Finlay,
The thing that worries me in this debate is that you switch instantly from talking about intergenerational transmission to adult education, with no break, and no indication that you view them as separate things.
You talk about bringing families of learners together in a single community -- there are very few adult learners who acheive a suitable level of learning any given language in their first couple of years for being a source of intergenerational transmission.
Encouraging parents to talk to their children in Gaelic before they themselves are conversationally competent is dangerous as it risks stunting the child's own linguistic development.
Now it is regularly commented that lack of Gaelic childcare is a big problem for parents attempting to bring up their children as Gaelic speakers, and one of the biggest potential plusses about this community would be if it had the clout to get a decent childcare scheme going, with native speaking carers. (Even if it were only an informal network of nursing mothers.)
If learner parents were able to bring their kids up speaking English at home and leave the intergenerational transmission to the natives, that would be good, but my biggest fear is confused Gaelic being produced by kids taking their mothers' beginner Gaelic as a model.
Now, you do keep pointing out that intergenerational transmission isn't happening in a large number of island and mainland families, and I even remember you telling me about a native speaker asking advice on how to teach a kid Gaelic.
The problem that intergenerational transmission faces is simply one of education -- there are various myths that go unchallenged.
As I said in Edinburgh, everyone talks about bringing children up as Gaelic speakers, but I just don't hear people talking about bringing kids up bilingually.
If you really want to encourage intergenerational transmission, suitable education would be far more efficient and effective than building a new village, but of course both could be done.
But at the moment, I just don't hear this stuff about bilingualism. I hear parents say "they'll pick up English outside" and all that sort of thing. In the Basque Country they have the same attitude to Spanish, which is all well and good, but I tried to point out to a native Basque speaker that his adult-learner wife can't present a very good model of Basque to their kids, but he can, whereas she can present a perfect model of Spanish. Instead they only speak Basque at home and the children aren't exposed to Spanish until they go to primary school. The children could be brought up perfectly bilingual, but in effect the parents have sacrificed their proficiency in
both languages in the name of activism.
So why aren't you or anyone else encouraging bilingualism? Why is everyone shooting off on different extremes -- TV, towns, training courses, big events -- but not telling people the simple stuff?
Fionnlagh wrote:Nach iongtach e gu bheil nan aon bheachdan thaobh sgaradh agus droch iomhaigh ag eiridh a seo sa chaidh a thogail nuair a bha mi a cur foghlam fo aois sgoile agus Aonadan Gaidhlig air doigh ann an Nis (Leodhas) agus as cha mhor a h-uile ait eile air an tuath. Cha bhitheadh tu air seasamh seachdainn san iomairt sin, coltach ri ioma duin' eile.
Segregation of schooling is still a controversial topic in Scotland, although at the moment it's mostly a question of catholic vs secular schools.
But if the Niseach were making these same points, then they were maybe looking at GME as a bigger deal than it was. A village <i>is</i> a big deal. Maybe they were blowing it out of proportion, but maybe in this case it's proportional.
They say in financial ads that "past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results," and this goes for you too. You have done a lot for the language and no-one would be daft enough to say otherwise, but that doesn't mean that the next thing you do won't be a failure.
Oh actually, wait a moment. Someone <i>did</i> suggest that you haven't done much for the language: you.
Think about it: you keep saying that schooling is not enough, because the kids go out into the playground and speak English, right? (I agree, naturally.[*])
So you are saying that this Gaelic education is not a major success. It hasn't stopped the decline of Gaelic, and people in the system still speak English whenever given the choice.
If we take past performance as indicative of future results, then it logically follows that people in the new village will speak Gaelic in "class" (metaphorically speaking) but then will go out into "playground" and start speaking English. What the equivalent of the class and playground would be, I don't know.
This is not an attempt to attack or slag you or your work, but a defence of other people's opposition and concerns regarding this scheme. It just always seems to me that you hold up previous schemes as "credentials" for why your next idea is so good, and really that's more than a little misleading, in light of the above.
Nìall.
[*] Although the long-term payoff of GME still isn't known. At least kids now have the opportunity to learn it. Even if they turn their backs on it, it's still a hell of a lot easier to come back to it as adults with the knowledge that they've gained through their education. Perhaps in another 5 or 10 years the SMO will be running "Fàilte air ais" short courses and TIP's Gàidhlig 'san Dachaigh will be full of fluent speakers seeking a wee bit of information on playtime talk for their kids. We just don't know.