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#Scottish Gaelic
hairtusk · 10 months
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'Wool waulking is a traditional Scottish process of finishing and strengthening newly woven woolen fabrics. It is a significant social and cultural activity, often carried out by women in the Highlands of Scotland. The Gaelic songs that are sung during waulking have a distinctive rhythmic pattern that aids in synchronising the work.'
(Video and text via Inverness Outlanders)
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llyfrenfys · 8 months
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I'd like to preface this with that this is a screenshot of a post I saw a few days ago in the #welsh tag and that the OP has since deleted this post, but the sentiment is something I'd like to address since I see a lot of parallels with this kind of thinking in other contexts, such as in LGBTQIA+ rights conversations.
So, the most obvious elephant in the room is the idea that Welsh is super widely spoken in Wales now and that it isn't in as much danger as other Celtic languages. This idea is wishful thinking at best and erases the very real danger that Welsh is in and that it could be lost just as easily as Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Cornish (which is related to Welsh) actually did die out and has had to be revived. To make a metaphor out of this, we classify languages on a scale of non-threatened to endangered in a similar way to how we classify species.
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Here are the statuses of Welsh and Irish as of 2010 (above) and the statuses of Lions and Tigers (below).
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On paper tigers are more 'in danger' than lions. But that does not mean that lions are suddenly not in danger at all. The little bracket above CR, EN and VU labels all of these classifications as threatened. It isn't (and definitely shouldn't) be a competition of 'who is most in danger' because you do not want the thing you care about (whether it be a species or a language) to be in danger.
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To come back to the original screenshot "they* [Welsh speakers] have always had the means and the ways because the English didn't beat or slaughter them for speaking it"- on the most basic of levels, this is just incorrect. The Welsh Not was a wooden token hung around schoolchildren's necks if they spoke Welsh in school. If someone else spoke Welsh the Not would be hung around their neck. At the end of the school day, whoever was wearing the Not would be beaten and caned by their teachers. I needn't go into much detail but there have been concerted efforts to beat Welsh out of schoolchildren. With the lions vs tigers metaphor, making the claim Welsh speakers have never been beaten for speaking Welsh because they always had the means and ways, while Irish speakers were beaten and never had the means or ways is like claiming poachers have never shot lions, only tigers. Bottom line is, lions and tigers are both victim to poaching and both species have suffered as a result. Similarly, Welsh and Irish have both suffered language loss and both need conservation efforts in order to survive.
(*sidenote- the consistent use of 'them' and 'they' in the original post is definitely indicative of a 'us vs them' sentiment which is a deeply unhelpful attitude to have when it comes to endangered languages and the Celtic languages in particular)
I see parallels with LGBTQIA+ rights in this situation. When equal marriage came in for gay and lesbian couples in the UK in 2014, many allies began to act like gay rights had now been achieved and that gay issues had been done, they're solved. Except, they really weren't (and aren't). Progress has been made in Wales and undeniably Welsh is doing the best out of the living Celtic languages. But that doesn't mean Welsh has been saved or that full equality for Welsh speakers has been achieved. It very much hasn't. The sentiment of the post in the screenshot is not conducive to helping Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Putting down Welsh speakers and erasing Welsh-language history will not save Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Pretending Welsh has had it easy in some kind of lap of luxury is a deeply harmful and bogus claim.
I'll address the tags under the cut as this post is getting long.
To address the tags, personal feelings ≠ an accurate reading of a situation. Nor is it praxis, for that matter. Why is pride in Welsh different/less good than pride in Irish? Is it the assumed proximity to England? If so, that's a terrible claim to make. Not only that, but Scotland is also next to England- does that make pride in Scottish Gaelic the same as pride in Welsh according to this metric? It's a ludicrous thing to say and deeply insensitive to the needs of Scottish Gaelic and Welsh speakers, who cannot help any current or former proximity to England.
Additionally, proximity to England ≠ worse. I know it's a popular internet joke to hate on England because of English attempts to eradicate the Celtic languages, but when the joke becomes praxis, it does not help. England ≠ a place devoid of Celtic languages either. Many English counties near the Welsh border actually have communities of Welsh speakers, such as Oswestry (Croesoswallt) in Shropshire. Cornwall is also home to many speakers of revived Cornish. It does a disservice to Celtic speakers in England to insinuate that proximity to England taints or corrupts them somehow. This is how ethnonationalism starts and we ain't about that.
And "#it feels a little.... blehhhhh you were seen as sophisticated and english enough and you assimilated however the Irish and the Scots? #brutish animals that need to be culled". So, this is arguably one of the worst things to say about a Celtic language- or any threatened language in general. First of all, the 'you were seen as' - 'you' is very telling. The switch from 'them', 'they' to 'you' indicates that this sentiment is aimed at Welsh speakers directly. This was likely a subconscious thing that OP wasn't thinking about when they wrote this. But it does indicate unhealthy feelings of jealousy and bitterness unfairly directed at Welsh speakers, who are also struggling. This righteous anger at the decline of Irish and Scottish Gaelic would be better directed at efforts to help promote those languages- some useful things to get involved with are LearnGaelic, similar to DysguCymraeg but for Scottish Gaelic or supporting channels such as Irish channel TG4 by watching their programmes.
The idea that Welsh speakers were or are 'sophisticated and english enough' is insulting and carries with it a lot of baggage of how any of these assumptions came about. Welsh speakers were definitely not seen as sophisticated. Where Welsh was 'tolerated', it was treated as a curiosity, a relic of a bygone age. Classic museification which all Celtic languages and cultures suffer from as well. Welsh was not tolerated in any legal sense since 1535- with English becoming the only valid administrative language and the language of Welsh courts after England annexed Wales into its Kingdom. Monolingual Welsh speakers suddenly had no access to any legal representation, unless they learned English. This is no voluntary assimilation- it is an act of survival for many speakers of minoritised languages to 'assimilate' into the dominant culture, or else risk losing access to legal security and other kinds of infrastructure. You need only ask any non-native English speaker living in an Anglophone country what that process is like. Welsh people did not see English incursion as an opportunity to become 'sophisticated and english enough', they had to assimilate in order to survive.
The "Irish and the Scots? #brutish animals that need to be culled" is also painfully misrepresenting a very complex social and political process that unfolded over the span of hundreds of years. The phrasing itself of 'brutish animals that need to be culled' speaks to righteous anger at the damage done to these languages and cultures, but it reinforces negative stereotypes about the Irish and Scots themselves. It also is more complicated than a simple English hatred of anything non-Anglo, since the English conception of particularly the Irish changed a lot over the centuries. It was (and still is) rarely consistent with itself. See: the enemy is both strong and weak. The very earliest Celticists were by and large, Anglos or French.
Ernest Renan (1823-1892) for example, was an early French Celticist who published La Poésie des races celtiques (Poetry of the Celtic Races- English translation) in which he says:
"... we must search for the explanation of the chief features of the Celtic character. It has all the failings, and all the good qualities, of the solitary man; at once proud and timid, strong in feeling and feeble in action, at home free and unreserved, to the outside world awkward and embarrassed. It distrusts the foreigner, because it sees in him a being more refined than itself, who abuses its simplicity. Indifferent to the admiration of others, it asks only one thing, that it should be left to itself. It is before all else a domestic race, fitted for family life and fireside joys. In no other race has the bond of blood been stronger, or has it created more duties, or attached man to his fellow with so much breadth and depth"
Yeah. This guy (unsurprisingly) was a white supremacist. Note that this sentiment is being applied to all people considered Celtic by Renan- Irish, Welsh, Breton, Scottish, Cornish, Manx etc. None unscathed by the celtophobia of the day. In this period, Celticity was romanticised (yet disparaged at the same time). It is less 'brutish animals' and more 'archaic, time-frozen peoples' in this period. Of course, 'brutish animals' attitudes towards Celticity did still exist, but it is disingenuous to act as if it was this attitude alone which drove English celtophobia. Like many things, it is always more complicated and never clear cut as it might seem.
I'll bring this to a close shortly, but returning to OP's suggestion that the Welsh assimilated and the Scots and Irish did not, is also incorrect in that some Scots did have to assimilate to survive as well. The Statutes of Iona (1609) required Scottish Gaelic speaking Highland chiefs to send their sons away to be educated in Scots and/or English in Protestant schools. Many did as the statutes required, which led to further language loss in the Highlands of Scottish Gaelic. These are acts of survival- and not ones always taken willingly.
This has been a long post but it's one which I felt I wanted to address. There's no need for infighting between speakers of Celtic languages over who has it worse. There isn't any answer to that question, nor is it a good use of time or energy. All in all, the Celtic languages have suffered greatly over the years and its only just now that some of them are turning a corner. If you care about these languages, put your energy into something good. Only through active work will these languages be saved for generations to come.
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wordsmithic · 5 months
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I don't like this for so many reasons. Anglophone (usually USAmerican) writers often take foreign words and misrepresent them in their books, misinforming a whole new wave of readers in the process. They regularly do this with Greek as well. These languages haven't resisted assimilation and suppression so they can be used as USAmerican accessories in 2023.
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ayeforscotland · 4 months
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Very cool.
Article here
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yvanspijk · 6 months
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Ancient Greek híppos, Latin equus, Irish each, and Icelandic jór all mean 'horse', and Spanish yegua and Romanian iapă mean 'mare'. They're very different, yet they ultimately stem from the same Proto-Indo-European word. They drifted apart due to the sound changes they underwent.
What would their modern English, German, Dutch, French and Italian cognates look like if they had survived? I tell about it on my Patreon.
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snifferish · 4 months
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I have a very hard time learning languages, (probably linked to my in general communication issues lol)
But I’m finally committing to learning Scottish Gaelic and I’m super excited!
I know a few words and some terms of endearment from growing up around my dad but I’m so excited to learn more. Languages are so beautiful.
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elaho · 1 year
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Elliott’s Immersive Wedding Mod v.2.0.0 is now up and ready to play!
Explore 3 new wedding day events with Elliott, including a wedding reception hosted at the Stardrop Saloon, as well as 2 intimate events with Elliott at home (PG - PG 13) in between events, and much more!
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This new update also features new sprites and portraits based off my other mod, Elliott Scottish Wedding Kilt, as well as edited marriage dialogue with a little Scottish Gaelic affection sprinkled in. 
Your choices in-game will affect your relationship with Elliott, as well as open up different opportunities for new events, revealing vanilla-based character growth for Elliott throughout your time together in Pelican Town. 
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More about this mod:
Elliott is an ISFP who is quirky, grandiose, and romantic but also largely misunderstood by others. In the beginning, his superficial traits tend to rub people the wrong way (melodramatic, vain, and “life-is-a-stage” type attitude) but getting to know and befriend him over the course of the game, we come to see him as a deeply passionate and highly motivated person, who is unapologetically true to himself and his values, despite the odds and adversity. Throughout your friendship, you see Elliott come out of his shell more and engage with the others around him, despite his history of rejection and discouragement. 
Though much of his personal growth can be seen through heart events, dialogue, (and stalking him around town), I wanted to delve deeper into his character and explore how his choice to move to Pelican Town has shaped his personal growth, including his relationship with others in town - and most importantly - his relationship with the farmer, from friendship to marriage.
Enjoy playing! <3 -Elaho
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inthefaceofadaffodil · 8 months
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ngl I was considering reading Fourth Wing but after seeing a tiktok by a Gaelic speaker saying that the author throws in random Scottish Gaelic for the names of things because it sounds “fantasy-esque” presumably without consulting anyone who actually speaks the language so some of it doesn’t actually make any sense and the audiobook butchers the pronunciation has put me right off. Anyways here’s her caption because quite frankly some of you need to read it.
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kaizey · 6 months
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The number of americans and non-gaelic speakers saying that its either over-reaction at how many of us are taken aback by this, or feel "vindicated" that their pronounciation was right all along, just know; This has now overtaken the actual, irish and scottish gaelic pronounciation resources
This is not over-reacting, its a legitamite justified response to another example of some american cunt team deciding that instead of being faithful to a culture a media is borrowing from and exposing new people to it, they bastardise a term, and now, god knows how many people are going think the mispronounciation is real, and will feel justified in future ignorance when exposed to our languages
The original japanese is actually accurate. Thisis literally just another case of yankee localisers deciding to fuck with another aspect of gaelic folklore and language to be palatable for monolglots and anglophones. This is another small thing in the pile of small things thats made Gaelic of any variety viewed as either a joke, "broken" english or just gibberish by outsiders. When so many of us who speak our mother tongue have to constantly deal with yanks and brits boosting incorrect info and whitewashing actual aspects of our folklore that people might actually find interesting
Its "Kat-shee", or "Ke-at-shee"
Ar son Dé. Le do thoil. Stop é seo a dhéanamh.
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wildflowergirlie · 16 days
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I love being in a large fandom because on a whim I decided to see if there were any fics (like at all) in Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig), and the first one is a freaking wolfstar fic. like what are the odds?
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harkthorn · 7 months
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There was a whole lesson in Duo with sentences like this, and (what remains of the discussion threads) were full of comments like "lmfao" "amazing" etc, so I went looking-
Imagine being such a nob a language course dedicates a lesson to dunking on you!
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meichenxi · 1 year
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Speakers of non-English languages of the UK and Ireland wanted!!
Since it’s World Mother Language Day today (February the 21st), I’m thinking of doing a series of posts on the native non-English languages of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with some information and short interviews. 
For this, I am looking for both native speakers/signers and learners (with or without parentage/heritage of the language in question) of the following languages:
- Scottish Gaelic
- Irish
- Welsh
- Any sign language of the United Kingdom or Ireland (e.g. BSL)
- Any other minority language indigenous to the United Kingdom or Ireland. By this I mean primarily spoken only within the UK or Ireland as a minority, or spoken very little elsewhere. For example: Cornish, Manx, Shelta, or Anglo-Romani, not languages like Polish or Bengali that are minority within the UK but have a significant speaker base elsewhere. (I am aware that I am fishing for some of these *cough* Cornish *cough*...but you never know!)
- Any language or variety that you speak that you feel is linguistically / culturally distinct from Standard English that you would like to inform more people about. For example: Shetlandic, Scots, Ulster Scots. 
I don’t have anything finalised yet, but if you would be wiling to speak to me about some text-based interviews for the sake of qualitative and informative tumblr posts, please send me a message!
(NB: if I have used any names of languages that are not preferred, tell me and I will change them. I don’t know a lot about the non-Celtic and non-Germanic languages here, which is part of my reason for wanting to make this series of posts in the first place.)
Please reblog so more people see this!
- meichenxi
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llyfrenfys · 3 months
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I'm making my opposition to the proposal to severely reduce language provision at the University of Aberdeen known - Scottish Gaelic, an endangered Celtic langauge, is one of the languages at risk of being cut. This would do immense damage to the language revitalisation effort. @uniofaberdeen must reverse this decision and commit to protecting Gaelic and other languages in their institution.
If you feel the same way, you're encouraged to make more posts and stories about the issue to show the University of Aberdeen just how much this decision is frowned upon. Use the hashtag #saveuoalanguages in your posts to get the word out about this.
I'll be travelling tomorrow and wish I could do more right now. But together we can make it known just how unpopular this decision is.
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ukfrislandembassy · 8 months
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Scottish Gaelic throws up some interesting challenges to Anglo-centric assumptions about word class and syntactic structure sometimes. A few months ago I came across this sentence in a corpus: Theabas mo bhàthadh.
Translated into English this means 'I almost drowned'. So straightforward enough right?
But no! When you actually do the morphological analysis, you realise that the structure of the Gaelic assigns all the 'wrong' word classes (to an English speaker) to the various lexical meanings.
Starting with what in English is the predicate, 'drown'. In the Gaelic this is whay they call in the Celtic literature a 'verbnoun', a kind of masdar form which shows a lot of nominal properties. The verb root in this case would be bàth 'drown'.
One of the nominal properties of verbnouns is that they take an argument in the genitive, sometimes the direct object, or in this case the subject mo 'my' (versus the non-possessive form mi 'I, me'), which also triggers lenition on the possessed, hence mo bhàthadh.
Now for the real head scratcher. The first element in this clause is theabas. This is a verb, meaning basically 'to almost happen', which only occurs in the past tense. By itself the root is theab, but here we seen an additional -as suffix. What's that? Well it's an archaic form of the past tense impersonal, which would normally be -adh (and I've come across a couple of examples of theabadh too). So this means that there was an erstwhile subject that has been demoted and an object raised in its place, and in this case the only conclusion that can be drawn is that this subject was the firsr person singular mi, now expressee as a possessive pronoun modifying the erstwhile object, the verbnoun bàthadh.
So to spell that out, compared to the English translation we find a finite verb instead of an adverb, a possessive pronoun instead of a subject pronoun and a verbnoun (in subject position!) instead of a finite verb.
If you want more examples search for theabas at Corpas na Gàidhlig.
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Because people keep reblogging my shit and tagging it "Irish"
Íf thé áccénts gó thís wáy ít's Írísh
Ìf thèy gò thìs wày ìt's Scòttìsh Gàèlìc
Also Irish underwent spelling reforms a while back which removed a lot of silent consonants, while Gaelic did not
Eg: oíche vs oidhche (night), rí vs rìgh (King), sú vs sùgh (juice)
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yvanspijk · 4 months
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The word tooth is a remnant of an ancient present participle meaning 'biting'. It is etymologically related to French dent, German Zahn, Irish déad, Ancient Greek odṓn, and Sanskrit dán. These words all stem from the same Proto-Indo-European ancestor.
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