A Question for the Celticists

[pratishabda]

I've been working through Assimil Italian, and I think the method works well for me. I'll soon be at a point where I'll realistically be able to start learning another language. As always, there are lots of potential candidates!

Learning a Celtic language, particularly Irish or Scottish Gaelic, has been a dream of mine, but I never really got off the ground with any of the courses I have. However, Assimil has a (French-based) Breton course that might be a good intro to how Celtic languages tend to work, although I'm not sure how much of a discount it would give me on the Goidelic languages later.

When I was researching the course, I came across this thread on Unilang about the course. The meat is at the end of the third post: a native speaker's opinion of what standard Breton really is: a sort of artificial dialect that is a language of learners rather than native speakers, and that the relatively little media that exists for it is usually riddled with anglicisms/francisms and other errors.

Given that the situation for Breton is similar to some of the other Celtic languages, would you agree that that's also true for the ones you've learned? The issue of courses aside, it also makes me wonder how should you approach learning a Celtic language when its standard form is significantly different from the colloquial one/s?

[tarvos]

You learn the standard (they will understand you), or you pick one common standard and learn that. You adapt to the rest as you go.

[galaxyrocker]

Learning a Celtic language, particularly Irish or Scottish Gaelic, has been a dream of mine, but I never really got off the ground with any of the courses I have. However, Assimil has a (French-based) Breton course that might be a good intro to how Celtic languages tend to work, although I'm not sure how much of a discount it would give me on the Goidelic languages later.

I'm not sure how much Breton or Welsh would really help you learn Scottish Gaelic or Irish. They'd certainly teach you some features - verb first, inflected prepositions, etc. - but in general they're pretty different. More different than the Romance languages are.

When I was researching the course, I came across this thread on Unilang about the course. The meat is at the end of the third post: a native speaker's opinion of what standard Breton really is: a sort of artificial dialect that is a language of learners rather than native speakers, and that the relatively little media that exists for it is usually riddled with anglicisms/francisms and other errors.

Sadly this is very true when it comes to Breton. An Irish-speaking friend of mine is a linguist working with Breton and he complains about it all the time, and about how nobody seems to realize it. He even goes so far at times to view it as a new language, not a continuation of Breton in a normal evolutionary sense, since it wasn't changed by native speakers.

See the comment by Lughaidh here: http://www.irishlanguageforum.com/viewt ... lit=Breton

Given that the situation for Breton is similar to some of the other Celtic languages, would you agree that that's also true for the ones you've learned? The issue of courses aside, it also makes me wonder how should you approach learning a Celtic language when its standard form is significantly different from the colloquial one/s?

I have to say from my experience with Irish: Yes. The standard form for Irish was made by a bunch of non-native speakers, and really poorly reflects the living dialects (even including those that were alive at the time). It seemed they just randomly chose features for it, regardless of whether it was used in the majority or not. My own little joke is that they got drunk and threw darts at a map of Ireland to decide where to get a feature from! And, what was worse, for a long period of time dialectal features that didn't conform to the standard weren't allowed to be used on tests and such, causing a huge issue among native speakers thinking such things are incorrect (and don't even get me started on reducing the 'superfluous' spelling...). Basically, the Caighdeán was created for English speakers.

And, given that most people who do it learn Irish in the 'Gaelscoil', it's even-more English influenced, since they don't have enough teachers with a grasp of good Irish to point out all the learner's mistakes, and then people starting thinking that's 'good' Irish, though there's no reason a native speaker would say it that way.

I started learning Irish with a fairly standard view, but before I got too far into it I was able to spend time in a Gaeltacht area (Connemara) and learn it how they speak it. It also helped that when I returned my teacher was from the same Gaeltacht (only a few miles down the road, actually), so I kept asking for specifically Connacht forms. So I personally recommend picking a dialect and learning it, though a lot of people will wonder why. There's books available for each of them, but they're various levels of dialectal.

[Montmorency]

For what it's worth, Breton and Cornish are regarded as being closer together than, say, Breton and Welsh. Having said that, when I looked at an Assimil Breton course, I could see some similarities with Welsh in the written language (but not hear it in the spoken). OTOH, I've heard some audio Cornish lessons and could recognise similarities with Welsh.

But Cornish as we now know it is probably even more "artificial" than Breton.

Regarding the "standard" Irish, it is probably a similar situation to that of Literary and Biblical Welsh, which was indeed synthesised from different dialects and never represented the way anyone really spoke, and still doesn't, although a sort of more formalised version of the language - not quite literary Welsh - has been adopted by the media and for official uses. But no one should learn to speak that. As has been said for Irish: pick a dialect and learn to speak that. Then learn to read the formal and literary languages if you wish. But popular novels and blogs, etc, are often written in a representation of the spoken colloquial language, and are not the same as the literary or formal written language.

I would say at the present time, Welsh is still a genuinely living language, in the Welsh equivalent of the Gaeltacht, which is said to be gradually shrinking. In other areas, it's probably a bit of a spectrum of artificiality, as it faces on the one hand, an invasion of English loan words, but more seriously, English structures, and on the other hand pressure from schools and the media to impose a more standardised form of the language, which will always be to some extent artificial. Welsh-medium schools have to some extent stopped the rot that would otherwise have set in, but the future of Welsh is by no means guaranteed, and it could easily go either way in my opinion.

[pratishabda]

I've read often that while the Irish state has always at least nominally supported the Irish language, placing the burden for this upon the school system was a major mistake. In contrast, the use of Breton has been actively discouraged by the French government, so I was hopeful that things were a little better for Irish, at least. However, it sounds like the standard/dialect dilemma exists for learners of basically any Celtic language.

[William Camden]

All standard languages are artificial to some degree. I think that without a standard language, their situation would be even worse, because creating a standard form improves chances to teach a language as an L2 by making it easier to create learning resources. But inevitably L1 speakers will feel slighted if the standard does not resemble their own dialect. Yet if you don't standardise, you will have five or ten Gaelics, five or ten Irishes, or five or ten Welshes.
Although not a Celtic language, I remember once showing a written text in Basque to a Basque, and he was quite scathing about it because it was not Basque as he knew it. It was presumably written by a Basque from a different region from himself.

[Brian]

I've lived all my life in Scotland and travelled extensively around the country but I've never heard Gaelic spoken openly on the streets as a community language. I think you'd have to go to the Hebridean Islands to experience that. On the mainland, I believe the language has retreated to remote communities, although I have heard snippets spoken in larger towns like Oban and Fort William - mainly by older people.

In total contrast, I heard people of all ages speaking Welsh while out and about on the Island of Anglesey and the north-western town of Caernarfon. This included teenagers chatting at a bus stop and a young child playing on the beach. The language really does seem to be used across the spectrum in everyday life, although I guess that only applies to certain parts of Wales. Having said that, I've also heard Welsh spoken in areas dominated by English speakers. In a shop in Machynlleth, I even witnessed a customer more or less demanding that she be served in Welsh (the proprietor was an English woman and she actually coped quite admirably). There seems to be some sense of pride in the language and a feeling of entitlement to use it - which is as it should be - whereas in Scotland I get the impression that the few native Gaelic speakers who are left are reluctant to use it outwith their immediate community and that it's something to be hidden away when venturing further afield.

Ireland is an interesting case in the sense that the state has officially promoted Irish for almost 100 years yet the number of true fluent speakers continues to decline sharply. Many Irish citizens will have some passive comprehension due to the language being a compulsory school subject but I also detect a feeling of resentment among some people that the Irish language was "forced down their throats" by school and state. Others will have nothing against the language, but no real desire to use it actively. Building respect for the language in a bottom-up fashion seems to be the best solution but how you do that when only tiny numbers of native speakers remain, I don't know.

[Montmorency]

I've lived all my life in Scotland and travelled extensively around the country but I've never heard Gaelic spoken openly on the streets as a community language. I think you'd have to go to the Hebridean Islands to experience that. On the mainland, I believe the language has retreated to remote communities, although I have heard snippets spoken in larger towns like Oban and Fort William - mainly by older people.

In total contrast, I heard people of all ages speaking Welsh while out and about on the Island of Anglesey and the north-western town of Caernarfon. This included teenagers chatting at a bus stop and a young child playing on the beach. The language really does seem to be used across the spectrum in everyday life, although I guess that only applies to certain parts of Wales. Having said that, I've also heard Welsh spoken in areas dominated by English speakers. In a shop in Machynlleth, I even witnessed a customer more or less demanding that she be served in Welsh (the proprietor was an English woman and she actually coped quite admirably). There seems to be some sense of pride in the language and a feeling of entitlement to use it - which is as it should be - whereas in Scotland I get the impression that the few native Gaelic speakers who are left are reluctant to use it outwith their immediate community and that it's something to be hidden away when venturing further afield.

Ireland is an interesting case in the sense that the state has officially promoted Irish for almost 100 years yet the number of true fluent speakers continues to decline sharply. Many Irish citizens will have some passive comprehension due to the language being a compulsory school subject but I also detect a feeling of resentment among some people that the Irish language was "forced down their throats" by school and state. Others will have nothing against the language, but no real desire to use it actively. Building respect for the language in a bottom-up fashion seems to be the best solution but how you do that when only tiny numbers of native speakers remain, I don't know.

I think you have correctly identified some of the strongest areas for Welsh in Wales. Generally speaking, I believe the counties of Gwynedd, Ynys Môn, Ceredigion, and Camarthenshire (Sir Gaerfyrddin) are reckoned to be the strongholds (although the percentage of speakers even there has gone down to what it was). On the other hand, if you want to speak Welsh, I believe you can find it if you look for it, even in places like Cardiff, which is not usually associated with the idea of Welsh speaking (outside of the BBC and the Welsh Assembly/Government). There is a new Welsh Language centre to be opened in January in Cardiff in what was the old library.

The Guardian recently published this:
http://www.theguardian.com/travel/short ... sh-reviews

Now I don't take the article seriously - it's a daily "joke" column, although to be fair, the Welsh they reproduced in it seemed accurate as far as I could tell. What is more worrying is some of the anti-Welsh comments. Have a look. They were balanced by opposing comments, but you can see that feeling is strong, in both directions. This is one reason why I think the future of Welsh is by no means secure, even though of course I wish it well.

[tarvos]

I spoke to one of my colleagues about the status of Basque here in Spain (I live in Cantabria which neighbours Viscaya (Bizkaia) and the Basque reason and I'm quite close to the border so occasionally you hear little Basque things creeping in - we say pinchos for tapas here). Apparently Basque was severely repressed during Franco's time and because you could only speak it at home, every valley had their own Basque dialect that wasn't intelligible to others. It was rekindled when Franco got ousted, but the unified Basque that is taught is artificial and resented by the older generations, who believe it doesn't reflect the way they speak. On the one hand, the unified Basque was necessary to keep Basque alive, but on the other hand, no one speaks like that...

It reminds me of Breton. Such things tend to be damaging...

[Alphathon]

I've lived all my life in Scotland and travelled extensively around the country but I've never heard Gaelic spoken openly on the streets as a community language. I think you'd have to go to the Hebridean Islands to experience that. On the mainland, I believe the language has retreated to remote communities, although I have heard snippets spoken in larger towns like Oban and Fort William - mainly by older people.

That's my experience as well. There's quite a nice map on Wikipedia showing percentages of speakers based on the 2011 census, and only parts of the Hebrides have >50% speakers, let alone those who speak it day-to-day, so that's not entirely surprising.

There isn't really a formalised, codified standard like the Irish Caighdeán Oifigiúil for Scottish Gaelic, or at least not one I'm aware of. The closest is probably the so-called Mid-Minch Gaelic, which is basically a levelled form of the surviving western-highland/Hebridean dialects and a natural result of mass media such as BBC Alba and Radio nan Gàidheal. I don't know if there's any ill-feeling towards it, and I think it's pretty much a descriptive term rather than a specific form. There are de facto written standards, but their only feature which I am aware of which natives are resistant to is the dropping of the acute accents by the SQA, and by extension many publishers, which is pretty reasonable in my opinion considering it was used to distinguish different sounds which could be made by certain vowels. Generally though, spelling is quite conservative. (Accents notwithstanding, it hasn't been "simplified" like Irish spelling.) I don't know how much, if at all, literary Gaelic differs from the spoken, although I suspect some classical features may be retained.

I don't honestly know how much Mid-Minch Gaelic differs from Gaelic as actually spoken by natives, but as I understand it most of the surviving Gaelic in Scotland form a single dialect group with some relatively small regional differences, and given that Mid-Minch is effectively a levelling of this dialect group it is probably pretty close to most the common forms. I certainly doubt that it's anywhere near as different as an Caighdeán Oifigiúil is to Irish dialects, since that covers far more diverse and geographically disconnected dialects, which as I understand it are about as different from each other as they are from Scottish Gaelic or Manx, or at least in the same ball park. (That they are considered the same language but Scottish Gaelic is not is probably more political than linguistic; although these days an Caighdeán Oifigiúil does act as a sort of Dachsprache for the Irish dialects, a few hundred years ago it was Classical Irish/Gaelic, which covered both countries. Manx is somewhat different since it has a quite different writing system. One could maybe think of there being 4 main Goidelic languages/dialects: Scottish Gaelic, Munster Irish, Connacht Irish and Ulster Irish; or 6 if you include an Caighdeán Oifigiúil and the semi-extinct Manx. Please feel free to correct me if I have the wrong end of the stick though as I'm by no means an expert.)

In total contrast, I heard people of all ages speaking Welsh while out and about on the Island of Anglesey and the north-western town of Caernarfon. This included teenagers chatting at a bus stop and a young child playing on the beach.

I've only been to Wales once, but I had a similar experience (in Denbighshire/Sir Ddinbych).