[Closed] Random observaation, Scottish identity

Because as a nation we're lazy as **** and can't be arsed knowing 2 languages

TV in the Gaelic is awesome....

Gaelic was only spoken in certain parts of Scotland. That's why you only find Gaelic taught in those parts of Scotland (the West and the Islands). Other parts of Scotland speak Scots (lowland areas) which as far as I can tell is somewhere between an English dialect and being its own language and isn't taught in schools although it may be spoken.

Gaelic was only ever ( I think) the language of the highlands and islands. However there area a few Gaelic language schools ( where all teaching is in Gaelic) springing up even in the lowlands.

I don't think to the lowlanders its a part of their identity. Speaking lallans or Doric might be closer but even then its not a core part I don't think

As said this is completely random, and prompted by my attempts to learn [b]Irish[/b]

You mean phrases like "fierce idjiot" and "bejaysus" or you are learning Gaelic 😉

jamba, trying to learn Gaelige. Have to set yourself challenges.

Chapeau. It would be a challenge for me that's for sure, I hardly speak French 😳 in fact I hadn't even heard of that language. On a serious note preserving that sort if heritage is very important so again well done.

There's a fair campaign for Gaelic up here, all the road signs are getting changed, there's a Gaelic language school etc.
I'm not too sure about it all to be honest, if I was a kid putting the effort into learning a second language I'd want it to be something useful in the world, not a hobby language. But then I think it would be good if we all spoke the same language, different languages foster division IMO.

It just occured to me that both Ireland and Wales see the Language as part of their identity and make some attempts to pass it on. Yet i hear nothing about the scots trying to preserve something that you might assume formed part of Scottish heritage?

I can understand why the English government might not put the effort into teaching Cornish, can't be having another region getting an identity....

There is plenty of evidence that Gaelic has been spoken across nearly all of Scotland, at various times in history. eg many placenames across Lothian are clearly Gaelic origin.
Maybe not spoken by everyone, but signifiant parts of the population.

That's because you don't live in Scotland.

All our train stations have dual names in English and Gaelic even in parts of the country that never spoke Gaelic.

Yet i hear nothing about the scots trying to preserve something that you might assume formed part of Scottish heritage?

The overwhelming majority of Scots (me included) are lowlanders, who spoke/speak Scots, not Gaelic. As above, this doesn't stop there being bilingual signs everywhere e.g. the bilingual 'Welcome to Greenock' sign on the A8

There is plenty of evidence that Gaelic has been spoken across nearly all of Scotland, at various times in history. eg many placenames across Lothian are clearly Gaelic origin.
Maybe not spoken by everyone, but signifiant parts of the population.

Most place names in E Anglia are Norse but no-one suggests people in Lincolnshire should start learning it.

That's because you don't live in Scotland.

Agreed, living close to the Welsh border does make me aware through close proximity.

Maybe there is more effort than i am aware of. I just dont get the impression of effort.

That's because there's no significant effort (Dotaman aside) and Gaelic isn't part of the national (as opposed to regional) heritage in the way Welsh is in N Wales, or enshrined in law the way Irish is.

The London governments and media have been trying to oppress Scotland's culture for the last 300 years. It wasn't that long ago that children were beaten for speaking Gaelic. Which leads to people in Scotland believing that its not part of their national culture.

Or trying to say make it about the Gaelic language vs the Scots language. Why not celebrate and promote all of the indigenous languages of Scotland?

I'm a fifer

We struggle with grunts lets not make things complicated.

Back in the '90s during a stay in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary I was watching the local news in the ward's day room. A story came on about a new Gaelic school that had just been opened. One of the ward's older patients got quite incensed that money was being spent on Gaelic in the area, as Doric was Aberdeenshire's historic tongue. To demonstrate its beauty he then loudly regaled me with some Doric poetry. I chose to smile and nod politely.

I don't think that enough Scots see Gaelic as a unifying piece of our cultural identity for it to be placed in as high regard as Welsh is in Wales.

Set phasers to malky!! 😀

Its about as relevant to learning french to me.

And adding ghaelic names to trainstations is barmy when you then have to make if up in ghaelic.

This pretty much covers it for me:

Why not celebrate and promote all of the indigenous languages of Scotland?

jambalaya

As said this is completely random, and prompted by my attempts to learn Irish

You mean phrases like "fierce idjiot" and "bejaysus" or you are learning Gaelic

In Ireland the two main languages are English and Irish. That is to say, the we refer to the Gaelic language spoken on this island as "the Irish language". Unless you're actually speaking Irish in which case you would be speaking [i]as gaeilge[/i].

We would use the term Gaelic to refer to the broader culture.

It is obviously very similar to the "Gaelic" language spoken in parts of Scotland. So similar in fact that I can sort of read road signs and the like in Scotland. Not well, but I get the gist. The pronunciation is totally different though and I wouldn't stand of understanding a conversation.

I was surprised and disappointed to see the stance taken by the bloke who does the Wings Over Scotland website:
[url= http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-lesser-of-two-stupids/ ]The Lesser of Two Stupids[/url]

In Wales everyone *has* to learn Welsh, for 3 years in High School for an hour a week, most don't really apply themselves to it.

Whilst it's lovely to have it and all that, it's pretty much useless, the only time you'll hear it in work environment is in 'the media' and 'the arts' where you'll struggle to get into the industry unless you do. The rest of us just learn 'hello' and 'thank you' and it's seem to appease them, well enough for sub contractors anyway.

The rest of the time is means massive bi-lingual signs that only 20% of people can read both sides of, yet 100% of people can read the English half. The *best* ones are the illuminated warning boards on the motorway - they alternate between Welsh and English a mile apart (or so) it's always be bit daunting to see a big warning triangle with collection of consonants machine gunned across it and having to wait another mile to read about my impending doom.

British history is fascinating.

The Romans conquered Britain, or at least most of it. England did not exist. When they left, Britain was back to being occupied by British regional tribes. There were I think three linguistic groups - Goedels in Ireland and bits of Scotland, Picts in Northern Scotland and Brythons everywhere else, including Southern Scotland.

When the Saxons and Danes arrived they occupied a chunk of Britain that became united as England, and what was left over ended up Wales in the west (from the Saxon word for 'foreginer' ironically, also seen in places like Wallona and Wallachia), Southern Scotland which was known in Wales as the Old North, and the Highlands - all of which were divided into various 'kingdoms' or tribal areas.

Wales, with a long border with England, clearly ended up with a common identity in the face of foreign invasion, and they eventually united into a confederacy, still with princes ruling each 'kingdom', shortly before being assimilated into England politically.

Seems like a similar thing happened in Scotland, but there were always multiple languages in the various different groups - unlike in Wales. Except Scotland managed to fight back and win, whereas the Welsh lost.

Because Wales has been a rump of England for almost 800 years, the language was the only route to national identity. They were a different people, but occupied and oppressed. But there is also a very long literary tradition going back to way before the Saxon invasion of England, and that continuity is now seen as important. The earliest British literature is a compilation of stories that are still taught in Welsh schools, and is a thousand-odd years old.

We do have the Victorian romantics to thank for a fair chunk of this, but the language has always been there even when the English were actively trying to stamp it out. Even in the early 20th century it was still the normal everyday language for most of the country geographically.

You could argue that it's pointless as a means of communication, true. But just imagine if Britain had lost the war, and we all had to learn German, our kids were punished for speaking English in school; you spoke German to your own kids and felt like you couldn't teach them English for their own safety; you had to speak German to deal with any officials; shop staff and other public services all spoke German to you just in case any Germans were around. Woud you just roll over and become German speakers? Probably not, you'd start feeling pretty attached to English as a language. You'd keep using it out of pride, wouldn't you?

All of that stuff actually happened in Wales.

Whilst it's lovely to have it and all that, it's pretty much useless

Depends what your attitude to life is.

If you think the only purpose of a language is to get a job then fair enough. But languages can also be ways to connect to the landscape, history, culture etc. They allow you to view the world through an alternative filter.

I was surprised and disappointed to see the stance taken by the bloke who does the Wings Over Scotland website:
The Lesser of Two Stupids

I'm not really in favour of promotion of Gaelic - but then I am a white settler. Its not something I would get irate about - and IIRC the Gaelic signage pre-dates the SNP.

Unlike in Wales its only spoken by a tiny % of the population and never in the lowlands ( is that true - help me out more knowledgeable folk) It seems pointless to spend time money and effort on promoting Gaelic when learning a european language would be much more useful

Pragmatism over romanticism?

In Finland they have local rules. So if the Swedish speaking population is say under 5% they don't bother putting it on signs, and conversely in strong Swedish areas they don't bother with Finnish.

We were on South Uist 2 years ago (going again in June) I we went to the museum near Askernish, there was a school trip in & they were all rabbiting away in Gaelic. Kids of about 9-10 upwards. Sounded magical to me.
Coool as owt!

So do Scots regard Gaelic as part of their identity, and their heritage so why no attempt to teach more broadly?

Scots is the language of Scotland

I've no real interest in formally learning Gaelic as I don't have a connection to that culture, but I do like seeing place names in it on signs and more commonly on maps.

Adds a bit of interest and spurs me on on occasion to look up the meaning of a nice hill I walked up or place I visited and liked. You can piece together bits of stories and adds a bit of extra interest when pouring over maps which is a favorite pastime of mine.

I don't have a problem with spending a bit of money on road/rail signs as I believe it adds a bit of interest for the tourists also, but I think now they only get added in non-Gaelic areas when the signage needs replaced (I may be wrong).

Scots... which as far as I can tell is somewhere between an English dialect and being its own language and isn't taught in schools although it may be spoken.

It is sort of taught in Scottish schools. Not as a formal subject in itself, but at primary level, often as part of a "Scots week" (usually around Burns time!), that might seem very little - but compare it to when I was at school and you'd probably get the belt for using it! http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Education/Schools/curriculum/GaelicandScots

All our train stations have dual names in English and Gaelic even in parts of the country that never spoke Gaelic.

To the extent that they've made up Gaelic names for places that never had one.

Stupid amounts of money being spent on this crap for a tiny part of the population many of whom could give two hoots about train stations in the central belt. There is a very powerful Gaelic lobby at Holyrood and a real agenda. By all means support a language where it is spoken but don't impose it on the rest of us.

There are Welsh names for lots of places in Britan, many of which aren't clse to the English names. Because they are the original British names from before the occupation...

It was an option to learn gaelic in my schools in the Highlands but not many did. I have heard people speaking it in the shops in Skye and the hebrides though.

The changing of road signs to have gaelic translations even when the place name has no historical gaelic name is a complete waste of money though. Can't imagine what they've spent on it.

If you apply for a grant for a community project in the Highlands one of the questions on the application is 'what will your project do to promote Gaelic language and culture'. Will it prejudice your application to say nothing? Who knows but promotion of Gaelic has invaded every level of government in Scotland. All the signs at Cairngorm ski centre are bilingual now. When was the last time Gaelic was widely spoken in that area and what percentage of their customers speak Gaelic?

When was the last time Gaelic was widely spoken in that area and what percentage of their customers speak Gaelic?

I think they are trying to promote the language, and perhaps encourage more people to speak it.

Might be an uphill struggle in the lowlands though. It worked in Wales because even thought people might not be fluent speakers, lots of people even in the 60s had some exposure to the language through grandparents and now many people speak some Welsh but won't admit to being a 'speaker' as such. So this kind of promotion can help. But I get the feeling that trying to promote Gaelic in the Lowlands might be like trying to get the English to speak Welsh.

People trying to preserve minority languages all over the world come to Wales to find out how decline was reversed.

I think they are trying to promote the language, and perhaps encourage more people to speak it.

Like I said, an agenda.

Interesting what you say about lots of Welsh people having had some exposure, for most lowland Scots Gaelic is centuries and hundreds of miles away. It's flogging a dead horse, spend the money on summint else.

How do the Lowland (for want of a better word.. should I say something else?) Scots think of the Highlands? Does it feel as much a part of their country as anywhere else? What about the Islands? How do the different parts of the country relate to each other?

In antiquity as I recall, lowland Scots would have spoken Welsh as they were ethnically British like the Welsh. (Useless fact - the only character from the Arthurian legends known to have existed is Merlin a Welsh speaking lowland Scottish monk from near Dumfries, added to the tales by a Frenchman who re-wrote them - fact. Period.)
More recently they spoke Scots. Arguments have raged about whether this is s language or an English dialect.
My view? Don't get into an argument about it in Glasgow on a damp Tuesday night.
The highland clearances of course brought a fair Gaelic speaking population into the big west coast lowland urban areas - by which I mean Glasgow and it's surrounds - so there is some Gaelic for that reason.

And the vikings brought some language too - Brodick on Arran for example (Broad Bay but you probably knew that). So I suppose that needs both a Gaelic name and an English/Scots/Welsh one in addition to its actual one.

Daft.

How do the Lowland (for want of a better word.. should I say something else?)

I think that's the right terminology.

I also think Scotland is pretty cohesive. Glaswegians can generally relate to islanders and islanders definitely feel part of Scotland. People from Edinburgh are arseholes though. 😉

Some people do have the connection, but for various reasons the connection was lost.

I can personally relate to it somewhat, my own grand parents spoke it, was native to them, Ulster Gaeilge (which, I'm lead to believe, is closer to Gaidhlig than it is to other forms on Ireland). This imo is because there's a massive shared history between the north of Ireland and Scotland going back millennia.

In regards to my Grandparents, by the time I came along they'd completely turned to English(even by the time my Father came along, which I'll describe below). I never actually heard them speaking it in the 20 odd years I knew them. I can only speculate as to why that is...

My impression is that, in Donegal the families were completely bi-lingual(I'd guess that happened sometime in the 18th/19th century). I've found census record for both families going back to the 1901/1911 Irish census(searchable online if anyone is interested. http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ it's all free). It's interesting, seeing people you know on a 1901 census! We also actually still own the land my grannies family come form in Donegal. Nearly lost it due to time, but my Da claimed it all legally ad paid the dues, just bits and pieces here and there, not worth anything bar the connection, I'm rambling!

In the context of my own grandparents, my granny I know moved back and forth between Scotland and Ireland in her earlier years (she was born in 1928) I think she went up north somewhere for school, before ending up in Glasgow. My Granda I know came over here in the 40s to go fishing in Aberdeen, he was born in 1922(actually interesting, My da's still got his first passport allowing him to come over here and work during the war, I just didn't make a connection he'd have needed one, was a bit of a surprise when I found that).

So they've both been very young and Glasgow around that time would have been majorly English speaking. Pockets of Irish would still have been about, large scale Irish immigration to Glasgow/Scotland/Britain really started after the famine(Glasgow took the most post famine as far as I knwo), but there's been plenty of subsequent flows since, largely down to economic necessity. Anyway they ended up in the Gorbals, so I guess they just went with the flow language wise because they came over so young.

So by the time my Da came along in 1953 the established dominant language would have been English in the family home and at School and among friends. I'd also guess in the context of a poor working class family living in Scotland, the parents perhaps wouldn't have recognised the benefit in teaching him Irish. Even though my Da travelled back and forth to Donegal a lot in his youth, spending summers there and stuff, and worked there for a number of years too in his 20s. He still didn't learn it.

English is the dominant language even in Donegal. But IMO, the English language take over there is much later, early 19th/around the turn of the 20th century going by my own personal census records, they'd have been typical of Donegal natives as far as i know. Irish still exists fairly strongly as it has been promoted in schools for years, and because the history of it still exists in the generational memory going back not too far. The change could well be earlier than my assertions though, happy to be schooled by any Donegal natives on that(I have no particular strong connection to Donegal, few distant cousins around letterkenny but that's about it.)

tbh I don't really know the relevancy in all that, just a one example of how the language did actually die in practice within a family unit, that I thought might be interesting..

As to the wider question of Gaelic on the British isles, it's history is much wider than a lot of people generally know, imo. Molgrips is along the right lines. In Scotland the Picts and various British/English/Welsh Celtic tribes, spoke a more welsh style of Gaelic. I think around 800 or so, the scots came over from Ireland and merged/dominated the local Picts. By all accounts it wasn't a massacre, more a merging of Kingdoms, but the Scots(Irish) culture dominated. MacBeth is actually very important in that history if I remember right (there's also heavy Viking influence in the islands of Scotland. Form the Northern islands, right into the Clyde and the Western and Southern islands, as well as in Ireland too). From then only you'd had various other language developments in England(I'll leave that outline to someone else!), which starts to push up, both naturally and forcefully, which push the Gaelic languages into the periphery of Scotland, into Wales, and there's a push back in Ireland too(the latter probably much later and slower).

By the time you get to the 13/14/1500's English is starting to become the dominant language on the island. (It's around this time, I think a lot of Scots begin to forget the shared gaelic history with Ireland/England and Wales. Not just the Scots, I'd guess that applies to the British population in general around that time).

Anyway, that's a fairly simplistic view and you can get much more local within Scotland and England etc(Scots, and Doric histories for example), but you'll need to do your own research there. Magnus Magnusons book is very good(well half if it is, I only got up to around the 11/12/1300s and I would need to re-read it again anyway) But the above is my general view, and I think it rings fairly true as a quick overview. As ever though, I'm open to other opinions, and pliable with my own.

Magnus Magnussons book if anyone is interested:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotland-Story-Nation-Magnus-Magnusson/dp/0006531911