From: cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn)
Subject: Re: Accent and Dialect, the politics there
Organization: Digital Equipment Co. Ltd., Reading, England
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 07:34:55 GMT


Ann aithris <1992Nov10.025316.1@vxcrna.cern.ch>, sgriobh zeus@vxcrna.cern.ch 

>> True, but Scots is not a particularly good language in this respect - not
>> different enough from English, for one thing. I take your point that there
>> is more opportunity for someone in Scotland to be _actively_ bilingual in
>> Scots and/or Gaelic, but that is the sort of thinking that gets English
>> children learning Bengali and Urdu (not that I have anything against these
>> languages, I just think French and German are far more important).
> 
Scots Gaelic is very close to Irish Gaelic, and is actually descended from
it. Scots is very similar to English, and isn't descended from English -
it evolved in parallel from different sources. Yet, no-one considers
Scots Gaelic to be bad Irish - this show the effect that the English media
has on the detriment of Scots.

>It seems somewhat pointless to create unneeded barriers to comunication by
>seeking to resurect dead languages in the hope of fostering some form
>of national identity. It is as pointless as resurrecting old English to
>teach Beowulf. Fine as a technical exercise but precious little use.
>And before people start leaping up and down complaining about the loss of
>"their" cultural herritage, poetry and language isn't national property.
>A German or Spaniard has as much right to read Burns as a Scott. If the
>Scotts find that Burns is no longer relevant to their culture it will
>only be because they have found another icon to identify with. Its fine
>for people to identify themselves with national symbols, but forcing them
>on others is wrong. It seems to imply that by identifying with an icon
>one gains the right to ram it down the throats of others just beacuse they
>happened to be born in the same locality. It's that sort of thinking thats
>rather too popular in Iran at present.
> 
I don't think anyone is suggesting ramming Gaelic down anyone's throat.
There isn't enough teachers for a start, to make it compulsory everywhere.
I am in favour of choice, and that means aiming towards having Gaelic on
the curriculum of as many schools as possible, but not as a compulsory 
subject. French was a compulsory subject at my school, yet there are more
jobs in Scotland using Gaelic than French. Which do you think it was 
appropriate to ram down my throat? We did have one of the best Gaelic
tutors at my school (Alasdair MacInnes from Glencoe, teacher
for 33 years, winner of the Bardic crown at the 72 Mod), but he was banned
from teaching Gaelic. This is the sort of behaviour I am trying to 
eliminate so that pupils have the choice.

Many Scots (one 't') are abandoning Burns because the Scottish Education
Department is no doubt influenced from England. I saw the "English" 
examination papers this year, and whilst it was evident that the pupils
were studying Shakespeare, there was no mention of Burns at all. Burns
is probably the world's best known poet and he's not being studied in his
home land!

Learning other languages isn't putting up barriers, it's taking them
down. We live on a multi-lingual planet in presumably a multi-lingual
universe. Different languages are a fact of life and will be for a long
time to come. They are keys to cultural identity, and many people in 
Scotland are turning to Gaelic because they are interested in the language
and they want to, not because they are forced to. What happens if you
eliminate languages - would you eliminate dialects afterwards?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Craig Cockburn, Digital Equipment Co. Ltd, Reading, England.     Suas
  Internet: cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com                           leis
  UUCP:..!decwrl!edieng.enet.dec.com!cockburn                      a'
                                                                   Gha\idhlig!
  Views here are my own, and are not necessarily those of Digital
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british