There were just 58,552 Gaelic speakers left in the 2001 census. Thats about the population of a town like Dunfermline.
This Times article lays into the "Gaelic triumphalism" which "surfaces whenever the little that remains of the culture comes under threat of further erosion, at the same time as Gaelic is crowbarred into an ever-increasing number of crannies in lowland life."
At £20m a year for BBC Alba? Sounds a lot but still only £350 per head per speaker. But taking in the wider public spending (£50m) on 1.2% of the population this rises to about £850 a head.
But consider this.
Koichiro Matsuura, Unesco's director-general, said: "The death of a language leads to the disappearance of many forms of intangible cultural heritage, especially the invaluable heritage of traditions and oral expressions of the community that spoke it – from poems and legends to proverbs and jokes."
How important is it to know that Bheinn Mhor means 'Big Hill?'
3 comments:
"The death of a language leads to the disappearance of many forms of intangible cultural heritage, especially the invaluable heritage of traditions and oral expressions of the community that spoke it – from poems and legends to proverbs and jokes."
You could argue that Gaelic would be an exception to this rule. Working in Bolivia, I came across a handful of languages that had no written versions at all. If those languages died, then this statement would be true.
If Gaelic died as a spoken language, it would leave behind a vast record of written, recorded and even multi-media material which would be readily available to historians essentially forever.
That would put Gaelic in the same category as Latin. It would have historical and linguistic interest and perhaps some "academic speakers".
Every guidebook ever produced would tell us what Ben Vorlich means (hill on the bay), but not many people would care. Much the same as now, I would suggest.
Was going to make some comment about Latin but Russell got there first.
Then found myself wondering if Latin in fact has mor interest and mystery precisely because it a dead language.
Though of course it is not - it is still spoken in the Vatican ;-)
Would Gaelic be of more interest as an academic dead language do you think? To be admired for its beauty and grammatical structure, as an expression of some cultural heritage maybe?
Just a thought - isn't that what commenting on blogs is all about?
The Gaelic education media in Glasgow alone, particularly the nursery places, are becoming oversubscribed. To describe it as being "crowbarred" into place as that article does is a touch disingenuous! The growing demand for places could be for lots of reasons but our reasons for choosing it were:
1. Perhaps because of its smallness there is still a *community* of Gaelic-speakers, and it's a warm, welcoming, lovely one, and how often do you find that?
2. Kids raised with two languages grow up smarter, and learn other languages better, later on. That's good for everybody. I can see that most people would prefer something more widely spoken, like Spanish, but the point remains. There is a strong case for *all* kids being taught in a different language from as early as possible - and one as far from English as possible! Surely that'd be worth doing for the Daily Mail's reaction alone!
I've never met anyone, Gaelic-speaker or not, who chose Gaelic medium education to "save" Gaelic. That's kind of a dry concept and I'm not sure you'll find many answers there. The reality of Gaelic is not a couple of squiggles on a map, it's a busy and growing community!
Besides, I have a niggling feeling about languages and cultures. These things are big - very, very big - and we don't really understand them. They're sort of a part of our intellectual ecosystem. I run into open hostility to Gaelic every day, but I still feel like it might yet prove more important than we think.
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