Quote:
Originally Posted by wullie m
Quite right Lachie, Scots is going the way of Gaelic/Irish, what we have now in the cities (and 80% of us live in the cities), is an accent plus some Scots words. Speaking "Some Gaelic" is down to about 1% of the population, it never survived in an urban environment. We won't know until after the census. A lot of real Gaels, brought up in a Gaelic environment, have popped their clogs in the last ten years. Students of the language, albeit from Engerland, are no substitute. Britain was the worlds first industrialised nation and "getting on" meant learning English. What's remarkable is that three hundred years after the Union the languages survive at all. But why we need some screwball English troll with a Heilan Complex to tell us how many beans make five, is something else! wullie.
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Gaelic is on the rise internationally. I know of a Gaeltacht in Germany and Gaelic learners in New Zealand, Canada and San Francisco. im also involved in a project to bring speakers and learners together and create new networks between them bith in Scotland and internatinally, though its at its early stages.
Furthermore, as a literary language it is expanding internationally. Iain F. macleoid's novel Ėmpereachd is very popular and in no way as parochial as many Scottish novels have tended to be in recent decades. He plays with language in a way that shows the dynamism of Gaelic and avboids the cliched language of the Lallans kailyard.