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.

@exnewwifeproblems

How's Irish in NI going to work when half of the population don't want to speak it because they consider themselves British? It's a big reason why we don't have a functioning Executive right now ...

^
What do you mean how is it going to work? It's not going to be compulsory for British people in the island of Ireland to learn Irish. But it's going to give protections for whoever does want to learn it and live it to do so. And it's not an Irish language act it's a cultural package which will also give Ulster Scots the same benefits- should anybody wish to drive that forward. As for the executive, sure it's one thing after another with the DUP- Irish language , now the protocol when the real reason is the DUP feel they are too good to sit under (when really it is alongside) a female nationalist/ republican politician.

@DownNative you do know that Protestants also can and do speak Irish? Your ignorance is unfortunately not surprising,

I was referring to this statement

Welsh should be compulsory in Wales, Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, Irish in NI. Children should achieve a decent level of proficiency in them.

Irish should not be compulsory in NI. I have zero desire to learn Irish and I don't have to. It should not be compulsory. I do not wish to be made to learn the language of a different country that I will never use.

The understanding amongst linguists is that if a language simplifies in one aspect, it becomes more complex in another aspect.

You mentioned English lost its case system which was weakened by the Norse Vikings and then wrecked completely by the Normans. This gave a degree of simplicity to it.

But English became more complex in syntax instead and this requires more time spent learning.

If I recall correctly, the Romance languages became more complex in syntax.

Syntax is usually the aspect that becomes more complex over time - not less.

"We can say anything Chaucer could have said, but Chaucerian English would be woefully inadequate in the modern world."

C.R. Hallpike 2018

Syntax, grammar and lexicon become more complex over time. The industrial age and modern scientific discoveries plus technological innovation has further pushed the development of complexity in language on.

This is what happened to English. The main simplicity in English was losing the case system, but this did not simplify the entire language as a whole. Syntax, grammar and lexicon were all smaller centuries ago.

A simple example that also demonstrates the complexity of modern English - "wail" and "whale" sound the same. And this can create confusion within native speakers, never mind non-native speakers.

More time and care needs to be spent on languages like English as a result.

Please quote where I stated that Protestants cannot learn to speak Gaelic?

If anyone being ignorant, it's actually YOU assuming I'm a Protestant when there's zero indication I am. In fact, I've said before my family background is a Catholic one and none of us speak Gaelic. No desire to, really.

And the Republican Movement weaponisation of Gaelic is very off putting too.

Approximately 4,000 Catholics speak Gaelic at home fluently on a daily basis in Northern Ireland. This means little to no intergenerational transmission of Gaelic is occurring within Catholic families, including Nationalist and Republican ones.

As I said before, very, very few people in the Republic of Ireland speak Gaelic and fewer still in Northern Ireland as well as Scotland.

It's not for no reason UNESCO project that all forms of Gaelic will disappear by the 22nd Century.

This is a fallacious argument since your assumption is that I'm opposed to learning a second language.

This is far from the case. In fact, I wish I had enough exposure to Portuguese so I could learn it efficiently. I can say a good number of things although I can read Portuguese much better.

But I am opposed to the argument that languages like Gaelic and Welsh should be compulsory in schools. The statistics does not support this by any means. People can choose to learn these if they wish, but no way should they be compulsory in our schools!

No, it is I who is having to chase your constantly shifting goalposts. 🙄

My argument has remained the same all along - the vast majority of people aren't interested in learning minority languages.

Globalisation and climate change are extremely potent threats to minority languages - an argument you've not really touched.

You consistently ignore the figures demonstrating most children do not continue speaking Gaelic as adults. Even Federico Espinosa, an expert you deliberately misquoted earlier vis a vis Welsh, stated that intergenerational transmission of minority languages isn't happening.

Intergenerational transmission is what actually keeps languages alive.

All the combined factors already stated more than prove it isn't financially worthwhile keep pumping millions into Gaelic. Children aren't keeping it as adults.

There is benefits to bilingualism.....as long as the second language is used as an adult. Its much more useful for child to learn Spanish, French, German or Portuguese as a second language alongside English than it is for Gaelic. We're talking about the world's most dominant languages here which are part of the world's most powerful economies.

Economic power = serious language strength.

Minority languages do NOT stand a chance which is why UNESCO project that half of the world's languages will disappear by the 22nd Century. Including....all forms of Gaelic.

But I predict you won't address that point. 🤐

That policy in Scottish primary schools has only been around since the 2021-20 academic year.

But it is only compulsory under the same policy from S1 to S3 in Scottish secondary schools. No modern foreign language is compulsory in S4, S5 and S6.

The Republic of Ireland has long had compulsory Gaelic in their educational system. And the vast majority of students keenly drop Gaelic once they've left school. Indeed, an ROI Government report stated that Gaelic will no longer be the dominant language in Gaelic speaking areas such as Donegal by 2025.

Making it compulsory in schools doesn't arrest the decline as Federico Espinosa acknowledged:

@DownNative it is quite frustrating engaging with you, because you make some quite valid points mixed in with absolute garbage, and your tone is becoming rude and aggressive.

UNESCO is not predicting that Gaelic will die out, they have pointed out it is severely endangered and needs help to survive. They place a high value on the cultural contribution of Gaelic, which has been considered for UNESCO status.

No one is disputing that globalisation - the ESOLisation of the world - is detrimental to minority languages. English language colonialism continues to this day, especially in the Internet Empire.

Because so much of Gael culture was a rural, fishing and crofting culture, with a lexicon culture intimately connected to the natural world - in Irish there are 32 words for different types of field - Gaelic is seen as a language aligned with changing our outlooks to fight climate change.

But you seem very fixed in your reductionist view, so go ahead and punch down on minority languages and British Isles heritage all you like. Do you want to demolish Stonehenge because no one uses it anymore too?

Because so much of Gael culture was a rural, fishing and crofting culture, with a lexicon culture intimately connected to the natural world - in Irish there are 32 words for different types of field - Gaelic is seen as a language aligned with changing our outlooks to fight climate change

Prior to the industrial revolution, most languages were primarily related to rural culture (BTW, there are 122 synonyms of field in English), so I don't see why Gaelic is any more aligned to fighting climate change then any other, I've not heard Greta Thunberg use it.

im a welsh speaker. English is my second language. Same with my husband and kids.
my kids had their education in welsh, and their further education in both languages.

my job is welsh essential. Local government. Most jobs in LG are. It may be politically correct on their website when advertising jobs but welsh is essential. They want welsh speakers as over 76% of the county’s population speak welsh. I start my telephone conversations in welsh.

and i can go for days without speaking English. Most days i have no need to. Especially in work, in an office of over 600 people, I haven’t come across an English speaker there.

calling the tax office, passport office etc, they have a welsh language line.

so if you speak a language its not dead. You can try to kill the welsh language, but if its spoken it cant be killed.

We live in a part of Wales where lots of people speak Welsh as a first language. Although I grew up in England I wouldn't dream of not chatting to the shops staff in Welsh. I can't see the Welsh language dying out.
My kids were genuinely surprised when we crossed the border into England and the road signs and emergency service vehicles weren't bilingual. They think it strange people only speak one language.

@Worldwearymum

"it is quite frustrating engaging with you, because you make some quite valid points mixed in with absolute garbage, and your tone is becoming rude and aggressive."

On the contrary, it's YOU who is frustrating debating with here since you keep on ignoring every single caveat in order to shore up your weak position.

"UNESCO is not predicting that Gaelic will die out, they have pointed out it is severely endangered and needs help to survive."

Firstly, UNESCO has given Gaelic the status of "definitely endangered" and not "severely endangered".

Secondly, UNESCO is predicting that Gaelic WILL die out because its "definitely endangered" status means there's no meaningful intergenerational transmission occurring.

See attachments.

According to the Linguistic Society of America:

"What does it mean to say a language is endangered?

An endangered language is one that is likely to become extinct in the near future. Many languages are failing out of use and being replaced by others that are more widely used in the region or nation, such as English in the U.S. or Spanish in Mexico. Unless current trends are reversed, these endangered languages will become extinct within the next century."

While there are differing degrees of endangerment, all those languages within the endangered group ARE at risk of extinction.

UNESCO projection is by the 22nd Century half of the world's languages will disappear and become extinct. All forms of Gaelic is included in that projection.

There is just one condition to this projection - arrest language decline and you stave off extinction within a century. But Gaelic is still declining despite all the best governmental efforts, particularly in the Republic of Ireland.

"No one is disputing that globalisation - the ESOLisation of the world - is detrimental to minority languages. English language colonialism continues to this day, especially in the Internet Empire."

Glad to hear the first part there! It would be silly to assert otherwise.

But it is NOT "colonialism" that's responsible for language extinction in the 21st Century.

It is Globalisation aligned with the importance of World Economic Markets. So, I'll quote Federico Espinosa in full here:

"Maybe to take the stigma out of being an endangered language there are about 7,000 languages in the world and about half of them are predicted to be extinct by the end of the century, which is by UNESCO’s reckoning as well as Google.

Both of them cited similar numbers of 20,000 to 40,000 speakers of Irish currently in the world and I think that’s quite a bit lower than some estimates that put it at 1.7 million according to the census in 2016.

That’s because a lot of people who answered yes to the question might speak some Irish- so it’s kind of what the definition of speaking it is and if they are really fluent.

It’s also mostly because people don’t teach it to their children anymore, globalisation is the key issue.

People learn languages that they see as useful and functional and that kind of limits the ability to really dive into the debts of some of the languages that are much more culturally significant to them but maybe not one that they are going to learn to high levels of proficiency.

I think it’s also because motivation is going. Ultimately, language learning is hard and learning a language that you don’t need to use every day can be hard to motivate your children to do or people to do.”

• Federico Espinosa, Lead Language Expert at Busuu

By far, the biggest driver of English in the 20th and 21st Centuries has been the economic strength of the United States of America. It's why US English is replacing British English - next time you go to the supermarket, note how the 'h' has been lost from the word 'yoghurt', for example.

Streaming giants such as Netflix and Disney + further entrench the dominance of the English language.

As land area that's habitable for humans decreases, language loss becomes more pronounced as people will have to move to areas where their native language isn't spoken. Displacement is also going to be caused by conflict over access to water sources as wars over water has been increasing the last decade.

This is not colonialism as it is understood. Colonialism is to do with acquiring political control of another country and that's not what's happening here in the 21st Century on a global scale.

Rather, since economic trade IS global and vital to modern life.....it follows then that it is economically massively beneficial to countries to have a common language they can speak.

Hence, English is the lingua franca of the modern world precisely because the United States has been the most powerful country in the world. And countries want to do trade with the US.

All the most dominant languages in the world today largely correspond to economical strength:

United States English

British English

Spanish

Mandarin

Portuguese

French

In no particular order.

Economic trade and language usage is a very different thing to colonialism.

"Because so much of Gael culture was a rural, fishing and crofting culture, with a lexicon culture intimately connected to the natural world - in Irish there are 32 words for different types of field - Gaelic is seen as a language aligned with changing our outlooks to fight climate change."

This is seriously flawed logic!

For a start, everyone lived in rural communities before the Industrial Revolution.

For example, Belfast was just a tiny village until the industries of shipbuilding and linen manufacture took off. As a result, Belfast swelled to its current size rapidly and attracted workers from all over the British Isles.

Gaelic isn't regarded as "a language aligned with changing our outlooks to fight climate change." Arguably, the world's most dominant and widely used languages are far more useful in this regard.

English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Mandarin, for example, absolutely WILL raise awareness of climate change with hundreds of millions people in comparison to an endangered language. In fact, the most popular languages today have been right on the forefront of raising awareness of climate change!

Your assertion there has no logical basis. English is the international language of science and the most important scientific discoveries as well as research is presented in....English.

Climate Change is a science that absolutely uses English for this purpose precisely because you want as many people as possible to become aware of the risks of not changing our behaviour on an industrial scale.

Greta Thunberg is the poster child for climate and she speaks to the world in English.

Not Gaelic. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel!

"But you seem very fixed in your reductionist view, so go ahead and punch down on minority languages and British Isles heritage all you like. Do you want to demolish Stonehenge because no one uses it anymore too?"

Firstly, it is not reductionist to look at the statistics in terms of sheer numbers. The numbers leads to conclusions from UNESCO and others that half of all languages are projected to disappear by the 22nd Century. This is informed by human behaviour itself and not some underhanded agenda.

Secondly, what a bizarre shift in logic! Does Stonehenge require people using it in order to stand?

No.

Do all languages require people to use them in order to survive via intergenerational transmission?

Yes.

Ergo, your comparison does not hold. It's not a meaningful comparison at all, but more a sign of desperation on your part as you run out of road.

You must be living in Gwynedd where the figure is 76% according to the Welsh Government.

For Wales as a whole:

"For the year ending 31 March 2021, the Annual Population Survey reported that 29.1% of people aged three or over were able to speak Welsh. This figure equates to 883,300 people."

Welsh is in a better position than Gaelic, but it is still declining. It is classified as 'Vulnerable' by UNESCO and is the only Celtic language not classified as 'Definitely Endangered'.

But that status is not a given by any means.

A major difference between Welsh and Scottish Gaelic is that only Welsh has actual protection in law. This is why Welsh must be supplied in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland when requested. You will find a Welsh language option in Tesco stores in Scotland, for example. But not Gaelic.

Scotland only has legislation for promoting Gaelic which is very different to protection.

“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.

Aye!

Gaelic has 50 words for 'penis' whereas English has 174 words! 'Anal impaler' is one! 🤣

I don't think World-weary thought it through.

@DownNative so easy to copy and paste.

but based on day to day life in the place i work, the shops i buy my goods, the education my kids receive, the place i work at , the restaurant i eat, the pub i drink in, the running group i frequent, were all welsh.

that us important. Not what a language expert thinks.
anyone can become a language expert and produce reports. But in reality? It doesn’t count.

what I hear in the street/school/work does.

Welsh lives on.

To be honest @DownNative I somewhat threw logic to the wind when you started rumbling on about the impact of the evolving complexity of English syntax on classroom teaching time!?

I’ve read Prof Conchúr Ó Giollagáin‘s “The Gaelic Crisis in the Vernacular Community” and Dr Emily McEwan-Fujita’s “Gaelic Language Revitalisation Concepts and Challenges” as well as the data from the 2011 Census, so I’m well aware how perilously fragile Gaelic is. It may or may not survive, but why stamp on it, when it’s receiving very little state support anyway?

I’ve never argued that the study of minority languages should be compulsory - which is what this thread is actually about - although I do think young people would benefit from at least an introduction to which minority language applies / applied to where they are living.

@DownNative

Is it any wonder then that there is opposition to an Irish language act? Especially since around 4,000 Catholics use Gaelic on a regular basis as their home language in Northern Ireland. The numbers really isn't there for such an act.

^ why did you single out catholics as if they are the only people who speak the language? I attend community groups were there people who speak Irish on a daily basis.

And your figures are wrong- there's about 4000 children being educated through Irish each day at school, but that doesn't account for the 1000's more who have left school over the past 40 years (since the first IME school) who still speak it as part of their day.

P.s I don't assume you're any religion. I only assumed you were ignorant.

young people would benefit from at least an introduction to which minority language applies / applied to where they are living.

Again, how would this work in Northern Ireland?

I have no desire to be made to learn Irish and neither do most in the loyalist / unionist population here.

An introduction to Irish could be done in as little as an afternoon! And could help bridge cultural and sectarian divides.

It wouldn’t take very long to outline the history of Irish, the difference between P-Celtic Brythonic languages and Q-Celtic Goidelic languages, and a few common phrases. You could do this in 40 minutes!

The Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Bill is intended to deliver measures to promote and respect Northern Ireland's diverse national, cultural and linguistic identities, and some classroom introduction could be part of that.

The figures I used is from the 2011 Northern Ireland Census which shows that 4,130 people (0.2%) use Irish as their main home language.

That's precisely what I was referring to!

Catholics are STILL the largest group of Gaelic language speakers in Northern Ireland AND the Republic of Ireland. It makes sense to refer to the group rather than the smaller group. In this case, Catholics overwhelmingly outnumber Protestants in speaking Gaelic.

Vast majority of those who learnt Gaelic in school in the Republic of Ireland simply drop Gaelic once they've left. Federico Espinosa has already referenced the Irish census and how it skews the actual numbers of speakers here:

"Maybe to take the stigma out of being an endangered language there are about 7,000 languages in the world and about half of them are predicted to be extinct by the end of the century, which is by UNESCO’s reckoning as well as Google.

Both of them cited similar numbers of 20,000 to 40,000 speakers of Irish currently in the world and I think that’s quite a bit lower than some estimates that put it at 1.7 million according to the census in 2016.

That’s because a lot of people who answered yes to the question might speak some Irish- so it’s kind of what the definition of speaking it is and if they are really fluent."

That's quite a discrepancy. The ROI census doesn't ask about level of fluency, BTW.

As ever, it's intergenerational transmission that's key. Not total number of speakers. A crucial distinction!

I don't want to learn Irish or be introduced to it particularly and that is incredibly culturally sensitive here.

Under the good Friday agreement I am permitted to identify as British and not Irish and I have zero desire to learn or be "introduced to" Irish Gaelic.

Most unionists (as I am) do not want this. (And I don't think Ulster Scots is suitable as a sop to us.)

Gaelic has had loads of State support in the Republic of Ireland for decades as has already been demonstrated by the words of Federico Espinosa. 🤷‍♂️

But it hasn't made a difference.

This is a case of evolve or die. A language has to be fit for purpose in the modern world. If not, why should any state spend millions on it? Especially when figures show decline is still occurring?

As for complexity, it was a direct response to someone else who argued languages become simpler. In one sense, yes, but in another sense no. Hence, the point about syntax, lexicon and grammar.

But that has no relevance to your own points. No need for you to throw logic out the window! But you did. 🤷‍♂️

You are Federico Espinosa and I claim my £5!

The thing is, you're actually arguing that your anecdotal experience trumps evidenced studies.

It doesn't. The fact you're relying on your anecdotes in ONE Welsh County of Gwynedd does not come close to detracting from the overall point made by language experts.

Just 29% of people in Wales speak Welsh. That's a minority of approximately 866,000 people which is not enough people to secure Welsh.

That's why UNESCO classify it as VULNERABLE which it is. In other words, Welsh as a language lives....for now.

But it's future is far, far from safe and secure. This is a crucial distinction to understand which you don't seem to have grasped.

And no, not anyone can become a language expert! 🤣🤐

What’s the point?