Cringe to denigrate our native Scottish languages and culture.
The only blood and soil ethnic nationalism I can see in the Gaelic question is in the actions of those who have tried to extirpate it.
link to enotes.com
Translations is worth seeing. “It is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.”
UKOK Britnats like Jackson up there can always be heard at, clue’s in the BBC name, with BBC World Service regularly explaining how the Irish want back in the UK. Who gets the Irish ferry from Holyhead to Kings Town (Dun Laoghaire) these days?
Surely Pictish would be better classed as our true national language? Gaelic was from Ireland, as was most of the highland culture which Scotland has been ‘introduced’ to.
Gaelic in Scotland, and indeed Ireland will go the same way as Pictish, given a few generations.
Stu, I hope you are not feeling too besieged by the responses. Your article is excellent, it minces the parts of the press that justly deserve it.
Scottish Parliament TV just started 2pm
Yes, I love the fact that this £26 million figure is being bandied about the same time as Osborne has promised £500m for Trident renewal. Talk about political diversion! The most worrying thing is how many people are biting.
Were Nicola to speak in the Gaelic from time to time, an’ Alex too, that would set the heather on fire. Now there’s a project to unite the nation!
There’s a helluva lot more to Independence than just the political variety.
Livng in Bristol must be affecting you. This sort of gratuitous ignorance is the sort of thing you expect Michael Portillo to engage in when on TV with Andrew Neil when banging on about ‘the language’. You have much to learn about Human Rights with respect to historically suppressed minority languages around Europe.
I am a Gaelic speaker and father of Gaelic speaking children and living in a community where Gaelic is a common mode of interaction on a daily basis.
I routinely experience unprovoked gross racism using the general approach and words in your post from DUP Councillors, the sole UKIP nitwit on my council and others operating in various state institutions.
A lot of the ‘incomers’ to my area from England vote for me as the alternatives are so stark – and I tend to ignore and forgive comments of this type from them as I know the media they watch and education they have been through and understand it it is not their fault – anyway after a year or two they generally ‘get it’.
However this level of ignorance in a mainstream blogger like yourself is pretty unforgivable – go on a course and get yourself educated – or just don’t blog in this subject until you have a grasp of the essentials.
It would take hours to list the areas of discrimination we routinely experience in our day to day lives, and I can send you this list if you want or need it.
Suffice it to say that 50 years after 1955 when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person in Alabama, I started a High Court case against the Government for refusing bus transport to Gaelic speaking children to go to school including my own daughter. Every other type of school imaginable was provided with buses from our local bus station.
By the time we won the case, my daughter was at University and never got to ride the bus, and Rosa Parkes was long-dead.
The Wee Ginger Dug gets my money from now on.
No Gaelic means far less tourists – means lots and lots of jobs lost from our tourist industry.
“No Gaelic means far less tourists – means lots and lots of jobs lost from our tourist industry.”
I suspect that’s rather overstating it, but nevertheless it’s a point I made clearly in the article.
Wings 2 – 5 Wingers
Everyone can have a ‘bad day at the office’.
Still runaway League leader though.
If by learning, supporting and speaking Gaelic annoys the feck out the establishment I’m never going to stop learning the language. As regards Stu’s views on the language I’m with the Wee Ginger Dug on this https//weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2015/08/06/signs-of-repayment-of-a-debt-to-gaelic-and-scots/ .
I don’t mind the signs but I doubt Gaelic will ever be more than a minority interest in future years as the global interweb village dominates.
O/T I want to thank Willie Rennie for making me laugh out loud this morning. I heard a few moments of the radio news in the car with Kezia wittering platitudes regarding doing betterer and then Willie totally blew her out the water with “The Liberal Democrats occupy the radical centre ground” My God Jeremy has a lot to answer for 🙂
@BrianW
Tha mi sgith.
Tha mise sgith cuideachd
Disappointed to see this attack on Gaelic from the pen of Rev Stu. Why disparage part of your country’s culture on a forum which is so carefully scrutinised by our unionist friends? They will drive any wedge possible. Let’s not do it for them.
Maxxmacc, you may find this of interest. The supposed Irish origins of Gaelic culture have been looked at closely and have been questioned:
link to electricscotland.com
Although the paper is fifteen years old, the author still has the same view, I believe.
Interesting concept but be aware that part of the current problem is that the English are so unspeakably mono-cultural most of them do not understand spoken Scottish.
Wherever they go they live in an artificial britbubble. You see it happen in Spain, in France and in Scotland, where the settlers will only communicate with other settlers and seem ill at ease with the unadapted locals.
At least most Scots are bilingual, and 1% is even trilingual!
I should let you know Stuart that there is a groundswell among Rangers Supporters with much the same antipathy for the gaelic.
The horror.
“Why? If something’s your first language why do you need money to teach it to your children?”
Carson?
And this coming from a person who has set up this site to highlight the role of the British establishment and the media in manipulating the people of Scotland. Really? Very disappointed to hear you spouting this tripe.
When we are at it why don’t we just tell all those Johnny Foreigners in all those crappy little European countries to pack up their language and culture as they are all useless anyway. Yeh let’s just have English everywhere as everyone speaks it anyway, don’t they??? Oh and while we are at it we can put Westminster in charge too.
I would like to think a new Independent Scotland would exclude bigots like you!
Your attack on Gaelic is uncalled for and ignorant. I bet you wouldn’t insult our fellow Chinese, Indians etc with such gusto !
“I would like to think a new Independent Scotland would exclude bigots like you!”
Ah, how I love the voice of tolerance.
I am, at least, in part from Gaelic stock – the language of my grandfather’s family was forced from my cultural inheritance by the British state. I resent that.
While I understand the argument that it is not very practical to learn it I still want to! I will go further – I intend to relocate my family to a community that has a Gaelic medium primary so that my son can learn the language.
Not only to help recover our lost family heritage but also to give my son the opportunity to understand and appreciate that cultural and linguistic diversity are central to our future as a human race.
Without healthy Gaelic speaking (and other minority language) communities we will certainly condemn future generations to a life dictated to by multinational corporations and institutions that will demand uniformity and subservience, hooked on GM foods, trash TV and computer games (FFS!) That’s not the world I want!
For me one of the main reasons I want independence from the UK is to encourage diversity – to my way of thinking anyone who trashes Gaelic must be against diversity and favour corporate and political monolithism.
PS For those of you from the Gaelic is of ‘no practical use School of thought’ – what you need to understand is that English will be spoken by most people in the world in the not so very distant future, ergo all other languages ought to go extinct
‘complete idiots’, ‘demented knuckle-draggers’, ‘honking buffoons prone to parroting idiotic drivel from internet nutcases’ and ‘a thunderingly witless moron’ – is all this abusive invective in line with the ‘Rev”s commenting rules?
If so the rules are about as useful as Gordon Brown’s ‘light-touch regulation’.
If not, don’t the rules apply to the Rev himself?
Since my previous comment disappeared into the aether let’s try again.
Your use of the 1% figure as a stick to beat Gaelic is disingenuous. It is not a figure of Gaelic’s making, Gaelic speakers are not denying the language to monoglots. There is even a website: link to learngaelic.scot to help us.
Gaelic has been marginalised and even the making it an official language and publicly funded Gaelic media have simply served to ghettoise it and lead most to assume it’s all cared for and they need pay no notice. People like you.
Then given that situation and absent any evidence that a majority of Gaelic speakers want this situation to pertain you use it to beat them.
I hope you are proud of yourself.
Re Maxxmacc
Not strictly correct, my friend.
Thousands of languages have died. Latin is dead as a conversation language.
If a language dies, it’s for a reason.
Language evolves. Some grow, some don’t. English isn’t even the language it was.
There are far more useful skills that could do with the funding. Like being able to build boats, or fish properly, or such like.
How many languages do you want funded, and why? If your reason is simply that it’s part of culture/heritage, then you should be getting on that horse to demand funding for the countless cultural activities that have been lost or are enjoyed by a tiny number of people now.
More people speak Polish than Gaelic in Scotland. It would be more useful putting up signs in that language.
On a positive note link to theorkneyvole.com
Dear Rev,
This is the first time since the Clare Lally story last year that I got to the end of the blog and thought “He’s got it wrong on this one”.
Your rant against Gaelic has completely overshadowed the important points you were making about Carlaw, Smash the SNP and the Daily Record.
Sorry to say it but your attempts to justify your position isn’t helping, the comments on here and the traffic on twitter proves this, you’ve become the story not them.
Stew,
I think that you’ve dug a hole for yourself with this one, so stop digging please.
You will, hopefully take note of the many people,who post on here with long/longish comments which are very informative, and of great interest , and almost to a man, (eh, woman as well) disagree with your view on our Gaelic.
Surely it’s not a case with you that ” if you don’t understand , then mock” !.
This just isn’t SNP is bad stuff. It is a continuation of the SG is bad propaganda and Scots are bad propaganda and Scotland is just a country populated by downright evil sub humans propaganda.
I believe Stu is highlighting the intolerance, the bigotry and racism of the British/English Cultural Nationalists. Oh and their arrogant and ignorance. He could have chosen a better way to highlight the goose-stepping of the average British Nationalist though.
O/T
Scotgov plans for 2015/16
link to gov.scot
How do you say “sorry” in Gaelic? Stu could do wit some lessons.
BTW though most of us are native English speakers – now – the state still considers it worth while teaching English in schools and Universities. So why not Gaelic?
Do you remember when Thatcher banned Russian in universities once the Soviet Union had been “consigned to the dustbin of history”? I remember 20 years earlier being taught Russian after Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight. Horror! Nobody in UK spoke Russian.
Plus ca change!
“…because everyone you can talk to in Gaelic already understood English”: that’s increasingly true of many languages other than Gaelic. So if we were to apply this logic consistently, we’d end up as…the monoglots we are increasingly becoming. Is that really what we want?
“that’s increasingly true of many languages other than Gaelic.”
No, it isn’t. There are no countries outside of the UK (other than those where it’s the primary language, eg the USA and Australia, of course) where EVERYONE speaks English.
Rev let his feelings about Gaelic undermine an excellent article, that highlighted a Tory MSP using unfounded, baseless pish as a platform for some cheap point scoring about the SNP. Which was the real story?lets be honest it doesn’t matter anymore. The internet being the outrage engine par excellence – the story is now about How REV hates gaelic. Which is not what he said – what does it matter now, the damage is done and Carlaw sneaks off back under the rock and no one remembers or notices what he said.
You had him in your sights rev, then you shot your toes off.
Bilingual roadsigns weren’t instigated by the SNP as part of its dastardly obsession with inculcating seperatism, but by the first Labour/Lib Dem administration in 2003.
I am also concerned with Jackson Carlaw’s apparent affiliations and the dishonesty he is eager to sell. Does he not appreciate he is poisoning Scotland’s body politic with distasteful and disillusion bigotry?
That said, I think you might have been a bit quick there Rev., in dismissing Gaelic as irrelevant. Though a dying language, I think it still forms part of our uniquely Scottish umwelt.
link to cambridge.org
The Electoral Commission has decided that the most precise use of language will be necessary on the ballot paper for the EU referendum (2017). The Cabinet, in other words, are afraid the ‘yes’ / ‘no’ format, may put the Governments preference at a disadvantage.
Meanwhile every statement by Cameron, Osborne & crew, directed to the Scots, is dipped first in spite and then in stale urine before being delivered.
Every narrative of the very worst cases of marital abuse and exploitation fits perfectly the ‘marriage’ between England and Scotland. Divorce is the only solution.
You know it makes sense.
Non-literate, or minimally literate communities in our past, and in other societies elsewhere today, cope(d) well with languages.
It would be an unusual 17th century innkeeper along a Lowland cattle trail who understood no Gaelic whatsoever, and could only cope with one upper class version of English. He might manage some bits of French and Romany. Essential working knowledge in a mobile trading community.
Written language skills in one enforced dominant language tends to diminish competence to pick up other ways of speaking and thinking. Hence the need to beat out native languages and beat in the language of the dominant.
Like many, I remember criticism of my use of Scots as “common”, ie, ignorant. I still write in received English, but that is not how I speak or think.
I learned some French at school. I have learned some German at work, and on holiday with friends in Germany. I resist speaking English as far as possible in both countries.
I have a little Spanish, Italian, Russian and Mandarin by osmosis.
I have learned to speak and read some Gaelic, and use it, mixed with English with a friend. I consider it to be one of the cultural strands of Scotland and worth keeping. I would never force people to learn it as De Valera tried in Eire.
I understand that Stu is making a personal point – and not asking us to agree with him – then sticking a well-deserved boot into Jackson Carlaw and, more so, the utterly incompetent, biased media that allow his ravings to pass as valid comment.
Stay on the latter point.
“Tha mi uabhasach duilich”
Translation for ‘I am very sorry’!
“Translation for ‘I am very sorry’!”
Why, what have you done?
I’ve noticed that the grand sum of 2630 like ‘Smash the SNP’ page. Don’t think we have too much to worry about.
Thanks for pointing out another in a line of simple unionist accounting errors Rev. How the eff are any of them expecting to run a country.
Have to say though, i’d be ok with 26 million being spent on the signs. I’m sick of the Anglicisation of this Nation.
Re: the Gaelic, I’m like a lot of Scots, my gran spoke Gaelic but never passed it on (this was back in the days when you got the belt for speaking Scots or Gaelic), my granddad was a Scots speaker – and I do mean a Scots speaker, none of this speaking a few words and calling yourself a Scots speaker malarkey. Again, other than a few words, he didn’t pass it on, for the same reasons that my gran didn’t.
I’m trying to learn and use both. Not because I’m trying to exclude anyone or so I can boast about being multi-lingual, just because it’s my heritage and I don’t want to lose it. I don’t think I should have to lose it or be expected to let it go simply because, ‘Ah well, everyone understands another language so we should all speak that.’ If we were all to think that then the world would be a much less vibrant and interesting place. If you feel bad that you can’t speak another language: learn one. There you go, solved that problem for you! If anyone doesn’t want to speak Gaelic or Scots, fine. But please don’t put down people who do or who want to retain their culture. Don’t be that kind of person.
I’m a big fan of Gaelic. Not because I speak it but because I think Gaelic culture, particularly its music, is so rich. Quite simply I think it’s worth preserving, or at least giving it the chance of being preserved.