Originally Posted by
squidge
Rob - are you suggesting that i shouldnt have an opinion on Gaelic and its promotion and teaching or on the Scots language or on minority languages per se? Why are you allowed an opinion, Davth allowed one, BT allowed one and yet not I?
Dialects and languages are wonderful things, I love language and words, I think that Gaelic and Welsh and Cornish and Doric and lallands Scots and Scots itself, lancashire Dialect, geordie and all our regional accents are worth protecting and developing so that people own them. I can still spot a caithness dialect in a crowwded room and it always makes me smile. Tthe benefits of being bilingual are well known and as Gaelic and Welsh are languages of the British Isles then people should have the opportunity to learn them. Why not? No one is forcing people that dont want to learn Gaelic to learn Gaelic but as a language of Scotland it should be promoted and cherished - if it isnt then what happened to it in the past - just like what happened to Doric will happen again and I think Britain will be the poorer for it.
just as an aside - the suggestion that £26 million is being spent on Gaelic road signs needs to be clarified. Here for you guys who have been frothing at the mouth over Gaelic road signs are the facts.
£26m is in fact roughly £3m more than the entire annual budget for ALL Gaelic-related activities in Scotland under the six-year Gaelic National Plan, including BBC Alba which costs £13 million. and does a valuable job even for English speakers, broadcasting lower-league football and minority sports like shinty, even if most viewers can’t follow the commentary).The government body charged with promoting the language, the Bòrd na Gàidhlig, has an annual budget of £5.1 million. Independent research suggests that such investment actually pays for itself in terms of various benefits to the economy.
Bilingual roadsigns weren’t instigated by the SNP as part of its dastardly obsession with inculcating seperatism, Gleeber has already pointed ou that they were instigated by the labour/libdem administration in 2003 The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act, which set out “the status of the Gaelic language as an official language of Scotland commanding equal respect to the English language”, was passed by the labour/lib dem Government in 2005, and subsequently enthusiastically backed by the tories.
Indeed the Tories had a manifesto in 2011 which said they “remain committed to the promotion of the Gaelic language and culture”.
The actual total budget for “Gaelic road signs” is not £6m but £2m, and is actually just the budget for roadsigns generally – Gaelic names will only be added when signs need replacing making the real cost effectively zero.
I hope this makes things a bit clearer for you - it seems it might be you who know nowt about it after all.