Remind me what's good about living in Scotland?

[CoralPaperweight]

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 think Gaelic place-names on road signs, 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

I get that in the highlands and islands. But my heritage is from south west Scotland. Gaelic hasn't been spoken there since the 16th century. In a great many other parts of Scotland its not been a living language for hundreds of years. Foisting gaelic signage all over the country is a false representation of much of the past.

And why can’t we just appreciate our culture without it having to be state sponsored?

The scottish cringe is high on this thread.
I disapprove of flag waving & 'patriotism' (the forthcoming jubilee will be vomit inducing for example)
But
The deliberate doing down of a country in which they live (by some) simply because they do not like the democratically elected government or their manifesto is Jaw dropping.

Even great things about scotland are criticised & nit picked.

Horribly provincial small minded pathetic behaviour.

Well, there's a good chance that some of those foreign tourists will have learnt some Gaelic! There are over 400,000 people actively learning Gaelic on Duolingo - 37% are in the US, 25% in the UK, 6% Canada and 32% around the rest of the world.

I'm in the actively learning figures of Icelandic on Duolingo. I can barely speak a word because I lost interest quite quickly. These are misleading figures.

I wouldn't mind Gaelic so much if it weren't being used as a political tool to foster a separate Scottish identity to England. I am quite good at languages and have a far better idea how to pronounce "Eyjafjallajökull" or "Stroget" than whatever is written on Scottish trains or ambulances.

It wrankles too, because the history of Shetland shows that the original language was wiped out there by the Scots moving in and there is no funding from the Scottish Government because for Norn because it is a "dead" language. There are some Norn road signs however, and they are a damned sight easier to pronounce than Gaelic! Caithness also used to be Norn speaking yet signs have appeared for some word that means "beach" in Gaelic along with others there.

Yet Gaelic is an Irish language and was only spoken for a short time in some parts of Scotland.

Latin is still used in modern Scots to a large degree because we have a continental legal system based on Roman law and that was preserved in the Act of Union. Its probably used on a day to day basis by far more people than use Gaelic.

Now you really are clutching at straws! So we should continue pushing a language spoken by around 1% of the Scottish population onto road signs across the country because 148,000 Americans (out of a population of 329.5 million) who are learning Gaelic on Duolingo might come over here and read the Gaelic translations underneath the English road signs?! Come on

PS - I'm 'actively learning' Italian on Duolingo. Doesn't mean I can speak it.

No, I am simply pointing out that there is more interest in Gaelic than there might be thought.

I don't think anyone has said there isn't a small level of interest in Gaelic. The question is around why the SG is trying to foist it into areas which have never been majority Gaelic speakers and where other languages are spoken far more widely. Actually, it's not really a question - @AchatAVendre is spot on.

I really don't think the SG is trying to foist the language on people (and I am no fan of the SG). Yes, parents now have a right to request Gaelic medium education, but it's up to the Council, not the SG, to decide if there's sufficient demand.

The road signage may partly be due to Gaelic language plans.

I don't think anyone is going to force Orkney and Shetland to have Gaelic road signs. That would be crazy.

Of course they're foisting Gaelic on us - there's no reason for it in many areas, other than the SG have decided to implement a national language strategy in a political move.

Yes, the councils have to do decide if there's a local demand - although the SG can over-rule the threshold. Costs to get the child to a Gaelic school are also borne by the Councils - I know someone who is driven in a taxi over 30 miles each day at a cost to the Gaelic school at a cost of £0 to her (well off) parents.

I don't think anyone is going to force Orkney and Shetland to have Gaelic road signs. That would be crazy

Any more crazy than the Gaelic railway signs at Shotts? Or the Poileas and Ambaileans driving about Wishaw?

Putting up unpronouncable Gaelic language road signs everywhere is about as foisting of a language upon people as you can get! It does seem to be an SNP tactic - I used to have some fervent SNP supporters on my social media and they all had those bizarrely spelled Gaelic-ised names. I have never felt less of an affinity with a language than I have with Gaelic, but thats not surprising since my family comes from a completely non-Gaelic speaking area.

What on earth is a "Gaelic language plan?" They clearly struggle to translate some of those placenames into Gaelic on those road signs too - they are laughably tortuous and long.

Do you say the same about those in Ireland with names that you personally find hard to pronounce? What a horrible attitude to have .

Ok.. who genuinely knows how to pronounce the Gaelic for police, as seen across Scotland? Without googling!

I don’t and my mother was a native speaker.

You need to read Peter May’s Lewis trilogy - that’s how I learned my Gaelic. 😂 and I have Gaelic names

It's easy poileas and pronounced polis. Used by a huge proportion of people in scotland.

Commonly thought (by ignorant types) to be slang for police.

🤦🏻‍♀️

It's rather different finding place names abroad difficult, finding them difficult in your native country because they are not in your native language could well grate

in the case of the borders it would never have been native , in the case of many regions would not have been native for many hundreds of years

It’s only easy if you know!

but I’m ignorant

I went to university in Wales - everything is bilingual - yet until a big push alongside devolution, South Wales contained very few welsh speakers. I learned enough to order a beer and a shag. Dim ysmygu.

You’re stretching the truth if you think the correct pronunciation of poileas is widely known across Scotland. If it’s polis (or poalis, depending where you are) then it’d have made more sense to use that, given that it’s used by a huge proportion of people in Scotland.

I don't live in Ireland and I'm not Irish. Its a foreign country.

we were in Amsterdam last month. If you think Scottish public transport is "fine" then you have nothing to compare it to.

Their monthly tram-card subscription thingy costs about a euro a day. For that price you can travel throughout the city centre whenever you like. If you need to go further afield, the prices go up a bit, but for a card covering bus/train/tram all across the Amsterdam commuter zone, it's 3 euros a day. About £2.75. A return from East Kilbride to Glasgow is £9. The trams have smart screens telling you which bus lines and train lines connect at each tram stop. You need to buy a new ticket for each leg of the journey. Trams run every 15 minutes from 5am to midnight, and there's a night service too. Ferry across from one side of Amsterdam to the other is free. Trains to the airport every 15 minutes.

Even London's transport system is 100 times better than what we have to put up with here.

Oh that one's a joke, it really is.

I love the ones which are obviously made up like the Gaelic version of Coatbridge Sunnyside.

You mean Drochaid a' Chòta Taobh Grianach. It quite trips off the tongues of the locals 🙄

the public transport is fine

I am guessing that was written before the carnage of the new Scotrail timetable was published