do all Scottish, Irish and Welsh speak English?

Hopeful   Tue Dec 27, 2005 7:11 pm GMT
I only wonder
Do all Scottish, Irish and Welsh speak English?
I know that there are many left who don't speak Gaelic and Welsh, but are there anyone left who don't speak English?
JJM   Tue Dec 27, 2005 11:30 pm GMT
It's entirely possible that there are small children who are unilingual Gaelic and Welsh speakers.

But I doubt that there are many older children or adults who do not also speak English. Perhaps a handful of very old rural people in the remotest parts of the west coast of Ireland?
Brennus   Wed Dec 28, 2005 6:59 am GMT
Some Irish and Welsh still speak Gaelic and Cymbric respectively but their numbers are rapidly diminishing. The situation is even worse in Scotland where there are probably no true native speakers of Scots Gaelic left (i.e. speakers who learned the language on their mother's knee). A woman named Mary Stewart, who died in 1972, was the last known speaker of the Sutherland dialect of Scots Gaelic and even she was reportedly bilingual, having learned Gaelic at home as a child but English in school.

The fact that Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh are all very difficult languages which cannot be learned in the same way as one would go about learning Norwegian, Spanish, French or even German makes it tough to revive them.
Lazar   Wed Dec 28, 2005 7:12 am GMT
<<Some Irish and Welsh still speak Gaelic and Cymbric respectively but their numbers are rapidly diminishing.>>

In the case of Welsh (what you're referring to as "Cymbric"), that is blatantly untrue. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2755217.stm

<<The fact that Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh are all very difficult languages which cannot be learned in the same way as one would go about learning Norwegian, Spanish, French or even German makes it tough to revive them.>>

Huh?
Brennus   Wed Dec 28, 2005 7:30 am GMT
Lazar,

I've read the 23% figure before too (In your article 20.5%) and would say that it is probably somewhat generous. Still, you're not talking about many people, especially in a country the size of Wales. To say that another 28% of the population understands some Welsh could mean almost anything; in some instances, they may understand only a few touristy phrases or cuss words.
Travis   Wed Dec 28, 2005 9:48 am GMT
>>The fact that Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh are all very difficult languages which cannot be learned in the same way as one would go about learning Norwegian, Spanish, French or even German makes it tough to revive them.<<

LOL. Like the verbal systems of Romance languages or the practical usage of prepositions and verb prefixes in Germanic languages are anything close to being easy and simple to non-native speakers to begin with. Once one gets past stuff that would be simply unfamiliar to non-native speakers such as initial consonant mutations and their orthographies (in particular in the case of Irish and Scots Gaelic), I see no reason to say that Irish, Scots Gaelic, or Welsh are fundamentally any more difficult than, say, German for the average IE language-speaker. Please get back to me once you have something to really back up your quoted assertion.
Kirk   Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:08 am GMT
<<The fact that Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh are all very difficult languages which cannot be learned in the same way as one would go about learning Norwegian, Spanish, French or even German makes it tough to revive them.>>

As Travis indicates, there aren't inherently "difficult" or "easy" languages (what is difficult or easy depends on how similar the target language is to your native one, but such things are not universal).

And at least with the case of Welsh, it's been experiencing a net growth in Welsh speakers in recent history, which means claiming its "numbers are rapidly diminishing" is false.
Adam   Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:13 am GMT
Even the ones who speak Welsh or Gaelic also speak English. They are bilingual.

However the Welsh, being arseholes, like to speak to English speakers in Welsh, even though they can speak English.
Travis   Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:22 am GMT
>>However the Welsh, being arseholes, like to speak to English speakers in Welsh, even though they can speak English.<<

Maybe said English-speakers could learn to speak to them in Welsh, perhaps.
Adam   Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:22 am GMT
The Welsh language isn't dying. It's being revived. Most speakers of Welsh live in Northern Wales, and also in North East Wales in coastal areas. Even these days, many Welsh people speak English at home but get taught in Welsh at school. Go to Wales (and even in Western England near the border with Wales where there are thousands of Welsh-speaking ENGLISH people) most of the roadsigns and other signs are written in both English and Welsh.

So it's not true to say that Welsh is dying. It's nowhere near being a dead letter.

I think about a quarter of all native Welsh speakers are Englishmen and Englishwomen who live in counties such as Shropshire and Herefordshire - counties that border Wales.

The people of North Wales hate the people of South Wales because the people of South Wales rarely speak Welsh, preferring to speak English. The people of Monmouthsire, despite being a Welsh county, consider themselves as English rather than Welsh.
Adam   Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:24 am GMT
"Maybe said English-speakers could learn to speak to them in Welsh, perhaps. "

Why should someone learn to speak Welsh to speak to a Welshman who is BILINGUAL - and has two natives languages?

A lot of the time, they converse with each other in English, but then speak Welsh to an English-speaker who can't speak Welsh.
Adam   Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:41 am GMT
At the beginning of the 20th century, about half of the Welsh population spoke Welsh. Towards the end of the century, only 20% did. But in the 2001 census, 23% of the population of Wales spoke Welsh, so the numbers are increasing.

In Wales, there are 750,000 Welsh speakers, and 1.5 million (about half the population) can "understand" it.

There are also 133,000 Welsh speakers in English by people who speak it natively - so it's almost like a native language of England as wellas Wales.

And people often say that Welsh looks difficult to pronounce, but that's not true. Welsh is far easier to learn to read than English.

---

Welsh Language Guide

The language of Wales, more properly called Cymraeg in preference to Welsh (A Germanic word denoting "foreigner"), belongs to a branch of Celtic, an Indo-European language. The Welsh themselves are descendants of the Galatians, to whom Paul wrote his famous letter. Their language is a distant cousin to Irish and Scots Gaelic and a close brother to Breton. Welsh is still used by about half a million people within Wales and possibly another few hundred thousand in England and other areas overseas.

In most heavily populated areas of Wales, such as the Southeast (containing the large urban centers of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea), the normal language of everyday life is English, but there are other areas, notably in the Western and Northern regions, (Gwynedd and Dyfed particularly) where the Welsh language remains strong and highly visible. The Welsh word for their country is Cymru (Kumree), the land of the Comrades; the people are known as Cymry (Kumree) and the language as Cymraeg (Kumrige). Regional differences in spoken Welsh do not make speakers in one area unintelligible to those in another (as is so often claimed), standard Welsh is understood by Welsh speakers everywhere.

Despite its formidable appearance to the uninitiated, Welsh is a language whose spelling is entirely regular and phonetic, so that once you know the rules, you can learn to read it and pronounce it without too much difficulty. For young children learning to read, Welsh provides far fewer difficulties than does English, as the latter's many inconsistencies in spelling are not found in Welsh, in which all letters are pronounced.

cyllideb - budget

cytundeb - agreement

cyhoeddiad - announcement

cymoedd - valleys

talu clod - to praise

cyd-destun - context

Llywodraeth y Cynulliad - Assembly Government

cyfarwyddwr - director

argyfwng ariannol - financial crisis

gweddill - the rest

dyledion - debts

cytundeb - agreement

parhaol - permanent

rhagweld - to foresee

hwylio - to sail

o dramor - from abroad

cloi - to lock

pryderus - worried

anghydfod - dispute

cyfaddawdu - to compromise

pigiad gwenwynig - poisonous injection

ymddiswyddo - to resign

dull degol - decimal method

cyfrif - to count

ychwanegol - additional

arbenigwyr - experts

dealltwriaeth - understanding

astudiaeth - study

amgueddfa - museum

rhodd - a gift

gwaed ychen - ox blood

gwrachod - witches

arbrofi - experimenting

cymaint - so many

diffoddwyr tân - firefighters

ewyn - foam

ffrwydrad - explosion

difrod - damage

o dan reolaeth - under control

stordai - warehouses

yswirwyr - insurers

ymosod - to attack

saethu - to shoot

tystiolaeth - evidence

gadael llonydd - to leave in peace

cyhoeddusrwydd - publicity

llofruddio - to murder

bai - blame


britannia.com
Adam   Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:50 am GMT
But whereas the number of Welsh speakers has risen, the number of Scots Gaelic speakers has declined.


1991 and 2001 figures



1991 figures
These figures were released in October 1992.


The first figure is the number of Gaelic speakers, the second
is the percentage this represents of the total population in the area.


Borders 460 (0.45%)
Central 1612 (0.61%)
Dumfries & Galloway 515 (0.35%)
Fife 1477 (0.44%)
Grampian 2491 (0.50%)
Highland 14713 (7.39%)
Lothian 4206 (0.59%)
Strathclyde 18283 (0.83%)
Tayside 2479 (0.66%)
Orkney 92 (0.48%)
Shetland 105 (0.47%)
Western Isles 19546 (67.23%)


total 65978 (1.34%)


The numbers for Skye & Lochalsh (part of Highland Region totals) were: 4715 (41.16%)
Only two parishes in Skye had more than 50% Gaelic-speakers: Kilmuir (73.2%) and Snizort (52.5%)


other areas:


Lochaber (Highland): 1988 (10.52%)
Inverness (Highland): 3476 (5.77%)
Ross & Cromarty (Highland): 2812 (5.82%)
Argyll & Bute (Strathclyde): 4583 (7.23%)
Glasgow City (Strathclyde): 6300 (0.96%)


Dun Eideann (Edinburgh) 3089
Lodainn an Ear (East Lothian) 322
Meadhan Lodainn (Midlothian) 227
Lodainn an Iar (West Lothian) 567


These figures come from the 1991 Census Scotland, Table L67S (Gaelic Language), by way of an article by Kenneth MacKinnon, "Gaelic and 'the Other Languages of Scotland' in the 1991 Population Census". The Gaelic-speaker numbers are specifically labeled "Gaelic Mother-Tongue speakers", so I don't know if second-language learners were excluded (or if they were, how).



2001 census
Numbers from the 2001 census were released on 13th Feb 2003. Surprisingly they took 4 months longer to be released than the figures of 1991.

The number of Gaelic speakers fell by 11% over 10 years to a figure of 58,650.


ALL PEOPLE
5062011


Understands spoken Gaelic but cannot speak, read or write Gaelic 27219


Speaks, reads and writes Gaelic
31235


Speaks but neither reads nor writes Gaelic
19466


Speaks and reads but cannot write Gaelic
7949


Reads but neither speaks nor writes Gaelic
4758


Writes but neither speaks nor reads Gaelic
901


Reads and writes but does not speak Gaelic
1435


Other combination of skills in Gaelic
319


No knowledge of Gaelic
4968729
Ben   Wed Dec 28, 2005 10:58 am GMT
In Ireland, most Irish speakers are bilingual, however, as has already been said, young children and old folks can be found who are monolingual. This is particularly true in the gaeltacht, for example I know many old people there who struggle with their 'cúpla focal as Béarla' -( few words of English).

Brennus, once again, some interesting viewpoints ;)

As people have already said, you're off base about Welsh being a diminishingly spoken language. Also, Welsh is actually supposed to be a relatively easy language to learn. As for Scots Gaelic and Irish, you know my standpoint ;). - Irish is not the rediculously hard language some make it out to be. I don't know about Gaelic.

In Ireland, on the last census, it was found that there were about 30,000 native speakers of Irish left in the Gaeltachtaí, whose first native language was Irish. Outside of the Gaeltachtaí, many people speak the language on a day to day basis, for example in pockets of Dublin if you know where to look, and also in Citys like Cork and especially Galway where a huge Irish language revival has taken place in recent years.

Also, with the rising popularity of the Gaelscoileanna - state funded schools with all lessons being taught through the medium of the Irish language- Irish is up and coming. These schools are the most sought after schools in Ireland, and have huge waiting lists. There are loads all round the country, in all counties in all major cities. Also they exist in Northern Ireland

Leaving Gaelscoileanna out of it, every Irish person who goes through education in the Republic will learn Irish from the age of 5 thought until they're 18.

Thanks to the help of Radio na Gaeltachta and especially TG4 - the Irish language television channel- Irish is making a comeback and is considered cool.

There's a long way to go, but the situation isn't as bad as you make it seem.

Ben.
Ben   Wed Dec 28, 2005 11:05 am GMT
PS: The main thing that needs to happen to help the Irish language is the revision of the way it is taught in schools in Ireland.

Ben.