Well yet another great soapbox episode. I agree with you if you want to learn a different language then do so, as you said even if that language dies or has died out it would still be available to learn so why spend money on keeping it going,i can speak a little French and i know some words in Welsh it may not be much but its what i have chosen to learn. I may start up again you have now put me in the mood to learn more. Have a good weekend David xxxx.

I myself was raised trilingual (Frysk, Dutch, English). Now Frysk is also a dying language, and very fast as well: Most of the elders only speak Frysk and hardly any children can even understand the language. Now our government wants to make Fryks classes obligatory. I don’t know exactly what the British government is trying to do about the Gaelic situation, but forcing children to learn a language isn’t the way. If they don’t want to learn, don’t make them. If some of them do want to speak it, they’ll learn it on their own or with help from their parents anyways.

Like you said: there’ll always be dictionaries.

Never mind the old languages, I need to learn to understand the new ones - text message language, and the one young American folk adopt when they are trying to appear cool or hard done by.

I spent 13 years learning Irish, Gailge, but I can only barely speak and understand the school taught dialect that native speakers laugh at.

I think it’s good to preserve languages but it should not be done by force.

Slán

Not all Indians speak the same language, in fact English is the one language that actually transcends across India… not Hindi. But that’s beside the point. English is quickly supplanting all the other languages. Are we going to lose the poetry of Russian and French, the beautiful logic of German, the melodies of Italian and Spanish? A language is not just a way of communication, it is a part of one’s identity both cultural and individual. Different languages have different rhythms but also different frameworks within which one can think, reason, feel. They create variety of thought as well as sound. They reflect history and culture better than anything else, and more pervasively and dare I say it beautifully than anything else. Language bears the scars of a people’s history - changing with time but retaining a core identity and hearkening back to the past with its roots and structures. I for one think that retaining languages is essential to preventing the kind of sick homogeneity that would happen if everyone in the entire world was suddenly British or American. So, there is a reason to preserve even the dying languages - to preserve cultural diversity, a diversity of thought and perspective that makes traveling from place to place a much more interesting experience than it would be if the only difference was geography.

Reason… thy name is Mitchell.

I don’t fully agree that language is only a way of communication between humans. I also believe it to be communication between the human and her surrounding and also to her own self. Different cultures labeled objects and feelings based on their approach life. Maybe english has 20 synonyms for \angry\ and chinese only 2 (No reference whatsoever). Are chinese people and english people biologically different then? Or is it their approach and reaction to feelings as a phenomena? How does that shape a person and a nation? For me, languages can help me to expand my perspective of my everyday life by realizing that other cultures would say it in a way that would induce an entirely different feeling. Some say that it would be a whole lot better if there was only one universal language. Less misunderstandings that way. But I would suspect that the essence of whole cultures would be wiped out with them. There are much worse problems to deal with at this time so to spend government money on such an endeavor seems a bit inappropriate. Existence before essence I say (and Sartre). But to trivialize the concept of language, dying or not so one can reduce the sentiment of its extinction to \it’s a pity\ is a superficial and easy justification. I accept the trade-off we have to make with our money. I wouldn’t want to say to the unemployed mother of 2 that we can’t help her since we invested that money into saving gaelic. But I do feel sad, that in order to create new history, we have to let go of some of the old.

It’s all about preserving different cultures. Otherwise eventually the entire world might turn into one monoculture. Nothing really terrible about that, but it makes the world a bit more boring.

Thank you.

As an historian who was raised and educated (and still lives) in Scotland, I’ve had this argument with people more than once over the years. As demonstrated in a comment above, there’s a sad tendency for any criticism of the Gaelic nationalist agenda to be equated to the worst forms of racism.

Of course, that agenda is itself is intended to gloss over the many races that went into making up Scotland, and to pretend that there’s a single homogeneous past to which all residents must sign up or be deemed disloyal bigots.

For myself, I think it’s a far greater tragedy that the people of the Lowlands aren’t taught about y Goddoddin than that there’s a failure to teach them to speak Gaelic - a tongue never spoken in much of modern Scotland. It’s simply the language of one of the more successful of many waves of invaders and settlers, that some now seek to impose as the “national heritage” of even those areas where it was never prevalent.

The reality of Scotland’s history is far more nuanced, interesting, and vibrant than the narrow ethnic nationalists would ever have you believe. Gaelic is and was just one part of this, and deserves no more special treatment than any of the other portions that contributed to the whole.

Hmmmm so David Mitchell can see no reason why tax payers money (a paultry £80,000 since 2005) should be spent to help people learn Cornish, as it is a ‘dead’ language.

That would be the same David Mitchell who attended Cambridge University, which for time immemorial has been teaching that oh so contempory language Latin? Cambridge University is due to receive £913,000 of tax payers money to ‘widen patricipation

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..l-mix.html

Mitchell really does demonstrate why it is sometimes better to keep your thoughts to yourself.

What utter crap… I used to like you as well, shame.
Kernow bys vykken

“I have never heard of the silly little man in this item - David Mitchell is he called ? For his information, the Cornish language is not dead, more and more of us speak it and bad luck, our street signage is becoming bi-lingual.

Another typical English imperialist.”

Sorry to break this to you lad but you’re English yourself. Every bit of England was formerly Celtic and Brythonic speaking. In every bit of England the Brythonic language died out and was replaced by English - just as happened in Cornwall. It doesnt matter that the Brythonic language lasted some centuries longer there than it did in Cumbria, or any other part of England a dead language is a dead language regardless of whether or not it is revived. I mean it’s not even as if the type of Cornish used by enthusiasts today is the authentic language - it’s a bastardised mistmatch of various stages of the old language from historical fragments with some bits of Breton and Welsh thrown in. It’s basically a Celtic Esparanto. Were the English population of Cumbria, or Northumbria, or London, or Essex or wherever to reconstruct some Brythonic dialect for themselves and start claiming to be Celts rather than English would these claims be valid? I would say no but any Cornish enthusiast must, if he is to keep from being a blatant hypocrite, say that these invented identities and language are every bit as valid as that of Cornwall.

Gaelic is not compulsory nationally in Scotland. In fact in most Scottish schools it’s not even an option.

It was compulsory in the 80s in the school I went to in the Gaelic speaking Hebrides - not sure if it still is, but highly likely that pupils will have to study it to some extent. It is usually streamed into ‘Learner’ and ‘Native Speaker’.

I was in the latter and speak Gaelic to my young daughter even though we live in Edinburgh. There is a Gaelic medium primary school in Edinburgh (And Glasgow and Inverness) and I am glad there is such an option. I don’t think one school in the whole of Edinburgh is sucking up a lot of taxpayer’s money - the school would be there anyway - it just happens to be teaching via Gaelic instead of English. Evidence has shown that bilingual kids score higher in IQ tests than their equivalent monoglots, so it is not a waste.

Don’t confuse Scottish nationalism with pro-Gaelic - they are two different things, even if there might be some overlap if I were to draw a Venn diagram!

So mostly, from an education point of view, taxpayer money is spent in areas where there is demand for Gaelic education, ie large cities with Gaelic populations or the islands which are predominantly Gaelic speaking areas. Nobody is imposing the language in areas where it is not wanted.

As for BBC Alba (Gaelic TV channel launched last year) it attracts an audience well in excess of the entire Gaelic speaking population of Scotland (despite only being available on Satellite TV), peaking at one time at 600,000… comparable to BBC2 or Channel 5 probably! So just because it is Gaelic does not restrict it to Gaels only… subtitles make it more accessible.

So what’s your point David Mitchell? How much is too much taxpayer money? What is too vast?

how’s about the home counties adopting dual language teaching in modern english and anglo-saxon - reversing the wrongs done by the damned norman french imperialists, suppressing the language of the native anglo-saxons… who….um… came from denmark and germany….damn….ok….so, er, how’s about british then. what do you mean we can only remember ‘tor’. well. that’s clearly not going to work.

i know. how’s about we teach people to use language (and i mean any language) properly. i agree with you about the apostrophes.

There is a long list of comments I might make, but as a sociolinguist who studies language revival and the discourses and ideologies surrounding it, I think I would like to make some observations about how Mr. Mitchell makes his points here, rather than commenting on the points themselves.

We live in a world where we are surrounded by journalists and pundits who opine on every subject. We may agree or disagree with what they have to say, but I would suggest that it is often more interesting to step back and ask, how can these people claim to have special insight into the subjects they are discussing? Mr. Mitchell might simply claim that he is one man expressing an opinion, but we know he is not. He is a well-known comic, and that gives him an automatic audience others wouldn’t have. And he uses this opportunity, this power, to hold forth on a number of subjects and one might ask, how does he have the authority to express these opinions? By authority, I don’t mean political right, of course he has the right to say whatever he wants, but what I mean by authority is, why should we listen to him in particular?

Usually, when I listen to someone on the news or read an opinion column in the paper, I am just like anyone else in that when it comes to the war in Afghanistan or debates about social issues, I am no expert. I have to accept the authority of the opinion-maker on faith to a degree. I can evaluate the argument on its merits, but since I am not an expert, there will be parts of the argument, basic facts, founding assumptions, facts left out and so forth, that I can’t evaluate and I will have to trust that this opinion-maker is really informed and being honest. It is an odd experience then to listen to someone hold forth on something on which you yourself actually are an expert. Almost every sentence Mr. Mitchell makes here contains a debatable point, a misunderstanding or an inaccuracy. Mr. Mitchell is an accomplished comic rhetorician and he uses devices like speaking in a slow, condescending way about others’ arguments, setting up straw-dogs, and resorting to his impressive university-educated vocabulary to bolster his authority here. But as someone who actually studies the Scottish-Gaelic revival full-time, I know he doesn’t understand what he is talking about.

He is a funny guy and I like his programs, but in the end, he is a comic and he clearly doesn’t know much about this subject. He is, of course, entitled to his opinion, but he knows no more, and possibly much less, than most people when it comes to the issues surrounding language revival.

Actually, it occurs to me that the situation wrt “nationalist sentiment” is exactly the opposite of what Mitchell suggests.

If Gaelic appears to get excessive support from one particular party, it is only because other parties have neglected it.

What would be the reason for that neglect? I point the finger at British nationalism (small N). For major cross-border parties, supporting Gaelic would be seen as a rejection of the British identity that is so valuable in Westminster elections south of the border.

The Tories in particular have shown themselves more than willing to sacrifice election results in Scotland in order to appeal “down south” by playing up their Britishness.

Labour’s strong traditional support in Scotland has led to a large representation by Scots within the cabinet and other senior position, but they have mostly taken accent coaching to appear more British, despite the derision of their Scottish power-base.

To me it is clear that the nationalistic sentiments tied up with the issue of Gaelic funding are more to do with the “against” side than the “for” side.

Commentaries like these make me even more determined to master and use Gaelic. Tapaidh leat, David!

Why should a Gaidheal living in the Highlands learn Hindi? Of course language is a means of communication… did you learn that at Cambridge David? And other than English, Gaelic is our means of communication here in the Highlands as well as other parts of Scotland. That is why public money is rightly spent on it and not, as you seem to ignorantly declare, an asurdly exaggerated amount.

Any language in current use should be taught in mainstream schools… otherwise standards would significantly decline. Do you suggest the English language should not be taught in schools? No of course not. Why? Because it is obviously a ridiculous idea.

Gaelic education should be provided for those in Scotland who want to learn the language. Parents who want to give their children a head start in life may also consider sending their children to a school with Gaelic provision as it is one area of the economy in Scotland that is growing (not only because of public money), and there are many employment opportunities to be found for those who possess the language.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I would suggest that you should think twice before professing about cultures of which you clearly have a limited understanding.

Your just jealous, because all you have in english culture is Morris Dancers and em!! I can’t think of anything else?

David, surely you have not looked at the facts. As a posh Invernesian, although I have heard Gaelic around, I am not a speaker, I am more offended by your assertion that Scots is simply a dialect of English. This is definitely not true. Scots is a saxon language that split from Anglo-Saxon in the 7th century and was regarded as an entirely separate language until the 18th century when successive anglo-centric governments re-branded it as a dialect of english. Fortunately it has now been recognized as a separate language by the EU, however the British Government still hasn’t.
The point about the whole Gaelic question is that it’s death is man-made having been banned by parliament after the rebellion of 1745 for fears that locals would use it to pass information without the soldiers understanding it. So it is emblematic of Scottish oppression.
I hope you read this although I doubt you do, as you seem like an alright guy who just doesn’t know all the facts.

DYNA I CHI RWTS LLWYR GAN SAIS DI-EGWYDDOR
There is complete non-sense from an Englishman with no principle, sentiment and culture and considering he is from a highly rated institution its sickening.

I as a Native Welsh speaker have to over come the old arguement that money shouldnt be wasted on our language blah blah bore bore, Yet Welsh medium education is growing, English medium is falling and Failling, Welsh speakers are increasing, and people deem Welsh dead, And it is closer to a million than 600 000 speakers who speak Welsh in the Uk.

My a dhysk yn temmik kernewek oghas tebys yw an yeth natyriol i Kembrek.
Rwy’n dysgu tamaid o Gernyweg achos mae’n debyg i fy iaith naturiol i Cymraeg.
I’m learning a little cornish because its similar to my native language Welsh.

Cornish is mutual intelligible with Welsh, I can understand a Cornish person speaking Cornish with some effort more so if i couldn’t speak a Word of English, The fact that I can is irrelevant, Cornish should be kept a live and should have funding.

Kernewek bys vykken
Cernyweg am Byth

Oh Dear. David has unwittingly upset a huge number of people. I don’t think he meant to, I just don’t think he realizes how many Celtic language speakers and enthusiasts there are, even in England. I’m not Scottish, but I spent a lot of time in Glasgow in 2001, and I learnt a bit of Gaelic. I kept it up and I’m now reasonably fluent, and I can also get by in Manx and the northern dialects of Irish. Gaelic has changed my life not just because I have joined a passionate sub-culture, but because it is an entirely different way of seeing the world.

The problem that many English people (including David) seem to have is that they think all Celtic language speakers and learners have a nationalist agenda. That is a totally bogus argument. The state backs all sorts of cultural endeavours that I don’t care much for (eg Shakespeare and Radio One) - but that doesn’t mean that everyone involved in something I’m not into is a nationalist bigot.

I enjoy David’s TV work, and I’m not offended by his musings. He has to come up with bumpf for his Middle England, Semi-educated, Half-comatose evening audience, and he does it in a pleasant and cheery enough way. What is ironic is that so much of his career has been supported from (over-generous) state funds, and yet he is whingeing about the paltry sums allowed for minority languages. Try making the same fiscal argument for cutting back the largely state backed Shakespeare promotion industry in England.

So as someone said earlier language and culture are intertwined. As long as there is a distinct culture underpinning the Gaelic language it’s hard to see it dying out. Whether over time the Gaelic culture will become more and more absorbed into the British one I don’t know and wouldn’t like to hazard a guess. What I do think though is that it’s not the government’s job to interfere in the natural course of this process. Of course it is only right that schools should be free to teach in Gaelic where there’s the demand, BBC Alba sounds like a good idea and I’m glad that there are people who care so much about their culture. It is no more right now though that the government should actively try to promote Gaelic than it is that it tried to suppress it hundreds of years ago. Culture is people’s own business and it’s their own responsibility to maintain it should they wish to. Anything else would be social engineering and, despite the many potential benefits of maintaining diversity of culture, you can’t bestow it on people from the outside. For an example see the ludicrous European Capital of Culture scheme which basically sees struggling cities importing some art for a year before reverting to their old state.

Dear all,

I think it’s great that those of you who have taken an interest in learning Gaelic have done so. Your time might have been better spent learning Chinese or German or Spanish or Russian or Arabic but much of learning is about motivation, and if you’re motivated to learn Gaelic and not a more populous tongue, fair enough.

You can take me to by replying to ‘Bidney’, mainly, but much of what I want to say is relevant to the other comments posted here.

David’s comment about government funding /is/ relevant. Okay, so the funding comes out the Scotland budget. So what; Gaelic speakers make up a minority of the Scottish population just as they do a minority of the British population as a whole. As to the amount currently spent, the figure £80,000 was mentioned. If that is the figure, then I agree it’s almost certainly too low in so far as the government has an obligation to allow those who e.g. do want to learn Gaelic at school to fulfill their foreign language requirement are able to do so, so far as is possible. I suspect that’s not the sum however if there are, as someone said, Gaelic-medium primary schools. I’m not dead-against Gaelic-medium primary schools if there is sufficient demand for them - though depending on the degree of saturation one can’t help but worry you might be doing your kids a disservice if their English is weaker than the average citizen in an English speaking economy - but I’m pretty sure £80,000 won’t cover them, nor will it cover the number of Secondary School of Gaelic teachers there are. So I’m not sure where the figure comes from but I think it’s safe to view it as suspect. I suspect the figure comes from what David /is/ talking about which is the Scottish government trying to persuade and encourage people to learn Gaelic.

First and foremost, if it’s legitimate for them to do this then it must be legitimate for David to discourage people from doing so. Second, the ‘well people could vote them out’ point offered by ‘Bidney’ is complete rubbish for the following reasons 1) people vote for poiitical parties for a variety of reasons. I might have voted for the SNP because I want an independent Scotland (I didn’t, I don’t particularly) but that doesn’t mean I have to roll over and accept whatever else happens to be in their manifesto without comment, 2) the majority of people in Scotland did /not/ vote for the SNP, it received 660,000 votes - just more than that received by Labour, and by the Lib Dems and the Tories combined, not counting minor parties, in a country with a population of approximately 5,000,000; that at least means the mandate is not so overwhelming that their is no grounds to question any position the government might happen to take and 3) it’s the nature of a true democratic system that political scrutiny is not limited to my decision at the ballot box. Yes it might be SNP policy, but David is asking whether it is a good policy. That doesn’t mean the SNP don’t have a mandate to enact it, but whether he thinks, and we should think, they should. So no more of this ‘their the government and you should shut up until the next election nonsense’.

David is English (or possibly Welsh). He cannot help that. But that’s not his fault and it doesn’t mean he cannot voice a legitimate opinion about matters north of the border. If it helps you, think of him as defending the position of people like me; Scots who are from the lowlands, who have been lowlanders for tens of generations, and who have never spoken Gaelic, don’t especially want to speak Gaelic, don’t want their children to be forced to speak Gaelic in lieu of learning something more materially useful like Mandarin or calculus or Scottish history and don’t appreciate being told that by not speaking Gaelic, or not wanting to speak Gaelic, they are in some way a second-class Scot. This is the same mentality which says I don’t count as Scottish because I don’t wear a kilt. That’s your cultural imperalism right there.

“The difficulty is that you appear to have entirely bought into a version of Scottish history designed to counter those troublesome Scots. To whit: your language is useless, your history is invented and you get too much money from the English taxpayer.”

Well on the last point, strictly speaking we do. The Barnett formula is tilted in our favour. Now admittedly the oil should probably be factored in (which Unionists don’t think it should as it’s a national resource), as should (I think) the fact that we are two countries with two national capitals don’t just one big country but you can understand why the English think they’re getting a raw deal. Though David never mentioned anything about it. Your history is invented if you think the country has been majority Gaelic-speaking in recent memory. The embarrassment to me is that you feel we need to invent our history. We don’t need a de Valera style neo-luddite image of noble celtic crofters running subsistance farms; we had the Scottish Enlightenment. We virtually invented economics, we were amongst the pioneers of modern science, we practically ran the British Army, we took the lions share of the tobacco trade and built the bulk of the Imperial fleet. We don’t need to pretend that Robert Burns is anything better than a second rate poet when we produced the greatest philosopher of the modern period. So yeah; your (nationalist) history is bogus and as a genuinely proud Scot I find it embarrassing. And as for your language being useless a: it’s not ‘your’ language if ‘your’ language is meant to mean the Scots. Gaelic isn’t my language. So either you think it should be, in which case I disagree largely for the reasons David gave - there’s nary a speaker of it who doesn’t speak English - or else you think I amn’t Scottish in which case you can go fuck yourself.

The question is whether it would be good policy for the Scottish government say to require every Scottish school child to learn Gaelic, as happens in Ireland. There is a school of thought that this policy has actually hurt the language in Ireland, but that doesn’t concern me at present. The argument that this wouldn’t be a good policy comes down to four main points; A: Gaelic is a linguistic and cultural minority in Scotland, Gaelic-speaking culture is not the culture of Scotland as a whole, B: Using limited classroom time to teach children Gaelic ex hypothesi against their wishes or the wishes of their parents is a misallocation of limited educational resources given there is limited material benefit to learning a language all of which speakers can speak English and in most cases speak English fluently. This is why the bi-lingualism point is invalid; if it were possible to make children bilingual using school education alone (which it isn’t) it would be more productive to teach them an important international language (Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, German, French). We would assume parents who are trying to teach their children to be bilingual Gaelic speakers would not fall under the category of those who do not wish Gaelic to be taught to their children. C: No one is saying that where possible the ability to learn Gaelic whether in School or at home shouldn’t be available to those that want it. But C1: the same is true of, e.g. French, and this doesn’t to equate to saying that funds should be put aside to actively promote the language or worse to force children to take Gaelic instead of French and C2: (a corollary) Gaelic should be afforded no particular special status as a language. D: If it turns out that people (children) are deliberately choosing not to speak Gaelic this might be sad, but there is neither an onus on the government to do anything about it nor is it fair to force people to learn a language they do not wish to speak (with the possible exception of the national language, on the grounds of being able to participate in the political process requiring knowledge of the national tongue).

All of this was implicit in what David said, and most was explicit. I’m sorry if you decided to read it as ‘Gaelic is shite and the Scots are stealing our money’ but that isn’t what he said. Tis folks like yourself who lean me away from nationalism, simply because I don’t want ruled by basket cases. Otherwise I’d be quite happy for Scotland to take it’s place amongst liberal social-democratic Scandinavian nations. The basic argument comes down to whether you equate ‘Gaelic’ with ‘Scottish’ and quite evidently some of you do, so perhaps I can move the ’shoe of outrage’ onto the other foot for a moment and say I find that shockingly, shockingly offensive. The same as if you were to tell me I wasn’t really Jewish (I’m not) if I didn’t attend a synagogue regularly enough, or that I wasn’t really a homosexual (I’m not) if I didn’t take place in pride marches. There is a name for this sort of fallacious reasoning, which ironically is called the ‘no real Scotsman fallacy’.

“No Scotsman doesn’t eat porridge for breakfast”
“Well I’m a Scotsman, and I don’t eat porridge”
“Oh well, no real Scotsman.”

It’s a mistake of a contingent for an essential property. I am Scottish, I don’t need your cultural license to count myself so and it’s up to me provided I live here, count myself as Scottish and have determined to devote a certain amount of my time, work and income into enriching this country materially and culturally to decide what that actually means. So please;

1: Don’t equate Gaelic-speaking with Scottish,
2: Don’t force me or anyone to learn Gaelic,
3: Provide services for those who want to learn Gaelic, to learn it,
4: Don’t call David Mitchel a racist.

Then perhaps we can all live in peace.

Best to all,
Duncan.

Good video. And he’s dead right about Scots. It’s like Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland. It’s not a language, it’s a dialect that’s being used as a political tool and trumped up to seem more important and relevant than it really is.