Blair asks the Foreign Office to translate (Scottish) Gaelic letters

[dcfcsteve]

From The Scotsman - 12th October 2005

Blair asks the Foreign Office to translate Gaelic letters

JAMES KIRKUP
WESTMINSTER EDITOR


GAELIC is a foreign language, at least as far as Tony Blair is concerned.

The Prime Minister has outraged Gaelic campaigners by revealing that his office regards the language - along with Welsh - as so alien that Foreign Office assistance is needed to understand it.


His apparent disregard for a language spoken by tens of thousands of Scots was revealed in a written parliamentary answer issued by Downing Street yesterday.

Angus MacNeil, the SNP MP for the Western Isles, has been tabling parliamentary questions to Whitehall departments asking how they deal with correspondence in non-English British languages.

Mr Blair yesterday gave Mr MacNeil a curt, one-sentence answer. "My office has arrangements with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to translate letters received in languages other than English," the Prime Minister wrote.

In a separate answer, Mr Blair confirmed that Downing Street had "no specific facilities" for dealing with telephone calls in Gaelic or Welsh, but said it would "enlist the help of other government departments where possible".

Adding insult to injury, the Foreign Office admitted it had no facility for dealing with Gaelic, in either its Scots or Irish variants.

In an answer to Mr MacNeil's question last month, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, confirmed that, while the Foreign Office does translate some "major" Welsh documents, it has no "formal policy" on Gaelic and does not routinely translate the language "on the grounds that no clear cost-benefits case exists."

Mr Blair's attitude to Gaelic left Mr MacNeil angry and predicting a backlash. He said: "It seems he knows nothing of the languages of the United Kingdom despite being Prime Minister of the UK."

Gaelic-speakers would be "very annoyed" by Downing Street's attitude, Mr MacNeil said, but he had a suggestion for assuaging that anger. "We can only hope that Tony Blair comes to Skye for Gaelic lessons," he said

In 2001, Britain ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, obliging ministers in London and in Edinburgh to encourage the survival of languages such as Gaelic.

However, Donald Martin of Comunn na Gaidhlig, the Gaelic development body, said No 10's answer suggested the Prime Minister was not taking those commitments very seriously. "I think we can conclude that the Gaelic language is being lumped in with foreign languages as far as Downing Street is concerned. There is no logic to that answer that I can see."

For all its apparent lack of recognition in Whitehall, Gaelic campaigners say the language remains very much alive.

A report earlier this week showed that, while Gaelic is on the wane in its traditional heartlands of the Highlands and Islands, its use is rising in other parts of Scotland.

The total number of Gaelic speakers dropped by about 10 per cent between 1991 and 2001, to 58,652. But, according to Census returns analysed by the registrar general for Scotland, some 92,400 people have some understanding of Gaelic, almost 2 per cent of the Scottish population.

Should Mr Blair take up Mr MacNeil's offer of Gaelic lessons, he could find himself in good company. Earlier this year, it was reported that the Queen had been learning the language.

On a visit to the West Highlands, she reportedly startled a Harris-born police protection officer by asking him: "Ciamar a tha sibh?" - or "how are you?"

[dahamsta]

Mountain, meet molehill.

(Thanks for wasting 30 seconds of my life with this garbage btw Steve.)

[glentoranfan]

Seems to me like Sinn Fein IRA and Irish. They are only saying that to try to bring some sense of independance/identity to their own land. It is a dead language. Get over it. This thread is born of bigotry, plain and simple.

[Speranza]

You refer to Sinn Fein I.R.A as the one entity but would you be so quick to refer to Paisley's lot as D.U.P. Ulster Resistance?

Your post was pathetic, of course they are aiming to retain their identity! Do you have a problem with that or should it just be ignored and eventually stamped out?

Dead language, there is evidence to completly dispell that but your ignorance makes any explanation futile.

You are the only bigot to have posted on this thread.

[jofyisgod]

Adam's right. Not an issue. I'd say his office has better things to be doing than translating letters from people who are just trying to be awkward. They're writing to an English speaker, write in English. Just like if i cntact Spaniards, i use Spanish. It's courtesy.

[Thunderblaster]

Just like us poor people here in the Republic having to need Irish for no use whatsoever. If Irish was abolished in the morning, I would not care less because I cannot speak the language. The only reason for Irish being compulsory in the curriculum is for Gaelic Revival purposes. I'd rather speak French anyway.

[dahamsta]

(I didn't mean to appear quite so p1ssed off. I wasn't, I just think it's a ridiculous article and concept that I doubt anyone gives a flying pork at the moon about.)

[glentoranfan]

You refer to Sinn Fein I.R.A as the one entity but would you be so quick to refer to Paisley's lot as D.U.P. Ulster Resistance?
Yes indeed I would. I don't really align myself to any political party. I have my own seperate views. I don't support violence from anybody in anyway. However, you can't compare the DUP to anybody from Sinn Fein IRA. Infact, Paisley dismissed the UR.


Your post was pathetic, of course they are aiming to retain their identity! Do you have a problem with that or should it just be ignored and eventually stamped out?

Dead language, there is evidence to completly dispell that but your ignorance makes any explanation futile.
Welsh/Scottish/Irish Gaelic are dead languages. 0.01% of the UK population speak them.

Maybe French, German, Italien etc should be the UK's national language too. More people speak them.


You are the only bigot to have posted on this thread.
Judging by DC Steve's previous posts on this forum and another we all certainly know why this has been posted. It would be unfair to attack him because a) I don't know the guy and 2) and he is not here to defend himself but this needs saying. With his anti-unionist views he is suggesting that this is the case with Irish Gaelic on this island. That is the underlying tone I see here.

Also, how can a person who has half of his family being Roman Catholic possibly be a biggot? I calling things stright down the middle here.

[dcfcsteve]

Yes indeed I would. I don't really align myself to any political party. I have my own seperate views. I don't support violence from anybody in anyway. However, you can't compare the DUP to anybody from Sinn Fein IRA. Infact, Paisley dismissed the UR.

Welsh/Scottish/Irish Gaelic are dead languages. 0.01% of the UK population speak them.

Maybe French, German, Italien etc should be the UK's national language too. More people speak them.

Judging by DC Steve's previous posts on this forum and another we all certainly know why this has been posted. It would be unfair to attack him because a) I don't know the guy and 2) and he is not here to defend himself but this needs saying. With his anti-unionist views he is suggesting that this is the case with Irish Gaelic on this island. That is the underlying tone I see here.

Also, how can a person who has half of his family being Roman Catholic possibly be a biggot? I calling things stright down the middle here.


Whaaaaaaatttttt ? Have I just landed in a parallel universe or something ????

Firstly - my credentials. I am somewhat of an amateur linguist. That means that I find linguistics fascinating. If I had the time, the money and the ability to do so, I would happily toddle off and do a linguistics degree. Whilst some people take 'The Da Vinci Code' and other beach-fodder to read on holiday, I'm happier reading books like 'The Stories of English' by David Crystal - a study of the development of the English language as a whole, and its various dialects, from the Dark Ages to modern day (which is what I read in Cyprus). That's my credentials - I dig languages, I believe in the fundamental cultural, societal and human importance of linguistic diversity. And I just find the field of lingusitics fascinating.

So - with that background, me posting an article about the British government's unsympathetic approach to Scottish Gaidhlig makes me a sh!t-stirring bigot ??? Firstly - the vast majority of Gaidhlig speakers are protestants. So I'm one hell of a fecked-up bigot if I believe in their right to live their life through their own native language. Does that malke me anti-protestant or anti-Catholic ? I look forward to your reasoned responses, Glentoranfan and others. Take your time....

Secondly - I would counter that anyone who says that the Celtic languages of the British Isles are 'dead languages' is both an idiot and themselves clearly a bigot. An idiot because it is clearly factually incorrect that those languages are dead. They are still in daily community use. Therefore, wait for it - THEY LIVE !!! Their numbers may be declining in their heartlands (though 5 of the 6 Celtic languages are are actually increasing in used and numbers over-all), they may be on the list of UNESCO endangered languages, but they are certainly NOT 'dead'. You won't find any communities that still actively speak Latin, for example. You will, however, find plenty who speak Scottish Gaidhlig, Irish and Welsh (if you ever had the balls to get out and see some of the world....). Signs of life, doctor..... . Again - I look forward to your intellectual debate that ignores reality in the pursuant of your own anti-Celtic agenda and claims that Irish, Scots Gaidhlig and Welsh are dead languages. And to justify my claim that anyone who claims they are is a bigot - to ignore fact and deride a language on what I can only perceive to be through at best ignorance and disrespect to linguistic rights/diversity, and at worst an anti-Celtic agenda, is pure and utter bigotry. And the irony of calling a Catholic who supports the linguistic rights and demands of the protestant Gaidhlig speaking population of Scotland a bigot. For everything else in life there's Mastercard....

Finally - so I'm an anti-Unionist, eh Glensfan ? And we all "certainly know why this (article) has been posted" ? Care to explain what evidence you have to support that view - as "we're all" so certain ???? The fact that I complain that the Northern Irish football team explicitly aligns itself with only one community in the North does NOT make me anti-Unionist, by the way. It's a statement of fact - dispute it at your peril. I can't think of anything else I could possibly have written on this site that would even enable your tunnel-visioned mindset to twist it into an excuse to label me as 'anti-Unionist'. Perhaps the fact that I agreed that any protestants living in Southern Ireland should have the right to a British passport ?? Oh no, wait - that's an example of me being anything other than anti-Unionist. Oh dear - did I just make you look stupid ? For the record - whilst I may be opposed to the Union of Northern Ireland with Great Britain on economic, cultural, political and what I believe to be common sense grounds, I respect the Union's existence, I believe it should remain in place whilst the majority of the population express a desire for it to be so, and I am certainly not anti the Unionist people. So how exactly does that make me "anti-Unionist" ? It is is possible, for example, to be anti the state of Israel without being anti-semetic (though for the record, I am pro-Zionist, whilst some Jewish groups themselves actually are anti). Likewise - it is possible to be opposed to the political Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland without being anti the Unionist people. Could I be any more clear ? Could you be any more wrong....?

I cannot believe that there are people on here *waiting* to be offended by an innocous article regarding the native language of Scotland. You're pathetic. People deriding Gaidhlig I can handle, even if I firmly believe it's pathetic, narrowminded, intolerant and bigoted. People deriding me and questioning my motives for posting such in an 'Off Topic' format I can't. Give me your address and I'll send you money to buy a full-length mirror so you can take it home and have a long hard look at yourselves..........

P.S. "Here comes the science bit" : 20% of the population of Wales can speak the Welsh language, whilst the percentage amongst younger age groups is even higher (i.e. the language is actually growing, not dying). An article in the Economist in August noted how the language is in a real ascendancy at the moment, and is a positive case study for other 'endangered' languages. Meanwhile 2% of the population of Scotland as a whole can speak Gaidhlig, and the number is growing amongst the young - not huge numbers admitedly, but nontheless again signs of a language that is expanding, not contracting (I'm happy to supply you with the sources for these stats). 75% of the language's Western Isles heartland is Gaidhlig speaking. Not bad for a dead language........ . Finally, 42% of the population of the Republic stated in the last census that they had "some knowledge" of Irish. Admittedly that could mean anything - but almost 1 million claimed a good degree of proficiency in the language. Diss the stats all you like - have you any other to claim that the people of Ireland DON'T know ANY Irish, and that the language is dead ? Meanwhile, Northern Ireland had 167,490 census repondents claiming "some knowledge" of the language in 2001 (10.4% of total population). Of those, 15,000 are estimated to be fluent, with a further 40-45,000 considered 'functional speakers' (i.e. with a better than average ability to speak the language). Again, dismiss the figures if you will - and I accept that a certain percentage of such census respondents will be motivated more by politico-cultural reasons than by linguistic honesty - but there is still a significant number of Irish speakers in the north, the numbers are growing, the figures are there in official government documents, and I suspect you have no figures to claim the opposite. So - all-in-all your remark that "0.01% of the population of the UK" speak those languages is frankly absurd and irrelevant. The majority of the UK population is English - how or why would they ever speak Irish, Gaidhlig or Welsh ? Would you deride the German language on the basis that only 25% of Europe speak it ? Meanwhile, in the UK 'nations' where Celtic languages are native, the percentages who speak them are understandably much, much higher than your magic 0.01%. Would you like a hand moving those goal-posts......?

Now I'm off to bed in the hope that I'll wake up and that this has all been a bad dream. Surely the world can't be so full of bigoted w@nkers.......

[dcfcsteve]

Adam's right. Not an issue. I'd say his office has better things to be doing than translating letters from people who are just trying to be awkward. They're writing to an English speaker, write in English. Just like if i cntact Spaniards, i use Spanish. It's courtesy.

And likewise, somebody Scottish who speaks Scottish Gaidhlig shoule be able to contact a Scottish government department in their own native tongue. Apologies if you disagree - I'm just extending your arguement logically.....

How dare those plucky Scots seek to live their life through their own language and culture - as their parents, and their parents-parents did ! They don't really speak Gaidhlig amongst themselves in the Western Isles you know - they usually sit in their little crofts speaking the Queen's English with Received Pronounciation, and only resort to that barbaric Gaidhlig nonesense when they want to be awkward with non-Gaidhlig speakers ! Hah - that's them rumbled ! If only they'd been properly thrashed at Culloden, this sort of nonsense really wouldn't arise anymore......

[dcfcsteve]

Mountain, meet molehill.

(Thanks for wasting 30 seconds of my life with this garbage btw Steve.)

News just in : Corkman suddenly realises that other people have views, opinions and heartfelt interests that can often differ from his own.

More on this outrageous scoop after the break....

[Green Tribe]

Christ, I am exhausted after reading all that, :D . Very good Steve, nice one!
:)

[Drumcondra Red]

Whaaaaaaatttttt ? Have I just landed in a parallel universe or something ????

Firstly - my credentials. I am somewhat of an amateur linguist. That means that I find linguistics fascinating. If I had the time, the money and the ability to do so, I would happily toddle off and do a linguistics degree. Whilst some people take 'The Da Vinci Code' and other beach-fodder to read on holiday, I'm happier reading books like 'The Stories of English' by David Crystal - a study of the development of the English language as a whole, and its various dialects, from the Dark Ages to modern day.

What a geek! :D

[anto eile]

thats one long post dcfcsteve, but as a fluent irish speaker i agree totally

[Aberdonian Stu]

Steve's post was so long I skipped it (I'm in a net cafe so time is money).

As fluent speaker in Irish who studied Scots Gaelic in Scotland I have some info that will interest both sides.


Scots Gaelic
An extensive study carried out four years ago by the then Scottish parliament minister Alistair Morrision (he lost his job when McConnell came in) showed that only 50,000 scots had any ability to read, write, speak, or understand any amount of Scots Gaelic. That's including basic greetings.

Welsh & Irish
Unlike Scottish the numbers who select these languages as their first language have grown constantly with every census. The growth is slow but steady. There is even an industrial estate in the west where Irish is the main language of business, an important step in making the language more useful practically.

[Schumi]

Scots Gaelic
An extensive study carried out four years ago by the then Scottish parliament minister Alistair Morrision (he lost his job when McConnell came in) showed that only 50,000 scots had any ability to read, write, speak, or understand any amount of Scots Gaelic. That's including basic greetings.Is that more or less than you?

[Plastic man]

http://foot.ie/showpost.php?p=440513&postcount=12

[Student Mullet]

Comunn na Gaidhlig, the Gaelic development body

...

"Ciamar a tha sibh?" - or "how are you?"Lads, I didn't think I was able to speak Scotts Gaelic untill I read this article. Is it just me or is Scotts Gaelic just Doneygal Irish with more sensible spelling?

[Aberdonian Stu]

No. No it's not.

The crazed replacement of the letter c with g in inappropriate places is one of the many things that makes it generally even harder to understand or find any rationality in the spelling. Also on a nerdy linguistic level its similarity with Donegal Irish is always overplayed. There isn't really any greater similarity with it than with the other dialects.

[Jerry The Saint]

However, the only reason it's perceived as 'dead', is down to, er, History & colonial occupation.


But in the 80 or so years of self-determination, we haven't done much to improve its use as a primary means of communication (outside of government regulation like forced-education and translation of documents). Meanwhile in the still very much colonised Wales:) their native language is used more frequently in day-to-day life....

[Aberdonian Stu]

I'm a fluent Irish speaker gonzo however I am willing to admit that Donegal Irish sounds nothing like it reads. That was the point both the Mulleted one and I were making.

[micls]

thats one long post dcfcsteve, but as a fluent irish speaker i agree totally

Il join you there.

Could anyone without actual facts refrain from posting bull so other people wont read it and believe it...thanks

[Plastic man]

Would I be correct in thinking that say pre English Settlement that the various ancient tribes in Ireland would of spoke slightly different languages from each other?

Is Modern Irish an invention mixing the various know at the time Irish languages together?

[Dr.Nightdub]

I remember being told either in school or in the Gaeltacht that there's "caighdeán" Irish, which is closely based on the Munster dialect - this caighdeán is the one we're all taught in school. Why it should have got the nod, I dunno (perhaps based on numbers speaking it), but it's quite different from the Connacht or Donegal dialects.

[Aberdonian Stu]

The caighdeán oifigiúil or official standard is based on the three primary dialects of the Irish language.

[Dr.Nightdub]

OK, not being smart here, but which of these is caighdeán for "How are you?"

1. Conas atá tú? (Munster)
2. Cé' chaoi bhfuil tú? (Connacht)
3. Cad é mar atá tú? (Ulster)

I could have the origins of 2 and 3 mixed up but either way, my guess is that number 1 is the "official" version. Be interested to hear from Galway, Sligo, Harps and Derry fans which version(s) they most recognise?

[Aberdonian Stu]

Well from my understanding of caighdeán both 1 and Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú are classic examples. Furthermore to the best of my knowledge the meaning of 3 is perfectly accurate according to caighdeán only it is considered a less used version.

The Irish I speak is a blend of Connacht and Mumhan. One thing is certain: No region has a monopoly on complaining about how the caighdeán oifigiúil is so different to what they are used to. Munster folk complain as much as Connacht folk who complain as much as Ulster folk:D

[pineapple stu]

Wasn't there a simplification of lots of Irish spelling about 100 years ago or something? Remember being in a pub in Tipp and seeing a list of All-Ireland winners on a poster on the wall - spent ages working out who "An Lúghbhadh" were, only to find out it was Louth (An Lú). Also my name is often seen spelt Caoimhghín (I think - however that Sinner spells it), whereas I'd spell it Caoimhín. What's the story with that?

(Edit - wayyyy off topic now, I know, but Irish is something which interests me anyway...)

[Poor Student]

Would I be correct in thinking that say pre English Settlement that the various ancient tribes in Ireland would of spoke slightly different languages from each other?

Is Modern Irish an invention mixing the various know at the time Irish languages together?

Pretty much, but then again all official languages are a standarised version of a variety of dialects.