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Learning to speak the Scottish Language

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About the Scottish Gaelic Language

Scottish Gaelic is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages, and is distinct from the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages, which includes Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Scottish, Manx and Irish Gaelic are all descended from Old Irish. Other common names for Scottish Gaelic are Scots Gaelic and Highland Gaelic. Outside Scotland, it is occasionally also called Scottish, particularly when being compared to Irish and Manx, though Scottish Gaelic should not be confused with the Scots language, which is an Anglic language descended from Old English.

Scottish Gaelic, originally the language of the Scoti settlers from Ireland to Scotland, became the language of the majority of Scotland after it replaced Cumbric, Pictish, Old Norse, and in considerable places, Old English. There is no definitive date indicating how long Scottish Gaelic has been spoken in today's Scotland, though it has been proposed that it was spoken in Argyll before the Roman period, although no consensus has been reached on this question. However, the consolidation of the kingdom of Dál Riata around the 4th century, linking the ancient province of Ulster in the north of Ireland and western Scotland, accelerated the expansion of the language, as did the success of the Gaelic-speaking church establishment, started by St Columba, and place-name evidence shows that Gaelic was spoken in the Rhinns of Galloway by the 5th or 6th century.

The Gaelic language eventually displaced Pictish north of the River Forth, and until the late 15th century was known in the Scots' English language as Scottis, and in England as Scottish. Gaelic began to decline in mainland Scotland from the beginning of the 13th century, accompanying its decline in its status as a national language, and by the beginning of the 15th century, the highland-lowland line was beginning to emerge.From around the early 16th century, Scottish-English speakers gave the Gaelic language the name Erse , and thereafter it was invariably the collection of Middle English dialects spoken within the Kingdom of Scotland, that they referred to as Scottis . This in itself was ironic, as it was at this time that Gaelic was developing its distinct and characteristic Scottish forms of the modern period.

Scottish Gaelic was called "Erse" partly because educated Gaelic speakers in Ireland and Scotland all used the literary dialect (so that there was little or no difference in usage. When Classical Gaelic stopped being used in schools in both countries, colloquial usage began to predominate, and the languages diverged. Scottish Gaelic has a rich oral and written tradition, referred to as beul-aithris in Scottish Gaelic, having been the language of the bardic culture of the Highland clans for many years. The language preserves knowledge of and adherence to pre-feudal 'tribal' laws and customs . The language suffered particularly as Highlanders and their traditions were persecuted after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, and during the Highland Clearances, but pre-feudal attitudes were still evident in the complaints and claims of the Highland Land League of the late 19th century. This political movement was successful in getting members elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Land League was dissipated as a parliamentary force by the 1886 Crofters' Act and by the way the Liberal Party was seen to become supportive of Land League objectives

The first translation of the Bible into Scottish Gaelic was not published until 1767 when Dr James Stuart of Killin and Dugald Buchanan of Rannoch produced a translation of the New Testament. Previously the Irish Gaelic translation of the Bible dating from the Elisabethan period was in use. Very few European languages have made the transition to a modern literary language without an early modern translation of the Bible. The lack of such a translation until the late eighteenth century may have contributed to the decline of Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic may be more correctly known as Highland Gaelic to distinguish it from the now defunct dialects of Lowland Gaelic. Of these Galwegian Gaelic was spoken in Galloway and seems to have been the last dialect of Gaelic to have been spoken in Lowland Scotland, surviving until the Early Modern Period. By the end of the Middle Ages, Lowland Gaelic had been replaced by Middle English/Lowland Scots across much of Lowland Scotland, while the Brythonic language had disappeared. According to a reference in The Carrick Covenanters by James Crichton , the last place in the Lowlands where Scottish Gaelic was still spoken was the village of Barr in Carrick (only a few miles inland to the east of Girvan, but at one time very isolated). There is, however, no evidence of a linguistic border following the topographical north-south differences. Similarly, there is no evidence from placenames of significant linguistic differences between, for example, Argyll and Galloway. Dialects on both sides of the Straits of Moyle (the North Channel) linking Scottish Gaelic with Irish are now extinct.

Today, the closest tied Irish dialect with Highland Gaelic is Ulster Irish, spoken in County Donegal - most notably the Gaeltacht of Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore). Written Ulster Irish as well as common grammatical and vocabulary traits reflects more archaic Classical Gaelic still providing more of a solid link between the two languages than with Official Standard Irish, based on the dialects of southern provinces. However, to claim that Ulster Irish is a perfect intermediate between the Irish and Scottish forms of Gaelic still remains perhaps an over-exaggerated statement.

Prehistoric (or Ogham) Irish, the precursor to Old Irish, in turn the precursor to Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, was written in a carved writing called Ogham. Ogham consisted of marks made above or below a horizontal line. With the advent of Christianity in the 5th century the Latin alphabet was introduced to Ireland. The Goidelic languages have historically been part of a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland, the Isle of Man, to the north of Scotland. Classical Gaelic was used as a literary language in Scotland until the 18th century. Orthographic divergence between Scottish Gaelic and Irish is the result of more recent orthographic reforms resulting in standardised pluricentric diasystems.

The 1767 New Testament historically set the standard for Scottish Gaelic. Around the time of World War II, Irish spelling was reformed and the Official Standard or Caighdeán Oifigiúil introduced. Further reform in 1957 eliminated some of the silent letters which are still used in Scottish Gaelic. The 1981 Scottish Examinations Board recommendations for Scottish Gaelic, the Gaelic Orthographic Conventions, were adopted by most publishers and agencies, although they remain controversial among some academics, most notably Ronald Black.

The modern Scottish Gaelic alphabet has 18 letters:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U.

The letter h, now mostly used to indicate lenition of a consonant, was in general not used in the oldest orthography, as lenition was instead indicated with a dot over the lenited consonant. The letters of the alphabet were traditionally named after trees , but this custom has fallen out of use.

The quality of consonants is indicated in writing by the vowels surrounding them. So-called "slender" consonants are palatalised while "broad" consonants are velarised. The vowels e and i are classified as slender, and a, o, and u as broad. The spelling rule known as caol ri caol agus leathann ri leathann ("slender to slender and broad to broad") requires that a word-medial consonant or consonant group followed by a written i or e be also preceded by an i or e; and similarly if followed by a, o or u be also preceded by an a, o, or u. Consonant quality (palatalised or non-palatalised) is then indicated by the vowels written adjacent to a consonant, and the spelling rule gives the benefit of removing possible uncertainty about consonant quality at the expense of adding additional purely graphic vowels that may not be pronounced.

In changes promoted by the Scottish Examination Board from 1976 onwards, certain modifications were made to this rule. For example, the suffix of the past participle is always spelled -te, even after a broad consonant, as in togte "raised" (rather than the traditional togta).

Where pairs of vowels occur in writing, it is sometimes unclear which vowel is to be pronounced and which vowel has been introduced to satisfy this spelling rule.

Gaelic has long suffered from its lack of use in educational and administrative contexts and has even been suppressed in the past but it has achieved a degree of official recognition with the passage of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005.

As well as being taught in schools, including some in which it is the medium of instruction, it is also used by the local council in the Western Isles, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. The BBC also operates a Gaelic language radio station Radio nan Gàidheal (which regularly transmits joint broadcasts with its Irish counterpart RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta), and there are also television programmes in the language on the BBC and on the independent commercial channels, usually subtitled in English. The ITV franchise in the north of Scotland, STV North (formerly Grampian Television) produces some non-news programming in Scottish Gaelic. The ITV franchise in central Scotland, STV Central produces a number of Scottish Gaelic programmes for both BBC Alba and its own main channel. Viewers of Freeview, a non-subscription digital TV service, can receive the channel TeleG, which broadcasts for an hour every evening. On 19 September 2008 a new Gaelic TV service launched, broadcasting across Europe on the Astra 2 satellites, available to Sky Digital and Freesat viewers in the UK. Despite initial announcements to the contrary, the channel is not yet available on digital cable television. The channel BBC Alba is being operated in partnership between BBC Scotland and MG Alba – a new organisation funded by the Scottish Government, which works to promote the Gaelic language in broadcasting.

Bilingual road signs, street names, business and advertisement signage (in both Gaelic and English) are gradually being introduced throughout Gaelic-speaking regions in the Highlands, Islands and Argyll. In many cases, this has simply meant re-adopting the traditional spelling of a name Bilingual railway station signs are now more frequent than they used to be. Practically all of the stations in the highland area use both English and Gaelic, however the spreading of bilingual station signs is become ever-more frequent in the lowlands of Scotland.

While this has been welcomed by many supporters of the language as a means of raising its profile, securing its future as a 'living language' (i.e. allowing people to use it to navigate from A to B in place of English) and creating a sense of place, recently revealed roadsigns for Castletown in Caithness in the Highlands indicate The Highland Council's intention to introduce bilingual signage into all areas of the Highlands have caused some controversy .

The Ordnance Survey has acted in recent years to correct many of the mistakes that appear on maps. They announced in 2004 that they intended to make amends for a century of Gaelic ignorance and set up a committee to determine the correct forms of Gaelic place names for their maps.

Historically, Gaelic has not received the same degree of official recognition from the UK Government as Welsh. With the advent of devolution, however, Scottish matters have begun to receive greater attention, and the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act was enacted by the Scottish Parliament on 21 April 2005.

* Establishing the Gaelic development body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig, (BnG), on a statutory basis with a view to securing the status of the Gaelic language as an official language of Scotland commanding equal respect to the English language and to promote the use and understanding of Gaelic.
* Requiring BnG to prepare a National Gaelic Language Plan for approval by Scottish Ministers.
* Requiring BnG to produce guidance on Gaelic Education for education authorities.
* Requiring public bodies in Scotland, both Scottish public bodies and cross border public bodies insofar as they carry out devolved functions, to develop Gaelic language plans in relation to the services they offer, if requested to do so by BnG.

Following a consultation period, in which the government received many submissions, the majority of which asked that the bill be strengthened, a revised bill was published with the main improvement that the guidance of the Bòrd is now statutory (rather than advisory).

In the committee stages in the Scottish Parliament, there was much debate over whether Gaelic should be given 'equal validity' with English. Due to Executive concerns about resourcing implications if this wording was used, the Education Committee settled on the concept of 'equal respect'. It is still not clear if the ambiguity of this wording will provide sufficient legal force to back up the demands of Gaelic speakers against the whims of public bodies.

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