‘Cosagach’ query

It is surely beyond parody that Visitscotland chose a word to imitate the Danish “hygge” from Gaelic that even Gaelic speakers do not recognise or understand.

At a glance, the invented word seems to be a sort of Gaelicisation of “cosy”, but surely, the point of using words is that people understand them? Perhaps, though, I am missing the point. The whole aim of this is, I am quite certain, to make a point that Gaelic is “Scotland’s language” rather than being a minor language spoken by a very small number of Scots, rather as a very small number of Belgians speak German.

I have an idea. Because Scotland is cold at this time of year and the basic idea behind the daft “Cosagach” campaign is to illustrate how nice it is to be somewhere warm and dry, with a fire crackling merrily in the background and a glass of something warming to hand, how about having a “cosy campaign”?

The advantage is that “cosy” is a nice... um... cosy sort of word.

I’ll tell you what – as it is a word that people understand and that has a nice warm definition, why not use it instead of incomprehensible words which are meaningless even to the people who speak the language that it purports to come from?

ANDREW H N GRAY Craiglea Drive, Edinburgh