Scottish Gaelic and Scots now recognised as official languages of Scotland

Scottish Gaelic and Scots are now recognised as official languages as from St Andrew's Day, thanks to the Scottish Languages Act, which was voted through in June this year. (see this article on the BBC website).

I've seen a couple of recent examples of editors sharing translations 'into Scottish Gaelic' which were actually into Scots! However, the two languages are not to be confused! Scottish Gaelic is closely related to Irish and Manx, and one of the Celtic languages which also include Welsh, Cornish and Breton. It is very different to English and as such can be challenging to learn. Scots is much more closely related to English and arguably these days feels more like a dialect than a language, as though lots of people in Scotland use a good number of Scots words, few speak wholly in Scots or even using Scots grammar. But historically it really is a language and it's great to see it being officially recognised as such in a modern Scotland. 

Both Scots and Scottish Gaelic are vital parts of Scotland's culture and this recognition of  their status ensures that they can continue to play an important part on the country's future. 

If you want to learn Scottish Gaelic, then the Speak Gaelic website is a good place to start. This website is tied in to a programme that ran recently on BBC Alba (the Scottish Gaelic channel of the BBC) and is now available on Youtube. Alternatively, you may be able to access face to face learning in a local community centre. 

Edinburgh Council has a very good adult education programme and is now taking bookings for the next term, including classes in Scottish Gaelic and one class in Scots.  

There are a number of useful online Scots language resources including:

The Scots Language online.  

Dictionaries of the Scots Language.  

Making Progress with Learning Gaelic

I've been trying to learn Scottish Gaelic for a few years now and it's a tricky language, as it is so different to English or any of the other languages I speak. I started out learning with Duolingo, but eventually gave up on that, as the course suddenly changed. I attended local classes, but, although the tutor was enthusiastic and encouraging, his teaching style really didn't suit my learning style. I've been watching Speak Gaelic for a few years now, this is a course originally broadcast on the BBC but also available on Youtube. The Speak Gaelic website contains lots of support material to help you on your learning journey. Learn Gaelic has lots of resources and a useful weekly newsletter, which is well worth signing up to.  

Since starting to learn Scottish Gaelic, my ambition has been to win the Gaelic section of the Scottish Book Trust's monthly 50 Word short story contest. Last month, the challenge was to write a story about an elephant, which made things much easier. I have a very short, real life story about an encounter with an elephant that I've told (in English) many times. So I just needed to write a version in Scottish Gaelic, which I could do, using relatively simple phrases and after all it only needed 50 words! And, I'm delighted to say, it won the competition. You can read my story in Gaelic, with English translation, here (just scroll down a wee bit). 

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Meanwhile, the latest post in my Crafty Green Poet Substack has gone live. You can read it here.  

 

What do you call the narrow walkway between buildings?

Growing up in Manchester, we called them ginnels, while here in Edinburgh they're referred to as 'closes' or 'vennels'. Those narrow walkways between or alongside buildings are known by a wide variety of dialect words across the UK. Here's an interesting map, showing many of the words and where they're spoken. 

Gaelic Graffiti

I was intrigued to find these examples of Gaelic graffiti in an underpass Edinburgh! 

 The graffiti above says: 

"Chan eil mi a' smaoineachadh gu bheil Gaidhlig cudromach: Tha fios agam, gu bheil" which translates as "I don't think Gaelic is important, I know it is" 

The graffiti above says "ionnsaich Gaidhlig" which simply translates as 'learn Gaelic' to which I can only reply, I'm trying!

Còisir Dhùn Èideann (Edinburgh Gaelic Choir)

 I recently joined the Edinburgh Gaelic Choir in the hope that it will offer a creative way for me to learn Gaelic. It's a small, friendly group. We learn songs in Gaelic and get a good amount of help on Gaelic pronunciation from the conductor who is a fluent Gaelic speaker. 

The choir is looking for new members, so if you're in Edinburgh, enjoy singing and have an interest in the Gaelic language then why not join in! Details on their website here.

A Year of Learning Scottish Gaelic!

Last year, I made a belated new year's resolution to learn Scottish Gaelic. Today I reached a 365 day streak of learning the language on Duolingo. Over a million people across the world are learning Scots Gaelic with Duolingo. Find out more here.

I did do a term of evening classes in Scottish Gaelic with Edinburgh Council's Adult Education Programme. However I was very disappointed in them and didn't sign up for another term. University of Edinburgh offers a wider range of classes, though they're more expensive and I was put off by the tutor who I met who said I'd need to sign up for the total beginners class despite having done a term with the council and a few months with Duolingo. 

More Online Resources

Learn Gaelic is a free online resource for learning Scots Gaelic. It shares a Gaelic word a day on social media. 

Speak Gaelic is a Scots Gaelic learning programme, offering online classes and producing learning materials for other organisations. The programme is broadcast on BBC Alba (see below) and you can also watch all the episodes on Youtube.

BBC Alba offers broadcast TV primarily in Scots Gaelic with some excellent programmes.

Scots Gaelic Week (20-26 February)

Manchester Voices

 Manchester Voices is a fascinating research project run by a team from Manchester Metropolitan University. The project explores the accents, dialects and identities of people from Manchester in the North-west of England. 

The team identified four distinct Greater Manchester dialects - ‘Manc’, ‘Lancashire’, ‘Wigan’ and ‘posh’. Most people would probably say I have a 'posh' accent (and many people tell me I do sound posh), but really I have a Lancashire accent (posh Lancashire?). Of course, my accent has been affected by living in Edinburgh for over 30 years!

There's lots to explore on the Manchester Voices website! You may also be interested in the following articles about the project:

D'you know what I mean? article in the Mancunian Way newsletter

Vocal Pride on the Manchester Metropolitan University website

A permanent exhibition of Manchester Voices will be found in the city's central library.

How International is the English Language?

I'm used to rejection. It's part of life being a writer and in fact I can see a lot of value in the 'aim for 100 rejections in a year' idea. However, the best rejections offer constructive criticism or are neutral in tone. Today I received a really rude rejection from an American editor who suggested that though 'people in Scotland may speak like that' people in America would not want to read it.

Now I accept that there may be good reasons that my story didn't get included in the anthology in question but this is not a good reason. 

The characters are Scottish, the setting is Scotland, sometime in the medium future. There are three styles of speaking in the story, there are those who speak an urban Scots-influenced English, those who speak a Western Isles style of English influenced by the rhythms of Gaelic (the first language of many people in those islands) and there is a character who speaks a very careful English because it's his second language and he doesn't want to make errors. All the ways of speaking are slightly different than they are now, because, well it's the future and language changes.

I haven't included swear words or particularly obscure Scots words and I've kept all elements of Scots in the dialogue, rather than in the narrative. To my eye, all the characters speak a readable form of English, with some influences from Scots and the rhythms of Gaelic. This makes the characters more individual and adds authenticity to the story. After all, people in Scotland don't actually speak like Americans and I certainly don't want to think that in the medium future, we'll all have, like, American accents.

Why shouldn't Americans want to read this? After all, Scottish cinemas show loads of American films and we have to listen to accents and dialects from across the States. I can't imagine a British editor would tell an American writer that they couldn't accept a story set in America because the characters sound too American!

People have different ways of speaking and reflecting that in fiction is surely a positive not a negative.

Last chance to vote for your favourite Scots word!

The Scottish Book Trust are asking people to vote for their favourite Scots word!

You can see the shortlist and vote here!

Finding the Right Words

Gumusservi

on the beach
I watch moonlight
liquid silver
on the waves

Altjiranga mitjina

the eternal ocean of dreams

Razblyuto

sea breezes carry away
the last pain of
an impossible love

Ichigo-ichie

I will treasure this moment
perfect it in my memory.



Glossary:
Gumusservi (Turkish) moonlight shining on water

Altjiranga mitjina (Aranda, Australia) the timeless dimensions of dreams

Razblyuto (Russian) The feeling for someone once but no longer loved

Ichigo-ichie (Japanese) the practice of treasuring each moment and trying to make it perfect.


Originally posted in October 2006 for Poetry Thursday - theme - Be Inspired by newspapers.

I wrote this poem in response to the article: Lost in Translation G2, Guardian, 9 October 2006. The words from other languages and their definititions are taken from the article.

An earlier poem on this blog was also written in response to a newspaper article - Tarragona Widow. 

And over on Crafty Green Poe4t, I've reposted another old poem, you can read it here. 

International Women's Day - Girl, Lady, Woman

Happy International Women's Day! To mark the occasion I'm reposting my thoughts (again) about the use of the words girl and woman from a year or so back.

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I'm a woman and resent being referred to as a girl.

In my mind a girl is a female under 16, a young girl is a girl under 12 and a little girl is a girl under 5 or a girl under 12 of particularly small stature.

Some people say calling adult women girls doesn't matter, but think about it, would you call a male work colleague a boy? If you would then maybe it's fair enough to call your female work colleagues girls, but I'm guessing that most people refer to their male work colleagues as men (or possibly guys) and so should refer to their female work colleagues as women. I've only ever met one man who has ever referred to his male colleages as boys.

There's a time and a place of course to use the word girls - 'Girl's night out' for example, but in that case it's a choice made by a group of women to refer to themselves as girls and is directly equivalent to the use of 'Boy's Night Out'.

Using the word girl to refer to adult women is just another symptom of the increasing sexism of today's society and it tends to infantalise women. The word 'Girlpower' is an attempt to reclaim the word girl from it's infantalising useage.

Sometimes I think focussing on the use of words can detract from the issues. For example news articles sometimes obsessively analyse a politician's use of one word or phrase on one occasion while the issue behind the words isn't touched. However, the use of 'girls' to refer to women is still so persistant I feel it undermines a lot of the work done by feminism to move towards the equality of women and men.

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You may also be interested in my blogpost about women's health 'Our Ovaries Ourselves'. 

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It's great to see Poetry24 devoting the whole day to poetry for International Women's Day!

Polish for Beginners

I always thought you were Polish
with your exotic blonde beauty
so I polished my few phrases of that language.
You never know when it might be useful.

The day after I overheard you had gone
home to a country that is not Poland
I was in a bar speaking Polish
with some old drunk who said
he thought I was an angel.


originally published in Poetry Scotland and first posted on this blog ten years ago.

Meanwhile over on Crafty Green Poet, you have a 2nd chance to read my poem Windmills! 

The Ball's in Your Court - Learning a Foreign Language e-book

This short guide is intended to inspire and direct your language learning. Covering topics including learning styles, the origin of languages and the importance of learning about culture alongside language, this is an energising read for anyone learning or thinking of learning a language.

The book usefully helps the reader to identify and overcome their own barriers to language learning, whether lack of self confidence or difficulties with hearing spoken languages. It also helps you decide whether you would be better learning in a classroom (and if so, how to find a good teacher) or by yourself with books and tapes and how much time you can afford to devote to your studies. It goes into some detail on selecting learning materials (including recommending some individual programmes. It also offers some useful techniques for learning and using a foreign language - including circumlocution (rephrasing what you want to say to avoid coming up against words you don't know) It offers suggestions for how to build up your fluency, including suggesting reading a magazine of interest to you (for example, I read the Italian version of Focus magazine, which not only helps me develop my understanding of Italian but also gives me plenty of genuinely interesting articles, many of which are about science.)

The Ball in the title of the book, refers to BALL, an acronym gor Brain Activated Language Learning.

Though by the end of this book you won't have learnt a new language, you will have your mind thinking about how best to go about it. Which is a very important place to start.

The Ball's in Your Court - Learning a Foreign Language by Aurelia McNeil is available here. 

Disclaimer  - I recieved a free review copy of this e-book. 

The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg

Subtitled the Biography of a Language, this brilliant book traces the development of the English language from it's earliest days as a dialect of an obscure tribe in northern Europe to its current day status as global language.

Bragg is excellent at weaving the history of the language in with all the strands of history around it. He traces for example how English more or less went into hiding during the French speaking days after the Norman conquest and how the adventurous nature of the American Wild West lead to an adventurous period of development in the English language. He explores how the use of English changed church history in the British Isles and how Shakespeare changed the language forever.

He looks at different Englishes spoken throughout the world, including Australian English, Indian English and American Englishes as well as the pidgins and creoles that have developed particularly against a background of slavery where people with various different native languages would try to create something mutually comprehensible from a common (though poorly known) language. Also the way that English has affected the other languages it has come into contact with.

I felt the book cound have benefited from a section about the forms of English spoken in Africa and that in general most sections of the book could have been extended. I just found it totally fascinating and wanted to find out even more about this amazing language we speak! 

So anyone who's interested in the English language, how it's developed and ow it fits into the general history of the English speaking world, should read this book.

The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg published by Hodder and Staughton .

Le Ton beau de Marot by Douglas R Hofstadter

This is a huge and brilliant book about poetry, translation, understanding and artificial intelligence that I can't begin to do justice to in my typical short review!

The main chapters of the book look at ideas around translation, particularly the essential untranslateability of certain words and phrases and with a large section on humour. Hofstadter also examines the history and development of artificial intelligence and mechanical translation programmes.

These main chapters are interwoven with multiple translations, by multiple writers of Ma Mignonne a poem by the old French poet Clement Marot. It could feel that this element of the book is overdone, but I found the comparisons between translations to be fascinating (it was also particularly instructive to see translations here made by mechanical translation programmes!). Many of the translations are really 'versions of' Ma Mignonne, or even 'poems inspired by' Ma Mignonne, which leads into discussions about how faithful a translation needs to be.

The penultimate chapter annoyed me. Hofstadter rants against modern poetry, and although I agreed with much of what he says he seems to entirely forget that rhyme wasn't often found in English language poetry before it was introduced from Italy!

The whole book is thought provoking, entertaining and insightful, recommended reading for anyone interested in poetry or translation. (And despite the title, it is in English (except for a few poems and phrases!).

Le Ton beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter published by Bloomsbury

I reviewed this for Brighton Blogger's 2012 Reading Challenge.

Wrap yourself in poetry

When I was in Malawi I discovered the wonderful world of kanga textiles. These are the cloths that women tie round their waists for everyday wear in several countries across East Africa. The word kanga is a Swahili word, in Chichewa, the first language of Malawi a kanga is known as a chitenje (plural zitenje). Kanga traditionally have proverbs printed on them, usually in Swahili. Given that Swahili isn't spoken in Malawi, I never worked out what most of my zitenje say! (Most zitenje are printed in Swahili, though some, commemorating national events are printed in Chichewa).

I have several zitenje, which I use nowadays mostly as tablecloths (see photo).

I recently found this wonderful article about kanga. You may also like this video of women modelling the kanga and reciting some of the proverbs from kanga.

Inspiration from Helen Keller

I've always been amazed by the achievements of Helen Keller, who lost her hearing and sight at 19 months and didn't start to learn to communicate properly until she was about 7 or 8. Her name has come up several times recently in things I've been reading and so I looked up more about her. You can read her life story and letters from her equally amazing teacher Anne Sullivan here. There's a lot of reading on that webpage but it is totally inspiring!

Not only is Helen Keller's story amazing in itself but her account and those of Anne Sullivan say so much about language acquisition, the importance of reading, natural approaches to education and joy for living - Keller seemed to always be enthralled by the world around her.

Helen Keller was entirely deaf and blind yet could speak English, French and German. She could communicate using a touch based sign language; by morse code or by touching people's lips as they spoke. She could read English, French and German in Braille and in text with embossed letters. Her writing was elegant and well constructed (which really gives the lie to those who say that deaf people can't learn to write properly, though of course some can't). She had a voice that some people found difficult to understand, but was well respected as a speechmaker and campaigner.

She became a renowned campaigner for disabled people's rights and for human rights in general. A totally inspirational woman!

Scots and the Census

We received our census form today. One of the new questions on the Scottish Census is a language question, asking whether you understand / speak / read / write in English / Scottish Gaelic / Scots.

As an English person living in an area of Scotland where there is no real Gaelic speaking community, I can confidently state that no I don't read, write, speak or understand more than the very occasional word in that language and I don't feel that there is enough real opportunity to develop lasting skills in it either, though I do occasionally think about doing a beginner's course.

Scots is more difficult. I definitely read Scots, I've just read Hugh MacDairmid's Selected Poems and I regularly read poetry and novels in Scots. I may not understand every word and I get inordinately irritated by people who write in what they claim is Scots but is just a variant spelling of English without actually including any Scots words but I'd be lying to say I don't read Scots. I understand spoken Scots a lot of the time, but give me an Aberdonian with a thick accent and I'd probably not understand a word, but still, I think in general I do understand. Though fingers crossed the Scottish Government won't send a Aberdonian with a thick accent round to check up on my understanding after the census results have been collated. I definitely don't write Scots, apart from the occasional word such as 'dippit' in emails to Scottish friends. The big question is do I speak Scots? Now leaving aside the absurdity of speaking Scots with a Manchester accent, I probably don't, but it depends on who I'm with, and I can pepper my conversation with a good few Scots words other than dippit when I want to, I have also picked up quite a Scots intonation in my speech. I guess I've until Sunday to decide whether or not I speak Scots? Probably not, probably not. Though perhaps I could if I chose to, does that count?

Chichewa - the language of Malawi

Prompted by a conversation I had on Twitter, I thought I would share some of the phrases of Chichewa that I still remember twenty years after leaving Malawi.

Chichewa is the main language spoken in Malawi (along with around 11 other native languages, plus English), though as Chinyanja it is also spoken in Zambia and other parts of southern Africa, apparently it is the third largest African language in Zimbabwe. Chichewa is a Bantu language. There is a basic phrase book here.

So, here are the phrases that I most remember and am likely to still throw into conversation (!):

Zikomo - thank you, excuse me, watch out
Osoandola - don't worry
Chabwino - okay
Tikupita - let's go
Tsalani bwino - stay well
Pepani - sorry
Sindikufuna - I don't want

I don't have much opportunity to use Chichewa in Scotland (so I'm unlikely to develop my skills, despite my Chichewa book!) but I have occasionally spoken a wee bit with Malawians I've met over here and I did once get involved in a Swahili conversation because of the similarity of some words with Chichewa.

Anyone else remember bits of a language you used to speak a long time ago or from a country you lived in or visited?

the last speaker
of a dead language -
old parrot