>Situation on Isle of Skye highlights challenges of arresting the slump in popularity, particularly among the young
>
>Mure Dickie on the Isle of Skye
>
>When John Finlayson was growing up, almost everyone in his community on the Isle of Skye was fluent in Gaelic. Now, despite decades of official support for what was once the dominant language of most of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Finlayson can only think of a single neighbour to the family croft on the island who speaks it.
>
>“We’ve been trying to make Gaelic sustainable for many years. So why is it we are failing? That’s the big question,” said Finlayson, 63, a former headteacher who chairs the Highland local council’s education committee.
>
>It is a question of increasing political urgency amid signs that Gaelic’s long linguistic retreat has become a rout.
>
>A study of areas where Gaelic is relatively strong published last year found that the ancient Celtic tongue could “soon cease to exist as a community language in any part of Scotland”.
>
>“The remaining vernacular networks will not survive anywhere to any appreciable extent, under current circumstances, beyond this decade,” said the study, led by Conchúr Ó Giollagáin, Gaelic research professor at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI).
>
>The Scottish National party government is now considering emulating Ireland — where Scottish Gaelic’s linguistic sibling Irish is also under pressure — by grouping areas where the language is relatively strong into a “Gàidhealtachd”, a region that would be given special treatment to support the language.
>
>There is cross-party support for Gaelic, which in the 11th century was spoken across Scotland before being eclipsed by the Scots language and later English.
>
>Scotland’s 2011 census found just over 1 per cent of people could speak Gaelic.
>
>On Skye, a historic centre of Gaelic culture, the challenges and complexities of arresting the language’s decline are clear.
>
>Young people who have learnt the language at home or through the Gaelic medium school system struggle to find jobs or homes on the island, where houses are often snapped up by southerners eager to try island life.
>
>Remote working allowed Katie Kroll, 30, to return to Skye after a decade away that sharply reduced her Gaelic proficiency. Now a lack of fluent local peers makes brushing it up harder.
>
>“I have a lot of friends of my age who are Gaelic speakers that would love to come back to their communities, but they can’t because there’s not much work apart from hospitality and there’s absolutely no accommodation,” Kroll said.
>
>In Staffin on Skye’s jagged-ridged northern coast nearly half of residents reported some proficiency in Gaelic in 2011. But Aonghas Ros, founder member of the local community trust, a grassroots development charity, said maintaining its routine use was a huge challenge.
>
>“English is all-powerful, all-pervading, totally dominating. Unless you are assertive, Gaelic simply gets pushed to one side,” Ros said.
>
>Since Scots Gaelic speakers also speak English, increasing numbers of monolingual English speakers in a community have a dramatic impact on the language used in social situations.
>
>When only Gaelic-speakers are on the Staffin trust’s board, meetings are conducted in Gaelic — but that changes if even one board member does not understand the language.
>
>“You always tend to defer to the fact that someone is only an English speaker, a monoglot person, otherwise you would exclude that person,” Ros said.
>
>Calum Munro, chair of the Gaelic committee on Highland council, said researchers’ forecast of vernacular collapse rang true.
>
>“It’s getting late. We know the situation now, so I think morally we have to face up to that challenge and try to do something,” he said.
>
>What to do is contested. The UHI study called for the creation of a new grassroots co-operative that would take some of the responsibilities and resources of Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the body responsible for promoting Gaelic.
>
>But Wilson McLeod, professor of Celtic and Scottish studies at Edinburgh university, said the study was unfair in its condemnation of current policy and had failed to provide evidence for its proposals.
>
>Much may depend on the judgment of Shirley-Anne Somerville, who as Scotland’s education secretary, is responsible for Gaelic policy.
>
>Somerville has promised new legislation to support the language and a review of Bòrd na Gàidhlig. But the cabinet secretary has yet to detail how a Gaelic speakers’ Gàidhealtachd might work or say what other new policies could help save the language.
>
>Officials have been holding discussions on the issue in preparation for a more formal consultation. “I go into this with a very open mind,” Somerville told the Financial Times in August.
>
>While some anglophone Scots bristle at any extra spending for Gaelic, bold action will be needed to reverse its decline.
>
>Mairi MacInnes, Bòrd na Gàidhlig chair, said rights to Gaelic education should be strengthened, almost all policies that affected island communities revised and much greater resources made available.
>
>The UHI study was critical of the official attention put on teaching Gaelic as a second language — suggesting greater focus should be on supporting native speakers — but MacInnes hailed the growing number of people learning the language in Scotland’s cities.
>
>“The use of the language is equally valuable, whether it is by someone who is learning it, someone who has learned it quite well, or someone who has just always had it,” MacInnes said.
>
>Some Skye residents take comfort from the increasing use of Gaelic by younger native speakers and learners alike in daily life and on social media.
>
>Anna Pelikan, 28, maintains a Gaelic Instagram page and runs a playgroup that introduces children to the language.
>
>Pelikan blamed Gaelic’s decline on linguistic oppression and the infamous 18th and 19th-century clearance of Highland and Island populations for more profitable sheep.
>
>But she believes enough young people now care about the language for it to revive. “I’m optimistic,” she said. “We are slowly going up the hill ourselves.”
>
>Younger speakers are also often more willing to speak imperfect Gaelic than their shyer and more punctilious elders, an approach that raises the language’s profile and encourages others to use it.
>
>“Even if your Gaelic is not perfect, it’s better to speak some,” said Raghnall Robertson, a 36-year-old Skye entrepreneur.
>
>“Is fheàrr Gàidhlig bhriste na Gàidhlig sa chiste,” Robertson quoted a proverb as saying. “It’s better to have broken Gaelic than dead Gaelic.”
It already went out just like French Canadian and Etruscan. No shame in it.
>Pelikan blamed Gaelic’s decline on linguistic oppression and the infamous 18th and 19th-century clearance of Highland and Island populations for more profitable sheep.
Was wondering when this bollocks was going to be brought up, doesn’t mention the fact that people flocked to the lowlands for work and thus adopted English anyway.
I don’t think it’s a good use of money to artificially keep a language afloat
Learning languages is amazing, but students will have so many more doors opened to them by learning French or Spanish.
Why the money isn’t going towards other languages, or any other in need public service (mental health services, cancer services) is bizarre to me
>Young people who have learnt the language at home or through the Gaelic medium school system struggle to find jobs or homes on the island, where houses are often snapped up by southerners eager to try island life.
Rich people coming and snapping up housing in rural areas is also a problem – a BIG problem for the Welsh language – in Wales where rich English people buy holiday homes in traditionally Welsh speaking areas, making young people from the area unable to buy these places. And of course they rarely integrate. Not like they’re there for much of the year anyway. It’s been an object of sharp criticism by Plaid Cymru (the Welsh nationalist party). I still remember the 2001 remarks by Seimon Glyn, Chairman of Housing in Gwynnedd County, one of the most Welsh speaking places in Wales. He was a Plaid Cymru councillor at the time and he was accused of racism for saying this:
>We’re faced with a situation now where we are getting tidal waves of migration, inward migration into our rural areas from England and these people are coming to live, to establish themselves here and to influence our communities and our culture with their own… Now if they were coming here under strict monitoring and control and if, for example, they were made aware of you know the different cultural aspects of these areas and made to or be persuaded to learn Welsh and to integrate smoothly into our communities there wouldn’t be a problem
This is not only happening in the United Kingdom. In the Basque Country, especially the North Basque Country, it’s really bad, but also in Corsica and Brittany etc. But I know the Basque case best. Secondary home owning is rampant, as rich French people who come from outside the Basque Country snap up property, initially in the coastal regions, but now they’ve spread into the interior regions.
In the North Basque Country, 25% of all housing is secondary housing. Between 2015-2017, in Miarritze (Biarritz), 41% of the housing were secondary homes. In Donibane Lohizune (Saint-Jean-de-Luz), 47% of the housing were secondary homes. In Getaria (Guéthary): 48% of the housing were secondary homes.
There is the very obvious economical pressure this puts on local people wanting to live in their region but unable to buy a house and being forced to leave. But in terms of language revitalisation, the French demographic influx has huge impacts on the possibilities of Basque language survival, because Basque is not official in the North Basque Country. Only French is allowed to be official in France. The French immigrants have no interest, incentive or obligation to learn Basque. The secondary home owners are usually only there for a couple of months a year anyway, and the long term immigrants and their children don’t have many opportunities to learn the language because again, only French is official and utterly dominant in the North Basque Country. Unfortunately you can be born, live and die in the North Basque Country only speaking French.
How can you make a language community out of people who aren’t given the means or incentive to learn, or don’t want to learn because they think that in France, French should be enough, or don’t care about the culture and language of the people they’re living among? You can’t. Consequently, Basque has been chased out of the cities and towns where it was once strong and vibrant up until the 1950s, and is now an endangered language.
In my opinion this issue is one of the main reasons why Basque nationalists/independentists (EH Bai) have become the number one left wing force in the North Basque Country, because solving the housing issue and saving the Basque language has been one of their priorities since the very beginning of their political party. Because ultimately it’s all linked. Keep Basque people in the Basque Country by creating jobs, affordable housing, education, public transport etc instead of forcing them to leave for Paris or Lyon or Bordeaux, where they’ll be atomised as a community and there’s little chance they’ll keep their language, instead assimilating into French monolingualism.
If you need to use legislation to artificially prop up your language it’s already too late that language is dead., better spend that money elsewhere.
There seems to be a large amount of English people in this thread who are very upset about this – why?
I don’t really see the point in this but if its what the scots want hopefully it’s successful
There are always a lot of reasons given for the modern decline with the likes of Welsh and Gaelic; but I never see it mentioned how to the majority of people, learning a second language that doesn’t serve them any career benefit is a complete luxury.
There are no economic gains to preserving a language.
This is really sad. I can say the same for some Greek dialects…
Finger crossed! It’s always such a pity when a language disappears
Hope they succeed. Don’t let your culture and language die
Alot of government jobs in ireland requires you to be able to speak irish, I believe they want to increase this to 28% in the next few years, while irish is taught in across the country within schools it fails to make a social impact on our lives not many house holds would speak it, many put it down to the way it was taught In schools, But fully speaking irish schools are getting increasingly popular, so here’s hoping our language will become more usable in our daily life’s.
16 comments
>Situation on Isle of Skye highlights challenges of arresting the slump in popularity, particularly among the young
>
>Mure Dickie on the Isle of Skye
>
>When John Finlayson was growing up, almost everyone in his community on the Isle of Skye was fluent in Gaelic. Now, despite decades of official support for what was once the dominant language of most of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Finlayson can only think of a single neighbour to the family croft on the island who speaks it.
>
>“We’ve been trying to make Gaelic sustainable for many years. So why is it we are failing? That’s the big question,” said Finlayson, 63, a former headteacher who chairs the Highland local council’s education committee.
>
>It is a question of increasing political urgency amid signs that Gaelic’s long linguistic retreat has become a rout.
>
>A study of areas where Gaelic is relatively strong published last year found that the ancient Celtic tongue could “soon cease to exist as a community language in any part of Scotland”.
>
>“The remaining vernacular networks will not survive anywhere to any appreciable extent, under current circumstances, beyond this decade,” said the study, led by Conchúr Ó Giollagáin, Gaelic research professor at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI).
>
>The Scottish National party government is now considering emulating Ireland — where Scottish Gaelic’s linguistic sibling Irish is also under pressure — by grouping areas where the language is relatively strong into a “Gàidhealtachd”, a region that would be given special treatment to support the language.
>
>There is cross-party support for Gaelic, which in the 11th century was spoken across Scotland before being eclipsed by the Scots language and later English.
>
>Scotland’s 2011 census found just over 1 per cent of people could speak Gaelic.
>
>On Skye, a historic centre of Gaelic culture, the challenges and complexities of arresting the language’s decline are clear.
>
>Young people who have learnt the language at home or through the Gaelic medium school system struggle to find jobs or homes on the island, where houses are often snapped up by southerners eager to try island life.
>
>Remote working allowed Katie Kroll, 30, to return to Skye after a decade away that sharply reduced her Gaelic proficiency. Now a lack of fluent local peers makes brushing it up harder.
>
>“I have a lot of friends of my age who are Gaelic speakers that would love to come back to their communities, but they can’t because there’s not much work apart from hospitality and there’s absolutely no accommodation,” Kroll said.
>
>In Staffin on Skye’s jagged-ridged northern coast nearly half of residents reported some proficiency in Gaelic in 2011. But Aonghas Ros, founder member of the local community trust, a grassroots development charity, said maintaining its routine use was a huge challenge.
>
>“English is all-powerful, all-pervading, totally dominating. Unless you are assertive, Gaelic simply gets pushed to one side,” Ros said.
>
>Since Scots Gaelic speakers also speak English, increasing numbers of monolingual English speakers in a community have a dramatic impact on the language used in social situations.
>
>When only Gaelic-speakers are on the Staffin trust’s board, meetings are conducted in Gaelic — but that changes if even one board member does not understand the language.
>
>“You always tend to defer to the fact that someone is only an English speaker, a monoglot person, otherwise you would exclude that person,” Ros said.
>
>Calum Munro, chair of the Gaelic committee on Highland council, said researchers’ forecast of vernacular collapse rang true.
>
>“It’s getting late. We know the situation now, so I think morally we have to face up to that challenge and try to do something,” he said.
>
>What to do is contested. The UHI study called for the creation of a new grassroots co-operative that would take some of the responsibilities and resources of Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the body responsible for promoting Gaelic.
>
>But Wilson McLeod, professor of Celtic and Scottish studies at Edinburgh university, said the study was unfair in its condemnation of current policy and had failed to provide evidence for its proposals.
>
>Much may depend on the judgment of Shirley-Anne Somerville, who as Scotland’s education secretary, is responsible for Gaelic policy.
>
>Somerville has promised new legislation to support the language and a review of Bòrd na Gàidhlig. But the cabinet secretary has yet to detail how a Gaelic speakers’ Gàidhealtachd might work or say what other new policies could help save the language.
>
>Officials have been holding discussions on the issue in preparation for a more formal consultation. “I go into this with a very open mind,” Somerville told the Financial Times in August.
>
>While some anglophone Scots bristle at any extra spending for Gaelic, bold action will be needed to reverse its decline.
>
>Mairi MacInnes, Bòrd na Gàidhlig chair, said rights to Gaelic education should be strengthened, almost all policies that affected island communities revised and much greater resources made available.
>
>The UHI study was critical of the official attention put on teaching Gaelic as a second language — suggesting greater focus should be on supporting native speakers — but MacInnes hailed the growing number of people learning the language in Scotland’s cities.
>
>“The use of the language is equally valuable, whether it is by someone who is learning it, someone who has learned it quite well, or someone who has just always had it,” MacInnes said.
>
>Some Skye residents take comfort from the increasing use of Gaelic by younger native speakers and learners alike in daily life and on social media.
>
>Anna Pelikan, 28, maintains a Gaelic Instagram page and runs a playgroup that introduces children to the language.
>
>Pelikan blamed Gaelic’s decline on linguistic oppression and the infamous 18th and 19th-century clearance of Highland and Island populations for more profitable sheep.
>
>But she believes enough young people now care about the language for it to revive. “I’m optimistic,” she said. “We are slowly going up the hill ourselves.”
>
>Younger speakers are also often more willing to speak imperfect Gaelic than their shyer and more punctilious elders, an approach that raises the language’s profile and encourages others to use it.
>
>“Even if your Gaelic is not perfect, it’s better to speak some,” said Raghnall Robertson, a 36-year-old Skye entrepreneur.
>
>“Is fheàrr Gàidhlig bhriste na Gàidhlig sa chiste,” Robertson quoted a proverb as saying. “It’s better to have broken Gaelic than dead Gaelic.”
It already went out just like French Canadian and Etruscan. No shame in it.
>Pelikan blamed Gaelic’s decline on linguistic oppression and the infamous 18th and 19th-century clearance of Highland and Island populations for more profitable sheep.
Was wondering when this bollocks was going to be brought up, doesn’t mention the fact that people flocked to the lowlands for work and thus adopted English anyway.
I don’t think it’s a good use of money to artificially keep a language afloat
Learning languages is amazing, but students will have so many more doors opened to them by learning French or Spanish.
Why the money isn’t going towards other languages, or any other in need public service (mental health services, cancer services) is bizarre to me
>Young people who have learnt the language at home or through the Gaelic medium school system struggle to find jobs or homes on the island, where houses are often snapped up by southerners eager to try island life.
Rich people coming and snapping up housing in rural areas is also a problem – a BIG problem for the Welsh language – in Wales where rich English people buy holiday homes in traditionally Welsh speaking areas, making young people from the area unable to buy these places. And of course they rarely integrate. Not like they’re there for much of the year anyway. It’s been an object of sharp criticism by Plaid Cymru (the Welsh nationalist party). I still remember the 2001 remarks by Seimon Glyn, Chairman of Housing in Gwynnedd County, one of the most Welsh speaking places in Wales. He was a Plaid Cymru councillor at the time and he was accused of racism for saying this:
>We’re faced with a situation now where we are getting tidal waves of migration, inward migration into our rural areas from England and these people are coming to live, to establish themselves here and to influence our communities and our culture with their own… Now if they were coming here under strict monitoring and control and if, for example, they were made aware of you know the different cultural aspects of these areas and made to or be persuaded to learn Welsh and to integrate smoothly into our communities there wouldn’t be a problem
This is not only happening in the United Kingdom. In the Basque Country, especially the North Basque Country, it’s really bad, but also in Corsica and Brittany etc. But I know the Basque case best. Secondary home owning is rampant, as rich French people who come from outside the Basque Country snap up property, initially in the coastal regions, but now they’ve spread into the interior regions.
In the North Basque Country, 25% of all housing is secondary housing. Between 2015-2017, in Miarritze (Biarritz), 41% of the housing were secondary homes. In Donibane Lohizune (Saint-Jean-de-Luz), 47% of the housing were secondary homes. In Getaria (Guéthary): 48% of the housing were secondary homes.
There is the very obvious economical pressure this puts on local people wanting to live in their region but unable to buy a house and being forced to leave. But in terms of language revitalisation, the French demographic influx has huge impacts on the possibilities of Basque language survival, because Basque is not official in the North Basque Country. Only French is allowed to be official in France. The French immigrants have no interest, incentive or obligation to learn Basque. The secondary home owners are usually only there for a couple of months a year anyway, and the long term immigrants and their children don’t have many opportunities to learn the language because again, only French is official and utterly dominant in the North Basque Country. Unfortunately you can be born, live and die in the North Basque Country only speaking French.
How can you make a language community out of people who aren’t given the means or incentive to learn, or don’t want to learn because they think that in France, French should be enough, or don’t care about the culture and language of the people they’re living among? You can’t. Consequently, Basque has been chased out of the cities and towns where it was once strong and vibrant up until the 1950s, and is now an endangered language.
In my opinion this issue is one of the main reasons why Basque nationalists/independentists (EH Bai) have become the number one left wing force in the North Basque Country, because solving the housing issue and saving the Basque language has been one of their priorities since the very beginning of their political party. Because ultimately it’s all linked. Keep Basque people in the Basque Country by creating jobs, affordable housing, education, public transport etc instead of forcing them to leave for Paris or Lyon or Bordeaux, where they’ll be atomised as a community and there’s little chance they’ll keep their language, instead assimilating into French monolingualism.
If you need to use legislation to artificially prop up your language it’s already too late that language is dead., better spend that money elsewhere.
There seems to be a large amount of English people in this thread who are very upset about this – why?
I don’t really see the point in this but if its what the scots want hopefully it’s successful
Scottish Gaelic is available to study on [Duolingo.com](https://Duolingo.com)
It’s it about a thousand years too late?
There are always a lot of reasons given for the modern decline with the likes of Welsh and Gaelic; but I never see it mentioned how to the majority of people, learning a second language that doesn’t serve them any career benefit is a complete luxury.
There are no economic gains to preserving a language.
This is really sad. I can say the same for some Greek dialects…
Finger crossed! It’s always such a pity when a language disappears
Hope they succeed. Don’t let your culture and language die
Alot of government jobs in ireland requires you to be able to speak irish, I believe they want to increase this to 28% in the next few years, while irish is taught in across the country within schools it fails to make a social impact on our lives not many house holds would speak it, many put it down to the way it was taught In schools, But fully speaking irish schools are getting increasingly popular, so here’s hoping our language will become more usable in our daily life’s.