Learning Gaelic? It feels a bit foreign to most of us

THERE is a beautifully observed scene in John Byrne’s TV drama Tutti Frutti which I would commend to Deputy First Minister John Swinney. Several bleary-eyed members of Glasgow band The Majestics are gathered in a B&B somewhere in the Western Isles as Padraig Post, Gaeldom’s Postman Pat, does his morning rounds on the TV.

They stare uncomprehendingly. The voiceover has an unmistakably Scottish lilt – yet, perplexingly, they cannot follow a word of it.

‘Why are they talking funny?’ asks one, finally.

‘Ach, ’cos it’s for the weans,’ concludes his bandmate.

John Swinney and others who claim that too many Scots harbour ‘hostility’ towards the Gaelic language can watch this scene on YouTube and, if they like, cite it as evidence of what they are talking about. Certainly it is the worst example of Gaelic-bashing I can think of, although it is possible more injurious remarks are heard in some of the really rough anti-Gaelic bars.

Filmed 30 years ago, the scene still resonates because our relationship with Scotland’s second language has not really changed. Most of us still have no clue how to speak it. Most of us, nevertheless, are gratified by its survival and currency as a native tongue, even if it is only in sparsely populated pockets.

Most of us wish the language and its speakers well going forward, even if most of us have no particular desire to be any more conversant with Gaelic than we already are.

In short, Gaelic and most of us? We’re cool.

Culture

Unless, of course, you subscribe to that Scottish Nationalist worldview which persists in conflating criticism of SNP policy with criticism of the thing the policy concerns. You don’t want an independent Scotland? You’re anti-Scottish. You’re not in favour of a Scottish Six? You’re against Scottish news. You question the Scottish Government’s wisdom in spending an extra £700,000 on Glasgow’s two Gaelic schools and promoting the language across Scotland whether it was once spoken there or not? You are hostile to Gaelic.

There are excellent reasons why I am writing this column in English. Having grown up in Aberdeen and St Andrews it is the language I am best at and, by happy happenstance, the language most readers in Scotland are best at too.

There are similar excellent reasons why Mr Swinney spoke in English this week at the Royal National Mod as he castigated supposed ‘opponents’ of Gaelic and announced that more taxpayers’ money would be spent on the promotion of a tongue used daily by barely 1 per cent of us.

He is from Edinburgh. English is his best language too.

Gaelic was as much part of his culture when he was growing up in Edinburgh as it was part of mine further up the east coast. That is to say it hardly figured at all. This was not an oversight by the schools or our parents or politicians. It was a reflection of the fact these were not Gaelic-speaking areas. Never had been.

What is it, then, with the obsessional zeal for peddling Gaelic in places with no historical association with the language? To ask the question at all is, as we have discussed, to sign up in blood to the antiGaelic lobby and pray nightly for the tongue’s demise in a vat of anthrax.

But we must steel ourselves to the shrieks of outrage as we wonder whether we need Gaelic signage in railway stations such as Obar Bhrothaig, Drochaid an Easbaig and Cille Bhrìghde an Ear.

It is not as if there is a Gaelic speaker who fails to understand the names Arbroath, Bishopbriggs and East Kilbride.

Why do Gaelic words clutter up road signs in areas with no Gaelic-speaking tradition? What are they doing on Police Scotland’s helicopter livery?

Why, they are even introducing Gaelic-speaking teddy bears at Aberdeenshire nurseries. The explanation for the SNP’s obsession with Gaelic is as insidious as it is simple. Gaelic is our language, one to which our neighbours across the Border can lay no claim. English is theirs. Just look at what they called it.

If we are to establish a political philosophy which seeks to divide the English and the Scots then it must accentuate the divisions wherever they are to be found.

Myth

Hence the romantic narrative of our wee bit hill and glen with its distinct identity, separate traditions – and its own language – completely subsumed by our impervious neighbour.

In promoting Gaelic in areas with no prior association with the language, the SNP seeks to instil the myth of separateness in credulous Scots.

Indeed, isn’t there a whiff of totalitarian strategising in the hard-sell of the Gaelic lie to the very young? You and I may be lost causes, but tap into children’s inner Gael early enough and they’ll be true believers for life.

Please, let no one stand in the way of anyone anywhere who wants to learn Gaelic. Let us keep the language alive if at all we can. But let us also understand our motivations.

It would be nice, too, if some money were spent on helping us with our English. Large swathes of the Scottish population do not know how to spell the word definitely. You can tell they don’t know how to spell it because when they are saying it they put the stress on the third syllable, which is the one they don’t know how to spell.

People who are so certain of things that they say ‘definitely’ all the time would get on better if they knew how to write it down.

Scotland groans with educated people who think the past participle of the verb ‘lead’ is ‘lead’ – only pronounced like the soft metal rather than the dog chain. There are Scottish policymakers (not Mr Swinney, of course) who think ‘your’ and ‘you are’ are synonymous.

It may not sit well with separatists, but our native tongue is English. Isn’t basic competency in that the priority?