There are not that many people who speak the different Gaelic languages
anymore.
Will the Gaelic language die out in the end, and if it does, when will
it happen? In this text you are going to learn more about the three Gaelic
languages, differences between them, and I’m going to deal with the question:
will it die or will it survive.
Table of Contents
•
The
reason why
•
Background
•
What
is Gaelic language?
•
Scottish
Gaelic
•
Irish
Gaelic
•
Manx
Gaelic
•
Differences
and similarities
•
Will
it die out?
•
Summary
•
Sources
The Reason Why
You may wonder why I chose to write about this topic. It’s as simple as
this; I was born in Scotland, but raised in Norway with Norwegian parents, and
I wanted to learn something more about the culture in Scotland. My first
thought was to write about Scots, which is one of the languages they use in
Scotland, but I thought it would be a bit hard and boring to write page up and
down just about that. My teacher gave me the brilliant idea to write about the
Gaelic language, and so I did.
Background
Above you can see a language tree of all the main languages in the
world. You can see that the Gaelic languages are a part of the Celtic language
family, and divided into three. It is quite interesting to see how the
different languages are connected to each other. From this tree you can see
that Scottish and Scottish Gaelic don’t look alike and that Irish and Irish
Gaelic don’t either. But all of the Gaelic languages are similar, especially
Scottish and Irish Gaelic.
Scottish and Irish Gaelic started out as the same language.
When you are standing on the coast of Northern Ireland on a good day,
you can actually see the tip of Scotland, or to be more specific a territory
that belongs to Scotland. Hundreds of years ago the language of the Irish
spread across the sea into Scotland as the Irish moved towards Scotland. At
that point Ireland and Scotland had the same language with different dialects
and accents. The people who spoke Irish and Scottish Gaelic can still
understand each other although it is two different languages.
What is Gaelic language?
Gaelic is an English word for any of the three languages that form one
half of the Celtic language family. The Gaelic language is divided into the three
following languages: Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic and Manx Gaelic. Many people
get confused about Gaelic and Celtic. Example: Welsh is a Celtic language, but
not a Gaelic.
Here you can see a comparison between Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic:
Scottish Gaelic
They speak Scottish Gaelic in Scotland. There were 58,652 people in
Scotland who spoke Scottish Gaelic in 2011, and that’s 1,2% of the Scottish
population. Scottish or Scots Gaelic is mostly talked on the West coast, for
instance Glasgow. In Scotland there are
only two schools that teach Gaelic, one in Glasgow and one in Skye. If you
don’t go to these schools you have to go to a private tutor or attend a course.
Most people don’t think it’s worth the effort or expense. Therefore most people
in Scotland just speak English, but there are still some families who speak
Gaelic as their first language at home. They often switch to English if they get
visitors.
People who speak Gaelic tend not to speak Scots. They speak Gaelic and Standard
English. Scots is the third language
they have in Scotland, and is mainly spoken in the North East, Orkney and
Shetland.
Scottish Gaelic is written in just 18 letters. Each of them is named
after a tree or a shrub. All the consonants have several pronunciations
depending on their position in the word and which vowels precede or follow
them.
Irish Gaelic
Irish Gaelic or just Irish belongs to Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland there are 1,77 million people that speak Irish Gaelic, and in Northern Ireland there are 64916. Irish is spoken as the first language by a small minority of Irish people, and as a second language by a rather larger group. In the Republic of Ireland Irish is the national and official language.
Irish Gaelic isn’t only spoken in the Republic of Ireland and Northern
Ireland, but also in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia.
Schools in Ireland teach Irish to the students as fist or second
language, and therefore every Irishman can talk Irish. Actually, children learn
Irish in school for about thirteen years, but still many people in Ireland
claim that they don’t speak a word of Irish. However the number of people who
claim some fluency has increased.
Now most people in Ireland support teaching of Irish in schools.
In the end of the 19th century Irish was close to extinction.
On the website askaboutireland.ie the author writes that Irish Gaelic is
among the 10% of the worlds languages deemed safe from extinction in the
future. It’s quite interesting to read how
fast it changes, but then it may change back fast too.
Her is the Irish Gaelic alphabet. They use the same letters as Scottish
Gaelic, with other pronunciations.
Manx Gaelic
Manx Gaelic or Manx is the third of the three Gaelic languages. Manx is
the language of the Isle of Man. The Manx people historically spoke this
language.
The Isle of Man, or just Mann, is an island located in the Irish Sea
between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. It is a self-governing
British Crown Dependency, and the head of state is Queen Elizabeth II.
In Mann there are only a small minority who is fluent in the Manx language,
but a larger minority has some knowledge of it. The last native speaker of Manx
died in 1974, but still Gaelic in Mann is considered to be an important part of
the islands culture and heritage. The language has never fallen completely out
of use.
Nowadays people are more interested in learning Manx. Since 1992 Manx
has been thought in Manx schools, and the classes have proved popular. Now the
Isle of Man has a number of playgroups and primary schools with Manx lessons.
They even have one secondary school with these lessons, and the classes for
adults are quite popular.
The Manx alphabet has a few more letters than Scottish Gaelic and Irish.
Differences and Similarities
Through all this reading and writing I have found out that the three
different versions of the Gaelic language have more differences than
similarities. All of them sounds like the same language to me, but for the
people speaking the languages they are all understandable, but still different.
Irish and Scottish Gaelic has the same
alphabet, but Manx has its own. There is different interest in learning these
languages. In Ireland they don’t have any option, they all learn Irish in
school. In both Mann and Scotland they have to show interest and take an initiative
to learn the language, if they don’t go to one of the few schools that have
lessons and classes in Gaelic.
Here is an example of some of the differences and similarities between
the Celtic languages. Not just the Gaelic, but also the rest of the Celtic
languages, which are called: Brythonic. The red ones are Gaelic languages, and
the blue are Brythonic. It all means,
“I live in Scotland”.
•
Scottish Gaelic - Tha mi a' fuireach ann an
Alba
•
Irish - Tá mé i mo chónaí in Albain
•
Manx - Ta mee cummal ayns Nalbin
•
Welsh - Dw i'n byw yn yr Alban
•
Cornish - Trigys ov yn Alban
•
Breton - E Bro-Skos emaon o chom
Will it Die Out?
I think that all of the Gaelic languages will die out at some point, but
not at the same time. The first to go is probably Manx Gaelic and then Scottish
Gaelic and eventually Irish Gaelic. In Mann there are no native speakers of
Gaelic anymore, and few who speak it fluently. Therefore I personally don’t
think it will take that many years before this language will die out. In
Scotland it seems to me like the majority of the population don’t use this
language, and there are few who make an effort to learn it. If no one does
something with their attitude towards Gaelic, the language will surely
disappear. In Ireland, however, every child learns Gaelic in school and there
are people who use Irish Gaelic as their first language. It may take a long
time until this language vanishes, maybe several hundreds years, but it will at
some point, I think.
There is some disagreement as to whether they all are dying, only one,
two, or none of them. Some people say that Manx died out in the beginning of
the 20th century, because Mann is such a small island heavy
influenced by England and the English language.
These people often also mean that Scottish Gaelic is about do die,
because people in Scotland have no interest in the language. They don’t see it as
a useful language.
About the Irish language they mean there are less chance that it
disappears than the other Gaelic languages, because more people are now getting
the interest learning it. But the use of Gaelic has decreased ever since the
independency.
Now there are about 10% of the population who speak it fluently.
Summary
I have learned a lot from writing on this project work, and realised how
little I knew about the Gaelic languages. The only thing I knew for sure before I
started on this project was that the Gaelic language is spoken in Scotland. Now
I know a lot more about it. I have learned that there are three different types
of Gaelic and they all belong to the Celtic language family, so does Brythonic,
but still Brythonic is not part of Gaelic.
All the types of Gaelic have differences and similarities. They have a
lot of different words, and ways of pronouncing the words they have in common,
but still they can understand each other.
If you ask me I think the whole Gaelic language will die out at some
point, but it may take quite a long time.
Sources
Wikipedia.org (26.01.14) “Isle of Mann” On:
Wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man
Localized (16.01.14)
Thompson, Irene (06.03.13) “Irish Gaelic” On:
aboutwordlanguages.com: (http://aboutworldlanguages.com/irish-gaelic
Localized (25.01.14)
LGMA Libraries
Development, nd ”The Irish Language Today” On:
askabouteireland.ie: http://www.askaboutireland.ie/learning-zone/secondary-students/irish/an-cultur-gaelach/translation-irish-languag/the-irish-language-today/Localized
(03.02.14)
(06.2009) “Do we let Gaelic die?” On: scotster.com: http://www.scotster.com/forums/scottish-language-gaelic/Do-let-Gaelic-die.1717.html
Localized (06.01.14)
Wikipedia.org (11.02.14) “Irish language” On:
Wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language
Localized (28.01.14)
Ager, Simon, nd “Scottish Gaelic” On: omniglot.com: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/gaelic.htm Localized
(06.01.14)
Wiki.answers.com, nd “Why is Gaelic language dying?”
On wici.answers.com: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_Gaelic_Language_dying?#slide=3
Localized (03.02.14)
Wikipedia.org (04.02.14) “Scottish Gaelic” On
Wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic
Localized (16.01.14)
“How do Scottish people feel about Scots Gaelic?” On:
answers.yahoo.com: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090126072627AAFTgYZ
Localized (18.01.14)
Bitesize, IrishGaelic (2013) “Irish vs Gaelic” On: youtube.com:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWBUnixqX5g
Localized (28.01.14)
Ager, Simon, nd “Manx Gaelic” On: omniglot.com:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/manx.htm Localized (17.02.2014)
Picture Sources
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