XPost: soc.culture.welsh, soc.culture.cornish, soc.culture.irish   
   XPost: soc.culture.scottish   
   From: allan@noemail.co.uk   
      
   "Westprog"  wrote in message   
   news:faflgv$rjj$1@news.datemas.de...   
   > Féachadóir wrote:   
   >   
   >>>>> I have the idea that when most people encounter the language as   
   >>>>> something tedious and threatening, they fail to develop an   
   >>>>> affection for it. The people in Donegal who use it to chat to   
   >>>>> their friends don't have that experience. Nor do the users of   
   >>>>> Scots.   
   >>>   
   >>>> True. Sometimes there's sympathy for the battered students,   
   >>>> sometimes annoyance at the unconscious and patronising hostility of   
   >>>> the galltacht. Mostly though, there's the weather, Keano's latest   
   >>>> transfer bids and Corro to discuss.   
   >>>   
   >>> And that experience is something which is almost never carried over   
   >>> to the English speakers. To them, the language is associated with   
   >>> punishment and coercion.   
   >>   
   >> Indeed. Well too I remember the pain of being forced to study   
   >> arithmetic, when I had a perfectly capable calculator in my pocket. I   
   >> still can't look at a sum.   
   >   
   > I believe you still occasionally have use for your arithmetic skills, and   
   > a   
   > vague sense that they were imparted for your benefit, not to suit a   
   > maths-using minority.   
      
      
   Mind you we are talking about completely different situations here. The   
   people who were sometimes punished for speaking or not speaking a language   
   here were not the English speakers. It was the Scots speakers! I know of no   
   plans to make non-Scots speakers speak Scots and certainly wouldn't advocate   
   such a plan. Basically nowadays space is supposed to be found in the   
   curriculum for recognising what Scots is and for some aspects of Scots to be   
   included but other than learning some literature it is forced on no-one. One   
   would think it inconceivable that you could go through school and, Burns   
   aside, learn nothing about the bulk of Scotland's literary figures. But that   
   is what used to happen. For instance we learned nothing about any Gaelic   
   poet or works; nothing about Scotland's early epics; virtually nothing about   
   the Border Ballads; nothing about the makars (I'd never heard of Dunbar,   
   Douglas or Henryson until in my 20s); nothing about Ramsay and Ferguson; and   
   nothing about the 20thC renaissance started by McDairmid. I don't know how   
   much things have improved but they have at least improved.   
      
      
   Allan   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)