why don’t they learn and speak their own language?
i've read some time ago that only 4.93 % of welsh people speak welsh, and i know it's the same in Ireland and Scottland with gaelic and in France with breton, provençal. i know they should also speak english and french because is the official language, but I think they(irish, scottish, welsh) should learn how to speak these languages fluently, after all....is part of their culture!
I ask this because in Spain we have other languages appart from Spanish(galician, catalan, basque) but they all(or at least, most of them)can speak, read, write them in Galiza, Catalunya and Basque Country.
thank you for the answers! it would be nice to have any answer from irish, scottish, welsh people.
sorry for the spelling, I don't know if I wrote it all propperly!
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Tags: basque, breton, catalan, catalunya, galician, ireland, languages, scottland, spain, spelling, welsh
November 13th, 2009 at 3:53 am
Ceist an-chasta é seo! This is a very complicated question!
You might be interested in a book "Celtic Dawn" by Peter Berrisford Ellis which discusses the history and prospects of all the Celtic languages.
And I’d be curious to know more about the differences in Spain.
A few points.
1. ‘their own language’
One could well argue that English has been spoken for as long in Dublin as it has been in London. The south of Scotland, I believe, has never been Gaelic-speaking. During the Industrial Revolution vast numbers of English-speaking migrants transformed large areas of South Wales into English-speaking communities.
2. ’should learn how to speak these languages’
Well, in Ireland and Wales, they do. They learn in school (although, for some, the ability may be limited – just as it is in English, maths etc.)
3. ‘to speak’
The difficulty is that outside the Gaeltachtaí (Irish speaking communities) there is little opportunity to speak the language,one is surrounded by a sea of English. So, just as we forget all the geometry, Physics, Chemistry we learnt in school, so we forget the language if we don’t have the opportunity to use it.
4. Under English rule the language ceased to play any role in government, law or the arts. It degraded into a language spoken only in poor rural communities. The Great Famine (an drochshaol) decimated these communities,leaving them with little opportunity but immigration to UK or US. If your children’s future lay in an English-speaking world, wouldn’t you ensure they were fluent in English even if they lost Irish. It would be unfair to ‘blame’ England, as Irish people rationally choose English for their children (although they had no say in the economic and social circumstances that forced such a choice).
5. And English is still the language of employment. Much of Ireland’s recent economic progress could be said to be due to having an educated, English-speaking population. But then, as the man said, English is a good language for selling pigs in!
6. Irish is very different from English – they have little in common. So,learning Irish (for an English-speaker) is far more difficult than learning a Germanic or romance language.
The difficulty lies not in constructing some idealistic Celtic dream, but in realistically developing bilingualism in these countries.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:53 am
Strange. I am Czech, Prussian, Irish, and English. Should I speak all those languages because my ancestors came from these places? I don’t think I should.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:53 am
The figure you quoted of 4.93% is actually incorrect. About 21.7% of the population of Wales speak Welsh…..however, I do agree with you that this is not enough and we should strive to increase this figure as it is a great part of the Welsh culture.
The Welsh language is a very old language….the earliest forms of Welsh date back do 500 AD. It was way more widley spoken centuries ago, from the 12th to the 18th century. The first Welsh Bible was translated in 1588. The language enjoyed a further boost in the 19th century, with the publication of some of the first complete and concise Welsh dictionaries.
However, the influx of English workers during the Industrial Revolution in Wales from about 1800 led to a substantial dilution of the Welsh-speaking population of Wales. English migrants seldom learnt Welsh and their Welsh colleagues tended to speak English in mixed Welsh–English contexts, and bilingualism became almost universal. The legal status of Welsh was inferior to that of English, and so English gradually came to prevail, except in the most rural areas, particularly in north west and mid Wales.
By the twentieth century, the numbers of Welsh speakers were shrinking at a rate which suggested that it would be extinct within a few generations. The 10-yearly census first started to ask language questions in 1891, by which time 54% of the population still spoke Welsh. The percentage fell with every subsequent census, until reaching an all-time low in 1981 (19%). In 1991 the position was stable (19% as in 1981) and in the most recent census, 2001, it has risen to 21% able to speak Welsh. The 2001 census also recorded that 20% could read Welsh, 18% could write Welsh, and 24% could understand spoken Welsh. Furthermore, the highest proportion of Welsh speakers was among young people, which bodes well for the future of Welsh. In 2001, 39% of children aged 10 to 15 were able to speak, read and write Welsh (many of them having learned it in school), compared with 25% of 16 to 19 year olds. However, the percentage of Welsh speakers in areas where Welsh is spoken by the majority is still in decline.
The following a number of measures, including the introduction of the Welsh Language Act 1993, Welsh has enjoyed a strong revival in recent years and has an equal status with English in the public sector in Wales. It competes with Breton (a close relative spoken in France) as the most spoken Celtic language.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:53 am
Here in Ireland this is a touchy and controversial subject.
Our history is the same as the Welsh one, or the Breton one: colonisation and migration, also the century-long discrimination against our native language has led to its decline. On top of that the method of teaching Irish is so unsatisfactory that most people leave school, after 13 years of compulsory Irish, without being able to write it correctly or speak it fluently.
I myself am living in a Gaeltacht area (most people speak Irish), but still we are being sent policemen and other officials who don’t speak the language properly, so that it is near impossible for any citizen to insist on their constitutional right to be able to do all their dealings with the state in Irish. Some do it, though, and get into all kinds of trouble, because for instance they ignore English letters from the revenue and other bodies.
Other people, mostly non-Irish speakers, resent the fact that up here all schools are Irish speaking, and maintain that Irish is a relic of the bad past, best forgotten.
I totally agree with you in that we should not give up our cultural roots, but at the moment I have but slim hope for Irish to survive into the next century.