Remind me what's good about living in Scotland?

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I moved to Scotland 25 years ago (central belt) and I've had a great life here but over the last year or so I've got increasingly itchy feet. May be a post-Covid or age thing but I'm not sure I want to stay in Scotland forever - it just doesn't seem to be as appealing to me, and even the cities seem a bit flat at the moment. Realistically, I can't disrupt DS education at the moment, he's very settled and happy so please remind me of everything that is fantastic about life in Scotland. I'm forever reading threads about people who are desperate to move to Scotland and I'm not really seeing why at the moment.

I do miss the clean air up there . It is very polluted down here . Also miss proper Glesga pakora . Don't miss the SNP tbh. But then the Tories are rubbish too ( and Labour I've fell out with).Miss Glasgow . Miss Loch Lomond and the Islands. Miss it alot. Miss how green the grass is. Wanna home swap ,Op?

It's good for kids to learn a bit of their cultural heritge, or the culture of the place where they live, no? And as I said above, learning poetry by heart has significant benefits.

We had this about 30 odd years ago in primary, too - learn and recite a Burns poem - it's not a new thing!

As for performing/reciting in public - this is an incredibly useful , sometimes crucial life skill. I think it's actually something that should be taught more in schools. If children get in the habit of presenting/reciting then it will stand them in good stead for many things throughout their life.

exactly.
yeh as i said in a previous post I did it in 70s and siblings did it at primary back in 60s. don't remember being traumatised - we must have been harder back then. and yeh, I find it sad, and pretty astonishing really when people don't want to learn anything about the culture of the place they live in.

I grew up in the East and we never did Burns.

I’m all for poetry and learning about our culture, which is multi faceted and not the narrow stereotype often claimed as “Scottish”.

Haggis.
FIN

There's fucking fins in it?!

I must have had a particularly gentle school in Scotland, as I was never made to recite anything in front of the class or school (not sure if thats a good thing or not). I also did Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen and modern American authors in Higher English and not a lot of Scottish stuff other than Iain Crichton Smith.

One poem that really stuck in my mind was fabulous though and I've never been able to find it anywhere with google. I wonder if anyone recognises it? The line that was really memorable referred to a landmark as "twin sentinels standing on the horizon like gap-toothed cretins" or similar.

www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/ask/

'If there are lines going round in your head that you can’t place, or you’d like to see the whole of a poem you learnt at school, try submitting the words you remember to us and we’ll do our best to find the poem for you.'

Learn about culture and poetry yes of course being forced to learn off by heart and say out loud to the class no!
I also believe in learning about all cultures which make up society as well.

It's hard enough with dyslexia to do some stuff with the English language and many struggle with languages (I'm definitely in this camp). As I say it runs in the family I'm not going to force them to learn Scots language poem for the sake of a Scottish week and potentially cause anxiety and stress. Reading out loud to many dyslexics is a challenge enough!

@wouldbegood thanks we will book our ski trip for that week as our LA doesn't do half term so we will always be taking them out for the week anyway!

www.gaelicsocietyofperth.com/history

No it wasn't. There was a Gaelic speaking Society which in itself is indicative of propping up the language.

It irritates me immensely seeing Gaelic station names on the eastern line. And place names in Edinburgh are beyond ridiculous.

You should read the whole page. Lower down (under the 20th century heading), it says 'there were still many native speakers of Gaelic in Highland Perthshire'. The vast majority of place-names in Perthshire are Gaelic (or Pictish). There is nothing 'fake' about putting the correct Gaelic place-names on road and station signs. The place-names we are familiar with today are anglicised Gaelic names.

From what I understand, Gaelic would have been the language of the more learned clerics & clergy etc, and therefore that's what was recorded. Gaelic spread with Christianity throughout most of Scotland, yes right to the east, for a period of time, and then was overtaken (yes sometimes forcibly) by Inglis/Scots/English. Hence the sometimes combined Pictish/Gaelic placenames.

Gaelic is quite legitimately one of the languages of Scotland. Although I do think more could be done to promote, say, Pictish or the old Celtic language or Nordic or any of the variety of fascinating languages/dialects throughout the country. Gaelic has become strongly linked to one political strand that includes Christian (CoS) sentiment and SNP sympathy. Which is not a reason to discount it or fail to appreciate it and its culture/heritage.

Anyway, no expert and these arguments have raged on for many, many years! Many people deliberately ignore them as they get so heated.

We shall to disagree on that. Gaelic never had the prominence its proponents had and Gaelic signs plastered over non Gaelic speaking areas is at best ridiculous and at worst foisting on a false culture.

Urdu, Polish, could probably make a good argument for being as important to Scotland now as Gaelic.

It depends where we're talking about. In rural Highland Perthshire (including what is now Stirlingshire around Callendar), ordinary people - farmers, labourers - would have spoken Gaelic until some point late 19th or 20th century. The Gaelic folktales recorded by Evelyn Stewart Murray in 1891 were told to her by people - women and men, young and old - across Highland Perthshire.

Gaelic is introduced into early medieval Scotland from Argyll after the kingdom of Dalriada took over the Pictish kingdom. The church language would have been Latin, though as preaching became more important then clerics were expected to preach in Gaelic. But you can see in the personal names that there were many Gaelic speakers from the nobility to the peasants. Even around Dunfermline in the fifteenth century there is some evidence of the continuing presence of some Gaelic-speaking communities.

We know so much less about Pictish because of the success of Gaelic! I don't think it's possible to learn Pictish (my DH is an early medieval historian).

But medieval Scotland is fascinating because it is not defined by one language. There are at least 7 spoken/used - Gaelic, Norse, Scots, English, French, Flemish, and Latin. But one argument in favour of promoting Gaelic now is that it was one which was and is still spoken most widely. The only place we can confidently say it was never spoken is the eastern Scottish Borders.

Thanks, Beithe, that's fascinating.

No, there's bugger all left of Pictish, although I think it could maybe be roughly reconstructed using old Welsh etc, no? And of course it wasn't written down. What did the 'ordinary people' in Central Scotland speak before Gaelic? Pictish? Or a mix of those other languages? I didn't think Latin was spoken, was it? So much as used for writing. And much of what was written is really stupendously rough dog-Latin.

It’s all very interesting, and I love the mix of peoples and how things evolve.

But I think it’s just ridiculous to be having all these Gaelic signs and livery. The vast vast majority of people have absolutely no idea what they mean or even how to say them! Tourists must be puzzled as to why our country is plastered with a language no one speaks.

So you're right that Pictish may be related to modern Welsh (lots of linguistic debate). It was probably a branch of the Brittonic language (I.e. Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric and Breton). But it would be very hard to reconstruct. Place-name elements like pit-, aber- and caer- are of Pictish origin.

In central Scotland, before Gaelic, there was the Brittonic-speaking kingdom of Strathclyde. That's area between the Ochils and south of the Forth and Clyde. Fife is Pictish.
Glasgow is strongly Gaelicised in 9th to 11th centuries.

I think Gaelic place-names on roadsigns, which by the way are only produced when signs need to be replaced anyway, are an important way of showing our past and present. Gaelic is a living language and road signs help to show that. It helps to promote the language, and yes to tourists too.

Gaelic place-names on roadsigns, which by the way are only produced when signs need to be replaced anyway, are an important way of showing our past and present

Our present is a multicultural society with Polish spoken more widely than Gaelic. If we truly wanted to show our present we would show a more realistic view of our language.

In the last census (2011), there were 57,000 Gaelic speakers (plus another 23,000 who could understand Gaelic). Whereas there were 54,000 Polish speakers and 23,300 Urdu speakers.

In 2019 there were 97,000 Polish Nationals living in Scotland. I’m willing to bet they speak or understand Polish.

It's a language which is being propped up. Sticking Gaelic signs on places which had no tradition of speaking Gaelic is not showing our past- it's inventing one. In Edinburgh you might as well add French.

For tourists it's not particularly helpful for road directions where the Gaelic word appears above the English word.

It is also nuts. Tourist “ hello Scottish person, what does that word say?”

Scottish person: “I have no idea, I can’t pronounce it or tell you what it means and not can anyone else here. “