Despite native-language schools, TV and radio stations, both Irish and Welsh are in gradual decline, even if the latter is starting from a much healthier percentage base. Scottish Gaelic is largely confined to remote islands, Manx and Cornish will require several decades of careful revival and Jerriais or Jersey French is rapidly approaching extinction. And that's before you decide if Scots and Ulster Scots are dialects or languages. If our nations, the US, Canada or Belgium are ever to become truly bilingual like Scandinavia or the Spanish regions, then oral language skills must be promoted at primary level to start.
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Developing bilingual societies
I thought Irish's decline (and Scottish Gaelic's) happened decades ago? So that they both have less than 100,000 fluent speakers. While that low level can be just about maintained by Gaeltachts, island Presbyterian sects and midle class incomers, they're not really comparable with Welsh? I hear the Welsh language every time I pass through Holyhead, Irish barely ever when I lived in Dublin.
Ulster Scots isn't a dialect, much less a language. Combination of extended joke and political shit-stirring basically. As an example of this, my grandmother grew up in Larne (then a country town with as many links to Scotland as the rest of Ireland) in the early 20th. 60 years later she and I could understand each other perfectly well, even though I'd grown up mainly abroad and sounded like a cross between Kevin Pietersen, Avram Grant and Clive Lloyd.
Belgium is effectively at least bi-lingual: everyone speaks their mother tongue plus English. -
Developing bilingual societies
Yes, linguistic diversity is to be welcomed. There are a whole host of sociolinguistic, socioeconomic and political factors at stake, though, aren't there? Promoting minority languages at primary school level would undoubtedly have an effect, but probably a bigger effect would be how 'cool' they were seen as and how prized they were in the search for jobs etc. I mean, maths is highly promoted at primary school, but a large proportion of society end up hating it. And then there are questions like whether it's 'better' to teach an Irish kid Gaelic or German, for instance. Nobody can give objective right or wrong answers, but people can have their opinions as to what 'better' is.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Cornish is no more of a living language than Latin really - pace Tubby and Lyra! - though it's fascinating to be sure and I studied it a little 25 years ago.
Welsh is a better success story. According to the last census figures, Welsh is gradually increasing, and that doesn't include Welsh speakers not living in Wales. There'll be a number of them as a decent number of educated folk head for opportunities in England.
As you say this has largely been down to encouraging early oral skills. My brother in law is English, but sent his English-speaking daughter to a meithrin (Welsh-language nursery school) and she grew up bilingual although Welsh mum is only E-speaking. Interestingly, this isn't in Gwynedd or Ceredigion, but in Cwmbran and pretty working class at that.
The highest percentage (40%) of W. speakers are in the 5-15 age group, which suggests either that the education strategy is starting to work, or that kids are learning the language and letting it go as adults. The numbers from the 2011 census will be instructive. Although I have to say it's in decline in our house as I haven't spoken much Welsh for 20 years and I'm horribly rusty.
Why have Irish and Scots Gaelic fared so comparatively badly? What have their strategies been? Or is it about the different cultural/political contexts?
What's your starting position/motivation for the post id?Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
It's hard to generalise, I think, other than to say that minority languages are always in a precarious position to some extent.
I've become quite interested in Elsässisch, the German dialect spoken in Alsace. Its position is unusual, in that for obvious reasons, there are real difficulties with associating the language with any kind of ethnic or regional pride; indeed, Alsaciens are usually falling over themselves to prove how French they are. Yet it is a unique dialect associated with a highly distinctive culture, and its loss would be a terrible pity.
Though that loss looks inevitable: there are, I gather, basically no young, or even middle-aged, speakers.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Crikey, Wyatt, that's sad and surprising news to me. I have fond memories of a 2 week holiday in Alsace with my parents back in summer 1980 (when I was 16), and as I recall the locals in the village we stayed in all spoke Elsaessisch (or "German" as I would have called it, frankly - it was certainly a damn sight closer to Hochdeutsch and more easily comprehensible to an English learner of German than, say, many rural dialects of Austria). In particular, my upbringing being strict Catholic, I recall that Mass at the local church was celebrated entirely in German.
Alsace has a fascinating and controversial history of course, including the forced treatment of locals during WW2 as citizens of the Reich, including conscription which is still difficult for some families, including apparently Wenger's, to come to terms with.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Basically, Wales was never subjected to famines or highland clearances. In the early 20th century, half of the people in Wales were still using Welsh as their everyday language. Welsh was never pushed past the point of no return.Why have Irish and Scots Gaelic fared so comparatively badly?
By the early 20th century both Irish and Scottish Gaelic were already essentially dead. Once a language has passed the point of no return there is really no reason to learn it besides nostalgia, nationalism or for research purposes. The Irish government refused to acknowledge this, and pretended that Irish was the official language of the country spoken by everyone. What they should have done was bitten the bullet and tried to save as much bits of Irish as possible by encouraging Irish words and syntax to be incorporated into the everyday Hiberno-English spoken by the populace. Instead we had a media that, with the exception a few words like Dail, Gardai and Taoiseach, exclusively used the Queen's English. Anybody speaking heavy Hiberno-English would be laughed out of RTE. The combined curse of inflicting both Dublin 4 English and pure Gaeltacht Irish on the populace destroyed any hope of saving as much Irish as possible.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
You bastards, another great thread starts while I haven't got time to get involvedComment
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Developing bilingual societies
I'd imagine a lot can also be attributed to French government policy, as up until recently only la Francais was actively taught in school, with the aim of suppressing Breton, Corsican, Provencal etc. As for my motivation in starting the thread, I enjoyed learning Irish, but always felt slightly self-conscious because there's no real incentive to speaking it, government policy and fanaticism of the language's promoters have done as much harm to its future as anything else.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Evariste Euler Gauss wrote:
That may be because it's not true. Having done some googling around, it seems it's in a stronger state than I'd thought. I may have been remembering the stats for Strasbourg.Crikey, Wyatt, that's sad and surprising news to me.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Actually I'd say Irish is doing better than it has done for a long time. We have an Irish language TV station, media, and have you checked how many Gaelscoileanna there are in Dublin nowadays? Irish was traditionally seen, even (especially?) by Irish people, as a little backward, basically. But interestingly, during the Celtic Tiger years, as the country became a lot more self-confident, Irish became more fashionable.
Welsh is doing a lot better, as some people have mentioned, partly because it never sunk to such a low ebb as Irish did. Again though, I sense it's been picked up by a younger generation of Welsh people who are a lot more confident and proud of expressing their Welshness.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Like Scandinavia? Not sure I follow, unless you're talking about Swedish in western Finland? Minority dialects are on the decline all over Scandinavia,Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Generally, the Scandinavian countries tend to have nearly fluent English, because they teach it in school from an early age.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Yeah, I guess that Elsässisch isn't widely spoken in Strasbourg. Whenever I'm there, I only hear French being spoken but elsewhere in Alsace, it's not uncommon to hear people chatting away in Elsässisch in the supermarket or wherever. I can understand a lot of it due to the similarity to standard German, as mentioned above, but I think there is a degree of pride in being from Alsace that helps to keep the language alive.I may have been remembering the stats for Strasbourg.
According to this Wikipedia article, an orthography is being introduced (or the attempt is at least being made to do so) to standardise spelling and unify the dialects within Elsässisch and thereby promote publication of more works in the language.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
irishreddevil wrote:
Tons of countries teach English in school from an early age. Not sure you can make "because" work in that sentence.Generally, the Scandinavian countries tend to have nearly fluent English, because they teach it in school from an early age.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
ad hoc wrote:
I was wondering about that too. Is it that kids in Scando countries are taught from pre-school that they have to be bi-lingual in English, because no-one else speaks Norwegian? How does it work for Hungarian (which I've picked out for its distinctiveness- I'm assuming that Russian and Bulgarian speakers, or Slovene and Serb/Croat can mutually understand each other)?Tons of countries teach English in school from an early age. Not sure you can make "because" work in that sentenceComment
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Developing bilingual societies
It depends how well it's being teached ad hoc, but there's clear evidence that being taught a language from a very early age onwards makes a huge difference in it being learned, no?Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Not really, no.
This blog post gives some links: http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/a-is-for-age-of-onset/
(Comments are interesting too, apart from mine)Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Wow, exactly one year ago today. That kind of coincidence still does my head in even though I know it is just that, and not at all improbable reallyComment
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Developing bilingual societies
Quite right to be better than interesting.(Comments are interesting too, apart from mine)Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Recently I got into conversation with the exotically-named Morgan Louis McNeice Rodriguez, aged three and a bit. He was visiting his granny, a friend of my mother.We were getting along fine (and pleasingly, he wasn't correcting my pidgin Spanish), until his mother explained that they were trying to persuade him to concentrate on English before he starts kindergarten (in Santander).Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
ChrisJ wrote:
I'm far from convinced their ever was a strategy for Scots Gaelic. The language has been more or less restricted to the islands off the west coast for 50 years now, and even then really only Skye and the Outer Hebrides have any sizeable populations.
Why have Irish and Scots Gaelic fared so comparatively badly? What have their strategies been? Or is it about the different cultural/political contexts?
In my opinion the social changes that the UK went through in the 1980s have had the greatest impact on the language. The economies of the islands were badly hit and the depopulation they experienced was huge. Native speakers left as local industry collapsed and they took the language with them. But as soon as you move to the mainland then English becomes your first language.
the government did invest in Gaelic television in the false belief that this would keep the language alive. All it's done is create a huge Gaelic television industry completely out of kilter with their potential audience.
Moves have been made in education, the Gaelic secondary school in Glasgow is doing very well and attracting children from many backgrounds not just from Gaelic speaking parents. Indeed the biggest problem they face is finding teachers. If the current number of applicants for the school continue then it is likely they will require to open another one in 5 or 6 years time.
I have one Gaelic speaking parent and I spoke more Gaelic than English before I went to school and I was born and raised in North Glasgow. I remember almost none of it now. I've confused views on whether that's a bad thing or not though.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
The point I was trying to make above is that surely Gaelic etc aren't as widely spoken as they could be because, for a whole variety of reasons, people by and large 'don't want' to learn them, not because they're dissatisfied with how they're taught. To argue about the best 'method' of teaching them seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Once you've sorted out some kind of motivation, then's the moment to address how and when to deliver classes. As has been mentioned, there are differing views on whether starting as early as possible is beneficial or not.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Simply being very good at English does not make you bilingual, it is actually more functional. Swedes and Scandinavians generally are not as good at English as you might believe, foreign people just tend to encounter people working in international environments or people in tourism. Whilst generally a touch better at English than the rest of the world, bilingualism is probably not the best way to describe it. I read an interview with a Swede on the BBC who said they were just as articulate in English as in Swedish which made me laugh and cry a little, as it showed a stunning lack of awareness of the subtleties and nuances of language. There is also a democratic issue as it makes Scandinavians into cultural consumers only, but that is a different kettle of fish.Comment
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Developing bilingual societies
Younger students (in my experience) do learn new language quicker, but I understood that learning languages at an early age helped mainly with regard to phonics. Otherwise, it was a matter of how much time they spent learning the L2.Comment
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