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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

12 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

troglodyte
Diglot
Groupie
BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5278 days ago
53 posts - 69 votes

Speaks: Portuguese*, English^C2
Studies: Italian

Message 9 of 12

13 July 2010 at 4:32pm | IP Logged

zyz wrote:

Cainntear wrote:

Don't forget the Welsh in Patagonia.

I'm always bewildered when I hear about small immigrant language communities in South
America. I know, like, intellectually that a bunch of people immigrated and some of
them
happened to be from European backwaters bearing obscure regional languages, but still.

A little off-topic, but as it was mentioned, I'll say that in Southern Brazil is not
difficult to find cities founded by German immigrants where German is still used on a
daily bases.

Once I was working at the division of Municipal Finance in one of these cities, and the
citizens who went there to pay taxes would almost always speak German, not Portuguese.

I also met a German woman who had visited such cities, and she said that people in
those cities spoke an archaic German. That's certainly because those citizens still
speak the language of their grand-grandparents, not the language that is spoken in the
country now.

I don't know anything about this community in Patagonia, though.
1 person has voted this message useful

Tyr
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 5780 days ago
316 posts - 384 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Swedish

Message 10 of 12

14 July 2010 at 1:25pm | IP Logged

Quote:

Your information is wrong -- the nationalists have never "pushed" Gaelic anywhere, and as a minority government have no power to do so.

All the legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament with regards to the Gaelic language (and previously by the Scottish Office of the UK parliament) has received wide cross party support.

The provision for Gaelic Medium Education was first made by a Conservative Government at Westminster. The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act was passed under a coalition government between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. (And as previously stated, these received significant cross-party support.)

In fact, the SNP has done very little of note with respect to Gaelic, short of recognise it as part of Scotland's heritage. As most members of the SNP are not Gaelic speakers themselves, they're hardly going to define "Scottishness" as something that is alien to themselves!

In fact, Gaelic is more of a problem to the SNP than a political banner -- anything they do that favours Gaelic, however small and insignificant it may be, gets painted as nationalist fantasising. In fact, even when Labour-run councils put up Gaelic signs as they promised to do in implementing Labour's Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act, this is still painted as nationalism-gone-mad.

Gaelic is not a vote-winner and never has been, so even now when it is at its most visible, it's still being incredibly badly served.

Well I've not lived in Scotland, only visited there pretty often and seen the big welcome to Scotland bilingual signs, I'm told from Scottish friends the nationalists are big on Gaelic pushing.

I will point out though- Irish was an alien language to the vast majority of Irish nationalists (and indeed the population. Though not to the extent of Scottish Gaelic of course) back in the day yet they embraced it as an example of Irishness to set them apart from Britain.
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Declan1991
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 6437 days ago
233 posts - 359 votes

Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French

Message 11 of 12

14 July 2010 at 2:26pm | IP Logged

Tyr wrote:

I will point out though- Irish was an alien language to the vast majority of Irish nationalists (and indeed the population. Though not to the extent of Scottish Gaelic of course) back in the day yet they embraced it as an example of Irishness to set them apart from Britain.

I don't quite know what you mean by that. Certainly many people believing that English was necessary to improve one's life in the 19th century stopped passing Irish on to their children and Irish nowadays isn't a native language for most Irish people, but it was never alien. English spoken in Ireland is heavily influenced by Irish to this day, vocabulary etc.

Edited by Declan1991 on 14 July 2010 at 4:54pm
1 person has voted this message useful

Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 6009 days ago
4399 posts - 7687 votes

Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

Message 12 of 12

14 July 2010 at 4:10pm | IP Logged

Tyr wrote:

I'm told from Scottish friends the nationalists are big on Gaelic pushing.

As I said, the press like to paint it that way. Anything goes when it comes to making the SNP look bad in the eyes of the public.

Also, the difference between Ireland and Scotland is that Irish was at one point the language of all of Ireland. Gaelic was never the language of all of modern Scotland. Most of the southern parts of the country went from speaking Cumbric (a Brythonic language) to speaking Scots (an Anglo-Danish language).

Edited by Cainntear on 14 July 2010 at 4:13pm

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