Re: Gaelic things

Moghrey mie! (Good morning)

Ren Mike screeu:

> I mean that often by forcing one form of a language, often will force
> related lingos to go there own way.. Basically if Ireland wants to
> speak Erse (Irish Gaelic)
As I said before -- just a heads up -- Irish people have never, as far
as I know, called their language "Erse". "Erse" was used in Scotland to
refer to *Scottish* Gaelic, which some non-Gaels identified with Irish.
And it is generally considered to be an impolite, if not offensive,
term. You're really better off not using it, at least not around Gaels
and/or Gaelic scholars. Irish Gaelic is, in English, usually called just
"Irish". Scottish Gaelic is called just that, or sometimes "Scots
Gaelic"; in Scotland and Cape Breton it's called simply "Gaelic" as
there's no other sort of Gaelic spoken there, so there's no confusion.
Manx Gaelic, like Irish, is most often called simply "Manx". Please
don't take this the wrong way; I'm not trying to tell you what to do
here, merely advising. But please be aware that the term "Erse" is
really not liked among Gaels.

However, getting back to your sentence...

> they might piss Scot Gaelic speakers to go there own
> way.
But Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic have been going their own ways for
*centuries*.

> But if the speakers of Irish, Scot, and Manx Gaelic were to get
> together and have a common Gaelic. Or do they expect it to happen
> naturally?
I doubt it. That's like saying that Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese
speakers should stop speaking those languages and come up with a "common
Iberian Romance" language and speak that instead. People will not easily
give up their native languages.

Ren Jan freggyrt:

> Don't forget that Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic are two separate
> languages, spoken on two separate islands.
Right.

> Manx Gaelic, on the other hand, is extinct.
As a student and enthusiast of Manx, I will debate this. :) There has
never yet been a time when the Manx language has ceased to be spoken on
Man. The mode of language transmission has changed, from parent -> child
to teacher -> student. However, there was an overlap: the older Manx
speakers today learned Manx from the last native speakers when they were
young. So the language has never stopped being used. Though today, of
course, it's a conscious choice to learn it and use it as your preferred
method of communication with others who have made that same choice, one
can argue -- and I certainly will and do argue -- that Manx is not
extinct.

> How on Earth can you tell people, that they have to change their
> language to make it more similar to another language? It just doesn't
> work that way; languages grow and evolve.
That's what I meant above. Irish and Scottish Gaelic are very similar,
to be sure; but the traditional, accepted dating (by the Celtic scholar
Kenneth Jackson, in the 1950s) places the split between Western Gaelic
(Irish) and Eastern Gaelic (Scottish and Manx) at around 1300. So it's
not like Gaelic was one and the same up until the Irish made Gaelic
mandatory in school, at which point the Scottish Gaels got ticked off or
something. We're dealing with two different languages which have been
divergent for the better part of a millennium.

> And for what purpose? To have one dying language
> instead of two?
Ouch.

> Imposing upon the Irish some sort of artificial "Common Gaelic" (an
> IAL?) would be exactly what I think Ms. Gunn means by "cannibalising
> our language".
As Christophe said, this has already been done in Ireland, with the
creation of Standard Irish. (I've also seen the term Literary Irish; I
don't know which is the usual term in Ireland). I suppose you could look
upon it as the most successful Celtic conlang! :-)

Ren Christophe screeu:

> Very true, except that the Standard Irish is already a "Common Gaelic"
> imposed upon three very diverging Irish traditions (which are at the
> edge of becoming separate languages).
I'm not sure I'd agree that the three main dialects (which are composed
of many regional sub-dialects) are quite that different from each other
-- to the point of being "at the edge of becoming separate languages", I
mean -- but the differences *are* quite far-reaching and significant, to
be sure.

By way of an interesting comparison, a sort of standard Scottish Gaelic
is starting to evolve in Scotland as well, due largely to the
Gaelic-language media and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig (the Gaelic college on
Skye). But unlike in Ireland, there's no official board or committee of
any sort overseeing it.

> Maybe it's part of the failure of Irish to grow up again
> as a national language...
There must be something wrong with how it's taught. That's all I can
think of. I don't understand how people can study a language for *years*
in school -- throughout their education -- and come out *not* being able
to speak it. But I've met loads of Irish people for whom that was the
case. And with few exceptions, they all said that they hated having the
language forced on them at school, but now they realised what an
important part of their heritage it was, and they regretted not knowing
it.

> Languages with a large number of speakers and little to no competition
> in the country where it's spoken can afford having a standard version
> taught at school along with diverging dialects (basically the
> situation of Dutch for instance).
Even languages with a small number of speakers -- look at Faroese for
instance. There are *fewer* speakers of Faroese than there are of
Scottish Gaelic! Yet Faroese is in absolutely no danger of dying out,
cause there's no competition from any other language, and everyone in
the Faroes speaks it as their native language.

> But such a situation is usually lethal for a minoritary language
> overwhelmed by another language in its own territory...
You think? It could be argued that it's the only way for such a language
to survive -- by having a single, unified standard for literature, the
media, etc., as opposed to just several divergent regional dialects.

Thomas

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