Deep in another thread (http://www.daltai.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/daltai/discus/show.pl?tpc=20&post=75075#PO ST75075)

Antaine asked:

quote:

Does anyone know when there came to be a formal distinction made between Irish and Scottish?

After some misunderstanding by me he clarified

quote:

Yes, but it is my understanding that in the 1500s, even the 1600s, that the languages were mutually intelligible such that modern linguists would not have separated them when classifying...so simply using the term "Irish" isn't the indicator I was looking for.

I'm not sure when the formal distinction was first drawn. What I would say however, is that such distinctions are often more political than linguistic. And I believe the Tudors started drawing the distinction - in order to split the Scots and Irish who had before (see Edward Bruce) joined against the English.

The language spoken in Ireland has been referred to in English as Irish, Gaelic, and Erse, with different terms having the whip hand at different times.

Scots has, as far as I know, always referred to the language similar to English spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland. [Trying vainly to avoid getting embroiled in that particular argument]

[Scots] Gaelic has been how the language of the Gael in Scotland has been described in English.

Aonghus, have you (or indeed, has anybody here) ever spoken Gaelic with a speaker of the Scottish variety? What was your personal experience?

I spoke once to a native speaker of Scottish Gaelic. I was speaking in Gaelic but since I'm not fluent nor used to speak Gaelic, I used some Irish words, but he would understand anyway. I can't say more 'cause when I'm with a Gaelic speaker (which doesn't happen too often!!) I try to speak Gaelic, not Irish...

According to Stair na Gaeilge, Irish and Scottish Gaelic began to differentiate from each other in the 13th century AD.

The main breaking point, for the literary language anyway, was the reformation when a distinct "Scottish" orthography was devised for bibles and prayer books as the traditional one was said to sound "too Irish" - i.e. too "Romish" perhaps :) - for some Scots.

I've been reading through Ciarán Ó Duibhin's site recently and he says that to Gaelic speakers themselves 'Gaelic' (regardless of the names used in different areas - "Gaolaing", "Gaedhlic", "Gàidhlig" etc) is one language spoken, in different varieties, from Kerry to Lewis.
The division into "Irish", "Scottish Gaelic" and "Manx" is one imposed by English speakers on it from outside.
Is he right?

This is my question as well.

And mine. I'm not fluent in Irish, but I understand the Scottish I read or hear, when it is something I would have understood in Irish anyway (if all that muddle makes any sense)...at least that's been my limited experience with Scottish.

One can see how all the terms can lead to confusion. Personally, "Scottish" by itself makes me think of Scots (or should that be Lallans...or Doric? Too many terms!)...or does it mean the form of English spoken in Scotland?
So...Scottish by itself seems much too vague. I just use Irish for Irish...and Scots Gaelic....I don't care for using just the word "Gaelic" for a particular language although I can see why some (especially speakers in Donegal or Belfast or Scotland might prefer it because of the links).

Antaine,

Here are some selections in relation to your questions:

quote:

'Gaelic' is equally messy.

quote:

It's use in English is quite new, however. It is no more than a crude anglicisation of the Irish word Gaeilge (the Irish language), or the adjective derived from it, Gaelach...

quote:

The language will be referred to as 'Irish' throughout. This is because it is the historically correct usage for the native language of Ireland, and the word 'Gaelic' is often commandeered by people who wish to suggest that the relationship of the Irish language to the country was somehow peripheral, or belonging to a disaffected and cranky minority. There is the added difficulty that 'Gaelic' is now commonly used to describe the Celtic language of Scotland...

quote:

In fact, 'Irish' was the word given to both languages by linguistic and imperial authorities until the seventeenth century. The term 'Gaelic' with incorrect reference to the Irish language in Ireland is little more than a hundred years old.

A pocket History of Gaelic Culture, pgs. 3-4

Alan Titley
ISBN 0862785693
The O'Brien Press, Dublin 2002

http://www.litriocht.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=4585

quote:

'that no manere man, freman nor foraine, of the citie or suburbes duellers, shall enpleade nor defende in Yrish tong ayenste ony man in the court... '

- Law for Waterford, enacted in 1492-1493...as quoted in:

Irish Dialects and Irish-Speaking Districts
Three Lectures by
Brian Ó Cuív 1950
ISBN 0901282480
First published 1951
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 1993

pg. 10
http://www.litriocht.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=3450

quote:

'All thEnglyshe folke of the said countyes ben of Iryshe habyt, of Iryshe langage, and of Iryshe condytions, except the cyties and wallyd tounes.

From an account of the State of Ireland, year 1515...as quoted in:

Irish Dialects and Irish-Speaking Districts
Three Lectures by
Brian Ó Cuív 1950

pg. 11

quote:

Two years later Elizabeth [Queen Elizabeth I], in a letter to the Lord Lieutenant, recommended a certain Robert Dale [Daly] to the vacant see 'the rather because he is well able (as we heare say) to preache in the Irish tonge'.

From the year 1564. As quoted in:

Irish Dialects and Irish-Speaking Districts
Three Lectures by
Brian Ó Cuív 1950

pg. 14

quote:

Thus in 1603 an English man, a nominee for the Sees of Kilmore and Ardagh, was described as having 'obtained the Irish tongue'.

quote:

In 1604 a recommendation was made that 'ministers that can speak Irish...be gotten out of Scotland'.

As quoted in:

Irish Dialects and Irish-Speaking Districts
Three Lectures by
Brian Ó Cuív 1950

pg. 15



It would seem that the term Yrish/Iryshe/Irishe/Irish was being used to refer to the language in Scotland at this time as well. No mention of Gaelic.

The Oxford Companion to Irish History claims that mutual intelligibility ceased in the 13th century, but that the literary language remained centuries longer. However, it would seem that certain northern dialects were quite similar to those in Scotland a lot later.

quote:

Even yet the Glensmen of Antrim go regularly to Highland fairs, and communicate without the slightest difficulty with the Highlanders. Having myself conversed with both Glensmen and Arranmen, I can testify to the absolute identity of their speech

- Belfast Irish Scholar Robert MacAdam, 1873.

As quoted in:

Ó Baoill, C. (2000) ‘The Gaelic Continuum.’ In Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies. pg. 122

I think the language spoken on Rathlin island was essentially a Scottish Gaelic dialect (and was described as so when there were still native speakers there, IIRC) because all the inhabitants had been massacred and replaced with settlers.

quote:

Many of the planters themselves were Gaelic speakers from Scotland and a significant proportion of Ulster Protestants were of native Irish stock. As late as 1835 the Synod of Ulster made Irish a necessary subject for the training of all Presbyterian ministers. In 1841 the Presbyterian General Assembly published a handbook for teachers of Irish, which was described as 'our sweet and memorable mother tongue'.

As quoted in:
The Oxford Companion to Irish History, Oxford University Press Inc. New York, 2002 (entry by Nicholas Williams, UCD)

pg. 315
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oxford-Companion-Irish-History-Connolly/dp/019866270X


The Irish Language In County Down by Ciarán Ó Duibhín is an excellent resource for this type of thing as well. He devotes a lot of time to the similarities between northern dialects and those in western Scotland etc. as well as the interactions between local speakers and ministers from Scotland

http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~oduibhin/oirthear/down.doc


Hope this helps.

(Message edited by Danny2007 on November 28, 2008)

"Even yet the Glensmen of Antrim go regularly to Highland fairs, and communicate without the slightest difficulty with the Highlanders. Having myself conversed with both Glensmen and Arranmen, I can testify to the absolute identity of their speech"

Having seen a TG4 documentary about a poet in a previously Scots-Gaelic speaking area accross the sea from Antrim, it struck me as different to that of the Hebridies and more like Irish anyway, so questions of relative similarity may be wrongly pitched

D'fhiafraigh Domhnall

quote:

Aonghus, have you (or indeed, has anybody here) ever spoken Gaelic with a speaker of the Scottish variety? What was your personal experience?

My personal experience is that I can have a fair stab at reading Scots Gaelic, but cannot follow a conversation
in it, or a song sung in it.
I sometimes listen to the RnaG programme "Sruth na Maoille", which is jointly presented by a Scots Gaelic and an Irish speaker. I can rarely follow the Scots presenter.

I think also that while there was a language continuum between Kerry and the Highlands, the extreme points of it would always have had difficulty following one another (much as Irish speakers had before the advent of RnaG)

Not understanding other dialects was the reason why Baile Ghib Gaeltacht in Meath more or less failed, whereas the neighbouring Rath Cairn, which was populated from Conamara only, worked.

My guess is US-english speakers will have the same difficulty with Aussie-english speakers in another 200 years.

But...that does seem to answer that very little distinction was drawn, by english- or Ulster-Irish speakers, between the tongue of Ireland and the tongue of Scotland right up to the mid-1800s. The impoverished speakers in Connacht and Munster who never left their villages and had no radio or television, would not have had the chance to weigh in on the subject with their opinion.

Thanks for all the digging.

Arran Gaelic and Antrim Irish are not identical although they have many similiarities.
One book has been written about each of them so it's quite easy to compare them.

quote:

Having seen a TG4 documentary about a poet in a previously Scots-Gaelic speaking area across the sea from Antrim, it struck me as different to that of the Hebridies and more like Irish anyway, so questions of relative similarity may be wrongly pitched.

On "Ríleanna agus Téipeanna" a few months back they played recordings of the last native-speakers from various counties around the around the country. The speaker from Oileán Reachlann definitely sounded more Gaeilge than Gàidhlig. Another time there was an interviewee on Alba (who was definitely speaking Gàidhlig!) whom I could understand better than the others. So there must have been an identifiable transition zone.(?)

As regards my own ability to understand Gàidhlig, it's like listening to a far-off MW-station on the radio; I understand a sentence and the it "fades" off again and so on.

For people who have either language it is definitely a wasted opportunity not to acquire the other because they are really very near each other linguistically. I've recently embarked upon it myself - d'aineoinn na síor-easpa ama!!

I think a good procedure to follow when learning a language which is related to a previously known one is to first look out for the similarities, the dissimilarities and the faux amis.

Would it not be a good idea to co-operate in the area of new terminology to stop both languages from drifting further apart?

where scottish is most similar to the geographically nearest dialect of Ulster Irish, is Manx most similar to the old Leinster dialect, or Ulster as well?

They say Leinster Irish was similar to Manx.

quote:

On "Ríleanna agus Téipeanna" a few months back they played recordings of the last native-speakers from various counties around the around the country.

Do you remember which month? Do you recall which counties were featured?

http://www.rte.ie/rnag/rileannaagusteipeanna.html

I was listening to that live, very interesting.

I wonder when the last traditional native speaker died in Kildare and counties like that, and what their Irish would have sounded like!

quote:

Do you remember which month? Do you recall which counties were featured?

I think it was late June or July 2008 (I've tried all the listed programmes back to March).

I missed the beginning of the programme but the first speaker I heard was almost certainly from Clare. After him came Bob McCormack (Oileán Reachlann), Páraic Mac Culloch (Tír Eoghan), Tommy Hollywood (Ard Mhacha), Áine Bean Uí Anluan (Lú) and Micheál Ó Maol Dhómhnaigh (Tiobraid Árainn). There was also a man from the evacuated island of Inis Mhuirí (Sligeach) who could only recite some prayers - albeit with almost perfect native-speaker diction. The clarity of the recordings was striking compared to other ones I have heard in the meantime, which leads me to speculate that they were recorded by Raidio Éireann.

I believe that the last native-speakers from most of the counties mentioned died out in the sixties.

The loss of these dialects is a tragedy of which the great majority of people are blissfully oblivious.

Atleast there is still native traditional speakers in Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, Cork, and Waterford in 2008.

I have no time for lugubriousness (or what would be called "comhairíochas" in a certain virtual breacGhaeltacht - agus tá súil agam gur ag breacadh chun gile a bheidh sí) but I am still fascinated with the history of the language in areas where it is now extinct as a native language, especially as I was familiar with some of these areas when I was growing up back in the sixties. It also serves as a standing wake-up call.

A handful of native speakers - mostly very old and isolated - still existed, and some people had some knowledge of the Irish spoken locally. If I remember correctly we had been learning Muskerry Irish in school for a year or two before Connacht Irish was introduced as a sort of standard. I remember how - in the days before RnaG - older people were slightly consternated at the rather strange new type of Irish we were bringing home from school which didn't sound right to them at all.

The interesting thing about the recordings is that I find the speakers from Clare and Tipperary easy enough to understand; they spoke native Irish the same way as the old people used to speak English, if you know what I mean. My conjecture would be that the switch-back - at least pronunciation-wise - would have been quite feasible up to a certain point in time i.e. before the mid-atlantic drift set in.

You have to understand that for most Irish people, the idea of consonant harmony and broad and slender would be classed as beyond bounds. People simply assume the English spoken and Irish are very close, and there is nothing you can do. I doubt more than 2 out of a 100 teachers known what 'broad' and 'slender' actually mean.

The reality is that Irish is so alien in grammar, idiom and pronunciation that it could never be revived as the Irish we know and love. People just could not accept it

I doubt more than 2 out of a 100 teachers known what 'broad' and 'slender' actually mean.

Seriously?

Well I only met one teacher of Irish who knew what they were about -and he was a professor of plant biology or the like (details escape me). Rank and file teachers had no idea at all. I don't mean this in a disparaging way, its just the way of things, only I suspect structuralistic currents are not very strong in the teacher -training colleges with regards to language

The two teachers I had in Donegal seemed to know all about it.

Most of the time they only appear to know about it, that is, they talk about it with respect to the orthography, but not the language directly

OK, I'll bite. If knowing what the difference sounds like, looks like, and matters for is not enough, what do you want? For language learning and teaching, mind you, linguistics is something else.

If they know they difference then, how come we never see them use them then? While I can't speak for other people, I think Lughaidh would be of the same opinion -where's the beef?

All I'll say is, if you're right I'm off to buy lottery tickets!

Not that I want to start a fight, I was just saying! I suppose Americans are better at learning foreign languages anyway, so you might find it hard to belief how poor it can be in Ireland

"I suppose Americans are better at learning foreign languages anyway"

you're kidding, right?

Although, the reason is not national aptitude, but scarcity of immersion in a language other than english for most of the country, for instance, I live 1,000 miles away from the nearest foreign country, and that country mainly speaks english as well. I'm 2,000 miles away from an non-english speaking country. Some cities in my own state hold pockets of ethnic communities, but I never have cause to visit, and most residents have some functional command of english. I have only had a "need" for a foreign language twice in my life (ie - the person I was trying to communicate with spoke no english).

Combine that with the fact that, until very recently, most students in the US did not begin to take a foreign langauge until high school (because there was not a perceived "need") and it's no wonder most Americans are monoglot english speakers.

While Ireland has long been attempting to educate students in Irish from much younger, it suffers from other factors mentioned above; namely, there is no perceived "practical need" for the language, which students would have to go out of their way to find in its natural habitat - and even then will find every native speaker also fluent in english.

but, to my point - Bearn, we all know what the books and usual learning materials say about broad and slender (which is undoubtedy an oversimplification), what, then, is your "correct" explanation of broad and slender, so that people can better judge whether or not the teachers they've encountered have or lack this knowledge?

Well they don't use it, that is the point -are people supposed to teach something they know nothing about?

Sounds like you're saying that they understand how it works in theory but they don't bother making broad/slender distinctions in their actual pronunciation. Laziness in diction, or thick English accent, then?

I suppose I can see how it could happen. It's not uncommon for foreign language teachers to be somewhat less than fluent in the language they teach, regrettably.

Just for historical interest at this stage but I can distinctly remember English-speaking adults from Clare and other western counties (vintage up to ca. 1935) having the slender "r" (hard-wired to boot) as part of their normal English diction.