Speaking our language

A big rant. This is close to my heart.

Suddenly the language you speak is important.

I'd be impressed if it wasn't for the fact that what I'm seeing on MSM (mainstream media) and on internet sites like Facebook and twitter is absolute nonsense.

As far as I can see, the language you speak is only important if it's English.

Today someone on FB told me that I shouldn't be bothered about the fact that the National Museum exhibition on the Jacobite Rebellions in Edinburgh doesn't contain any Gaelic because the exhibition isn't about Gaelic. It does depict many Gaelic speakers and features a disaster for Gaelic speakers (the period post-1745) for which I won't use the word 'genocide' although, after listening to a Radio 4 programme about the Rohingya tonight, it comes pretty close.

A woman on twitter was told off this week for speaking Welsh to her child in a supermarket - in Wales. And a guy using a cash-line in Cardiff was told off for using Welsh.

And another woman in a store in the USA was told it was time she learned English, the language of 'our' country, when she was actually Native American and speaking to her child in Cherokee.

And to top it all, someone posted a message on Facebook that when there is one person in a group who doesn't speak your language, you should revert to English.

I don't know what's happened here. Has someone given the bigots, idiots and ignoramuses of the western world permission to browbeat the rest of us? Have we decided that the 50% of the population of the world who are bi- or tri-lingual don't matter? That the benefits of raising children to be bilingual no longer exist, in spite of all the research that proves the opposite.

I watched a bit of the UN show yesterday. Donald Trump read a speech someone else had written for him and looked uncomfortable delivering it. Not as uncomfortable as the people listening to it, I have to say. If Donald was a paid performer he would know that silence is not a good response to your speech. If he had a brain, he would react and maybe change the direction of his speech. Not a hope. Donald's mother was, I expect, a Gaelic speaker. Pity she didn't pass sensitivity to language (or anything else) on to her boy.

Languages have been suppressed for a long time: Catalan was excluded from the schools in Franco's time, as was Basque. So were Gaelic, Scots, Irish and Welsh in the age of the British Empire. The French still have difficulty recognising the importance of local languages like Breton, Alsacien and Occitan.

It's power, you see: if you can wipe out the language, you can get rid of the music, song, poetry - and history. Then everything can become a bland version of English and people can be persuaded their languages and cultures have never existed at all - or at least not for centuries.

I'm happy to admit I have an agenda: I grew up in a family that spoke Glaswegian Scots. We haunted Elder Park Library and listened to talks in English on the radio, but mostly the language I heard - and still speak to my sister and brother - was Scots.

When I was about 9, my school put me in for a Burns recitation competition (Tae a Moose) and I won. I was taken from the town hall to my school hall to recite in front of the rest of the school. I got a round of applause. As I made my way back to my classroom, a met a teacher who said:
- I hear you did well.
- Aye, said I.
- What do you mean 'aye'? she roared at me. Speak properly!