Anyone on here speak Scottish Gaelic?

[Toadflax]

It's a language that has interested me for a few years, since I was unable to understand the names of various bagpipe tunes. A couple of holidays in the Hebrides prompted me to make an effort to start learning it so that I could have a stab at speaking it next time we go there.

I've been plodding through "Scottish Gaelic in 12 Weeks" for the past month, so I'm obviously 1/3 fluent! Chan eil! Still a LONG way to go, but I'm starting to get somewhere.

The BBC's An Litir Bheag (and the associated Litir do Luchd-ionnsachaidh) is a great resource to help out - a weekly five minute spoken 'letter', with a written translation, that can be downloaded as an MP3 file (with over 300 of these in the archive).

So, I'm curious. Anybody here speak it? Did you learn from childhood or did you learn it as an adult? Anybody, like me, trying to learn it at the moment?


Geoff

 

[Filterhoose]

I did a distance learning course run my SMO in Skye. There resources are fantastic, the course though was not for me as I hated being on the phone for two hours talking with a group.I have some pdfs and sound clips I'd be willing to share. pm me. Cheerie an drasta, Windy

 

[forestwalker]

IIRC the "Speaking our language" videos are on youtube, and a week or two in SMO either to get you started or to solidify it.

 

[T1Viper]

IIRC the "Speaking our language" videos are on youtube, and a week or two in SMO either to get you started or to solidify it.

Thanks for that link, its very interesting

 

[Robbi]

my DiL used to teach it on Lewis

 

[Pict]

I'm currently reading the History of Scotland and realized I knew nothing of any of the ancient languages. I went on a YT tour of Gaelic, Welsh etc. Quite the mouthful, my hat is off to anyone capable of learning them as an adult.

 

[xylaria]

I'm currently reading the History of Scotland and realized I knew nothing of any of the ancient languages. I went on a YT tour of Gaelic, Welsh etc. Quite the mouthful, my hat is off to anyone capable of learning them as an adult.

I am learning welsh. It is taught really badly, i failed to learn how to form a sentence in six months of lesson [six hours a week] and living in area where the majority speak it. Saysomethinginwelsh seems to be working for me.

There was a bloke that did the fire starting demos at the moot , i think his name is george/seoras, he was a native scots gaelic speaker. My son had been playing on colin and cumberland gealic game and turned round to him and said in gaelic "do you want some orange juice"

There are people that learn celtic languages as a adults, once the pilthory [or lack of] of yes and no answers, all those verb endings, and sentance order gets into the head. So who owns this verb and what gender is the table?

 

[Limaed]

I don't speak Gaelic however my boss and one of my pals speak it although they both speak English as a first language now. Both are from the Western Isle's and I enjoy chatting to them about how they grew up and their sense of identity.
As a mountaineer I find the language lives on in the landscape even in area's where Gaelic is no longer spoken. It's certainly very descriptive and anyone with even a passing interest in the language or the Highland landscape would find this book an interesting read: http://www.smc.org.uk/Publications/Publications.php?ID=33

 

[Pict]

How much did Gaelic influence the English we speak today? I understand that many place names were retained but what about common words?

As for the history of Scotland, I keep wanting to skip to the end of the book to see if anyone survives. No spoilers...

 

[Toddy]

I speak phrases, can read a little more, but our lowland accent throws the Gaels sometimes
There's a recent comment that the Gaelic accents are becoming some kind of mid Minch

Some Gaelic words do survive in Scots/ English. Landscape ones certainly, but superlatives like smashing......apparantly from s math sin....it is very good; and sonsy....happy as in the sonsy face of the dumpling bothy, corrie fisted for left handed, horny gollach from golack the earwig, quaich from cup, etc.,
Some of the grammar structure of common Scots is apparantly p-celtic, the other form of Gaelic, Pictish, and there again there are words that survive into modern times. Pit for instance is a portion of land.......Pitlochry, Lochry's land, and in common Scots, "Y'ir pit", isn't the underarm of the Americans (oxter here) but your bed, your place
Daed or Daid for Grandfather (apparantly shared with Welsh this one, showing older British roots) Aber is yet another word like that, but a geographical one.

To be honest the way Gaelic (that's pronounced Gaalic) is written, is greatly to it's detriment as a language, so much so that even native Scots are reluctant to try to pronounce it.
Written as it is might be good practice from a language expert's point of view, but it greatly inhibits comprehension among the rest of the country, and in doing so it keeps it a minority tongue that isn't even attempted by most Lowlanders.

Even with all the help of officialdom it is becoming less frequently the first language of the home. We have Gaelic schools, tv programmes, radio programmes, churches and roadsigns, and all official documents are in Scots, English and Gaelic, but it's still needing all the help it can get.

Pict, people forget that even at the height of the Clearances that the vast majority of Highlanders wandered no further than the towns of Glasgow & Edinburgh, and the factories of the Industrial Revolution.

I have worked in schools right across the Highlands & Islands, and in some parishes there are more names on the cenotaph stones than there are children in the school rolls We are a very urbanised nation.
That said, the Highlands and the Gaeltacht are anything but empty, there are vibrantly alive communities, enjoying their continuing culture while very much a part of the modern world, and their language is a very vital part of the richness of life.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[treadlightly]

I speak phrases, can read a little more, but our lowland accent throws the Gaels sometimes
There's a recent comment that the Gaelic accents are becoming some kind of mid Minch

Some Gaelic words do survive in Scots/ English. Landscape ones certainly, but superlatives like smashing......apparantly from s math sin....it is very good; and sonsy....happy as in the sonsy face of the dumpling bothy, corrie fisted for left handed, horny gollach from golack the earwig, quaich from cup, etc.,
Some of the grammar structure of common Scots is apparantly p-celtic, the other form of Gaelic, Pictish, and there again there are words that survive into modern times. Pit for instance is a portion of land.......Pitlochry, Lochry's land, and in common Scots, "Y'ir pit", isn't the underarm of the Americans (oxter here) but your bed, your place
Daed or Daid for Grandfather (apparantly shared with Welsh this one, showing older British roots) Aber is yet another word like that, but a geographical one.

To be honest the way Gaelic (that's pronounced Gaalic) is written, is greatly to it's detriment as a language, so much so that even native Scots are reluctant to try to pronounce it.
Written as it is might be good practice from a language expert's point of view, but it greatly inhibits comprehension among the rest of the country, and in doing so it keeps it a minority tongue that isn't even attempted by most Lowlanders.

Even with all the help of officialdom it is becoming less frequently the first language of the home. We have Gaelic schools, tv programmes, radio programmes, churches and roadsigns, and all official documents are in Scots, English and Gaelic, but it's still needing all the help it can get.

Pict, people forget that even at the height of the Clearances that the vast majority of Highlanders wandered no further than the towns of Glasgow & Edinburgh, and the factories of the Industrial Revolution.

I have worked in schools right across the Highlands & Islands, and in some parishes there are more names on the cenotaph stones than there are children in the school rolls We are a very urbanised nation.
That said, the Highlands and the Gaeltacht are anything but empty, there are vibrantly alive communities, enjoying their continuing culture while very much a part of the modern world, and their language is a very vital part of the richness of life.

cheers,
Toddy

Yes, Taid is grandfather in Welsh and Aber is the mouth of a river, used commonly in place names, eg Aberystwyth or Aberdare. It would be interesting to know more words common to the two languages. I have come across plenty of similar words between Welsh and Cornish and Welsh and Breton but not Welsh and Gaelic.

 

[Harvestman]

Am I right that Scots Gaelic is predominantly western, and in North-Eastern Scotland the language is Doric, which is even more minority spoken and barely publicised? I heard some spoken once and it sounded like a language made up by a five year old being silly, but it actually caught my interest. Would like to know a bit more about it.

 

[treadlightly]

Am I right that Scots Gaelic is predominantly western, and in North-Eastern Scotland the language is Doric, which is even more minority spoken and barely publicised? I heard some spoken once and it sounded like a language made up by a five year old being silly, but it actually caught my interest. Would like to know a bit more about it.

I didn't know that. So would Doric have been derived from the language of the Picts?

 

[Toddy]

Pictish is reckoned to be a P-Celtic language like Welsh, while modern Scots Gaelic has Q-celtic roots to it's vocabulary, but with some of the grammar structure of the P-celtic.
The Historian who explained it to me said that it seemed to be that the dominant language changed, but people still spoke in their familiar thought patterns, so they still used the familiar grammar structure.
Many lowland Scots use altered grammar to English on a daily basis. I'm sure I wrote about this before, the, "Come you here!", of added emphasis........you *will* come here!", for instance.
Someone from the North of England commented that they too use similar twists on normal English grammar..........makes you wonder just how much ancient British survives in our modern English

I've been spending an awful lot of time with my elderly relations recently and I find myself using words that I haven't used since I was a child. Broad Scots isn't slang anymore and I don't get into trouble for it and the elderlies though always bi-lingual, are especially when they're stressed (they've been ill) using the familiar words, phrases and accents of 'their' childhoods. Son1 says he's going to have to translate me for my Australian born and reared niece and nephew later in the Summer I'll try to find my received pronunciation again

Incidentally the elderlies speak and understand phrases of Gaelic though they're Lowlanders; Highlander societies in lowland towns were commonplace social groups in their earlier years. Music, song, dance, history, culture, politics, with Gaelic as an underlying framework.

cheers,
M

 

[Toddy]

Doric nowadays is Lowland Scots with an Aberdeenshire accent
Seriously, it's perfectly understandable once you get your ear in for the accent. Just like down at Kintyre, or Ayrshire on the West coast.

cheers,
Toddy

p.s. Just looked up wikipedia, and all the analysis is perfectly understandable to me, but when you hear it spoken and reply in kind, you don't think about the sliding l, etc., you just speak and understand.

English has a huge range of accents too though

 

[Toadflax]

So far (in my very limited knowledge of Gaelic), I haven't come across any commonality with English. However, the stressing of syllables in Gaelic (my wife keeps asking me, are your sure it's pronounced like garlic, or at least a northerner's pronunciation of gaarlic) explains the Scottish pronunciations for police. Gaelic (always?) has the first syllable stressed, so whereas English say poLEES, Scots say POLLis.

As others have said here, language does linger on in place names. I love going back to Yorkshire, leaving the soft names of the south like Wootton Basset, Kingston Bagpuize for those Garths and Gates.

We were at a local Burns' Night Ceilidh on Harris this year, and it was amazing to hear the local people switch seamlessly between English and Gaelic - and when one man started singing in Gaelic...we couldn't understand the words, but you could still sense what he was singing about, one song was for the love of a lady, and another for the love of the Isles.

This is the first time I've really wanted to learn another language. Latin and French at school were required lessons, and subsequent French and Italian were to have enough to get by on holiday. I've a theory that you are only fluent in a language when you can think in that language, rather than translating the sounds into your native tongue. Interestingly, though I can still only pick out a few words when I hear spoke Gaelic, I do seem to be getting the sense by 'feel' rather than by translating it back into English. Perhaps thats becuase I'm tending to learn by listening to spoken Gaelic, rather than learning by rote as we did at school.


Geoff

 

[treadlightly]

Good luck and let us all know how you progress.

 

[Hoggy]

Doric nowadays is Lowland Scots with an Aberdeenshire accent
Seriously, it's perfectly understandable once you get your ear in for the accent. Just like down at Kintyre, or Ayrshire on the West coast.

cheers,
Toddy

p.s. Just looked up wikipedia, and all the analysis is perfectly understandable to me, but when you hear it spoken and reply in kind, you don't think about the sliding l, etc., you just speak and understand.

English has a huge range of accents too though

English has a huge range of accents too though

 

[Pict]

I'm surprised there isn't a great deal of mixing. Here at home we speak both English and Portuguese in about equal portions depending on who is here at the time. My kids mix the two languages constantly in terms of vocabulary (Yesterday - "Someone needs to ralar the cheese") and my son will sometimes lapse into Portuguese word order when speaking English. My daughter (middle child) will often use English words to express ideas that come directly from her Portuguese. "Dad, close the window, it's staying cold in here." (esta ficando frio)

In a place where so many people have been bi-lingual for so long it is odd that there hasn't been a large portion of mixing.

When we catch each other doing this the standard response is "Só we podemos think assim". (Only we can think like this)

 

[Bigfoot]

The best way to learn Gaelic is to dive right in and try to pronounce it, alongside native speakers. In conjunction with written text as a reference, that is the way forward, IMO, don't just try to do it from a book.

However, there still are variations in how certain words are pronounced - "ard" (high) is a good example, being pronounced "arst" in most Gaelic areas but in Lewis & Harris, it's "ard". Listen to how the word "leabaidh" (bed) is pronounced and you will find subtle differences wherever you go. These differences tend to come from the older generation - as Toddy says, the Gaelic that is taught in schools these days seems to produce an almost common accent, which I suppose is the way the language has to go in order to help it survive. Good luck with your learning process, it is a very descriptive language and you will learn a lot about how our ancestors named topographical features - I love browsing maps to see how the Gaelic place names refer to features within particular areas.