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Scots Gaelic vs Irish Gaelic?
Fiona Ritchie (sp?) on her Celtic music show on NPR (sats 8pm EST) was talking about Scots' Gaelic and Irish Gaelic and how different they were.
Q- how different are they? can one understand the other? Is the written lanugage the same? she mentioned one island off Ireland near Scotland where a meld of the two was spoken And that the islands like Shetlands Gaelic had a Scandinavian influence? How different are these? Just curious - thanks |
Irish and Scots Gaelic are Q celtic as opposed to P, which is Welsh Cornish, Breton etc.
They are similar, but not the same. The island would be the isle of Man where Manx is spoken. |
Irish Gaelic has three main dialects. That of Donegal (in the north-west) has a similarity to Scots Gaelic, and speakers of one can comprehend a good deal of the other.
The written languages are not the same, but there is sufficient similarity for a reader of one to be able to discern, at least in a general way, the meaning of a piece written in the other. Very little Manx (as waring says, in the same group) is spoken, and the few who speak it are trying to revive a language which, in the not-too-distant past, lost its last native speakers. I suspect the island of which Fiona Ritchie spoke is Tory, ten miles off the Donegal coast. |
Yes i think it was that - it was a much smaller isle than Mann though she did talk about that
(the show was on Gaelic music from Scots and irish gaelic (her words) and in between - i thought she called the island Atory but was probably saying At Tory or something - even her edinburgh - i assume- dialect is hard to understand for septics |
Cornish is pretty much dead, although Welsh appears to be making a come back.
I was well impressed hearing Irish used for casual conversation in Galway. |
<i>...And that the islands like Shetlands Gaelic had a Scandinavian influence?...</i>
Shetland has never been a Gaelic-speaking area; the Vikings rubbed out any vestiges of Celtic culture when they took over around 1000 CE. Shetland was part of Norway until given (technically pawned) to Scotland as a wedding present/dowry in the 15th century. |
My cat's a manx and I have no problem understanding her whatsoever!
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it's tail-less right? so how can it talk
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Alright. Don't be silly. She speaks with her mouth not with her (non) tail!
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Cornish died out - the last native speaker died some 100 years ago. It is now being revived though.
Welsh has always ben spoken in North West and West Wales as a first language. It is now taught in schools and is enjoying a revival. My mothers family were Welsh speakers, and it was quite normal to hear Welsh in the pub or local shop. I haven't been back in years but I imagine it still is. My first boyfriend spoke Welsh as his first language and only learned English when he went to school. Welsh and Cornish are very different to Irish Gaelic (pronounced Gay-lic) and Scottish Gaelic (pronounced Gallic). |
In Bangor, Wales i was pleasantly surprised to hear Welsh spoken as the daily tongue - it was weird on buses - the driver and locals would be speaking Welsh and then at times lapse into English.
Weird that on NPR the other day there were talking about two older females who were the last speakers of some Mexican Indian language and though they lived near each other and saw each other they refused to speak to each other - enemies so the language is prematurely dead it seems! |
As I understand it, Irish and Scots Gaelic are about as similar as Portuguese and Spanish - one can understand the other, and some of the words are the same, but the pronunciation and much of the vocabulary is a bit off.
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There are no Manx speakers any more - though the language might have been rekindled.
Tory island is west of the Republic (about ten miles north of Donegal), and they speak Irish there - though who knows what kind of Irish? You could argue it's between Ireland and Nova Scotia, but it certainly isn't between Ireland and Scotland. The relationship between Irish and Scottish Gaelic is a lot messier than most people realise. The latest theories on this (all this DNA stuff doesn't half mess about with traditional ideas about language development) is in "The Origins of the British" by Stephen Oppenheimer. The statistics are hard going in places, but it's really, really worthwhile getting it from Amazon. It kills all kinds of dozy myths. |
flanneruk wrote: "Tory island is west of the Republic (about ten miles north of Donegal), and they speak Irish there - though who knows what kind of Irish? You could argue it's between Ireland and Nova Scotia, but it certainly isn't between Ireland and Scotland."
It's more north than west -- between Donegal and the North Pole. But the cultural distance is what really matters. Yes, the language spoken there is Irish Gaelic, but it is probably closer to Scots Gaelic than any other Irish dialect. There have traditionally been strong links between north-west Ireland and Scotland (hence, for example, Glasgow Celtic). flanneruk also wrote: "The relationship between Irish and Scottish Gaelic is a lot messier than most people realise." What is more in doubt is the question of Celtic purity. The evidence is that the genetic links between the people of the "Celtic fringe" and the Celts of Central Europe is very weak, vanishingly so. But the language and, so far as can be ascertained, the culture is Celtic. I can claim to be a Celt by culture, but not by bloodline. Think Dawkins's memes and genes. The language link between Ireland and Scotland is not that obscure: the Gaelic-speaking Scots are descended from Irish invaders. The word "Scot" originally meant "Irish" (a long time ago, and I'm taking very modest liberties to keep this brief). |
I know that parts of County Antrim in Northern Ireland until surprisingly recently traded primarily with Scotland, as it was easier to get across the narrow waterway by boat than across the primitive roads.
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One other fun fact: the iconic "Irish" word "craic", meaning "fun times", isn't Irish at all, but came in very recently via Scots-Irish, as "crack" -- and may even be Geordie (Newcastle) in origin. The spelling "craic" was wholly made up just a couple of decades ago, when the word filtered down into the Republic from Northern Ireland, and a desire to Gaelicize it was felt.
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fnarf999 wrote: "the iconic "Irish" word "craic", meaning "fun times", isn't Irish at all"
It is now, even if it is a relatively recently adopted loan word. We'll give it up if you agree to give up all the Latin, Norman, and Gaelic loanwords you use. We gave it new meaning. |
Actually I think you just gave it new spelling. But I'm not giving up pajamas or cafe or angst or any of the others, so point taken!
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"the Gaelic-speaking Scots are descended from Irish invaders"
Not universally accepted any more. It's not just increasing DNA evidence, but rapid changes in the techniques palaeolinguists use that undermine - at least till the next big theory - practically every simple idea of how languages spread to and round the British Isles, And no-one ever seriously argued that Gaelic-speaking Caledonians are descended from the (relatively recent) Irish invaders who were called Scots, though I appreciate Padraig may not have been claiming that anyway. |
(all this DNA stuff doesn't half mess about with traditional ideas about language development) is in "The Origins of the British" by Stephen Oppenheimer."
Openheimer isn't a linguist but a geneticist. He has put to bed the idea that the British or Irish were Celts (which is a dead concept anyway) or that the English are Anglo-Saxon. The so called "celtic" culture in Ireland is way older than the Celts, which is something to be smug about. Most of us are Basque it appears. |
waring wrote: "The so called "celtic" culture in Ireland is way older than the Celts, which is something to be smug about.
Most of us are Basque it appears." It is difficult to trace the history of a culture where there is almost no written record, and where it has varied expressions over time and in different places. Yes, many cultural remains in Ireland are recognised as "Pre-Celtic"; Newgrange is an example well-known to many visitors. But it seems that there is also much that has a Celtic character. Herself and I visited the Deutsch Historische Museum in Berlin, and were struck by how similar the exhibition of Celtic materials was to that in the National Museum in Dublin. The languages of ancient Britain and Ireland seem to have a great deal in common with the Celtic languages and, so far as I know, so do the religious beliefs: the god Lugh seems to have been everywhere, including London and Lyon, as well as all over Ireland. Yes, I recognise that the people in Ireland are largely descended from migrants from Iberia, and there is not much evidence of migration from central Europe. The supposedly apocryphal Book of Invasions indicates a pattern of settlement from Spain. But the cultural inheritance seems to have a strong Celtic component -- hence my remark about memes and genes. Genetically, I am a mongrel, but I have the soul of a Celt. |
As one who managed to learn the basics of Scots Gaelic several years ago can I have my tuppence (or two euro-cents?) worth?
I can still just about translate direction signs in Irish Gaelic. The only other examples of the language I see are song titles on CDs of Clannad, my knowledge of Scots Gaelic lets me make an educated guess at most of these. I've never yet understood a sentence spken to me in Irish Gaelic. This compares with about one in five sentences spoken to me in Scots Gaelic! I'm told the correct pronunciation for Scots Gaelic is "Gallic" if you are referring to the language but "Gaylic" if used as an adjective, for example in talking about "Gaelic Culture". Just to confuse things even more there are still a few stubborn vestiges of the old language in rural Perthshire where they refer to the language as "Gaylic". What is beyond doubt is that Gaelic, in it Scots or Irish forms, produces the most hauntingly beautiful music ever written in any language. |
I agree completely, craigillachie. I am listening to some as we speak (Port na bPucai).
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Scots Gaelic is strongly localised. For instance Barra Gaelic is closer to Irish than in other parts of Scotland. (I an reliably informed)
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If you wish to hear what the Irish language sounds like go to www.rte.ie, click on "radio" and then on "radio na gaeltachta". There is a lot of Irish music on that channel too as well as the spoken word.
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and you can do the same with Scots Gaelic on the BBC site for Radio nan Gael
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Why bother?
Jamesie Cotter: Rab, you and me, we go back a longs ways together. Rab C. Nesbitt: Aye, we dae, we dae, we dae, aye... Jamesie Cotter: We started goin in tae pubs together, then we went on tae secondary school. Rab C. Nesbitt: Aye, what's the point, what's the point...! Jamesie Cotter: The point, yae big wet slopbledger is - if you're on yer way oot with yer liver like an insole, then so are we! Cos we huv matched you pint for pint for the last 25 bloody years! Andra: BASTARD! [passionately] Jamesie Cotter: Rab, there's that much to live for! I mean even a man as yersel must have some ambitions left, somethin you want to do before you finally shuffle off this mortal coil! Rab C. Nesbitt: Of course I've got ambitions, of course I've got ambitions. Jamesie Cotter: What are they, Rab? Rab C. Nesbitt: Jist oncest, Jist oncest. I wid like tae be able talk tae you withoot feelin... like I've jist gargled wie *Preparation X! |
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