Scots Gaelic - Why would you want to learn it?

**Aussie_Don** · 17th July 13, 05:13 AM

Originally Posted by cessna152towser

I googled "nook" and it appears to be another of these new fangled electronic book things, similar to "kindle"
Thanks but no thanks, give me a good old fashioned paper book any day. One of my pet hates about this new technology is when the screen page suddenly changes or goes white when I am in the middle of reading something interesting.

So, read quicker.

But, as many of us (no, make that all of us) are growing older,
one of the really beaut things about these "new-fangled"
electronic gadgets is that you can easily change the text
size. So you don't need your bi-focals to read them.

-Don

**Aussie_Don** · 17th July 13, 08:01 AM

Originally Posted by Nathan

Interesting sidetrack about ebook readers.

Back to the original question. The answer is when the language dies the culture, in large part, dies with it. We have volumes of songs, poems, stories, histories all written in the language of the Gael. If nobody learns that language, nobody can appreciate that legacy and nobody can pass it on.

Sorry for being part of the digression. To reply to the main
thread, I'd really like to come to grips with Gaelic, though I
am concerned with what I have experienced in the past as
a lack of language ability.

As a "folkie" I would dearly love to be able to sing traditional
Scottish songs in the original Gaelic. And more importantly,
to understand what I was singing.

But, where do I start? In particular, where do I start with a
limited budget for fancy language courses?

-Don

**RyanMac** · 17th July 13, 10:05 AM

Don, I feel your pain, as I am in the exact same boat. Looking at it in written form makes my eyes hurt, and trying to understand it makes my head hurt. I feel like it shouldn't be that way since English is supposed to be the hardest language to learn. What I found that has helped me the most is a television series that was produced in the early 1990's for BBC Alba titled "Speaking our language". Its 72 episodes. You can find them around the web, but the best place to find them is on YouTube. You can also buy it on 3 DVD's from Amazon for around $60.

**O'Searcaigh** · 17th July 13, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by RyanMac

Don, I feel your pain, as I am in the exact same boat. Looking at it in written form makes my eyes hurt, and trying to understand it makes my head hurt. I feel like it shouldn't be that way since English is supposed to be the hardest language to learn. What I found that has helped me the most is a television series that was produced in the early 1990's for BBC Alba titled "Speaking our language". Its 72 episodes. You can find them around the web, but the best place to find them is on YouTube. You can also buy it on 3 DVD's from Amazon for around $60.

Thanks for providing another resource link for this. I too struggle with languages (even my "own") but once had to learn to read (and speak a little) French and German and have picked up a bit of Spanish off and on along the way but would really like to find a way into this this, for me, most frustrating of languages. Does anyone know of a transliterated (Gaelic words spelled in Anglicized form) introduction to Gaelic? Someone once asked how to pronounce "O'Searcaigh" ("O Sharkey," drop the 'O' and it is a common enough Anglicized name) or like "Sean" = "Shawn," but for the life of me, I have a really hard time making sense (hearing in my head from reading on a page) what any of it sounds like or means. It would be so much easier to learn, I think, if there were a transliterated text to help those of us who are learning disabled Anglophones.

**Laird_M** · 17th July 13, 03:12 PM

I'm also wanting to learn, and do seem to have a facility with languages. I want to learn to enable me to understand songs, help keep the language alive, and feel more of a sense of connection with my ancestors.

**Pipersson** · 17th July 13, 03:49 PM

I would like to learn a bit of Gaelic to be closer to the tradition and to understand it better. A language always gives information of the people's thinking
Though today just 1% of the Scots speak Gaelic themselves....
So let us help to increase this number :-)
And I need to understand the weather forecast on gaelic BBC

Tom

**A Lenape Scot** · 17th July 13, 07:35 PM

I agree with that. I have worked on Scottish Gaelic and know just enough to have a short introductory conversation. I have found radio lingua network very helpful as I can listen to it on my iPhone on the way to work. I also have a fun app from utalk scottish gaelic I paid $10.00 for. Unfortunately they is not anything effective I have found to learn the Lenape/Delaware language and I live 4 hours away from tribal headquarters. Ironic that I know how to have a short conversation from a culture thousands of miles away and I only know one word from a culture a few hundred miles away.

**piperchris** · 17th July 13, 09:49 PM

I hope to study Scots Gaelic someday, I think it's a beautiful and unique language!

**RyanMac** · 18th July 13, 04:53 AM

Radio Lingua has Scots Gaelic? I could only find Irish Gaelic when I was searching through their podcasts on iTunes.

**Nathan** · 18th July 13, 05:13 AM

BBC has a great free online resource for learning Gaidhlig called Beag air Bheag. Type that into Google or the Xmarks search function or browse the threads in the Gaelic Languages section of Xmarks for the URL.

Regarding transliteration, I know it can be complicated at first but once you learn a few tricks about how letters effect those around them, you shouldn't need it. For example if you think of the following names:

Sean - Shawn
Sine - Sheena
Sinead - Shinaid
Siobhan - Shuvaan

You'll soon recognize that an S followed by e or I is pronounced sh.

You'll also quickly notice that bh = v.

Once you see this repeat itself 20 or 30 times, you start to see a Gaelic word and sound it out according to Gaelic rather than English pronunciation conventions.