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Dundee gripped by gaelic fever


Reynard

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Can see where you are coming from, but the responses aren't as uniform as they would be if politics was the major driving factor. The dark blue blobs are in the right places, in my opinion, because they cover rural areas where people (the older generation for the most part) genuinely do still speak with a reasonably broad form of Scots.

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You deemed it important enough to start a thread about it. Relevence is? How does it compare to other public consultations in Dundee?

Clutching at straws to make some sort of point. Maybe you think being anti-Gaelic is anti-Scottish or that all Gaels are pro-indy. I don't know. Enlighten me.

Big fan of the Gaelic.

I love the seethe it brings out in the beetroot red faced and puggy looking Scots.

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I deemed it too good a chance to miss sticking the boot into the ridiculous SNP. The fact it's got utter fannies like you whining is also good.

Eh???????????? It's a requirement of The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005..........Labour/Libdem legislation.

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What you answered to the Scots question had more to do with politics than language IMO.

surely no? i didnt think we wer that petty in scotland. i would say that what is spoken by many nowadays is heavily watered down from say 100 or 50 years ago it still has enough unique words to be classified as a language. an english speaker would have trouble understanding it. remember scandavian languages are all fairy similar and dutch isnt a million miles from german but those speakers dont consider themselves to speak a slang, gramaticly inferior version of their neighbours tounge. many people here do tho.

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Services for Gaelic speakers were first seriously funded under the Tories - Thatcherite Michael Forsyth being our SSfS at the time. The LibDems and Labour continued as do the SNP. Gaelic has the support of Nats as well as arch Unionists like Brian Wilson.

Why some people feel threatened about a few signs appearing, I don't know. I like them. I pay my taxes too and my kids speak Gaelic.

I'll use the Gaelic wherever I can and Reynard can use the English. Win, win - no?

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Sin agad e agus cum orth fhein, An Crubag!

Only speak a smidgin, sorry pidgin of it, but cum Gaidhlig beo indeed.

How long til the ''Thur's mair Polish and Urdu speakers in Scotland the day than gaylick eins''. The letters section whenever Gaelic has had an article or some high-profile promotion is usually tremendous reading from the red faced proud Scot brigade who are absolutely in no doubt at all about it - utterly, utterly seething.

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What annoys some people when Gaelic is accorded a national rather than regional language status is that there are parts of Scotland where Gaelic has never been the main language and others where it was only briefly so about 1000 years ago. Many would argue that resources should be targeted at core Gaeltacht areas with an agenda driven primarily by native speakers rather than by a politicised learners' lobby.

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It's utterly useless. Reynard has it right though - it's just a pity we were saddled with such a ridiculous backward nonsense of a language. No surprise it never made it to civilisation.

An uair a bhios sinn ri òrach

Bidheadhmaid ri òrach;

'S nuair a bhios sinn ri maorach,

Bidheadhmaid ri maorach.

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What annoys some people when Gaelic is accorded a national rather than regional language status is that there are parts of Scotland where Gaelic has never been the main language and others where it was only briefly so about 1000 years ago. Many would argue that resources should be targeted at core Gaeltacht areas with an agenda driven primarily by native speakers rather than by a politicised learners' lobby.

I don't completely disagree with what you are saying. However, my defintion of the Gaidhealtachd and another person's are probably completely different.

The last native Gaelic speakers in Aberdeenshire, Angus and Perthshire only died in the 1980s. Do they get to be part of it? Glasgow and Edinburgh have historically had, and continue to this day, to have large numbers of Gaelic speaking economic migrants.Should they be supported to pass their language into their children or is the Gaidhealtachd to be a be a physical place where the language is allowed to cling on?

I do happen to think bilingual road signs in Dundee or Scotrail signs in Falkirk are an utter waste of time but at the same time they don't harm anyone.

The seethe generated by Gaelic for the resource poured into it and the affect it would have on most people's lives is incredible. If for whatever reason you don't like it, it's incredibly easy to avoid.

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Is Scots seen as a language in itself or simply as a dialect of English? I would say I can speak a fair bit of Scots purely because it's seen as "slang"

I don't think it is even a dialect of English, since that implies it is homogenous across Scotland which it certainly isn't (when did a Glasgow native said 'fit like') In the absence of a widely spoken 'other' language like welsh in Wales or French in Quebec, I think nat politicians like calling Scots a language because it helps legitimise the nationalism itself.
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I don't think it is even a dialect of English, since that implies it is homogenous across Scotland which it certainly isn't (when did a Glasgow native said 'fit like') In the absence of a widely spoken 'other' language like welsh in Wales or French in Quebec, I think nat politicians like calling Scots a language because it helps legitimise the nationalism itself.

Or it's how folk speak. And it should be protected. From c***s like Reynard.

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I don't completely disagree with what you are saying. However, my defintion of the Gaidhealtachd and another person's are probably completely different.

The last native Gaelic speakers in Aberdeenshire, Angus and Perthshire only died in the 1980s. Do they get to be part of it? Glasgow and Edinburgh have historically had, and continue to this day, to have large numbers of Gaelic speaking economic migrants.Should they be supported to pass their language into their children or is the Gaidhealtachd to be a be a physical place where the language is allowed to cling on?

I do happen to think bilingual road signs in Dundee or Scotrail signs in Falkirk are an utter waste of time but at the same time they don't harm anyone.

The seethe generated by Gaelic for the resource poured into it and the affect it would have on most people's lives is incredible. If for whatever reason you don't like it, it's incredibly easy to avoid.

Virtually the whole of Scotland was a Gaidhealtachd at one time or other. Scotland is named after the Gaels/Scotti and her core identity seems to be mostly Gaelic. We're not 'pure' but which nation is? Our iconography is Gaelic - think of a symbol of Scots culture and it's probably Gaelic in origin. Even stongly 'Anglo' areas like East Lothian are littered with Gaelic placenames left behind by Gaelic speaking communities.

Given the vast effort and expense given to eradicating Gaelic, then the money we now get towards giving Scottish taxpayers some services in their native tongue is a drop in the ocean.

Like I said before, I pay taxes and I assume right-wing whingers like Reynard does too. I'll use the Gaelic, he/ she can use the English.

What annoys some people when Gaelic is accorded a national rather than regional language status is that there are parts of Scotland where Gaelic has never been the main language and others where it was only briefly so about 1000 years ago.

Can Lurker name these areas and point me to the evidence?

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You are aware that Shetland went from being Pictish to Norse and only became part of Scotland after Gaelic had ceased to be the language of state, aren't you?

Beyond that most of the world's languages will die as living languages used natively and habitually by people throughout the course of their daily lives at some point this century. Bilingual road signs in Dundee won't get the job done for Gaelic on that sort of thing and is driven by an agenda that has nothing to do with saving the language. There's not much point closing the stable door after the horse has bolted in the formerly Gaelic speaking portions of Perthsire, Angus and Aberdeenshire. It's in places like Skye and the Western Isles that resources should be targeted.

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You are aware that Shetland went from being Pictish to Norse and only became part of Scotland after Gaelic had ceased to be the language of state, aren't you?

Beyond that most of the world's languages will die as living languages used natively and habitually by people throughout the course of their daily lives at some point this century. Bilingual road signs in Dundee won't get the job done for Gaelic on that sort of thing and is driven by an agenda that has nothing to do with saving the language. There's not much point closing the stable door after the horse has bolted in the formerly Gaelic speaking portions of Perthsire, Angus and Aberdeenshire. It's in places like Skye and the Western Isles that resources should be targeted.

Is that all? Though, there's still a Gaelic influence there too. Gaelic speaking monks settled the Northern Isles, Faroes and Iceland before the Norse did - check out the 'Papar' for more info. They probably also mixed with Cruithne/Picts who also came.

Whatever, in the modern day, surely tax-paying Scots who speak our oldest tongue deserve services in and for that tongue? I wonder under what grounds you would deny that to us? Being a minority? That could be a dangerous road to take. As to signs in Dundee - their cost is minimal though I'd argue that increased visibilty of Gaelic can only be a good thing.

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How much of the demand for Gaelic sevices is coming from genuine native Gaelic speakers rather than the politically-motivated learners lobby? Most of them are happy enough to use English in formal settings in my experience and use Gaelic as a vernacular rather than a literary language much the same as happens with Scots.

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How much of the demand for Gaelic sevices is coming from genuine native Gaelic speakers rather than the politically-motivated learners lobby? Most of them are happy enough to use English in formal settings in my experience and use Gaelic as a vernacular rather than a literary language much the same as happens with Scots.

What are the politics you speak of?

As to your other points - I don't know. But most native Gaels aged 45 or over will have been punished for speaking their family and community tongue during their school days. Given the universality of English and the strength of the Scots cringe, it's a wonder we still have communities and kids speaking it. No surprise then that Gaels feel that English is 'natural' or expected in some language domains.

While the aforementioned repression of Gaelic, often physically, has had an impression on the literary output of Gaelic, it has always been a literary tongue and indeed the oldest Gaelic, and Welsh, literature predates English by several hundred years. The oldest classical English lit such as Chaucer is closer to JK Rowling than it is to the first Gaelic classical lit. Is this meant to be an argument against Gaelic roadsigns btw? You should test it in a legal challenge if you're that fazed by it.

Oidhche mhath leat.

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