So, I now have a claim to fame: I was taught Gaelic by a famous (to be, I’m sure) recording artist )

Fred

By the way, Hindi has no “have” either, just like Gaelic. But it does encode for inalienable possession (arms, legs, brothers, sisters etc) versus alienable possession (books, computers, yesterday’s newspaper and so on). Not quite sure what that proves, but I thought you’d be interested…

In practical terms, to the simple question “Is Gaelic an indigenous language?”, the answer has to be ‘yes’, in that it’s _an_ indigenous language going back many centuries. However, a linguist friend of mine says that Gaelic came from Irish invaders/settlers (take your pick) who colonised the Highlands & Islands. He takes the piss out of reactionary (as opposed to progressive) Scottish nationalists who proudly proclaim “Alba gu bràth” and flaunt their often pidgin Gaelic by accusing them of speaking the language of the oppressor, and that a true Scot should be speaking Pictish

Ok, a rhetorical point, but as you point out, where do you stop in deciding what is/was a country or region’s ‘indigenous language’? To which the answer has to be, ‘whereever it suits your ideological purpose’. Gaelic has a good press and is flavour of the decade in Scotland, going hand in hand (or so it seems to this outside but Albaphile observer) with the relatively progressive and inclusive nature of currently dominant Scottish nationalism. However, as you make clear, Gaelic and the Gaels haven’t always been touch-feely Earth Mother types, and have plenty of blood on their hands. It’s not unlikely that, were dominant nationalism to take a more defensive and right-wing course (perhaps sparked by economic, political or even military conflict with its barbarian neighbour to the South), Gaelic heritage would be used to bolster a reactionary, perhaps even neo-fascist ‘purity’ agenda.

To be honest, you could write whole books on this topic, and indeed yer man Alistair MacIntosh, who’s commented above, has (a bit spiritual for my tastes, Alistair, but many of your points are well taken). And I don’t think you’d ever get anywhere by forensically dissecting history and spinning it to fit one or more ideologies – IMO all that does is give legitimacy to reactionary projects which use historical nostalgia to fit backward agendas. What’s preferable, I think, is to look forward to the future of Gaelic as one of many indigenous languages (Scots and Doric come to mind, maybe Norse if you’re up in the NE), and to see it as a useful bulwark against the linguistic and cultural imperialism of English. (Indeed, I remember seeing a flyer up in Uist, I think, claiming that learning Gaelic is an anti-capitalist project against corporate culture.)

This might sound a bit Blairite, a bit ‘let’s move on’, but that’s definitely not what I’m trying to say. History and linguistics are important to a culture, but go OTT and you really do end up wallowing in the past. I’m half-Irish and can see that the Irish can be guilty of this, using folk memories of Cromwell and the Famine to stoke up anti-English feeling and buttress backward Irish nationalism to reinforce ruling class power. The half-Brit side of me sees reactionary English nationalism on a very alarming rise, and that’s buttressed by a deeply selective reading of history, going as far as revisionism on the British Empire (which yer man Brown was guilty of not so long back). As you point out, the white supremacists of the far, and sadly not so far, Right in Ingerlan actively appropriate the ‘indigenous rights’ language used so effectively by progressive liberation movements elsewhere, to promote their reactionary ‘purity’ agenda and return to a mythical whites-only state.

Sorry, I’m banging on, wanting to fit too much into too small a space. This topic really does deserve a larger debate space, and with respect to Gràisg (nice handle )), a debate carried out in English and Gaelic, as it affects us all, not only Gaels.

On the issue of languages encapsulating values, that’s something I’ve wanted to write a blog entry about for a while but just haven’t had the time. That cultural norms and practical realities (all those Scots words for ‘rain’, for a start ) are encoded in a language is almost a truism. Static languages like English, French and German actively encode power relations and property rights, and it’s often difficult to talk in English of, for instance, propertyless egalitarianism, because the very language and its littering of direct possessives conspires against you – no wonder some wilder radicals take to inventing their own dialect! For me, learning Gaelic has been a revelation in this regard, as previously I spoke only English, Italian and French, all static languages – Gaelic is very clearly a dynamic language where things mutate according to context, and above all with no clear encoding of property and possession. The lack in Gaelic of the second-most important verb in a static language, ‘to have’, is a clear indication of that, as is the use of the genitive to encode ‘being a part of/being related to’. So “taigh Sheumais” means James’ house, not the house that James owns – he might own it, but equally might not, he just lives there. Or “a’ chlann aca” , which translated into English as ‘their children’ immediately infers ownership, but, to me at least as a mere learner of Gaelic, clearly means ‘the children who are of/with them’, without any ownership.

To me, one of the dominant cultural norms inherent in Gaelic is the lack of possession of things and land, and the relative lack of interpersonal power relations. That’s a partial view based on my libertarian Left beliefs I’m sure, and Celtic culture has hardly been an examplar of egalitarian anarchism in the past, but I think there’s something in it, as there is in your view that there’s an encoding of respect for nature in it.

Fred

Co-dhiù, tha mi airson fàilte a chur air a h-uile duine a tha leughadh seo bho Iomairtean Gàidhlig no Fòram na Gàidhlig, no làrach Gàidhlig eile. Ma tha beachdan eile agaibh mu na sgrìobh mi nach cuir sibh comment thugam – Gàidhlig no Beurla?

Agus mas e seo a’ chiad turas agaibh an seo, agus ùidh agaibh ann an cuspairean co-cheangailte, cuiribh sùil cuideachd air na ceanglaichean seo:

guthan nan eilean: background thinking
european award: a perspective on community languages

http://www.foramnagaidhlig.net/foram/viewtopic.php?t=1208

http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/wordlink/?sl=cr-Latn&url=http://cr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maskisin

Click on any word in the text in the left screen that you don’t know, and if there’s a dictionary entry for it it will appear in the right screen. Neat.