Why I am saddened by the Scottish Gaelic | Ian Jack (guardian)

Bilingual signage spread across Scotland. Photography: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

My new passport arrived the other day: my pasbort I siubhail cead. Inspect it, I found myself to be a citizen of Teyrnas Gyfunol Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon Rioghachd Aonaichte Bhreatainn Eireann Uist - type - which is how the United Kingdom is what sensitive words translated into Welsh and Scottish on the title page of the passport (the French alternative days are missing long). Anyone who lives in a large city British got used long ago the idea of English as the language local one among many others: hours displayed in Punjabi, Turkish, radiotherapy unit Somalia and Bengali, appellants mobiles on the bus who speak companions of Tirana, Vilnius, Lagos and Krakow, migrants or their families still live. But the Welsh and Gaelic phrases on the passport are surprising. They respond to this current UK. They exist in a more historic landscape for repairing the old rural grievances rather than to express new Metropolitan requirements.

The European Charter for regional or minority languages calls the "native", which means strictly native, but is now also the suggestion of a language which is moved in importance by a new come more popular. United Kingdom, the Charter also recognizes Cornish (aka Lallans), Scots Gaelic Irish and Scottish Ulster. The Charter, that the United Kingdom ratified in 2001, demand that everyone should be encouraged to survive. Two of them, Scots and Scottish the Ulster (aka Ullans), could be challenged as languages separated from the English or the other, and some say that Ullans invented for purely political reasons, as a counterweight Protestant Irish Gaelic acknowledged by the peace agreement of the Ireland North. But, while most language lobbies are as much political as cultural: their more powerful, they have contributed to break polyglot empires and kingdoms and redrew the boundaries of nation States.

This particular Kingdom minority languages, I can understand Scots and Ulster - Scots languages and dialects not, are what they are. With a little practice and remember, remember the words and expressions of my parents and grandparents used and find others in a dictionary, I might even be able to speak first, while a reasonable impersonation of Ian Paisley would bring me within shouting at the second. All the Celtic languages are a mystery. How far would need to meet to discover an ancestor who spoke Gaelic? Perhaps this England called era inspired, perhaps forever: Scotland has a complex and sometimes uncertain linguistic history which includes Vikings and Northumbrian old English variant in the East, as well as Gaelic who came with Irish migrants in the Southwest, each of them eventually replace a form of Celtic language or Brittonic yet survives in contemporary Welsh.

For five or six hundred years Gaelic well and expanded aggressively in the major part of Scotland, but he began to lose the competition with the Scottish-English as early as the 13th century and then began long retired to the Highlands. In 1755, Gaelic numbered only 23% of the Scottish population, which had decreased in 1901 to 4.5%, and 100 years later to 1.2%. Today, approximately 60,000 people talk about it, most of them concentrated in the bilingual English Western and all islands. Multiply this figure by five to get the number of speakers Cantonese United Kingdom by 10 to achieve the Gurmukhi 20 to those who use the Bengali, Urdu and Sylheti. These are conservative estimates for the United Kingdom as a whole and does not take into account many other migrant languages, including those of Eastern; But even if the comparison is confined to Scotland, it seems likely that the number of citizens who speak of South Asian languages equal at least to those who speak Gaelic. Yet, unlike the Gaelic and Welsh, none of them have the protection of the parliamentary acts and bureaucracy in expansion, not everything was rewarded with a publicly funded television channel its own.

The Gaelic lobbyist has a reasonable argument. Whatever happens in the UK, other languages will continue to thrive in their homelands. They are not in danger of extinction, while, in the words of John Angus MacKay, Chief Executive of the Gaelic Development Board (Bòrd na Gàidhlig): "Gaelic is to survive, it will only survive in Scotland." But the preservation of the culture comes to an expense. Review of Scottish, a courageous and lively, online magazine recently calculated that the cost of 17 million from £ annual Gaelic channel, BBC Alba, meant that close to 30% of BBC Scotland programme budget was devoted to slightly more than 1% of the Scottish population. People complain about "mafia Teuchter [BBC Scotland Highland]" - four of his eight executives are Gaelic - but resentment is generally put into mute. Scottish, wishing to emphasise an independent national identity, successive Governments have made Gaelic MacKay would accept the difference in England and many that take care of a language key that emigration and industrial economy has therefore almost wiped out is a sign of a civilized country.

And therefore in Scotland is currently Gaelicised, superficially and tokens literally. New Gaelic signs are a notice. For several years, I thought that they were simply local events, each individually explained by their presence in or near the current boundaries of Gaeldom, or where the tourists can see their ("Alba", for example, the boards of Directors at the border). But the plan is, because the Gaelic was designated a national language. Nameboards station in two languages, for example: eventually each station Scottish will one, whatever little square has been affected by the Gaelic at any time in its history.

Recently, ringing from the outskirts of Glasgow's Cardonald, I noticed a new name on its austere platforms: Cair Dhòmhnaill. Travellers would help? None. It is historically appropriate? The 15th century, a gentleman of Norman-survey owned lands Cardownalde, which certainly derives from P-Celtic rather than Gaelic No.. Is - this all matter? Yes and no. According to MacKay, teaches Gaelic away from his home in Lewis "refreshes a portion of my soul" and her view reminds the extent of the Gaelic. More materially, it helps the tourist trade by rewarding visitors with a sense of the difference which attempt to all tourists. MacKay, explains menus gaéliques translated into his restaurant local Indian Inbhir Nis (Inverness) disappear for this reason.

But I am saddened by it. What I remember Cardonald, is the former Ballroom Flamingo and Council estates good thoughts. For me, Cair Dhòmhnaill is a kind of instruction to concentrate on more distant history, like a piece of extracted sample base of several bands of the Earth, which has a questionable usefulness and could very well be wrong.