I know some Gaels who are terribly uppity about their 'correct' pronunciation of 'their' language. An elderly lady I knew, who'd grown up near loch Lomond, found that the accent she used in her native Gaelic, had her roundly snubbed by Gaelic speakers from some of the islands, they didn't believe she was a native speaker; there's always the few holier than thou patronising folks. Incredibly off puting. Thankfully now that the Gaelic schools are well established in the Lowlands that attitude is fading rapidly.
Tbh the greatest limitation on the understanding and spread of Gaelic is simply the way it's written.
We can all read French, or Spanish, we can even make sense of Text
yet ask any non Gaelic speaker to read Gaelic and it just doesn't happen.
Welsh ? It sings
Apart from a Welsh speaking uncle my only experience was at the Moot a couple of years ago.......basically a visit to the A & E at Bridgend was difficult enough with our Scottish accents, but trying to explain that the cause was an Iron Age sickle had the little Welsh nurse looking for help. Off she went and came back with a doctor.....a Chinese doctor who made sense for all of us
The last time Gaelic was the language of the courts Constantine was on the throne
and Latin was the language of the church.
If you look at the surviving documents from the Scottish Court the language is a real mixture. There's a peculiar latinese that's used in many of them, showing that even the language of church and diplomacy was influenced by the indigenous speech.
Even the Declaration of Arbroath shows the anomally, and the bishops who dictated it were learned men.
http://www.nas.gov.uk/downloads/declarationArbroath.pdf
The Scots used in the rest of them is not some dialect of English, it is a different language with some shared vocabulary.
East coast heartland Scotland doesn't have many Viking loan words, though Caithness certainly does. Strangely the Doric of the North East is very similar to the Doric of the South West. Geneally look for the trade links and there will be shared words. Kirk, dreich, and the like, are shared across the North Sea with our continental neighbours, not the southern ones. We have already discussed the French association with many of our cooking terms, but what about the farming and fishing words ?
We know from Columba's visit to the Pictish court of King Bridei that the Gaelic and Latin he knew wasn't enough for him to be understood. He needed a monk from the local area to act as a translator. That's showing a very early divide in the Gaelic of Gael and Pict, mid 600's.
Sorry Pango, not much help with the counting this, is it ?
cheers,
M
