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                            <h1 class="gmail-primary-heading">Can £27m a year bring a language back from near death? </h1>
                                

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                <p class="gmail-introduction">Finding the value in an ancient way of speaking.</p>
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                        <li class="gmail-seperated-list-item gmail-source-attribution-author"><span class="gmail-index-body">By Lennox Morrison</span></li>
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                <span class="gmail-publication-date gmail-index-body">1 August 2018</span>
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                            <p>The feeling of walking barefoot across a 
beach in summer and the sun-warmed sand chafing my toes takes me the 
length of this sentence to describe. My great-great-grandfather, Angus 
Morrison, would have used one word: driùchcainn.<em> <br></em></p><p>That’s
 because, born and bred on the fringes of Western Europe, on Lewis, in 
the archipelago of the Outer Hebrides, his mother tongue was Scottish 
Gaelic.</p><p>It’s the ancient Celtic language heard by TV audiences tuning into the Highlands time-travelling saga <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-44067468">Outlander</a>.</p><blockquote><p>
 Scottish Gaelic is considered at risk of dying out. On Unesco’s list of
 imperilled languages, it is classed as ‘definitely endangered’  </p></blockquote><p>In
 real life, working together crofting, fishing, weaving or cutting peat 
for fires, my ancestors spoke in Gaelic. It was spoken at home, sung at 
parties, used at church. But education in Angus’s day was strictly in 
English. As late as the 1970s, children were sometimes punished for 
speaking Gaelic at school.</p><p>Raised alongside Atlantic surf and 
storms, he became a sailor. Then, in the mid-nineteenth century, moved 
to Glasgow, and settled there working as a ship’s rigger. Among the 
principles he instilled in the family was the importance of education. 
But he did not pass on his cradle tongue.</p><p> </p><div class="gmail-inline-media gmail-inline-image">
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            <a id="gmail-p06g3vqc" class="gmail-responsive-image-wrapper gmail-fullsizeable" href="http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/1600_900/images/live/p0/6g/3v/p06g3vqc.jpg"><img title="(Credit: Getty Images)" alt="(Credit: Getty Images)" class="gmail-responsive gmail-landscape" src="http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/6g/3v/p06g3vqc.jpg" width="" height=""></a><span id="gmail-" class="gmail-icon-wrapper gmail-gel-icon-wrapper gmail-icon-wrapper-fullscreen">
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                <p class="gmail-caption-text gmail-caption-body">Dr Marsaili MacLeod
 says there's a fear that we risk losing some of our cultural diversity 
"through globalisation and English as a global language” (Credit: Getty 
Images)</p>
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        </div><p></p><p><strong>On the brink of extinction</strong></p><p>My
 family story illustrates what linguistics experts call 
intergenerational breakdown. In 2018, along with about half of the 
world’s estimated 6,000 languages, Scottish Gaelic is considered at risk
 of dying out. On Unesco’s <a href="http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001924/192416e.pdf">list</a> of imperilled languages, it is classed as ‘definitely endangered’. <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/economic-success-drives-language-extinction">Research</a>
 suggests that one of the biggest factors to blame for killing off 
minority languages is a thriving economy. As economies develop, one 
language often comes to dominate a nation’s political and educational 
spheres, meaning people are forced to adopt the dominant language or 
risk being left out in the cold.</p><blockquote><p> One of the biggest factors to blame for killing off minority languages is a thriving economy </p></blockquote><p>Today,
 only my father has a little Gaelic. My own knowledge is limited to 
words adopted into English, such as ‘ceilidh’ – meaning a social 
gathering, usually with Scottish or Irish folk music.</p><p>That puts me in the same boat as most Scots. The 2011 <a href="https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/news/2015/scotlands-census-2011-gaelic-report-part-1">census</a>
 showed only 1.7% of people in Scotland had some Scottish Gaelic skills.
 In a population of five million-plus, this amounts to 87,100. Of these,
 only 32,400 were able to understand, speak, read and write it. Which is
 why the Scottish government is investing millions in trying to save it –
 through broadcasting, cultural and education projects. This ranges from
 Gaelic groups for pre-schoolers to ensuring the police and ambulance 
services have Gaelic language policies in place.</p><p>The budget for 
this tax year is £27.4m ($36m). But is it even possible to resuscitate a
 dying language – and does it really matter anyway?</p><p>In Scotland, 
news of £2.5m of further public funding for a new Gaelic dictionary has 
stirred debate. Over the past four decades, successive governments of 
different political stripes have all supported the language. But critics
 say the  policy is artificial and nostalgic and the cash should go to 
teaching modern world languages such as Spanish. “If Gaelic is dying 
does it deserve a financial kiss of life?” wrote columnist Brian Beacom 
in <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16185338.Brian_Beacom__If_Gaelic_is_dying_does_it_deserve_a_financial_kiss_of_life_/?ref=erec">The Herald</a>.</p><p><span></span></p><div class="gmail-inline-media gmail-inline-image">
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            <a id="gmail-p06g30c2" class="gmail-responsive-image-wrapper gmail-fullsizeable" href="http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/1600_900/images/live/p0/6g/30/p06g30c2.jpg"><img title="(Credit: Getty Images)" alt="(Credit: Getty Images)" class="gmail-responsive gmail-landscape" src="http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/6g/30/p06g30c2.jpg" width="" height=""></a><span id="gmail-" class="gmail-icon-wrapper gmail-gel-icon-wrapper gmail-icon-wrapper-fullscreen">
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                <p class="gmail-caption-text gmail-caption-body">The 2011 census 
showed only 1.7% of people in Scotland had some Scottish Gaelic skills, 
In a population of five million-plus this amounts to around 87,100 
(Credit: Getty Images)</p>
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        </div>
        </div><p></p><p>The controversy is mirrored across the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages">globe</a> in countries such as New Zealand, where funding for <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-40493398">Te Reo Maori</a>
 (one of the country’s three official languages) is hotly disputed. In 
Germany, 60,000 Sorbs are fighting to retain government funding for the <em>two </em>separate languages they want to keep alive.</p><p>“It’s
 very easy to use an economic argument that monolingualism would be much
 more cost effective and that would reduce conflict and create economic 
efficiencies,” says Dr Marsaili MacLeod, lecturer in Gaelic at the 
University of Aberdeen, UK, and a champion of language rights. “But we 
would lose something if we all became one international nation with one 
language. People today really value cultural diversity and there’s a 
fear that we’re losing that through globalisation and English as a 
global language.”</p><p><strong>The value of an ancient tongue</strong></p><p>Spoken
 in Scotland for more than 1,500 years, in Medieval times it was the 
primary language for swathes of Scotland. But over the centuries usage 
shrank back to the Hebrides and the Highlands. In 1746, at the Battle of
 Culloden, British government troops defeated Jacobite forces. 
Afterwards, state suppression of clan culture and traditions included 
banning Gaelic.</p><blockquote><p> Generally, English was seen as the language of study, commerce and material success </p></blockquote><p>It
 was further weakened over the following century by the Highland 
clearances, when landowners evicted crofters from land rented for 
generations so that sheep farming could be introduced for higher 
profits. The resulting mass migration means that today there are 
Gaelic-speaking communities in Nova Scotia in Canada as well as in New 
Zealand, Australia and the US.</p><p>“Historically, Gaelic and pretty 
much any minority language tended to be excluded from formal usage, 
marginalised from economic life,” says Wilson McLeod, professor of 
Gaelic at the University of Edinburgh, UK. “The traditional formulation 
was that Gaelic had no commercial value.”</p><p>Then in the 1970s a 
pioneering business model emerged on the Isle of Skye. Landowner Sir 
Iain Noble turned disused farm buildings into the Gaelic college and 
cultural centre  <a href="http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/en/">Sabhal Mor Ostaig</a>
 and set up an hotel and a whisky distillery. He insisted that Gaelic 
was to be the normal working language of the estate. This was a new 
idea. “Nobody in the 1950s and 1960s in Scotland was working in an 
office in the medium of Gaelic,” says McLeod.</p><blockquote><p> With 18
 letters in its alphabet, no direct equivalent for ‘no’ or ‘yes’ and 
five syllables needed to say ‘please’, it is very different from English
 </p></blockquote><p>Thinking began to change. Politicians became 
interested in the idea of Gaelic as a motor in economic development, 
particularly in peripheral areas. “From the early 19th Century onwards, 
the economy of the Highlands and islands had been in perpetual crisis 
with out-migration, serious population decline, serious 
underdevelopment, and poverty,” says McLeod.</p><p>The 1980s brought key
 language policies with increased public funding for Gaelic arts, 
culture and education and especially for television. In  2005 the 
Scottish parliament in Edinburgh passed a <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2005/7/contents">law</a>
 to promote and protect Gaelic as an official language of Scotland, with
 the aim of it “commanding equal respect to the English language.”  
Since then, Gaelic education has been growing. Even parents arriving in 
Scotland from countries such as Germany and Turkey are sending their 
offspring to Gaelic-medium nurseries and schools.</p><p>Today, latest <a href="http://www.hie.co.uk/common/handlers/download-document.ashx?id=0e113231-5668-4945-b1db-e88a137a738d">research</a>
 by Highlands and Islands Enterprise in 2014 puts the present yearly 
economic value of Gaelic at about £5.6m and estimates its potential as 
high as £148.5m. In sales and marketing, for instance, it can enhance 
perceptions of uniqueness, authenticity and provenance, thus increasing 
appeal to target customers. </p><p></p><div class="gmail-inline-media gmail-inline-image">
            <div class="gmail-inline-image-wrapper">
            <a id="gmail-p06g3063" class="gmail-responsive-image-wrapper gmail-fullsizeable" href="http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/1600_900/images/live/p0/6g/30/p06g3063.jpg"><img title="(Credit: Getty Images)" alt="(Credit: Getty Images)" class="gmail-responsive gmail-landscape" src="http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/6g/30/p06g3063.jpg" width="" height=""></a><span id="gmail-" class="gmail-icon-wrapper gmail-gel-icon-wrapper gmail-icon-wrapper-fullscreen">
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                <p class="gmail-caption-text gmail-caption-body">In 2005 a law was 
passed to protect Gaelic as an official language of Scotland, with the 
aim of it “commanding equal respect to the English language”  (Credit: 
Getty Images)</p>
            </div>
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        </div><p></p><p><strong>Saying things you can’t say in English</strong></p><p>But
 for lovers of Gaelic, the language is beyond price. With 18 letters in 
its alphabet, no direct equivalent for ‘no’ or ‘yes’ and five syllables 
needed to say ‘please’, it is very different from English. It gives 
access to a unique treasure trove of history, literature, song and 
storytelling — and vocabulary to express ideas not readily put into 
English.</p><p>“It’s all to do with identity,” says Marsaili MacLeod. 
“It’s the language of my forebears, my grandfather’s and grandmother’s 
generation, the language of place and of people. It gives me a sense of 
who I am and where I come from.”</p><p>It provides an understanding of 
environment that’s been built up over generations — from the workings of
 landscape and weather to the healing properties of plants, she says. 
 “Any indigenous language has a lot to tell about that place.”</p><p>Rooted
 in close-knit rural communities, these original languages also tend to 
place people. “When you meet someone in Gaelic the first thing you ask 
is ‘Where are you from? Who out of are you? Who do you belong to?’”, 
says MacLeod.</p><p>In the Maori language of New Zealand, she says, 
people introduce themselves with ‘What boat did I arrive on? Which is my
 lake? Who are my people?’.</p><p>To learn more about 
great-great-grandfather Angus, I need to head to the windswept and 
wildly beautiful tip of the island of Lewis, the most north-westerly 
point in Europe. It’s here that descendants of migrant families find 
their way from north and South America, South Africa, Australia and New 
Zealand to a trim white-painted former schoolhouse – home to a museum 
and café run by the <a href="http://cenonline.org/">Ness Historical Society</a>.</p><p>Annie
 Macsween, chair of the society, helps visitors navigate family archives
 from the 1800s, and earlier. A retired teacher of Gaelic, and a native 
speaker, Macsween’s fascination for the past was sparked by a summer job
 in a retirement home as a teenager.</p><p>“I would sit and talk to the 
old folks at night and hear about their lives and history,” she recalls.
 “In school we learned all about kings and queens and the geography of 
other places but not of our own Highlands and islands and the history of
 it.”</p><p>The subject of her university thesis – the poetry and 
history of her home village – was at the time considered not very 
academic. Today, it’s what Unesco call “intangible cultural heritage”.  </p><p></p><p>With
 husband John, a fisherman now retired, she brought up their four sons 
as Gaelic speakers. “We made our kitchen an English-free zone, 
encouraging them to speak Gaelic naturally.”</p><p>Living in the Gaelic 
heartland, where the highest concentration of speakers is found, how 
does she feel about new learners with no link to the language? “I spent 
my life teaching Gaelic to people from every place under the sun but the
 day we lose the natural communities where Gaelic is spoken I think 
Gaelic is going to become like Latin,” she says. “It’ll be a dead 
language.”</p><p>She sees it as a priority for public funding to support
 the language in the areas where it is still spoken – and where there 
are a wealth of dialects with their own idioms and sayings.</p><p>“The language is part of me and I would feel I would be losing part of my own being if I wasn’t able to use it,” she says.</p><p>Her
 family has farmed locally through the generations for nearly two 
centuries. Today, eldest son Donald runs a nearby croft but rather than 
fishing or weaving, his other job is presenting <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ptnlc">Farpaisean Chon-Chaorach</a> – a series about sheepdog trials on BBC Alba.  Two of his brothers are also in jobs where Gaelic is essential.</p><p>Latest <a href="https://www.skillsdevelopmentscotland.co.uk/media/44717/gaelic-language-executive-summary-lb-180511.pdf">research</a>
 into the Gaelic language labour market identifies the key sectors as 
public administration, creative industries, education and tourism. Women
 are taking up more of these jobs than men. This is probably because 
many new posts are in education, early learning and childcare – sectors 
employing a higher proportion of females. The study by Skills 
Development Scotland projected that 98,000 new jobs would be created 
across the country between 2015 and 2027.</p><p></p><div class="gmail-inline-media gmail-inline-image">
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            <a id="gmail-p06g30k6" class="gmail-responsive-image-wrapper gmail-fullsizeable" href="http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/1600_900/images/live/p0/6g/30/p06g30k6.jpg"><img title="Scottish Gaelic is classed as ‘definitely endangered’ by UNESCO (Credit: Getty Images)" alt="Scottish Gaelic is classed as ‘definitely endangered’ by UNESCO (Credit: Getty Images)" class="gmail-responsive gmail-landscape" src="http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/6g/30/p06g30k6.jpg" width="" height=""></a><span id="gmail-" class="gmail-icon-wrapper gmail-gel-icon-wrapper gmail-icon-wrapper-fullscreen">
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                <p class="gmail-caption-text gmail-caption-body">On UNESCO’s list of imperilled languages Scottish Gaelic is classed as ‘definitely endangered’ (Credit: Getty Images)</p>
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        </div>
        </div><p></p><p><strong>Celtic guanxi?</strong></p><p>While Gaelic was written out of business for centuries, recent <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309490939_Doing_Business_with_China_The_Irish_Advantage_and_Challenge">research</a>
 into Irish Gaelic – closely related to Scottish Gaelic – reveals that 
this exclusion brings its own surprising advantages. This is because 
Irish and Chinese culture differ to Anglo-American culture in that 
business is developed on the basis of personal relationships, rather 
than power and money, says Cathal Brugha, professor emeritus in the 
School of Business at Ireland’s University College Dublin.</p><p>“Your 
typical American trying to do business in China will start by handing 
out their business card or Visa card and say ‘I want to buy this’ and 
the Chinese person will say ‘I don’t even know you, I will not do 
business with someone I don’t know. We’re going to develop a 
relationship and then we’re going to do things together’,” he says.</p><p>The Chinese word for this concept is guanxi – which exists in Irish as caidreamh, he says.</p><p>Translated
 into English? “You would need almost a paragraph: personal 
relationships that involve a certain amount of getting to know each 
other and reciprocity and reliance on one another and favour-making and 
leaning on the other person when you have a need and remembering that 
they owe you something so that you’re going to ask them to do something 
maybe in years to come,” says Brugha.</p><p>It's a concept understood 
the world over but certainly the Irish Gaelic word is a neat 
distillation. So, this summer, when I wander along a beach on the island
 of Islay in the Southern Hebrides, and feel the white sand between my 
toes, I will think of my forebears and their wealth of words yet unknown
 to me.</p></div></div></div></div></div>

<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies                     <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone:  (215) 898-7475<br>Fax:  (215) 573-2138                                      <br><br>Email:  <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a>    <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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