9/25/2023 0 Comments Touche meaning in scottish gaelic![]() ![]() Mairi MacInnes, the chair of Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the board charged with promoting Gaelic, said the study’s findings about a generational divide “will come as no surprise to anyone”. These were “pyrrhic, symbolic victories”, where Gaelic was given superficial recognition but remained peripheral to organisations’ work, or where “the actual speakers’ group is completely marginalised”. In both Scotland and Ireland, the trend of putting Gaelic on public signs and official vehicles has masked deep-rooted institutional indifference, Ó Giollagáin said. Things are in a stronger position with the Welsh language, where about half of the 500,000 people who can speak Welsh do so routinely. Ó Giollagáin said there was a similar crisis in Ireland, where only about 17,000 people use Irish habitually, despite official figures showing it is spoken by 1.7 million people. There was “general indifference among the young regarding the place of Gaelic in their lives,” it found. The study, which involved research throughout the Western Isles, in Staffin, a Gaelic-speaking district of Skye, and Tiree, an island in Argyll and Bute, found that even in Gaelic-speaking families, English was the default language. Gaelic should be embedded in all aspects of day-to-day life. Parents should be “encouraged to speak it to their children, in social and family settings,” he said. Ó Giollagáin said far greater energy should go into ensuring Gaelic is spoken at home and in every social situation, not just at school. Over the last year the Western Isles council, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, has increased Gaelic education in all schools and made it the default language for all children starting primary, provoking clashes between the Conservatives and the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens at Holyrood. The Scottish government has put heavy emphasis on increasing access to Gaelic education, specifically funding the construction of primary and secondary schools in cities such as Glasgow and Edinburgh. ![]() The study will reignite long-running controversies over the status of Gaelic and government strategies. More of the same will give you more of the same crisis.” ![]() “The situation is so critical the vernacular community is falling apart and those charged with supporting Gaelic need to face up to these issues. “It is imperative we have an open and honest discussion,” he said. He suggested there should be a new community-led Gaelic-language trust based in the Western Isles. He said an urgent overhaul of policy was needed, with a far greater emphasis on restoring Gaelic as a living, everyday language in its core communities. “We are in the position where the remaining vernacular networks are in the process of collapsing,” said Prof Conchúr Ó Giollagáin, the lead author of the study and an expert in Irish and Scots Gaelic. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |