Ciamar
a tha sibh?
(How are you?)
Tomorrow
sees me do the last few modules of level 1 Gaelic/Gàidhlig.
For those that don't know or are confused as I was – Gaelic is
pronounced Gah-lic at least when speaking about Gàidhlig
(Scottish Gaelic). What the Irish choose to do is their choice.
The
course I've been on is ran by Fife Council. It's usually ran over 24
weeks/6 months and conprises 24 units. FC
didn't invent the course, they use Ùlpan,
which was developed by a clever linguist fello.
I
wont say it's been easy because it's not. It's been doable with
occassional periods of genuine crashing of
the brain. On one unit my head went numb, I was flicking my forehead
and couldn't feel it. Given I've ADHD it could be I over applied
myself. My brain was still recording and I was able to do a document
recovery the next day when we did our breif
revision of the previous units.
I am
yet undecided weather or not being blind is an advantage or not for
learning how to speak Gàidhlig. Since the
words look nothing like English phonics your brain struggles to work
out where on earth the sounds are coming from. A bhail
thu deiseil? Are
you ready, pronounce ah-vel-oo jehshul.
The only issue I really have is know how many words are in a sentence
or phrase. A bhail thu
runs into one word. Tha gu
math, I'm well - the T is silent and so is the TH at the end so it
runs into, hagewmah.
Thankfully
I've an ear for languages so when I listen to BBC Radio Nan Gàidheal
my brain is able to desypher the phonics
and find some sense in all these lovely new noises that I'm hearing
and making.
The
educator said that there are 8 fewer letters in Gàdhlig
but 40 more phonics. Some of the phonics are almost indistinguisable
from one another either because they're slightly softer, change in
internation or it's a double sound with one
of the two parts being different.
As
with a lot of languages Gàidhlig genders
it's nouns. This confuses me generally coming from a place of
genderless nouns. Eggs, I think we can agree are pretty much excusive
to females but in Gàidhlig are masculine…
Milk however is feminine yet males can produce it too… Since 80% of
nouns are masculine, I've decided to make everything masculine and
4/5 times I'll be correct. This as a feminist is not ideal however
it's more important to be correct most of the time… that way I'm
showing women can, right?
I
used to think Gàidhlig was pointless and
should die off naturally. After all, it's just as imported to
Scotland/Alba (al-ah-pa) as Latin or English. However, Gàidhlig
was spoken more widely than Latin historically - so Gàidhlig
is the de facto native language of Scotland. If there are any Pictish
speaking folk out there do let me know. I now feel it's important to
save Gàidhlig both as a language and the
culture around it. If we can get people growing up bilingual with
English and Gàidhlig that would be great.
Is it useful? Not for calling your ISP no. But for conversations with
others that speak it, especially as an act of exclussion
:D; to save beautiful poetry and songs and to make the world more
interesting and less samey for sure it is.
I
don't think there are many, if any Gàidhlig
only speakers still alive, so changing road signs to include Gàidhlig
place names seems somewhat of an expensive action by the Scottish
Government. So does re-marking the Scottish Police helicopter while
we're going through a time of great gabs between those that, hae
meat and can eat and those than wad want it – to crudely paraphrase
Rabby. (Rabby
burns wrote in Scots not Gàidhlig FYI :) )
I'm
very grateful that my partner and I got our places funded on this
course and I believe teaching as many people as possible to speak
and/or read and write Gàidhlig is
important. But, most people wont see “Poileas
Alba” on a chopper which doesn't serve the biggest population of
Gàidheal. It is based in Alloa near Stirling half way (ish) between
Glasgow and Edinburgh 270Mi south of the outer Hebrides. If however,
they were to re-brand their land vehicle that would maybe be more
logical. Even if they only changed from POLICE to POILEAS. Obviously
this would be done on the basis of when a vehicle dies the new one is
given the new branding, so the costs would be roughly the same as
adding the livery to any new vehicle. The helicopter was re-branded
as part of the lease agreement with Bond Air Services after the lost
of the helicopter that cashed into The Clutha Vaults in 2013. There
are figures of £100,000 knocking about but I don't know how accurate
they are despite quoting them else where, oops, bad me for poor
research.
I do
know the resigning of roads etc cost £2,000,000. Once again, I have
been quoting higher figures in real life when I was against Gàidhlig
and even still think that it's a silly amount of money. Partly
because no Sat Nav yet supports Gàidhlig so you'd have to be reading
the English or translating the Gåidhlig. If you're navigating by
road signs only then please let me know how the 1800's are and your
horse. Yet again, a replacement rather than remediation scheme would
be more logical. It would still be a novelty project to a degree.
Ireland
and Wales have kept their languages alive along side English so why
shouldn't Scotland? If Scotland had more of a separate identity from
England I could maybe see the logic in Scottish Independence. I can
understand the view point of Siol nan Gàidheal as far as the English
didn't exactly bring us wine and chocolates when they came calling.
But the U.K. isn't England it's a newer separate entity. Don't say
the words out loud someone may hear you – I'm beginning to feel
Scottish. I'll always be British first. I've lived in Scotland for 19
years, I was born in Scotland and half my family are Scottish; I
speak and understand Scots and Scottish English yet I've never felt
all that Scottish until now. That maybe a bit of an exaggeration,
it's been a growing sense of Scottishness since last year. Learning
Gàidhlig has only served to strength that part of my identity.
In
conclusion :) :
•
Gåidhlig as a language and culture needs to be saved.
•
As many people as possible need to learn it.
•
Overtime we should re-brand everything to Gåidhlig and English where
possible.
•
Scotland might be worth more with its own true identity but not at
the cost of required resources.
•
I used to dislike but not like Gåidhlig.
•
Gåidhlig reading and writing is going to take me far longer to get
than speaking.
•
Learn Gåidhlig if you can, it's a lovely language, even if a little
tricky.
•
Always keep hydrated and wear sun block…