Learning native languages should be compulsory in the U.K

[RainCloud]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/25/why-i-quit-gaelic-language-forefathers-vocabulary?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

I saw this article earlier and it made me sad that the number Scottish Gaelic speakers are declining. I think it should be compulsory for us all to learn Scottish Gaelic and Welsh at school, all over the U.K. I'm not saying that we should all be fluent but we should learn the basics. It might inspire more people to become fluent and stop the languages dying out.

It isn't about needing to use it. It's about protecting the languages, so they don't die out.

But how would every child in the UK learning "a few phrases" in half a dozen languages stop this?
I learnt French for 5 years, German for 2. I don't think I could string a sentence together in German, and in French, well, I can ask where the toilet is, but they better be able to point because there's no way I would understand a response. The reason is I haven't had any reason to speak either language since.

If you think teaching a little of lots of languages will send all those children rushing off to learn them in their own time when learning languages to GCSE level is at an all time low then you haven't really thought that through.

Ridiculous idea other than to maybe mention these languages in a lesson about the UK so that people are aware of them. But to actually teach them nationwide would be a waste of time and money.

And I say that as a Londoner who thought it was a shame the native languages were ignored, studied them at university and now has dc who speaks one as their first language.

@DownNative - you seem to have conveniently forgotten several hundred years of weaponisation of English in Ireland, where it was used as an arm of conquest, with the Irish language the victim of deliberate policies of eradication.

Yet English is taught in Irish schools, Irish writers writing in English have livened up the canon of English literature, and Irish students tend to do very well in international tests of reading.

icebearforpresident · 06/08/2022 09:08

"Lots of schools are teaching Gaelic in Scotland and Glasgow has a primary school which is exclusively Gaelic speaking. As far as I know, and I could be wrong so happy to be corrected, it has the highest demand in the city."

There are a few Gaelic speaking schools in Edinburgh too.

We didn't learn Gaelic but had lessons in Latin which was slightly more useful but not much. Also apent hours on French, German and Spanish but can't remember a word of it.

I now wish we were taught a bit of Gaelic for the heritage aspect of it alongside the obligatory Royal Mile trip and Burns poems etc.

Quite so. Latin didn’t die out. It evolved - into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian. It was used as the lingua franca (yep, guess where that expression comes from) of the Church and the law for hundreds of years, and even now leaves big footprints in our vocabulary. True, the language in its original form is now chiefly used only by the Vatican and classical enthusiasts, but to say Latin is ‘dead’ is not entirely accurate.

For languages to thrive there has to be motivation and often that is political. Languages can be revived, Welsh has had some success in that but it isn't the only one.

Hebrew was in a similar place to Latin but was modernised and revived with the creation of Israel.

Singapore is interesting, the education system is officially bilingual, with most teaching in English but with all children having to learn a 'mother tongue' language, Malay, (Mandarin) Chinese or Tamil, the problems with this have included Chinese speaking students having to learn 2 languages at once because at home they might speak Haka or Cantonise.

Another problem is deciding which mother tongue a child should learn, it was based on the child's father's ethnicity so a child speaking Cantonese with their mother but whose father is Indian would be put in the Tamil class.

That's interesting... what if the child's father is ethnically anglophone or other European or African, do they get to choose the second language?

@ErrolTheDragon

Sorry I'm not an expert, it's just something we covered as part of my degree, it called 'language planning' and it's quite interesting.

Different governments have different goals when they plan which languages to use, and not just the language but things like the alphabet, Urdu and Hindi are basically the same language when spoken but written using different scripts.

Turkey adopted roman script in the late 1920s, so you had a generation of adults who couldn't understand, or had to learn, what their children were writing in school, Turkish used to use a similar script to Urdu and Farsi and written right to left, modern Turkish you read left to right.

I was taught French & Latin at school

And when they’ve wasted years learning these languages and leave school and never use them again, what happens to their language skills? They lose them. What a pointless suggestion.

On the contrary, the Irish experience has shown Gaelic is still declining despite these efforts .

A linguistic expert on measures the Republic of Ireland has taken for decades to save Irish Gaelic:

"I really don’t know as I think the government is doing such a good job already with the fact that it’s a mandatory school subject and it’s on TV and radio."

“Most governments to some extent or another are trying to save languages, Wales is with Welsh, Scotland is trying to save Scots Gaelic, and Isle of Man is trying to save Manx, yet all of these languages are still going.”

Federico Espinosa, Lead Language Expert at Busuu.

The only thing that explains this is the dominance and growing complexity of languages such as English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, etc.

Whataboutery at its best.

You do understand I was responding to a previous poster's very specific comment regarding the DUP and an Irish language act....right? Clearly, it has a history and didn't spring up out of thin air.

Extending things far into the past isn't relevant or helpful to a discussion which is literally rooted in the year 2022. If we all do this, we find Gaelic strangled other languages to death, so what's your point? Some might describe this as karma though I don't believe in such a thing.

According to UNESCO, at least half the world's languages will be extinct by the 22nd century.

Globalisation is one reason and climate change is another as people will move to where their native language isn't spoken.

Perhaps the governments in areas with declining regional languages need to focus more on how technology can help. I'm sure some do already, to some extent. Work towards making the babelfish a reality - a translator which can capture the nuances of a language, and the subtleties of pronunciation.

Is there yet an app I can point at a Welsh road sign and have it say the place name correctly?

Whataboutery at its best.

Oh dear..

I'm appreciating the irony here.

We're not talking about the distant past.

My grandparents were taught no Irish in school and were forced to recite a poem of gratitude that went as follows:
I thank the goodness and the grace
That on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days,
A happy English child.

As you can see, even the fact that they were Irish wasn't acknowledged.

It was actually the Tories who initially put large amounts of funding into Gaelic broadcasting back in the 80’s - George Younger was very supportive - and Labour who passed the Gaelic Language Act back in 2005.

The SNP do the bare minimum, in fact - perhaps because they want to avoid accusations of nationalism from people who don’t know the background history.

In most countries in the world it is beyond normal to speak two languages. Gaelic comes with a beautiful oral culture and heritage, and it would be a great loss if it were to die out all together, I feel.

So, you've gone from your "several hundred years of weaponisation of English" to "My grandparents were taught no Irish in school".

Shifting the goalposts fallacy.

None of that explains the fact that very, very few people in the Republic of Ireland have any real desire to learn Gaelic despite independence for 100 years now.

It also does not explain the fact that globalisation is the single biggest cause of minority language decline in the 21st Century. The dominant languages are more complex to learn now than in past history which means they take up more school time than ever before.

UNESCO predicts half of all languages will disappear by the turn of the century. 🤔

Worldwearymum, the SNP are wasting spending £25 million per year on Gaelic.
I hardly think you can call that “the bare minimum”, and, as a taxpayer in Scotland, I resent it bitterly, when the SNP are simultaneously cutting far more essential services.

Aye, SNP won the right to speak Gaelic in the EU Parliament despite the fact none of them can speak it fluently. 🙈

They waste time and money.

the snp could solve world hunger and you'd whinge about them.

But why do we need to protect a language?

If it dies out, its because no one uses it - you cant force people to use it

No point learning a language no one uses

In most countries in the world it is beyond normal to speak two languages.

I'm not sure about 'most', but yes, in much of the world, multilingualism is normal.

But in the vast majority of such cases, people learn languages, or grow up naturally acquiring multiple languages, for practical reasons, usually so that they communicate with others in either a local or international context. It certainly isn't normal to learn a language for abstract motivations such as 'protecting' it or appreciating the heritage.

In most countries in the world it is beyond normal to speak two languages.

Well, yes. Because most other languages aren't one of the major lingua francas. If you're working with colleagues from Japan, India. France, and the US (many of whom have a first language Russian, Mandarin, German etc etc) then all the communication will be in (American) English.

As you can see in the link, the large majority of that goes on Gaelic medium education, which is now offered in about 60 primary schools across Scotland. If the children weren’t being educated in Gaelic, they’d be getting educated in English and the net impact on the budget would be similar.

Scotland / Gaelic culture is very popular in countries like the US and Canada (which also has a Gaelic medium school itself now) so investing in Gaelic very much offers a return on investment in marketing the brand.

In France it’s possible to be educated in Breton, Basque and even in Occitan - to let these languages die would be a sad loss of diversity.

www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/foi-eir-release/2018/05/foi-18-01112/documents/foi-18-01112-gaelic-scots-budgets-april-2018-pdf/foi-18-01112-gaelic-scots-budgets-april-2018-pdf/govscot%3Adocument/FOI%2B-%2B18%2B-%2B01112%2B%2B-%2BGaelic%2Band%2BScots%2BBudgets%2B-%2BApril%2B2018.pdf

Actually, large numbers of people study a heritage language as children (think of all the Saturday schools) and adults. For example, about a third of Gaelic learners on Duolingo are based in the US. Languages are part of our identity as well as tools for communication.

Some people do this yes, but they are a tiny minority of those who learn other languages. The vast majority do so for practical reasons. That's the main reason why relatively few native English speakers learn other languages. Unless they have a specific reason to do so, there's not really a practical motivation to go to the time and trouble to learn another language.