Scots Gaelic speakers?

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Hallo a chairdean!

Ciamar a thandbag?

Chan eil mi fileanta anns a' Ghàidhlig, ach 's toil leam Gàidhlig ionnsachadh gu leòr.

ChasR--what sort of words are important for you to learn?

Cofaidh--I understand your frustration about the lack of Gaelic speakers in Suffolk, but you're in a comparatively better position for learning than I am (I live in Portland, Oregon). You could hop in your car and be at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye within a day. I, on the other hand, would have to hop on a bus downtown, take a train to Seattle, take a 10-11 hour flight to Glasgow (most likely with a layover in someplace like Newark. Yecchh...), a bus down to Steisean Sràid na Banrighinn (Queen St. Station), a three-hour train ride to Arisaig, a two-hour ferry ride to Skye, and then hitch a bit up to SMO.

There are several very active Gaelic groups in London, which would be a bit closer to you than driving to Scotland. Try checking Sabhal Mòr Ostaig's webpage for information on Gaelic classes in London and elsewhere in England.

Cumaibh oiribh!

[lalit]

Hi Sporting Pitchfork,

Well, it wouldn't be the SMO, but to the best of my knowledge there are regular Gaelic classes in Seattle, just a bus + train ride away for you. So you're not as badly off as you might think.

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Oh yeah, forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me. Would those be the Slighe Nan Gaidheal classes? I'd completely forgotten about them. I should shoot them an e-mail.

There's one other Gaelic speaker that I know here in Portland, though I've been told there are a few others lurking around. There used to be a class here, but as far as I know, it hasn't been active for a good few years...

[CHasR]

Hallo a chairdean!

Ciamar a thandbag?

Chan eil mi fileanta anns a' Ghàidhlig, ach 's toil leam Gàidhlig ionnsachadh gu leòr.

ChasR--what sort of words are important for you to learn?
Cumaibh oiribh!

Tha gu math, Tapaidh leat; tha mi a gle trang ag argumaid le mo Bhean,
tha i a gradh " Chan eil thu a guidheachan ( le Beurla)".
Tha mi a 'gairraidh a guidheachan aig Gaidhlig. Mar Seo!

De do chor, Sporting Pitchfork?

Did I completely murder that? its a pretty complex sentence...sorry if so.
Been a while since Ive tackled Gealic, used to have a little more, but if ya dont use it...

[fearfaoin]

Ciamar a thandbag?

Is that a cross-lingual pun? Is there a word for that?

[cowtime]

'S math sin!

You know, I've always wondered how much Celtic languages have affected English; I know of things absorbed from the Irish/Scots Gaelic like "galore", "bloke", "slogan", "slew", etc., but I figure there might be a lot more than one might think. For instance, the above sounds a lot like "smashing". Coincidence?

The following are quotes from "Dialect of the Appalchians" which can be found in its entirety here-('n that'll tell you why I talk like I do)

http://www.wvculture.org/history/journa ... h30-2.html


"When we remember that the first white settlers in what is today Appalachia were the so-called Scotch-Irish along with some Palatine Germans, there is small wonder that the language has a Scottish tinge; the remarkable thing is that the Germans seem to have influenced it so little. About the only locally used dialect word that can be ascribed to them is briggity. The Scots appear to have had it all their own way.

When I first came to Lincoln County as a bride it used to seem to me that everything that did not pooch out, hooved up. Pooch is a Scottish variant of the word pouch and was in use in the 1600's. Numerous objects can pooch out including pregnant women and gentlemen with "bay windows." Hoove is a very old past participle of the verb to heave and was apparently in use on both sides of the border by 1601. The top of an old-fashioned trunk may be said to hoove up. Another word heard occasionally in the back country is ingerns. Ingems are onions. In Scottish dialect the word is inguns; however, if our people are permitted the intrusive r in potaters, tomaters, tobaccer, and so on, there seems to be no reason why they should not use it in ingems as well.

It is possible to compile a very long list of these Scots words and phrases. I will give only a few more illustrations, and will wait to mention some points on Scottish pronunciation and grammar a little further on.

Fornenst is a word that has many variants. It can mean either "next to" or "opposite from." "Look at that big rattler quiled up fornenst the fence post!"

"The reason our people still speak as they do is that when these early Scots and English and Germans (and some Irish and Welsh too) came into the Appalachian area and settled, they virtually isolated themselves from the mainstream of American life for generations to come because of the hills and mountains, and so they kept the old speech forms that have long since fallen out of fashion elsewhere.

Things in our area are not always what they seem, linguistically speaking. Someone may tell you that "Cindy ain't got sense enough to come in outen the rain, but she sure is clever." Clever, you see, back in the 1600's meant "neighborly or accommodating." Also if you ask someone how he is, and he replies that he is "very well", you are not necessarily to rejoice with him on the state of his health. Our people are accustomed to use a speech so vividly colorful and virile that his "very well" only means that he is feeling "so-so." If you are informed that "several" people came to a meeting, your informant does not mean what you do by several - he is using it in its older sense of anywhere from about 20 to 100 people. If you hear a person or an animal referred to as ill, that person or animal is not sick but bad-tempered, and this adjective has been so used since the 1300's. (Incidentally, good English used sick to refer to bad health long, long before our forebearers ever started saying ill for the same connotation.)

Many of our people refer to sour milk as blinked milk. This usage goes back at least to the early 1600's when people still believed in witches and the power of the evil eye. One of the meanings of the word blink back in those days was "to glance at;" if you glanced at something, you blinked at it, and thus sour milk came to be called blinked due to the evil machinations of the witch. There is another phrase that occurs from time to time, "Man, did he ever feather into him!" This used to carry a fairly murderous connotation, having gotten its start back in the days when the English long bow was the ultimate word in destructive power. Back then if you drew your bow with sufficient strength to cause your arrow to penetrate your enemy up to the feathers on its shaft, you had feathered into him. Nowadays, the expression has weakened in meaning until it merely indicates a bit of fisticuffs.

"One of the most baffling expressions our people use (baffling to "furriners," at least) is "I don't care to. . . ." To outlanders this seems to mean a definite "no," whereas in truth it actually means, "thank you so much, I'd love to." One is forevermore hearing a tale of mutual bewilderment in which a gentleman driving an out-of-state car sees a young fellow standing alongside the road, thumbing. When the gentleman stops and asks if he wants a lift, the boy very properly replies, "I don't keer to," using care in the Elizabethan sense of the word. On hearing this, the man drives off considerably puzzled leaving an equally baffled young man behind. (Even the word foreigner itself is used here in its Elizabethan sense of someone who is the same nationality as the speaker, but not from the speaker's immediate home area."

"Almost all the so-called "bad English" used by natives of Appalachia was once employed by the highest ranking nobles of the realms of England and Scotland."

""My brother come in from the army last night." This usage goes back to late Anglo-Saxon times. You find it in the Paston Letters and in Scottish poetry. "I done finished my lessons," also has many echoes in the Pastons' correspondence and the Scots poets."

[lalit]

Oh yeah, forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me. Would those be the Slighe Nan Gaidheal classes? I'd completely forgotten about them. I should shoot them an e-mail.

There's one other Gaelic speaker that I know here in Portland, though I've been told there are a few others lurking around. There used to be a class here, but as far as I know, it hasn't been active for a good few years...

Yes, in fact I was thinking of Slighe Nan Gaidheal. They have day-long "Zero to Gaelic" intensive classes every month or so, often taught by native speakers.

[AaronMalcomb]

There's a Slighe nan Gaidheal colony as it were in Portland. I remember several Portlanders at the last Féis. Somebody at Slighe should be able to help you out... and come to the next Féis. Last year's was a blast.

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Ciamar a thandbag?

Is that a cross-lingual pun? Is there a word for that?

Yes. "Ciamar a hoo-haw?" is also commonly heard.

De do chor, Sporting Pitchfork?

Cor math, tapadh leat. Charlie, a' bheil thu ag iorraidh ionnsachadh faclan toibheumach, nach eil?

The worst thing I know how to say in Gaelic is "suas do thòin le botal briste."

I'll let those with some knowledge of Gaelic and/or Irish figure that one out for themselves...

Cowtime's information on Scots and pre-Vowel Shift English vocabulary and expressions surviving in some dialects of Appalachian English is fascinating, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the influence of Celtic languages on English.

One influence that has been suggested in recent years by some linguists has to do with revised theories regarding the colonization of England itself. Rather than a massive invasion of Saxon hordes that either wiped out the Celtic Britons or pushed them into Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, it has more recently been suggested that Anglo-Saxon migrations took place on a much smaller scale and that the cultural shift from "British" (in its original sense) to "English" in what we now call "England" was much more gradual than previously surmised. Some linguists have suggested that as Anglo-Saxon/Old English spread and was acquired as a second language by speakers of Brittonic languages, they were not able to master Anglo-Saxon's ludicrously thorny case system. As Old English evolved, more and more case endings got dropped. Celtic languages also have case endings, but simply having them in your native language doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to figure them out in a different language.

So, you very well may have the Celts to thank for the fact that in English "the cat chased the mouse" has one very distinct meaning and that the words cannot be modified to suggest the opposite without changing their order. Without them, we very well might have wound up speaking something grammatically closer to German...

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

There's a Slighe nan Gaidheal colony as it were in Portland. I remember several Portlanders at the last Féis. Somebody at Slighe should be able to help you out... and come to the next Féis. Last year's was a blast.

Thanks, Aaron. I'll shoot them an e-mail. One of the Portlanders you met was probably Geoff Frasier, who is the only Gaelic speaker I've met so far in Portland. He spent some time living on Benbecula and speaks excellent Gaelic. He's trying to bring up his son speaking Gaelic, actually. When I met him, I was playing in a pub and this two-year-old kid came up behind me and started shouting "Piob! Piob! Tha e a' seinn a' phiob!" Very cute.

[AaronMalcomb]

Is Geoff Fraser a big guy, has/had long hair? If so he wasn't at the Féis but heard stories about his Benbecula caravan experience at one of the after-after-hours gatherings.

Are you at the Portland Highland Games in a couple weekends? I'll be there with Maple Ridge as guest band.

[CHasR]

Charlie, a' bheil thu ag iorraidh ionnsachadh faclan toibheumach, nach eil?

faodaidh gu dearbh!