Words aren't always necessary / myLot

@JudyEv (382068)

Rockingham, Australia

May 18, 2017 1:33am CST

Firstly I’m getting no kickbacks from Duolingo but I thought it was very interesting that back in November, the company was invited to meet with the President of Ireland at Áras an Uachtaráin (The President's House). The invitation was to recognise the language site’s efforts in keeping the Gaelic language alive and thriving. Although there are less than 100,000 native Gaelic speakers in Ireland, over 3 million have studied it on Duolingo. When we were in Ireland, particularly in the south-west regions, we saw many road signs and information panels which were in both English and Gaelic. And some signs, like the one shown here, didn’t need any words at all!

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16 responses

topffer

@topffer (42155)

• France

18 May 17

It is interesting. My mother was natively speaking Occitan, which is a Latin language not far from Catalan, and as she voluntarily was speaking it to me, I am also a native speaker, bilingual at birth. In the 19th C it was spoken by about 20 millions people in Southern France, but we are between 200 and 300 000 now, and quite all of us are more than 50 years old. The reason is that the Republic made a war against local languages since the 1880's, and pupils speaking anything else than French at school were punished if they were found speaking something else in a courtyard until the 1960's. The Occitan spoken by native speakers has several local variants, but basically it is like US/UK English, the grammar and vocabulary are the same, and we all understand each other whatever our area. Since the 1980's, it is taught again in some schools, and there are also some information panels with both languages in a few areas. The problem is that the language taught in schools is the Occitan of the 12th C minstrels, and each time I hear it, I have the feeling that I am in front of an alien coming from an exo-planet, and the alien thinks that he is in front of a redneck without education. The true language will have completely disappeared in1 or 2 generations. As you write that there are only 100 000 native Gaelic speakers actually, the question is : are the native speakers speaking the same language than the language taught in schools to non native ?

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topffer

@topffer (42155)

• France

18 May 17

@Fleura I did not knew that, but it is exactly the same. It is because parents made an effort to not speak Occitan to their children, that it quite disappeared in 2 or 3 generations. They were thinking that they were doing the right thing for them...

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Fleur

@Fleura (35020)

• United Kingdom

18 May 17

The same situation existed in Wales and also in Scotland in the 19th century and early 20th century, Children were punished if they were caught speaking their native language in school. In many cases parents also discouraged their children and persuaded them to speak English instead so as to better their prospects.

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