YESTERDAY I was in a discussion with a number of people about our time at university. One of them, a teacher, quietly and without drama, started to cry. She is a lovely bubbly person and this was completely out of character, but it transpired that she has become more and more distressed at the attitudes she's increasingly facing from people disparaging her degree and dismissing her as being pointless. A graduate with an excellent honours degree from a top university she spent four years there before moving on to teacher training.
So after five years studying she moved into a teaching role where for 10 years she has guided and mentored students to better understand the world they live in and come from, helping them appreciate their environment and their place in the world and ultimately encouraging them to move on and make a place for themselves in the world as better rounded and balanced people.
In so doing she has helped nurture an appreciation of the history of their land, their place in the world and their responsibility for maintaining their birthright. By so doing she is helping sustain the memories of their antecedents that are contained in the many stories, poems and texts that have been built up over the centuries.
This lady teaches Gaelic.
Brian Beacom's column ("If Gaalic is dying does it deserve a £2.5m kiss of life?", The Herald, April 26) was a disrespectful dismissal of the history and living story of the people from a part of Scotland that I now have the privilege to live in. While the growth of technology has created a world where (American) English is all-pervasive, and the culture that underpins that language increasingly dominates, so the people in my part of Scotland use Gaelic on a regular basis and live their lives built upon the foundation of their Gaelic-speaking forefathers. To them the culture that Mr Beacom is so dismissive of is not dying, it is real and current, changing, yes, but vibrant for all that.
It ill becomes anyone to treat their reality with such disdain.
Bill Mitchell,
Upper Ardelve, Kyle.
THE answer to Brian Beacom’s question, “if Gaelic is dying does it deserve a £2.5m kiss of life?” must be an emphatic “Yes”.
Putting aside the fact that we are only talking about a modest banker’s bonus, imagine you go up a hill in the Lake District with your English cousin. At the top, you ask, “Where are we?” Your cousin identifies the peak on the map, Sca Fell, and says, “I don’t know. I can’t read it.” That seems absurd, but now take your English cousin to Skye, take the map, and go up Sgurr a’Ghreadaidh and Sgurr a’Mhadaidh. Suddenly you find you are illiterate. Get any book on the Scottish Munros and read the list of 282 peaks. Most of us Scots will not be able to read out most of the names. Imagine that. Our ancient homeland has become strange to us.
An analogous situation exists in New Zealand. Most of the place names are Maori. I am convinced that the predominant New Zealand national culture is Maori. The difference is that in New Zealand this culture is held in reverence, and protected through the Treaty of Waitangi.
Even a writer as profoundly English as George Orwell recognised the value of protecting Gaelic culture. Read “As I please, 73: Poles in Scotland; Scottish Nationalism” – “At one time I would have said that it is absurd to keep alive an archaic language like Gaelic… Now I’m not so sure… If people feel they have a special culture which ought to be preserved, and that the language is part of it, difficulties should not be put in their way when they want their children to learn it properly.”
If you lose the language, you lose the culture. If you lose the culture, you lose – well – everything. Then you can say: “Now there’s ane end o’ ane auld sang.”
Dr Hamish Maclaren,
1 Grays Loan, Thornhill, Stirling.
BRIAN Beacom states "it's next to useless in an international context." I beg to differ.
I have found its worth immeasurable in an international context.
Confronted by Greek and Turkish street-sellers, whose linguistic skills no doubt surpass my own but, who have not grasped the basics of the Gaelic, I have saved myself many a euro. Unable to establish lines of communication and thus a basis for financial transactions, they depart, mystified by my language of choice.
Maureen McGarry-O'Hanlon,
Dalvait, Riverside, Balloch.
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