Celtic Languages of the British Isles

[khiemtran]

Source: wikipedia

	Speakers	Native Speakers
Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge)	1,860,000	538,283
Welsh (Cymraeg)	750,000	611,000
Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig)	92,452	58,652
Cornish (Kernewek)	4,000	350
Manx Gaelic (Gaelg)	1689	56

I really had no idea there were so few Scottish Gaelic speakers. On the other hand, I was also pleasantly surprised to find there were any Cornish speakers at all.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

It's not hard to find Welsh spoken. You may even hear it in Cardiff, but wander around any town in North Wales and you'll hear people speaking it in the street. I have only ever heard Scottish Gaelic spoken once, and I had to go to a remote Hebridean Island to find it. Having said that, it is having something of a revival for political and idealogical reasons, so may be more common than it was back in the 1970s.

One problem is that it isn't actually the native language of the south of Scotland. They used to speak the Celtic language that now survives as Welsh until English took over. Only the Western Isles and Highlands spoke Gaelic. The name Glasgow is from Glas Cae (Green field) apparently and you can draw a line across Scotland, south of which mouths of rivers are "Aber" and north of it are "Inver". Therefore there is a feeling amongst some Scots that they should push the Scots dialect into actually being recognised as a separate language.

[athgarvan.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid the figures you quote are rather generous for all areas.

It is sad that we have allowed such an old and beautiful language to languish as we have. It has been spoken for thousands of years. It is an historical treasure.

We have experts digging up dead stones and preserving old ruined castles but have allowed a living language to die.

Ba cóir náire a bheith orainn!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I would think the figures for Ireland and Scotland are high. I've visited Ireland twice, but only heard Gaelic spoken during my first visit and that was up in Donegal and Sligo in 1970. The second visit in the 90s was to Dublin where I didn't hear it spoken at all.

Wales, on the other hand, has really fought to maintain Welsh, which has interesting implications for the culture. Rather than continually hark back to the past, it means that if you can do it in Welsh, it becomes Welsh. So you can sing pop songs, write country and western music, perform rap and so on and suddenly it's Welsh. :)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to think now if I heard any Gaelic while I was in Belfast. I wasn't there for very long, of course, and I had a hard enough time just tuning in to the English...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Belfast is another kettle of fish entirely. You absolutely won't here Gaelic there and, during the Troubles, Welsh people visiting the area were advised not to speak Welsh for fear of being mistaken for Irish Gaelic speakers and therefore Catholic. :(

Language and identity issues are so complicated.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, losing a language is a tragedy. With Cornish, I had actually read that the language was "extinct", so I was delighted to find it had been revived. I guess it's a bit like when, every now and then, someone gets wrongly declared as dead and afterwards the doctors say "their condition is now 'critical'"...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Or when a species gets declared extinct and then naturalists stumble upon a tiny colony living in the deepest and darkest part of the forest. :)

I'm sure I was told at university back in the early 70s that crinoids were extinct and only found as fossils, but more recently they've found living examples.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I watched a tv show recently ("Two on the Great Divide"), where the two presenters were shown the last known example of a particular endangered frog. The ranger who guided them was able to find it because it answered his calls when he said "Hey frog!" He said that if it didn't answer, the species would already be declared instinct.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting about native dialects in Scotland--very cool indeed. I had no idea.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I found this information about the Scots language recently while I was looking for material for an essay for the course I'm studying about the English language.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/01/06105123/4#

Scots is easily as different from standard English as Swedish is from Norwegian and they count separate languages. But as the saying goes, "A language is a dialect with an army and navy," and at the moment Scots is classed just as a dialect. But if Scotland votes for independence in the forthcoming referendum, who knows what will happen?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

"A language is a dialect with an army and navy,"

Except that that was originally said about Yiddish (and in Yiddish), and despite Yiddish never acquiring its own army and navy, I don't think many people nowadays would not call Yiddish a language, rather than just a dialect of German.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Indeed, you're right. The original quote was in Yiddish about Yiddish. It also doesn't apply to languages that are obviously different. Despite Wales not having an army or a navy no one would try to say that Welsh is just a dialect of English. :)

It works much better if you don't take "an army and navy" literally but instead read it as a metaphor for, "the political will to be recognised as a separate language."

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

They used to speak the Celtic language that now survives as Welsh until English took over. Only the Western Isles and Highlands spoke Gaelic. The name Glasgow is from Glas Cae (Green field) apparently and you can draw a line across Scotland, south of which mouths of rivers are "Aber" and north of it are "Inver".

That's very interesting. I had no idea of that either.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

One of the oldest "Welsh" books actually hails from Northumberland, dating from a time when Wales and the northern and western parts of what is now England all spoke the same language. :)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Guess I've got some more reading to do - thanks!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised there are fewer speakers of Scottish Gaelic than Welsh, too, but then, I realize I have no idea of relative populations overall. Maybe Wales is more populous?

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I've just checked and Wales is actually smaller with a population just over 3 million compared to Scotland's five and a quarter million. (2011 figures from Wikipedia) So the percentage of Welsh speakers is significantly higher than the percentage who speak Scottish Gaelic.

As I said in my first comment, it very easy to hear Welsh spoken, even if you're a casual visitor to the country whereas unless things have changed radically, you have to go to pretty remote areas of Scotland to hear native speakers just using the language in their everyday lives.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I hope I'll get a chance to go to Wales one day. I think I've only heard Welsh once 'live' and that was actually in Hong Kong. There was a family boarding the same flight as me and one of them was helpfully dressed in a Welsh rugby top.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

We Welsh speakers get everywhere. :) I've heard them in London, sitting at the next table in the hotel dining room and also at Manchester Airport. I've not yet spotted any abroad, but there's still time.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if you wear your Welsh speakers badge, someone will talk to you! A friend who lived in Indonesia for a while said he saw an ad in the paper there - "All your friends are learning English. Be different - learn Welsh!"