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Gaelic teaching


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What baffles me is why Gaelic recieves all the attention, Why isn't there funding for Scots language as well? I'm pretty sure it was a separate language up until about the 16th century, what about Doric and (especially, here) Norn as well?

 

Isn't Norn too dead and undocumented to be revived? Scots should be promoted as well though

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I've often felt that it is the lack of mastering  English that leads to the degradation of the indigenous tongue. By speaking a pidgin Engish like wot some of the above commentators do, this thereby degrades the dialect by mixing it instead of treating as totally separate languages. A native gaelic speaker does not generally speak Scots, but when  rquired a pure form of unadulterated English.

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I've often felt that it is the lack of mastering  English that leads to the degradation of the indigenous tongue. By speaking a pidgin Engish like wot some of the above commentators do, this thereby degrades the dialect by mixing it instead of treating as totally separate languages. A native gaelic speaker does not generally speak Scots, but when  rquired a pure form of unadulterated English.

 

When and where do you ever find "a pure form of unadulterated English"?

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  • 1 month later...

Having looked a bit more into this story it seems there's been a large slice of scaremongering going on.

 

Gaelic will only be taught in Shetland schools if there's a demand by parents for it.

 

I read Tavish Scott's attack in the Shetland Times, I voted for Tavish in 2011 and I find it sad that this is what the Lib Dems have been reduced to, it made me wonder what the Lib Dem policy on Gaelic teaching was.

 

What I found made me laugh because of the extreme hypocrisy of it.

 

In the Lib Dem manifesto for the Scottish elections in 2011 it states the Lib Dems will...

 

"Support Gaelic medium education where there is demand and promote the language in cost effective ways."

 

Tavish is attacking a policy which is EXACTLY the same as the policy he was arguing for in the last Scottish election.

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Of course there's scaremongering, we're in the run up to an election after all, and campaigning these days has far more to do with the candidate that's been made to look least bad by their opponents being the winning one, than the most sensible one with the "best" policies.

 

I have nothing against schools providing gaelic where there is a demand for it, but it would be extracting the urine severely if Shetland was forced by some gormless govermentt edict to provide it to miniscule numbers here while our own language is being ignored.

 

English we have to put up with, fine. Shetland is our second language here, if there's resources available to offer more than English then lets get our own looked after first as it is to the benefit of the largest local minority. After that, fine, move on to support whatever lesser minorities there is demand for, but not before.

 

Priorities, pure and simple.

Edited by Ghostrider
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Having looked a bit more into this story it seems there's been a large slice of scaremongering going on.

 

Gaelic will only be taught in Shetland schools if there's a demand by parents for it.

 

I read Tavish Scott's attack in the Shetland Times, I voted for Tavish in 2011 and I find it sad that this is what the Lib Dems have been reduced to, it made me wonder what the Lib Dem policy on Gaelic teaching was.

 

What I found made me laugh because of the extreme hypocrisy of it.

 

In the Lib Dem manifesto for the Scottish elections in 2011 it states the Lib Dems will...

 

"Support Gaelic medium education where there is demand and promote the language in cost effective ways."

 

Tavish is attacking a policy which is EXACTLY the same as the policy he was arguing for in the last Scottish election.

 

Tavish has never said he is against the policy per se.

 

The main issue is where is the money to come from?  Foisting the teaching of a minority language onto a region that has no solid cultural links with that language and dictating that part of the existing education budget should be used to finance it (with no extra funds being allocated) is the real problem.

 

The other issue is the creeping 'Gaelicisation' of Scotland and the Isles. It's already started elsewhere.

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Being 25 I think myself lucky that, being fae Whalsa, I retain a good amount of one of the dialects that make Shetland unique. I am always disappointed to hear Shetlanders the same age and younger than me speaking a much more diluted dialect. Then I speak to older Isles folk and realise that while I understand everything they say there are many words they use which have fallen out of favour with younger folk like myself. Dialect gets diluted every generation that much is clear. 

 

 

I think this ^^^ is an excellent posting !

 

As an infrequent visitor to Shetland, I've noticed the the older folk do have significantly stronger accents; I've noticed too, that the dialects vary according to the region.

 

In 2003, I was on Burra & I got talking to one of my relations (now deceased) who was one of the last people to have been born on Havra, she had an extremely strong dialect - I had a friend with me at the time, who is a linguist/interpreter, who said that the dialect wasn't at all 'Scottish', but sounded more like Icelandic or Norwegian.

 

Funnily enough, the accommodation that we rented on East Burra was owned by a lady from Whalsay - I struggled to understand any of what she said and my translator friend did little better.  I had no problems understanding my Grandparents (from Burra & Scalloway), but I couldn't 'tune in' to the Whalsay dialect.

 

I hope that the distinct Shetland dialects and accents are retained - it'd be a great shame to lose them.

 

Hang on to and be proud of your regional speech !

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On the flip side: how much will it cost Shetland not to teach Gaelic?

 

Am I missing something? From where I'm sitting the answer is a big round zero, zilch.

 

We're not teaching it right now, so what are we missing out on? We have even more minimal truck with gaelic speaking areas than we have resident gaelic speakers, and there's no reason to suppose that's likely to change anytime soon.

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