Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Steaphan
If you look at many African countries now, for example, you will find that their leaders speak the language of the oppressor i.e. French/English/Dutch but the majority of the people still speak their own languages. Would you try to argue that the majority of Congolese were French speaking in the 19th century just because the "nobility" were?
|
So how relevant do you think it might be to compare a post imperial African state with a mediaeval feudal society-I think it would be a case of comparing chalk and cheese.In a feudal society the dominant social class provides the dominant value system,the dominant culture and the dominant language and this filters down through the various social classes.Thereby the values of the social elite are absorbed by the burghers and townspeople and subsequently by the poorer classes.That is what happened in lowland Scotland during the middle ages.If you accept therefore that that process was underway by the time of the wars of independence then it can hardly be questioned that a century later Inglis must have been firmly established in all of the burghs and townships of Fife,Lothians,the Borders and Tayside and into Grampian and Moray.Therefore you are really putting forward an argument that is impossible to support in stating that Gaelic speakers predominated in Scotland after the early modern period.Wikipedia states that Gaelic was supplanted by English by 1200-I would accept that is difficult to support however it wasn't too long after that date when Gaelic speakers ceased to be in the majority in Scotland.