book notice: Alistair MacDiarmid, Language Revitalization in Cape Breton

[Harold Schiffman]

Alistair MacDiarmid, Language Revitalization in Cape Breton
Imagine a world where Canada had three official languages.

* * *

Alistair MacDiarmid's new Language Revitalization in Cape Breton
(Press of the University of Cape Breton: Sydney, 2008), is a thin
paperbook book at only132 pages, but befitting his status as the
sociological giant of Canada's Scottish Gaelic-speaking community it's
quite a good one. First providing a brief survey of the evolution of
the Gaelophone community of Scotland, he then turns his eye to Canada.
He identifies the Cape Breton's retention of its independence from
Nova Scotia as a key event in the evolution of Canadian Gaelic
inasmuch as the existence of a province with a Gaelic majority forced
the colonial government to communicate with the majority population of
unilingual or poorly bilingual Gaelophones, this in turn having a
ripple effect elsewhere in Canada. The end result? There are several
times as many Gaelophones in Canada as in Scotland, and twice as many
Gaelophones in Cape Breton than in Scotland's Western Isles.

MadDiarmid's not an optimist. What, he asks his readers, prevents
Canadian Gaelic from going the same way as Newfoundland Irish? The
rates of language shift in non-Cape Breton Gaelophone communities are
well-known, and even in Cape Breton things are difficult, with
Gaelophones surely to lose their majority status as of the next census
and the "Town Gaelic" produced in Sydney by the industrial
immigrations of the early 20th century starting to show itself as an
intermediate stage to full Anglicization. What is there to be done? In
brief, he recommends that Cape Breton adopt Québec's full suit of
language laws, including mandatory Gaelic-dominant signage and public
education. (I'm sure that the Acadians of Arichat, Isle Madame, and
Chéticamp would love that.)

MacDiarmid's hope blinds him to the realities facing the language, I
fear. Québécois might be a minority in Canada but their an integral
member of a worldwide francophonie, a cultural community that can
provide essential resources (human, economic, and otherwise) for a
traditionally isolated community. Gaelophones can sadly claim no such
wider language community. Just as importantly, without any taboos
against intermarriage or social intercourse, the community is bound to
lose members--my grandparents on Prince Edward Island my mother's side
spoke Gaelic to each other, but didn't pass the language on to her,
judging it unhelpful in the world and wanting to preserve it as a
language for gossip besides. I took my mandatory Basic Gaelic in high
school but I can only manage a few words an gàidhlig, mainly--I
admit--because I judged French to be a much more useful language.
These factors, in top of the fact that cohort fertility is just as low
for Gaelophones as for Anglophones, ensure the eventual death of the
language--not now, but perhaps in a half-century's time.

His hope aside, I'd still recommend Language Revitalization in Cape
Breton. People interested in language dynamics and language policy
will love it, as it is not only a case study of minoritized languages
but a guide to Canada's language politics. If only, I suppose, things
were different, but how could they have been? Canadian Gaelic was
lucky as things stand now. In my opinion, the task facing specialists
in the language now should probably be to archive as much of the
culture as they can before it's took late.

http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/1590675.html
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