XPost: rec.arts.drwho, alt.usage.english
From: peter@pmoylan.org
On 03/01/26 04:57, Hibou wrote:
> Le 02/01/2026 à 15:37, The Doctor a écrit :
>> Hibou wrote:
>>>
>>> [...] We native English speakers are lucky people.
>>
>> Exactly!
>>
>> Still how are the Scots doing to preserve Scottish Gaelic?
>
> Badly:
>
>
>
> There's no percentage scale there, but Gaelic speakers are currently
> about 1% of the population - and there's a question about how well
> they speak it. No-one in Scotland speaks Gaelic but not English.
In that respect, Irish is worse off than Scots Gaelic. The native
speakers live in little corners of the country.
> It is essentially impossible to preserve a language like Gaelic. If
> it's to handle all aspects of modern life, then it must acquire a
> mass of new words, and its nature changes. If one rejects that course
> and seeks to preserve it as is, then it becomes limited and
> obsolete.
>
> IMHO, it's no use being able to say, "Put some more peat on the fire,
> Donald" in Gaelic, and then having to resort to English to discuss
> Morag's doomscrolling on Facebook.
That doesn't have to be a problem. I've just been learning some
computer-related terms in Irish. The words -- e.g. riomhaire for
computer -- have the look and feel of native Irish words. Occasionally
you see a word that looks similar to English -- e.g. idirlión for
internet -- but overall the language is handling the new concepts
without introducing a pidgin.
The real problem is that the English language so dominates the society
that you can't function properly -- get a job, do the shopping, etc. --
unless you're fluent in English. That's also the problem for minority
languages in other countries.
--
Peter Moylan peter@pmoylan.org http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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