nach e ainm gàidhlig a th' ann an "galloway", co-d

[neoni]

clicky


Gaelic Station Is A Turn Off For Viewers

Feb 4 2008 George Galloway

HOOTS mon, Gaels have picked the pockets of the tax payer again and Angus Og has made off with millions with the start of a new Gaelic TV station.

Idon't know why they need one when they've got BBC Scotland, where if your first name is not Farquar, Crawford or Torquil, you haven't got a chance.

There are less than 60,000 people who speak Gaelic in Scotland, yet £20million is spent on their media alone.

That's more than £50 per week per head and all to keep alive a tongue which a Scot Nat once described to me as "the tongue which has been dead for 1000 years".

Well if it's dead why dig it up again?

Language is a living thing or nothing at all if you ask me. And the rest of us, by a stroke of luck, are in possession of a tongue worth the weight of Ben Nevis in gold. The English language is our greatest asset and the government spends far too little spreading it even wider.

The money spend on Gaels and their obscure language could be spent by the British Council teaching, for example, the people of China to speak English with infinitely more returns.

There are more people who speak Punjabi in Scotland than have the Gaelic. Can you imagine the outcry if the government gave £50 per week per head to subsidise Lahore TV?

And more people speak Polish in Scotland than speak Gaelic but Gdansk TV could only dream of such a subsidy.

The new Gaelic service will also feature shinty - there's no show without shinty - and even football (from Scotland's 'lower leagues' God help us). Soon we will have bi-lingual signs, and alphabet soup on every street corner. This is what an independent Scotland would look like. Brigadoon, dark, foreboding, like a Wee Free service on a cold wet Sunday in Portree.

We are not even spending enough teaching our own kids how to speak, read and write our own language properly as the poor level of English Higher passes testifies.

I get a shoal of texts and emails from Scottish listeners to my Talksport radio show every weekend. Many of them tell how patriotic they are about Britain, but not patriotic enough to be able to spell the words of abuse they hurl at me.

We'd be better spending the money to eliminate the last remnant of illiteracy of English in our country, including the English of the immigrants we so badly need in our huge country with its tiny population with the smallest growth rate in the world.

How many have read the greatness of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson or Lewis Grassick Gibbon? Not to mention Jack London, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Gey few and increasingly they are aw deid.

If a handful of people in Scotland want to keep this obscure language alive, they can do so. Like the Amish in the United States, let them be self-sustaining.

'We're not even spending enough teaching our own kids how to speak, read and write our own language properly'




abair sar dhuine, eh?

[*Alasdair*]

Amadan! is all i can say.

People like him make me mad. He may not like it but it doesn't give him the right to slag the people who do off...

"Obscure language" - I'll show him who's obscure!

[Níall Beag]

Nice highlighting.

But hark! Such merry prattle he speaks, for lo, our English is a great distance removèd from that of The Bard, and -- lest we forget -- twas into the land of England that Shakespeare was bourne, not that of Great Britain. Forsooth, the tongue of the bard of Avon was ne'er the tongue of Glen Avon.

And prithee, sirrah, why speakest thou of "hoots mon", the Anglo-Saxon tongue of the East, when thine article speaks of Gaelic, the Celtic tongue of the West?

[*Alasdair*]

Tha am fear amadan... Tha e fìor, nach e?
The man is an idiot... It is true isn't it?

His punctuation is also abysmal...

[Níall Beag]

Tha e fìor, nach e?

Careful -- your verbs don't agree there.

Tha e fior, nach eil?
or
'S e an fhirinn a th' ann, nach e?

[*Alasdair*]

Ahh, tapadh leibh. I thought i was "eil" but wasn't to sure.

I'll know for the next time

Also, as a little fact, an Fhirinn is "The Bible". Hmm, i wouldn't have called it the "truth" myself but each to their own.

[GunChleoc]

Maybe he is just resentful that he wasn't taught his own language properly - and now he doesn't want anybody else to learn their language properly.

And as if the English language would need any help becoming even more dominant throughout the world! It's doing fine on its own.

And if he thinks English classes in all schools across Britain can be improved and that it can be introduced throughout China by spending a mere 20m, he should think again. It's imperialistic thinking anyway in my book. If everybody should speak the same language, I vote for Chinese, which has a lot longer tradition of fine literature than English

[Níall Beag]

No -- not Chinese. Mandarin is like another English, bludgeoning, flattening and crushing multitudinous native tongues.

Learn languages not a language.

[Gràisg]

Chunnaic mi e air Bràthair mòr, saoilidh mi gu bheil e a' dol ris an canar Gorgeous George lol. 'S e sin Seòras Boidheach sa Ghàidhlig lol
Ach b'feàirrde leinn le Seòras Gòrach nach b'fheàrr?

[*Alasdair*]

Tha mi a' smaoineachadh sin tha e an "Turn off for the viewers"

Tha e gairbhseachail! Tha e amadan gu dearbh!

I think that he is the "Turn off for the viewers"

He is disgusting! He is an idiot for sure! :O

[GunChleoc]

Nach e duine boidheach a th' annsan gu dearbh.

No -- not Chinese. Mandarin is like another English, bludgeoning, flattening and crushing multitudinous native tongues.

Learn languages not a language.

I was just making a point

[Gràisg]

Tha e amadan gu dearbh

Chanainnsa: 's e dearg amadan a th' ann.

tha dearg air a chleachadh gus barrachd cudrom a chur air a' chuspair

Dearg is used to put more emphasis on the subject.