When it comes to Gaelic, native speakers should come first

As part of our morning routines, we should don our language-saving capes and sally forth into a world ­covered in English, sprinkling our magic ­translation fairy dust wherever we can before we stop for breakfast. After all, as Gaelic speakers, surely it is ­incumbent upon us to make sure the language doesn’t die.

Is it? Should it be? Why?

As a fluent Gaelic speaker for not kicking the tòn off 40 years, I have crossed paths with a whole variety of characters – each of whom assumes that my life’s work should be finding the elixir of life for a language that fewer than 1% of us in Scotland speak.

Firstly, there is the “translate everything that stands still long enough” brigade. These faithful soldiers would translate the back of a cereal packet given half a chance. When I am not writing columns that upset people, I build websites. “Why is it not in Gaelic?” is a question I hear all the time.

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“Why is your tea website not ­available in Gaelic?” they scream, puce with ­disappointment. Because my audience is not Gaelic speaking, that’s why.

Because it takes a stupid amount of time and will generate very few sales. “Why isn’t there more Gaelic on your packaging?” Because I need the people buying it to understand what they are buying. That’s why.

“But it’s a great story – very authentic – it will help sales.”

No, it won’t. If my market is in the south of England, I am not going to pander to the desire for twee any more than I have to because it brings me out in hives. I have no interest in doing a ­performative authentic, thanks.

Another fun brigade is the one which raises its head across education. From the moment I set foot in a Gaelic medium unit aged six, the message I got was that I should become a Gaelic teacher.

Pressuring Gaelic speakers into teaching is no way to preserve the language

“You don’t want to go into teaching?”

“Have you thought about teaching?”

The idea that you might be a Gaelic speaker and not want to build a career passing on your language seems to be most perplexing for some people.

“But it’s dying.”

Yes, yes it is, but that is not a good enough reason to let me loose on classes of small children on a daily ­basis. No-one would enjoy it. We’d learn a lot of vocabulary, but not Gaelic.

“Maybe you should teach people like me some simple phrases when we ­ arrive,” was the helpful suggestion I heard ­recently as I bemoaned the state of the language in Tiree.

We could – but we’ve been trying that for decades and well, here we are.

I am, in fact, trained to teach Gaelic to adults via the Ulpan method.

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That ­method lost the support of the Gaelic powers that be and was taken out by its own side. I would say that there is a lot of value in it – not least that it teaches people to speak before anything else, but I choose not to teach Gaelic any more. Why? Because it is exhausting. And thankless. And after years of hearing people butcher our more challenging sounds, I just couldn’t take it any more.

Without a strong scaffolding around language learning, we are not going to ­create more than a few functional, ­fluent and regular speakers. That’s reality. But we will exhaust the energy and the ­goodwill of the few willing to teach it.

In Tiree, we are trying to change tack, from simply teaching new speakers to encouraging our existing speakers to use Gaelic more.

In our vernacular communities, I firmly believe that if we are going to make any dent in the deepening crisis, this is key. As part of that, we are wanting to ­normalise more Gaelic in daily life – not least ­because the demographic balance is tipping away from native islanders.

It will take more than road signs to secure a sustainable future for Gaelic (Image: Archive)

We published the fuel station opening hours in Gaelic-only one day – without a translation. (The English hours were two posts down the page.)

Cue an instant ­response requesting a translation. Among the arguments for it, which I must admit, nearly tipped me right over the edge, was the suggestion that by ­offering a ­translation next to Gaelic, we were helping people learn, thereby ­helping ourselves save our language. Give me strength.

Gaelic speakers should be able to see things in their own language without ­always allowing for people who are learning or without always seeing the English next to it. They get to be just Gaelic speakers. If not, their entire context is as a learning tool for someone else. And that’s a huge part of the current problem.

What hope do we have of ever getting our native Gaelic speakers to feel like they are valued if the first thing they see is a criticism that it’s “not in both languages”? What if it just gets to be in Gaelic?

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Every Gaelic TV programme has ­subtitles burned in. Not subtitles you can enable or disable – cos that’s expensive and Gaelic TV has an appallingly small budget. That means that Gaelic speakers see the English version as they watch. It’s hard to miss, and it totally undermines the point of having the programme in Gaelic. Who is it actually for?

I’d love to know how many hours we waste translating things that are never read. I have an aversion to translating an annual report from English to Gaelic purely so that we can tick a funding box. I’ll go out on a limb and say that the ­Gaelic version is highly unlikely to be read by anyone but the most diehard. But still, we must do it, for if we do not, we do not care.

Every report that remains untranslated is another nail in the language coffin, and here I am, apparently nailing it closed.

Will my columns be in Gaelic, ­someone asked. It would be great for learners. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. My columns are in English and they will ­continue to be. I do not want to preach to the choir. Where is the fun in that? The trolls would be stumped and I’d hate to disappoint them.

We must do better. Fluent and native Gaelic speakers in both islands and ­cities should be catered for as the speakers they are. They should be able to watch ­programmes without subtitles. They should be able to read new things in Gaelic. They should be able to see the fuel station times or read the news without constantly having to think of learners or non-speakers.

Sometimes, I avoid speaking Gaelic if I think I’m going to be quizzed or turned into a learning opportunity. Sometimes, I just want to be a Gaelic speaker, speaking Gaelic. Not about Gaelic things or how to pronounce “dh”. Just me.

The problem is that so few of our ­vernacular speakers are speaking that we often have no choice but to default to the learning angle.

And there is nothing wrong with ­learning Gaelic, I don’t hate learners – we all learned, one way or the other. And there should be opportunities for learning at every stage of confidence.

My point, however poorly made, is that the teaching and learning of Gaelic should not always come at the expense of the existing speakers. And too often, it does.