What do you think of Gaelic?
There's a good chance you've never given Gaelic a second's thought. You may have noticed the word POILEAS on a police car but you'll have shrugged it off. Maybe you've come across the Alba Channel on TV in your desperate search during the Covid lockdown for any kind of footie to watch, even if it comes with a Gaelic commentary. Maybe your wean watches Peppa Pig in Gaelic. Mostly, you probably do what the First Minister suggests during the Covid-19 pandemic: you keep the heid and move on.
Unless, of course, you're a member of the bampot brigade and you're hanging about Twitter and Facebook just waiting to be offended by any reference to Scottishness and are convinced that the "outrageous spending" on a "dead language" by the Scottish Government is an affront, part of a plan by Nicola Sturgeon (because everything is her fault, innit?) to force us all to speak Gaelic.
No, I'm not making that up: I've come across quite a few references to outrageous spending on Gaelic. In fact, Gaelic and Scots got about 28.75 million in 2018-9. That's from a total Scottish budget of about 75 BILLION.
If I knew how, I would work the percentage out for you, but I think the figure probably starts with 0.00 + maybe ends in a 1.
In other words, the Gaelic budget is chickenfeed.
The Scots budget - if, like me, you're a Scots speaker - is worse than chickenfeed. It's an insult. And Scots who may deny they are Scots speakers in the anglophone world - and there are many - but talk Scots aw the time in the hoose or wi faimly an freens should maybe realise their language (naw, it's no a dialect and it's no slang) is as endangered as Gaelic is. I'm putting up a wee map here (I've posted it before) so you can see where the Scots language is in the world. Right hand side.
But Gaelic...right. Answer me this: If Gaelic is a dead or dying language, why do the UK press get so agitated about it? I reckon there have been 3 major attacks on Gaelic in papers like the Herald and the Scotsman in the last couple of years. I was more than annoyed to find that Michael Fry was allowed space in the National a couple of weeks back to tell us all again that the language is dying and should be allowed to die. And then the Guardian joined the assault.
I read Michael Fry's article a couple of times and I still don't know what he was getting at. If Gaelic is dying, why does he feel the need to beat its dying body? Just leave it alone. Articles like his are very depressing for people who have spent a lifetime promoting Gaelic - the language, the music, the poetry, etc. Here's another graphic. No idea where I found this. It's about what we lose every time we lose a language - and we're losing languages all the time.
The BBC Scotland website prints photos taken by local photographers every week. Some of my friends have contributed brilliant photos to the gallery. A couple of weeks ago, someone posted a picture of a still Highland loch with the comment that Loch Glas deserved its name. But Loch Glas is a Gaelic landmark and glas in Gaelic doesn't mean glass'.
The same thing happens with Welsh: I've seen several letters in the Observer and the Guardian demanding that we just let "that useless language (Welsh) die". In recent times, we've had Polish people insulted on the bus and the train and told to 'speak English'. There's not the slightest understanding that just over 50% of the population of the world speaks more than one language. It's not snobbery or an affectation: they just live in areas where more than one language is spoken and they need to be bi- or tri-lingual in order to make a living.
I'm more and more convinced that language is what drove the English out of the EU. It's not just that the English are often monolingual. Plenty of Spaniards only speak Castilian and many French people have no foreign language skills. There are Belgians who can't manage a word of French, even though
they live in a country that is (on paper) both Flemish and French-speaking). The Scots are also often monolingual but at least some of us have the decency to be ashamed of it.
In the case of some English people the problem is expectation: they expect people in other countries to speak English. After all, that's the world language, innit? Trouble is: English isn't the world language. That would be Chinese, followed by Spanish, Arabic, Punjabi, Portuguese, Malay - and who knows which languages will pop up as the political climate changes?
If we don't know which languages will be to the fore, maybe we need to try and allow all of them a place.
Unless, of course, you're a member of the bampot brigade and you're hanging about Twitter and Facebook just waiting to be offended by any reference to Scottishness and are convinced that the "outrageous spending" on a "dead language" by the Scottish Government is an affront, part of a plan by Nicola Sturgeon (because everything is her fault, innit?) to force us all to speak Gaelic.
No, I'm not making that up: I've come across quite a few references to outrageous spending on Gaelic. In fact, Gaelic and Scots got about 28.75 million in 2018-9. That's from a total Scottish budget of about 75 BILLION.
If I knew how, I would work the percentage out for you, but I think the figure probably starts with 0.00 + maybe ends in a 1.
In other words, the Gaelic budget is chickenfeed.
The Scots budget - if, like me, you're a Scots speaker - is worse than chickenfeed. It's an insult. And Scots who may deny they are Scots speakers in the anglophone world - and there are many - but talk Scots aw the time in the hoose or wi faimly an freens should maybe realise their language (naw, it's no a dialect and it's no slang) is as endangered as Gaelic is. I'm putting up a wee map here (I've posted it before) so you can see where the Scots language is in the world. Right hand side.
But Gaelic...right. Answer me this: If Gaelic is a dead or dying language, why do the UK press get so agitated about it? I reckon there have been 3 major attacks on Gaelic in papers like the Herald and the Scotsman in the last couple of years. I was more than annoyed to find that Michael Fry was allowed space in the National a couple of weeks back to tell us all again that the language is dying and should be allowed to die. And then the Guardian joined the assault.
I read Michael Fry's article a couple of times and I still don't know what he was getting at. If Gaelic is dying, why does he feel the need to beat its dying body? Just leave it alone. Articles like his are very depressing for people who have spent a lifetime promoting Gaelic - the language, the music, the poetry, etc. Here's another graphic. No idea where I found this. It's about what we lose every time we lose a language - and we're losing languages all the time.
The BBC Scotland website prints photos taken by local photographers every week. Some of my friends have contributed brilliant photos to the gallery. A couple of weeks ago, someone posted a picture of a still Highland loch with the comment that Loch Glas deserved its name. But Loch Glas is a Gaelic landmark and glas in Gaelic doesn't mean glass'.
The same thing happens with Welsh: I've seen several letters in the Observer and the Guardian demanding that we just let "that useless language (Welsh) die". In recent times, we've had Polish people insulted on the bus and the train and told to 'speak English'. There's not the slightest understanding that just over 50% of the population of the world speaks more than one language. It's not snobbery or an affectation: they just live in areas where more than one language is spoken and they need to be bi- or tri-lingual in order to make a living.
I'm more and more convinced that language is what drove the English out of the EU. It's not just that the English are often monolingual. Plenty of Spaniards only speak Castilian and many French people have no foreign language skills. There are Belgians who can't manage a word of French, even though
they live in a country that is (on paper) both Flemish and French-speaking). The Scots are also often monolingual but at least some of us have the decency to be ashamed of it.
In the case of some English people the problem is expectation: they expect people in other countries to speak English. After all, that's the world language, innit? Trouble is: English isn't the world language. That would be Chinese, followed by Spanish, Arabic, Punjabi, Portuguese, Malay - and who knows which languages will pop up as the political climate changes?
If we don't know which languages will be to the fore, maybe we need to try and allow all of them a place.
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