Britain has seven official languages: English, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Scots, Ulster Scots and Cornish.
All of them are closely related Celtic languages, except English and Scots, which are Germanic languages closely related to German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Frisian.
English, the most widely-spoken language on the planet, and Welsh, spoken as a first language by 611,000 in Wales and 150,000 people in England and which is Europe's oldest-surviving language, are the two most successful languages in Britain at the moment.
But the ancient language of Scottish Gaelic, spoken by 59,000 people in the rugged mountains and islands of northern Britain, is making a comeback, thanks to a laird - a Scottish lord. The number of Gaelic speakers is growing.
The Gaelic renaissance
Gaelic is (literally) being put back on the map. Clive Aslet meets the laird behind its revival.
By Clive Aslet
21 Jan 2010
The Telegraph
Sir Iain Noble Photo: ROBERT PERRY
And now, after the kilt-swirling and Auld Lang Syne-ing of Hogmanay, comes Burns Night, not only a festival in Robert Burns’s native land, but one of Scotland’s most successful exports, inflicting bagpipes, mashed neeps and the poet’s Address to a Haggis on the baffled peoples of the world. Time to brush up one’s Gaelic? Not necessarily: Burns himself never spoke it. His language was Scots (the most closesly-related language to English), though he made an effort to master parts of the Gaelic wedding ceremony when chasing his ''Highland lassie’’, the pretty servant girl Mary Campbell.
Gaelic, soft as the beating of doves’ wings, used to be the medium of the Highlands and Islands – and 30 years ago you would have thought it was dying out even there. But not any more; its popularity has been steadily growing. Soon the Ordnance Survey will be printing place names in their Gaelic, not English, form.
Goodbye Stornoway, welcome Steòrnabhagh. The language has been put, literally, back on the map.
Nobody has done more to bring this about than Sir Iain Noble. And yet, amazingly, the family into which he was born 74 years ago did not speak a word of it. As can be seen from the Lennox trews he wears at dinner, the Nobles were, though Scottish, far from being wild Highlanders. Sir Iain’s diplomat father spoke several languages, but Gaelic was not one of them.
His mother was Norwegian. At Eton, Gaelic was not on the curriculum. Instead, Sir Iain’s interest was stirred by hearing ghillies speaking among themselves. From them he learnt a few basic words. Then a minister in Edinburgh taught him from a Gaelic Bible, with the pronouncement: ''It won’t do you any harm and it may do you some good.’’
Some useful Scottish Gaelic phrases
Welcome - Fàilte
What's your name? - Dè an t-ainm a th'ort?
Pleased to meet you - Tha mi toilichte do choinneachadh
Could you speak more slowly? - An urrainn dhuibh bruidhinn nàs maille?
Would you like to dance with me? -A bheil sibh 'g iarraidh a dhanns?
Where's the toilet? - Càite bheil an taigh beag?
Who was that sheep I saw you with last night? - Cò an caora sin còmhla riut a chunnaic mi an-raoir?
That was no sheep. That was my spouse! - Cha b'e sin caora. Se sin mo chèile a bha innte
I would like to have breakfast - Bu toigh leam bracaist a ghabhail
My hovercraft is full of eels - Tha mo bhàta-foluaimein loma-làn easgannan
Today, Sir Iain prefers to speak only Gaelic, if he is in the company of others who know it, who include his wife Lucilla; having married him in 1990, she has had to learn it, too. It is the first language of their Eilean Iarmain Hotel on Skye, spoken even by the Polish woman who manages the restaurant. The college for Gaelic studies, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, which Sir Iain established down the road in 1973 (he had a farm building that ''was really far too good for a farm’’ to make use of), remains the world’s only higher education institute to teach exclusively in Gaelic.
Scottish Gaelic went into decline in the 18th Century after Highlanders and their traditions were persecuted after the Jacobites' defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. The Highland Clearances, in which Highland communities were forcefully removed from their land in order that the land be used for agriculture, was another factor in its decline.
Welsh was also badly hit. The English banned the Welsh from speaking their own language, believing that it was inferior to English, and anyone heard speaking Welsh, even children, could have been punished and humiliated. A report of 1847, written by three English barristers, castigated Welsh culture in general, and Welsh schools in particular. Throughout the 19th Century, and even as late as the early decades of the 20th century, Welsh children who spoke Welsh were made to wear wooden signs around their necks with the letters "WN" (Welsh Not) inscribed on them. By the end of the day, the wearer of the "not" would be given a lashing. But then Welsh became an official language of Britain again in the 1940s and is Europe's oldest-surviving language.
According to its new director, Professor Boyd Robertson, it has played a ''critical role’’ in changing attitudes.
Gaelic was what brought Sir Iain to Skye in the first place. An Oxford-educated 3rd baronet, he is not, despite his credentials, a conformist. As a toddler, he spent nine months imprisoned in a Shanghai hotel, his father being the British ambassador to China at the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. It provided a rare chance to see something of his parents, his upbringing being otherwise consigned to nannies and governesses. In 1969, he co-founded a bank, Noble Grossart, which became the Noble Group. During the 1970s, he was in the right place to take an entrepreneurial stake in the North Sea Oil bonanza.
The spectacular landscape of the Isle of Skye, Britain's third largest island after the mainland and Lewis & Harris, where Scottish Gaelic is spoken
Descending on the 21,000 acres of Eilean Iarmain during a snowstorm in 1972, he only had time to make a cursory tour, during which the car had to be pushed up a hill, before buying the estate. He did not even know there was a hotel. Soon, though, he had created his own Gaelic whisky, Mac Na Mara: typically, he rejected the standard practice of removing sediment by chilling, refusing to bow to what he considered to be an American taste.
Whereas other lairds might have been attracted by woods bursting with woodcock and lochs leaping with fish, Sir Iain had different interests. He was thrilled to own the ruins of the castle, on a spur of rock, onto which the 3rd-century hero Cuchulain leapt, when conducting his ungentlemanly courtship of the witch Scathath (having slaughtered all her retinue, he wrestled her to the ground ''by the breasts’’, as Sir Iain tells it). A vivid story-teller, he can move audiences to tears with his account of the death of Cuchulain’s son, accidentally slain by his own father who only recognised the young warrior, after battle, by his ring.
Well, Sir Iain is a romantic. But that is not the main reason that he wants Gaelic to survive. ''If you revive your language,’’ he declares, ''you have a greater chance of reviving your community.’’ His experience on southern Skye proves the point. Once, Gaelic was regarded as an agricultural language, spoken only by poor, ignorant people who had not been schooled properly. In Eilean Iarmain, it has been an engine of economic regeneration. Academics from around the world come here; the college has brought opportunity and hope. Result: there is no unemployment in the parish. Like Cuchulain, Sir Iain has fought and won.
* Clive Aslet is editor at large of Country Life
telegraph.co.uk
All of them are closely related Celtic languages, except English and Scots, which are Germanic languages closely related to German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Frisian.
English, the most widely-spoken language on the planet, and Welsh, spoken as a first language by 611,000 in Wales and 150,000 people in England and which is Europe's oldest-surviving language, are the two most successful languages in Britain at the moment.
But the ancient language of Scottish Gaelic, spoken by 59,000 people in the rugged mountains and islands of northern Britain, is making a comeback, thanks to a laird - a Scottish lord. The number of Gaelic speakers is growing.
The Gaelic renaissance
Gaelic is (literally) being put back on the map. Clive Aslet meets the laird behind its revival.
By Clive Aslet
21 Jan 2010
The Telegraph
Sir Iain Noble Photo: ROBERT PERRY
And now, after the kilt-swirling and Auld Lang Syne-ing of Hogmanay, comes Burns Night, not only a festival in Robert Burns’s native land, but one of Scotland’s most successful exports, inflicting bagpipes, mashed neeps and the poet’s Address to a Haggis on the baffled peoples of the world. Time to brush up one’s Gaelic? Not necessarily: Burns himself never spoke it. His language was Scots (the most closesly-related language to English), though he made an effort to master parts of the Gaelic wedding ceremony when chasing his ''Highland lassie’’, the pretty servant girl Mary Campbell.
Gaelic, soft as the beating of doves’ wings, used to be the medium of the Highlands and Islands – and 30 years ago you would have thought it was dying out even there. But not any more; its popularity has been steadily growing. Soon the Ordnance Survey will be printing place names in their Gaelic, not English, form.
Goodbye Stornoway, welcome Steòrnabhagh. The language has been put, literally, back on the map.
Nobody has done more to bring this about than Sir Iain Noble. And yet, amazingly, the family into which he was born 74 years ago did not speak a word of it. As can be seen from the Lennox trews he wears at dinner, the Nobles were, though Scottish, far from being wild Highlanders. Sir Iain’s diplomat father spoke several languages, but Gaelic was not one of them.
His mother was Norwegian. At Eton, Gaelic was not on the curriculum. Instead, Sir Iain’s interest was stirred by hearing ghillies speaking among themselves. From them he learnt a few basic words. Then a minister in Edinburgh taught him from a Gaelic Bible, with the pronouncement: ''It won’t do you any harm and it may do you some good.’’
Some useful Scottish Gaelic phrases
Welcome - Fàilte
What's your name? - Dè an t-ainm a th'ort?
Pleased to meet you - Tha mi toilichte do choinneachadh
Could you speak more slowly? - An urrainn dhuibh bruidhinn nàs maille?
Would you like to dance with me? -A bheil sibh 'g iarraidh a dhanns?
Where's the toilet? - Càite bheil an taigh beag?
Who was that sheep I saw you with last night? - Cò an caora sin còmhla riut a chunnaic mi an-raoir?
That was no sheep. That was my spouse! - Cha b'e sin caora. Se sin mo chèile a bha innte
I would like to have breakfast - Bu toigh leam bracaist a ghabhail
My hovercraft is full of eels - Tha mo bhàta-foluaimein loma-làn easgannan
Today, Sir Iain prefers to speak only Gaelic, if he is in the company of others who know it, who include his wife Lucilla; having married him in 1990, she has had to learn it, too. It is the first language of their Eilean Iarmain Hotel on Skye, spoken even by the Polish woman who manages the restaurant. The college for Gaelic studies, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, which Sir Iain established down the road in 1973 (he had a farm building that ''was really far too good for a farm’’ to make use of), remains the world’s only higher education institute to teach exclusively in Gaelic.
Scottish Gaelic went into decline in the 18th Century after Highlanders and their traditions were persecuted after the Jacobites' defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. The Highland Clearances, in which Highland communities were forcefully removed from their land in order that the land be used for agriculture, was another factor in its decline.
Welsh was also badly hit. The English banned the Welsh from speaking their own language, believing that it was inferior to English, and anyone heard speaking Welsh, even children, could have been punished and humiliated. A report of 1847, written by three English barristers, castigated Welsh culture in general, and Welsh schools in particular. Throughout the 19th Century, and even as late as the early decades of the 20th century, Welsh children who spoke Welsh were made to wear wooden signs around their necks with the letters "WN" (Welsh Not) inscribed on them. By the end of the day, the wearer of the "not" would be given a lashing. But then Welsh became an official language of Britain again in the 1940s and is Europe's oldest-surviving language.
According to its new director, Professor Boyd Robertson, it has played a ''critical role’’ in changing attitudes.
Gaelic was what brought Sir Iain to Skye in the first place. An Oxford-educated 3rd baronet, he is not, despite his credentials, a conformist. As a toddler, he spent nine months imprisoned in a Shanghai hotel, his father being the British ambassador to China at the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. It provided a rare chance to see something of his parents, his upbringing being otherwise consigned to nannies and governesses. In 1969, he co-founded a bank, Noble Grossart, which became the Noble Group. During the 1970s, he was in the right place to take an entrepreneurial stake in the North Sea Oil bonanza.
The spectacular landscape of the Isle of Skye, Britain's third largest island after the mainland and Lewis & Harris, where Scottish Gaelic is spoken
Descending on the 21,000 acres of Eilean Iarmain during a snowstorm in 1972, he only had time to make a cursory tour, during which the car had to be pushed up a hill, before buying the estate. He did not even know there was a hotel. Soon, though, he had created his own Gaelic whisky, Mac Na Mara: typically, he rejected the standard practice of removing sediment by chilling, refusing to bow to what he considered to be an American taste.
Whereas other lairds might have been attracted by woods bursting with woodcock and lochs leaping with fish, Sir Iain had different interests. He was thrilled to own the ruins of the castle, on a spur of rock, onto which the 3rd-century hero Cuchulain leapt, when conducting his ungentlemanly courtship of the witch Scathath (having slaughtered all her retinue, he wrestled her to the ground ''by the breasts’’, as Sir Iain tells it). A vivid story-teller, he can move audiences to tears with his account of the death of Cuchulain’s son, accidentally slain by his own father who only recognised the young warrior, after battle, by his ring.
Well, Sir Iain is a romantic. But that is not the main reason that he wants Gaelic to survive. ''If you revive your language,’’ he declares, ''you have a greater chance of reviving your community.’’ His experience on southern Skye proves the point. Once, Gaelic was regarded as an agricultural language, spoken only by poor, ignorant people who had not been schooled properly. In Eilean Iarmain, it has been an engine of economic regeneration. Academics from around the world come here; the college has brought opportunity and hope. Result: there is no unemployment in the parish. Like Cuchulain, Sir Iain has fought and won.
* Clive Aslet is editor at large of Country Life
telegraph.co.uk
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