Irish Translation Forum

Redwolf wrote:If you care about your heritage, learning your ancestral language is never a waste. A country without a language is a country without a soul. Scotland isn't England...why be content with speaking the language of an invader?

Redwolf

But wasn't Gaelic brought to Scotland from Irish settlers/invaders? During the Dál Riata era 6c-11c

So did the Gaels ever go as far as the Lowlands. Or were they from the beginning confined to the Highlands and Islands??

The Irish are the ones that gave Scotland Scottish Gaelic.

So did the Gaels ever go as far as the Lowlands. Or were they from the beginning confined to the Highlands and Islands??

As in Ireland, no one really knows how many Gaels. per se, moved to Scotland, but their language and culture did eventually cover the whole of what is now Scotland, except that, by the time the Gaelic language reached the extreme southeast, the new "Inglis" language had already taken a foothold there. Still, even there the language of government was Gaelic for several centuries, and the common people probably had to speak it some of the time.

There was also a fourth language spoken in Scotland, apart from Pictish, Gaelic, and Inglis. In the southwest, the people spoke a variant of Brythonic/Welsh. The River Clyde has a Welsh name, and the hero William Wallace, who was from that area, was of "Welsh" ancestry ("Wallis", supposedly meaning something like "strangers/foreigners", is what the English called the Welsh, and the origin of the name). That area also became solidly Gaelic-speaking, and that was where the last Gaelic holdouts were in the Lowlands centuries later.

"Inglis" (which became Scots) started to take over as some of the Saxon nobility fled to Scotland after the Norman Conquest (Queen/St. Margaret was one of those) and then was reinforced later as the Normans came in. Gradually, the Lowlands went English (or, more precisely, Scots) speaking, but it took a long time. Most Lowlanders were speaking Scots by the 16th century, but pockets stayed Gaelic speaking until even the 19th century. Even some of the Lowland settlers who came to Ulster were still Gaelic speakers (I've mentioned before that the building in which Cultúrlann is located in Belfast is a former Gaelic-speaking Presbyterian Church). There is a small, isolated village about 20 miles south of Glasgow which is reputed to have been the last Gaelic-speaking place in the Lowlands, and it was apparently still Gaelic-speakling in the early 19th century.

Hi, I agree with Kevin , also place names are a very good indicator of early language groups, so if we look at the ''Welsh'' and'' Gaelic '' place names in Scotland we should be able to figure out where we are coming from. In Edinburgh apprentices were forbidden to speak Gaelic as a condition of their apprenticeship, and they were from the locality so Gaelic was spoken amongst the common people even in Dun Edin.
Christy.

that's very interesting Kevin, grma.

http://scotgaelic.tripod.com/aboutscottishgaelic.html
II. Scottish Gaelic

(From Scottish Gaelic in Three Months, by Roibeard O Maolalaigh and Iain MacAonghuis, Hugo Language Books Ltd., 1996)

Gaelic was brought to Scotland by colonists from Ireland towards the end of the Roman Empire in Britain. By 500 A.D. these Gaels had established their Kingdom of Dàl Riada, centered on what is now Argyll in southwest Scotland; in Gaelic, Earra Ghàidheal, "the coastland of the Gael." To Roman writers they were Scotti -- Scotia at this time denoted Ireland -- although these names cannot be traced with certainty to an origin in Gaelic itself. But from these Latin forms came the name Scotland. In Gaelic, however, the country is Alba, as in Irish Gaelic, and Alban in Welsh.

By the eleventh century, Gaelic was at its highest point in Scotland and known to some degree virtually throughout the country. A Gaelic-speaking court, supported by the Columban church, gave patronage to makers of literature at the highest levels of society.

With the Anglicisation of the dynasty late in that century, what was been described as a shift to an English way of life was deliberately planned and, as far as possible, implemented. The court itself became English and Norman-French in Speech and the northern English dialect (Inglis) was fostered as the official language. The loss of status that these changes entailed for Gaelic had a profound and permanent effect.

In the mid-twelfth century the Lordship of the Isles, founded in part on the Norse kingdom of the Western and Southern Isles, but drawing also on the traditions of a former, wider Gaelic territory, emerged as a quasi-independent state. Until the Lordship was destroyed by the central authorities of Scotland in the late fifteenth century, Gaelic culture and learning continued to flourish. In the same twelfth century a reorganized literary order, whose main centers were in Ireland, was codifying Gaelic to produce an elegant formal register of the language, which we call Classical Gaelic. It was common to the learned classes of Ireland and Scotland and taught to the children of the aristocracy. It lasted in Scotland until the eighteenth century.

Modern Gaelic offers the learner a wide spectrum of styles, ranging from formal registers, still in some degree associated with the church, to rich, vivid, idiomatic speech. Gaelic as a living language is now largely confined to north-western and island communities But Gaelic speakers of local dialects are still to be found here and there throughout the Highlands (a' Ghaidhealtachd). There are, besides, sizeable communities in the cities, particularly in Glasgow. A number of organizations are active in promoting the Language. The oldest is An Comunn Gaidhealach, founded at the end of the nineteenth century. In the last few years, the Gaelic College in Skye (at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig), Comunn na Gàidhlig (CNAG) and Comann Luchd Ionnsachaidh (CLI) have all been established with the purpose of reviving the fortunes of the language.

While it is true that the history of the language is largely one of resistance to ethnocidal policies that sought to exclude the Gaels from the world of post-Renaissance Europe, contemporary developments in education, radio and television, and in literature generally, aim to redress the balance. And it should be noted that some of the most interesting writers now active on the literary scene are not native speakers but learners of Gaelic