Glasgow Gaels

It may only be spoken by a tiny fraction of the overall population, but traditional Scottish Gaelic is starting to fight back, and has just opened its first school in Glasgow, writes Brian O'Connell.

While many may have already written the obituary of Scotland's native tongue, there are signs that both popular and political attitudes towards Gaelic in Scotland are changing. With the country's first contemporary feature film in Gaelic due out this autumn, the BBC broadcasting live sports in Gaelic, comprehensive government initiatives being fast-tracked and substantial funding released to provide more Gaelic educational facilities, there is little doubt that major efforts are now under way to help save a language in serious peril. But will the efforts be enough? With only 1.2 per cent of the population now speaking Scottish Gaelic, the question remains: is the language suffering a slow death or experiencing a steady renaissance?

Speaking from a noisy playground in the heart of Glasgow, Donalda McComb is head teacher at Scotland's only exclusively Gaelic secondary school. The school was set up last year and currently has 33 pupils at secondary level and a further 222 at primary, all conducting their schooling through Gaelic. The numbers are small, especially when you consider the numbers learning Irish in Ireland. Yet for McComb and her staff, their school represents a huge psychological leap forward in the fight to preserve their mother tongue.

"The school here has been open a year," says McComb, "and also includes primary and nursery facilities providing for children aged between three and 18. I have to say, I'm proud to be working in the first Gaelic school in Scotland, here in the city of Glasgow, and helping in some way to stop the decline of our native language."

While enrolment looks steady in the long term, the success of the school has brought its own problems, with native Gaelic staff hard to come by. "Probably one of the biggest issues has been getting staff," says McComb.

"This year we have had some success and secured Gaelic physical education, arts and music teachers. We couldn't find anyone for drama, so our English teacher is currently studying the subject. What we need are teachers of more specialist subjects such as the sciences and maths. I feel it's going to be an ongoing issue." Having been involved in teaching Gaelic her entire career, McComb is frank in her assessment of whether there is an increasing public appetite to learn the language.

"I think it's hard to say. Our school is in the Woodside area of Glasgow and the population is drawn from very diverse backgrounds," says McComb, "We have begun to set up some outreach programmes, and other initiatives like after-school clubs. It's all about trying to generate interest. At the moment there is definitely a greater demand, I would say. While Gaelic is always vying for interest with other languages, I think there is a realisation that it is a valuable language to have."

McComb says she is more optimistic now than at any point in her career, and is looking to the future with some optimism. Yet the language needs substantial investment if it is to re-emerge.

"I'm actually confident about the language, and I've gathered staff here equally confident in preserving this language. We need support though, especially financial. There will always be people who have a negative view of the language, but I think we are moving in the right direction," she says.

Dr Wilson McLeod, senior lecturer in Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, has a slightly less optimistic outlook. While he acknowledges moves are being made at government level to protect the language, he says there is no guarantee that any of these initiatives will be successful. He points to the situation in Ireland, where government support has had little impact on the number of daily Irish speakers.

"The reality on the ground in Scotland is that Gaelic has been in more or less uninterrupted decline for centuries," says Dr McLeod. "What this means is that there are fewer speakers using Gaelic less often. That is the same experience in Ireland. There may be a lot more institutions using Irish, such as the educational, government or media departments, but the situation is still the same."

Dr McLeod's assertions are backed up by census figures, which confirm the language in Scotland is in a perilous state. Despite government suppression throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, there were still over 250,000 Gaelic speakers in Scotland in 1881 - almost 7 per cent of the population.

However, rapid decline set in at the start of the 20th century, with the number of speakers dropping to under 100,000 by the 1950s as generations of Gaels were punished in school for not using English. A move to redress the situation eventually began in the 1980s - including the introduction of education through Gaelic - but by 2001, numbers had fallen to 58,652, just 1.2 per cent of Scotland's residents.

Whereas in Ireland, the language has been strongly attached to the cultural and ideological development of the State, in Scotland the language has suffered at the hands of political ambivalence for generations. Yet recent government initiatives are going some way towards stemming official ambivalence. Primary among these is the establishment of Bòrd na Gàidhlig, an agency with a key role in the strategic development of Gaelic in Scotland, which is working to reach a target of 100,000 speakers by 2041.

Many observers feel the Bòrd has its work cut out. Following the announcement of its plan, the following comment in the Scotsman newspaper sums up certain prevailing attitudes: "Most 'Scottish' never spoke Gaelic. How can a dead language be revived? The money would be better spent on drug education in our primary schools - or not spent at all."

The plan, though, has been broadly welcomed in Wales, which is seen as a model of how to promote an indigenous language. Welsh was in decline until the early 1990s when there were 508,098 speakers - 18.7 per cent of the population. But the introduction of the Welsh Language Act in 1993 helped reverse the trend and by 2001 numbers had risen to nearly 21 per cent of the population.

Gaelic conservationists in Scotland will be hoping for a similar result, yet given the political climate, with the first minority government in situ since devolution, many are sceptical about the effectiveness of government intervention.

"The big question is how serious this issue is taken by those behind the plan," says Dr McLeod. "Is it just a case that some Gaelic organisation came up with this great vision, and the great majority of people have no idea it exists and it has no political weight behind it? It looks fine on paper, but reality is entirely different. The figures show that only 2 per cent of Scottish school children have contact with Gaelic - that tells you all you need to know about where government priorities should lie."

For their part, the Scottish Executive point to the fact that they are beginning to address the lack of educational opportunities through Gaelic. One such move, which has attracted much controversy, is the planned opening of the first all-Gaelic school in the Highlands, an area with the highest percentage of native speakers. Yet despite some protests from English-speaking parents, the local council approved the school and enrolment is expected to begin this August.

There is no hard evidence, though, that providing all-Gaelic schools in rural areas will do anything to preserve the fabric of the communities or their language. Rural communities speaking Gaelic may be a thing of the past in Scotland, while the re-establishment of traditional communities is wholly unlikely.

"What we are more likely to see here," says Dr Wilson McLeod, "is a convergence of Scottish and Irish Gaelic than any re-introduction of Gaelic onto dwindling communities. I mean, in Ireland, who speaks Irish? Generally it is a second language speaker, who has learned it in school, and goes on to use it in an urban context. There has been no large-scale renaissance."

So the future remains uncertain for Scottish Gaelic, and despite the current initiatives, it may be a classic case of too little too late.

Translations:

Scottish Gaelic          English                                Irish

Ciamar a tha thu?      How are you?                   Conas atá tú?

Oidhche mhath          Good night                       Oíche mhaith

Feasgar math            Good afternoon                Tráthnóna maith

Dè a tha seo?           What is this?                     Cad é seo?

Slàn leat (or tìoraidh) Goodbye                         Slán leat