Seems like a very backwards-looking article. Would've been interesting to hear more about his ideas for the future, such as what this should involve:
> if the new Scottish Languages Bill is to succeed in securing the Gaelic and Scots languages in the face of immense pressures, then the needs of the communities speaking those languages must be at the heart of it
Gaelic advances in the modern era include:
* the foundation of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, a Gaelic-medium university
* the rise of Gaelic-medium education as an option for primary and secondary school
* Gaelic-language radio and TV stations
* The launch, a few years ago, of SpeakGaelic (https://speakgaelic.scot/) with loads of learning materials (mentioned in the OP).
Problems include the continued dilution of Gaelic-speaking communities (native speakers either die or move somewhere with better job prospects; non-speakers buy up holiday homes or Airbnb investment vehicles in the area) and the perception that career prospects are much better for people educated in English (perhaps with a bit of French or similar on the side) than those educated in Gaelic.
It's hard, but it's doable. If Jews managed to resurrect Hebrew which was dead for centuries, what would be the reason for Scott not to revive Gaelic if they really wanted to?
- Israel is composed of people from different parts of the world with different languages so as a matter of practical policy they had to standardize on some uniform language for the country. Scotland doesn't have this problem: English is already the uniform standardized language.
- Israel exists in a more "existential" position than Scotland - there is more of a sense that their country and culture could be lost. Thus there is a bigger motivation to preserve what makes them different. I think you see this play out in Ireland, actually: there seems to be more of an interest in the Irish language in Northern Ireland, where the Irish identify is seen as more under threat, than in the Republic, where it is safe.
One thing they had going for them is that the people who moved (and move) to Israel come from a number of different language backgrounds, so it wasn't the case of make everyone who speaks language A now instead speak language B (as would the the case with Gaelic in Scotland, and was with Irish in Ireland) so much as choose a language all the speakers of A, B, an C can agree to learn and use so that can all talk to each other.
" the perception that career prospects are much better for people educated in English (perhaps with a bit of French or similar on the side) than those educated in Gaelic."
I think that this is the reality, not merely perception. How many college textbooks are even available in Gaelic?
I find it odd that the article makes almost zero mention of how Ireland is doing with its very closely related form of Gaelic. Ireland has arguably been at least slightly more successful.
Or Wales? Or other minority languages, such as Basque? Just nothing -- not a mention.
Ireland is awkward: there are state policies and all, but the language as taught in schools and universities is quite different from the varieties spoken inside Gaelic-speaking communities (gaeltachta) by a very small number of people. Scottish Gaelic is much better preserved in the communities, and Welsh is basically doing fine (hundreds of thousands of speakers), so it can be argued that the situation on the ground in the three communities is very different to touch upon in a smallish article.
// but the language as taught in schools and universities is quite different from the varieties spoken inside Gaelic-speaking communities (gaeltachta) by a very small number of people
There's only 3 regional dialects of Irish - Connacht, Munster and Ulster - and all three dialects are tested at Aural level in the School leavers Exam. There's very little difference between them bar pronunciation and some common phrases.
The vast vast majority of daily Irish speakers would speak Connacht Irish - i.e. Connemara Irish - due to spending time in the Colaiste Gaeilge during the summer holidays; effectively state-subsidised Irish language Summer Camps. It's also the predominant dialect on TG4 - the Irish language TV station.
Wales has a massively larger proportion of native speakers of Welsh daily, but this is due to the lack of colonial history attempting to wipe out the language, and the far more multi-cultural make-up of Ireland.
The thing is that there's not really any Munster Gaeltachts outside of Corca Dhuibhne in 2025. The only time you'll hear anything close to the differentiated Munster Irish outside of a Leaving Cert textbook is someone like Jack O'Connor giving commentary on TG4 after a match.
I'd also disagree with a lot of the sentence structure formation and 'grammar' espoused as fact on that Wiki page. You'd be marked down on any Irish Higher Level Paper 2 marking scheme that I'm aware of - e.g.
More to the point, I'd emphasise the far larger impact of Gaeilge on the dialect of Hiberno-English spoken down there - e.g. 'What mood are you in', 'I've the hunger of the world on me', 'I'm after having a fierce supper there' etc...
I absolutely understand that, but it seems concerned with the same things (preserving a minority language) and there are lots of initiatives in this area all over the U.K. Literally, right next door.
Really the article - despite the headline - spends a long time on the literary history of gaelic in scotland, with a short paragraph at the end on the current status. I doubt the author had time to expand to a review of minority language measures globally, and it didn’t seem to be the main point of it anyway.
And, the situation and standing of gaelic in Ireland and Scotland are quite different. In Ireland, gaelic is strongly associated with the primary, and successful ethnonationalist movement. In Scotland, at the end of the day gaelic is a remnant of a foreign invasion, and is also historically associated with catholicism, so is often seen as the “other”. This makes it more difficult to whip up enthusiasm to learn it, even among die hard Scottish nationalists. This whole situation is quite unlike Ireland and even Wales, it would be at best a distraction in the article.
Gaelic arrived in Scotland within 100 years of English arriving in England. They are both attested to arrive in around the 4th - 5th AD century IIRC. Before that Scotland spoke Pictish (which is not known in the modern era and may/maynot have been a Brythonic language) and a language related to Welsh in the Lowlands. Gaelic is a very interesting language and should absolutely get championed and preserved, but it is not the ancient language of Scotland, and hasn't really been spoken there much longer than the English language was in the UK.
You can't expect consistently accurate reporting on Ireland, I certainly wouldn't expect it from the BBC Eamonn growing up during the tail end of the Troubles. ;)
The existence of a dialect continuum doesn't make them the same language. By that logic, Dutch and German are the same.
Irish and Scottish are very similar, but they are not mutually intelligible. It's very annoying when people use the word "Gaelic" because I never know which language they're referring to. Just say "Scottish"/"Scottish Gaelic", "Irish", or "The Gaelic languages".
Yeah, to a degree, my dad speaks Irish and he says the same. But it's not quite enough to be considered the same language. It's comparable to Norwegian and Swedish, or Portuguese and Spanish.
Irish speaker here who has attempted to learn some Scottish Gaelic, and currently lives in Denmark, I think the Norwegian-Swedish comparison is probably apt. Although I think Irish/Scottish Gaelic are possibly even more divergent than that.
Side note: as an Irish speaker, reading Manx Gaelic, with its Welsh/English derived spelling system feels like what I imagine having a stroke feels like.
> Side note: as an Irish speaker, reading Manx Gaelic, with its Welsh/English derived spelling system feels like what I imagine having a stroke feels like.
Ha! That's a great description for how completely unsettling reading Manx is.
Northern (Donegal) Irish is to some extent mutually intelligible with Scottish, but it is very different from the eastern and southern varieties. The notion of the dialect "continuum" is a bit misleading here since the three varieties of Irish have been separated by English speaking regions for some time, and there are no intermediate forms.
>In order for that to happen we need to have stable Gaelic communities to sing the ballads and tell the stories, with formal and informal education that invites new generations into the tradition.
Whilst this has been true for centuries, you can actually see it happening right now in real time with Kneecap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneecap_(band)) and the incredible impact they are having on popularising the Irish language.
For a whole generation, they're definitely the cause. I've been traveling through Scotland for the past little while and there's real admiration and appreciation for what Kneecap is doing for the Irish language throughout.
Scottish needs its own Gaelic heroes to make speaking it cool again.
An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) is a 1941 novel in Irish by Brian O'Nolan (better known by his pen name Flann O'Brien), published under the pseudonym "Myles na gCopaleen".
set in Corca Dhorcha, a remote region of Western Ireland where it never stops raining, everyone lives in desperate poverty (and always will), while also talking in "the learned smooth Gaelic".
It is a memoir of one Bónapárt Ó Cúnasa (Bonaparte O'Coonassa), a resident of this region, beginning at his very birth.
At one point the area is visited by hordes of Gaeilgeoirí (Irish language lovers) from Dublin, who explain that not only should one always speak Irish, but also every sentence one utters in Irish should be about the language question.
However, they eventually abandon the area because the poverty is too impoverished, the cultural authenticity is too culturally authentic, and because the dialect of the Irish-language spoken in Corca Dhorcha is far too Irish.
Whenever I hear about Scottish Gaelic, I remember a moment of my childhood, when I have seen some Scottish singer performing "Màiri Bhàn" in Gaelic, and I have liked that song very much, including its lyrics, despite the fact that the Gaelic lyrics were unintelligible for me.
Searching for "Màiri Bhàn" will find many examples of how Scottish Gaelic sounds, for instance this is a good one:
In terms of the cultural resurgeance of Irish, whilst the Rubberbandits have done their part, its nothing compared to the full-on assault on cultural consciousness the politically divisive rap-group 'Kneecap' have performed - although they're about to be cancelled by the pro-Zionist lobby in the US.
There's an animated version of the graphic novel of An Béal Bocht that I haven't had a chance to watch yet but have had highly recommended to me.
I did find the description kinda funny though "An animated adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s only novel written in Irish under the pseudonym of Myles Na gCopaleen. It is a biting satire of the life story of a young Gael reflecting on his life from Sligo Gaol." - as if Flann wasn't also a pseudonym, but I suppose he never wrote much under the name Brian.
(Entirely unrelated, I saw the German adaptation of ASTB as a teenager and it was fascinating. Not necessarily good, but out there)
Seems like a very backwards-looking article. Would've been interesting to hear more about his ideas for the future, such as what this should involve:
> if the new Scottish Languages Bill is to succeed in securing the Gaelic and Scots languages in the face of immense pressures, then the needs of the communities speaking those languages must be at the heart of it
Gaelic advances in the modern era include:
* the foundation of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, a Gaelic-medium university
* the rise of Gaelic-medium education as an option for primary and secondary school
* Gaelic-language radio and TV stations
* The launch, a few years ago, of SpeakGaelic (https://speakgaelic.scot/) with loads of learning materials (mentioned in the OP).
Problems include the continued dilution of Gaelic-speaking communities (native speakers either die or move somewhere with better job prospects; non-speakers buy up holiday homes or Airbnb investment vehicles in the area) and the perception that career prospects are much better for people educated in English (perhaps with a bit of French or similar on the side) than those educated in Gaelic.
It's hard, but it's doable. If Jews managed to resurrect Hebrew which was dead for centuries, what would be the reason for Scott not to revive Gaelic if they really wanted to?
I think it's a very different situation:
- Israel is composed of people from different parts of the world with different languages so as a matter of practical policy they had to standardize on some uniform language for the country. Scotland doesn't have this problem: English is already the uniform standardized language.
- Israel exists in a more "existential" position than Scotland - there is more of a sense that their country and culture could be lost. Thus there is a bigger motivation to preserve what makes them different. I think you see this play out in Ireland, actually: there seems to be more of an interest in the Irish language in Northern Ireland, where the Irish identify is seen as more under threat, than in the Republic, where it is safe.
One thing they had going for them is that the people who moved (and move) to Israel come from a number of different language backgrounds, so it wasn't the case of make everyone who speaks language A now instead speak language B (as would the the case with Gaelic in Scotland, and was with Irish in Ireland) so much as choose a language all the speakers of A, B, an C can agree to learn and use so that can all talk to each other.
" the perception that career prospects are much better for people educated in English (perhaps with a bit of French or similar on the side) than those educated in Gaelic."
I think that this is the reality, not merely perception. How many college textbooks are even available in Gaelic?
I certainly know of a few written in Welsh
“A Critical Approach to Dragonslaying Theory & Practice, 4th Ed.”
Isn't that more commonly known as "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools"?
I find it odd that the article makes almost zero mention of how Ireland is doing with its very closely related form of Gaelic. Ireland has arguably been at least slightly more successful.
Or Wales? Or other minority languages, such as Basque? Just nothing -- not a mention.
It's missing quite a lot of context.
Ireland is awkward: there are state policies and all, but the language as taught in schools and universities is quite different from the varieties spoken inside Gaelic-speaking communities (gaeltachta) by a very small number of people. Scottish Gaelic is much better preserved in the communities, and Welsh is basically doing fine (hundreds of thousands of speakers), so it can be argued that the situation on the ground in the three communities is very different to touch upon in a smallish article.
// but the language as taught in schools and universities is quite different from the varieties spoken inside Gaelic-speaking communities (gaeltachta) by a very small number of people
There's only 3 regional dialects of Irish - Connacht, Munster and Ulster - and all three dialects are tested at Aural level in the School leavers Exam. There's very little difference between them bar pronunciation and some common phrases.
The vast vast majority of daily Irish speakers would speak Connacht Irish - i.e. Connemara Irish - due to spending time in the Colaiste Gaeilge during the summer holidays; effectively state-subsidised Irish language Summer Camps. It's also the predominant dialect on TG4 - the Irish language TV station.
Wales has a massively larger proportion of native speakers of Welsh daily, but this is due to the lack of colonial history attempting to wipe out the language, and the far more multi-cultural make-up of Ireland.
Munster Irish has some noticeable differences in morphology and the use of grammatical particles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munster_Irish
The thing is that there's not really any Munster Gaeltachts outside of Corca Dhuibhne in 2025. The only time you'll hear anything close to the differentiated Munster Irish outside of a Leaving Cert textbook is someone like Jack O'Connor giving commentary on TG4 after a match.
I'd also disagree with a lot of the sentence structure formation and 'grammar' espoused as fact on that Wiki page. You'd be marked down on any Irish Higher Level Paper 2 marking scheme that I'm aware of - e.g.
https://www.examinations.ie/archive/markingschemes/2019/LC00...
More to the point, I'd emphasise the far larger impact of Gaeilge on the dialect of Hiberno-English spoken down there - e.g. 'What mood are you in', 'I've the hunger of the world on me', 'I'm after having a fierce supper there' etc...
Why? It’s not about ireland - it’s about scotland. Article makes complete sense in a scottish context.
I absolutely understand that, but it seems concerned with the same things (preserving a minority language) and there are lots of initiatives in this area all over the U.K. Literally, right next door.
Really the article - despite the headline - spends a long time on the literary history of gaelic in scotland, with a short paragraph at the end on the current status. I doubt the author had time to expand to a review of minority language measures globally, and it didn’t seem to be the main point of it anyway.
And, the situation and standing of gaelic in Ireland and Scotland are quite different. In Ireland, gaelic is strongly associated with the primary, and successful ethnonationalist movement. In Scotland, at the end of the day gaelic is a remnant of a foreign invasion, and is also historically associated with catholicism, so is often seen as the “other”. This makes it more difficult to whip up enthusiasm to learn it, even among die hard Scottish nationalists. This whole situation is quite unlike Ireland and even Wales, it would be at best a distraction in the article.
English and Scots are also of course remnants of a foreign invasion.
So are the Gaelic languages. (It's turtles all the way down).
Gaelic arrived in Scotland within 100 years of English arriving in England. They are both attested to arrive in around the 4th - 5th AD century IIRC. Before that Scotland spoke Pictish (which is not known in the modern era and may/maynot have been a Brythonic language) and a language related to Welsh in the Lowlands. Gaelic is a very interesting language and should absolutely get championed and preserved, but it is not the ancient language of Scotland, and hasn't really been spoken there much longer than the English language was in the UK.
You can't expect consistently accurate reporting on Ireland, I certainly wouldn't expect it from the BBC Eamonn growing up during the tail end of the Troubles. ;)
They are different languages - i mean same roots but still different
The Irish spoken in the North West of Ireland (Tir Conaill) is pretty much indistinguishable from Scots Gaedhlig.
The real division is between Gaelic (Irish and Scottish) and Brythonic (Welsh, British and Cornish)
The existence of a dialect continuum doesn't make them the same language. By that logic, Dutch and German are the same.
Irish and Scottish are very similar, but they are not mutually intelligible. It's very annoying when people use the word "Gaelic" because I never know which language they're referring to. Just say "Scottish"/"Scottish Gaelic", "Irish", or "The Gaelic languages".
I've often heard "Irish" for Irish and "Gaelic" for the Scottish one. Is that not used systematically?
> Irish and Scottish are very similar, but they are not mutually intelligible
Not true.
They are mutually intelligible to a high degree. Native speakers, speaking slowly and clearly can understand most of what each other are saying.
I speak some Irish and have personal experience of this.
Yeah, to a degree, my dad speaks Irish and he says the same. But it's not quite enough to be considered the same language. It's comparable to Norwegian and Swedish, or Portuguese and Spanish.
Irish speaker here who has attempted to learn some Scottish Gaelic, and currently lives in Denmark, I think the Norwegian-Swedish comparison is probably apt. Although I think Irish/Scottish Gaelic are possibly even more divergent than that.
Side note: as an Irish speaker, reading Manx Gaelic, with its Welsh/English derived spelling system feels like what I imagine having a stroke feels like.
> Side note: as an Irish speaker, reading Manx Gaelic, with its Welsh/English derived spelling system feels like what I imagine having a stroke feels like.
Ha! That's a great description for how completely unsettling reading Manx is.
Northern (Donegal) Irish is to some extent mutually intelligible with Scottish, but it is very different from the eastern and southern varieties. The notion of the dialect "continuum" is a bit misleading here since the three varieties of Irish have been separated by English speaking regions for some time, and there are no intermediate forms.
>In order for that to happen we need to have stable Gaelic communities to sing the ballads and tell the stories, with formal and informal education that invites new generations into the tradition.
Whilst this has been true for centuries, you can actually see it happening right now in real time with Kneecap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneecap_(band)) and the incredible impact they are having on popularising the Irish language.
Kneecap are great for many reasons, but they're a symptom of the recent quiet resurgence of Irish across the island, not the cause.
For a whole generation, they're definitely the cause. I've been traveling through Scotland for the past little while and there's real admiration and appreciation for what Kneecap is doing for the Irish language throughout. Scottish needs its own Gaelic heroes to make speaking it cool again.
One of the biggest problems is the places where people speak Gaelic are now full of Airbnbs/second homes.
It's always the outsider who's to blame!
mar ná beidh ár leithéidí arís ann
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_B%C3%A9al_Bocht How does the language sound then?example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNFfDirBE6w with transcript and translation: https://songsinirish.com/?song=i-wanna-fight-your-father-lyr...
> How does the language sound then?
Whenever I hear about Scottish Gaelic, I remember a moment of my childhood, when I have seen some Scottish singer performing "Màiri Bhàn" in Gaelic, and I have liked that song very much, including its lyrics, despite the fact that the Gaelic lyrics were unintelligible for me.
Searching for "Màiri Bhàn" will find many examples of how Scottish Gaelic sounds, for instance this is a good one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhce99y_a_A
Hah, that video was ... unexpected to say the least.
I love Brian O'Nolan/Flann O'Brian - particularly the Third Policeman. I should read The Poor Mouth.
Wonder if there are Scottish Gaelic bands like The Rubberbandits. I like Clannadonia, but they are 'just' a piper/drummer band.
Flann O'Brian can't be celebrated enough - 'At Swim-Two-Birds' is up there with Ulysses in terms of the great works of English language literature.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/08/100-best-novel...
In terms of the cultural resurgeance of Irish, whilst the Rubberbandits have done their part, its nothing compared to the full-on assault on cultural consciousness the politically divisive rap-group 'Kneecap' have performed - although they're about to be cancelled by the pro-Zionist lobby in the US.
https://www.screenireland.ie/news/kneecap-becomes-first-iris...
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kneecap
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFYfp-hKxZQ
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/23/sharon-osbourn...
There's an animated version of the graphic novel of An Béal Bocht that I haven't had a chance to watch yet but have had highly recommended to me.
I did find the description kinda funny though "An animated adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s only novel written in Irish under the pseudonym of Myles Na gCopaleen. It is a biting satire of the life story of a young Gael reflecting on his life from Sligo Gaol." - as if Flann wasn't also a pseudonym, but I suppose he never wrote much under the name Brian.
(Entirely unrelated, I saw the German adaptation of ASTB as a teenager and it was fascinating. Not necessarily good, but out there)
I meant to actually link to the animated version rather than just say it exists...! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s67fNIn5ZsQ