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From: misha@umich.edu (Michele Tepper)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: The Story of English is all askew
Date: 25 Oct 1994 02:40:33 GMT

In article <38fpe9$i97@newsbf01.news.aol.com>, Podsnap <podsnap@aol.com> wrote: >Finally, people did in fact have non-English-language newspapers and
>journals in 18th and early 19th century America. You will find German
>periodicals and Dutch periodicals and even records written in Swedish. You
>will not find many (or any) newspapers in Irish Gaelic or Scots Gaelic
>because the Irish and Scots who came here were English-speaking. They
>used English-language newspapers, bibles, spellers, seed-and-grain
>catalogues... I challenge you to find me an old family bible in Gaelic.

Well, the Irish Gaelic issue has been addressed already, so let me try to take on the Scottish Gaelic question.

First off, depending on who's counting, there are up to three languages in Scotland: English, Scots, and Gaelic. Let's assume there are three but focus on the latter two.

Gaelic was outlawed after Charles Stuart's mostly Highlander army was vanquished at Culloden by the Duke of Cumberland in 1745 (As T.C. Smout notes in _A History of the Scottish People_ "they were also forbidden to wear the kilt or play the bagpipes, both the dress and the music being considered too barbarous and martial for good citizenship." [p.225]). In the 19th century, children were flogged for speaking Gaelic at school. So even if Gaelic was the language learned in the home, it was still probably not the language of literacy for the average Highlander (For a tragicomic take on enforced Anglicization in schools from an Irish point of view, I recommend the fine novel _An Be'al Bocht_ by Myles na gCopaleen). And the first Gaelic translation of the Bible was not done till the late nineteenth century, well after the massive wave of immigration by Gaelic speakers in the time of the Highland Clearances. I know Gaelic-speaking communities were formed in Canada -- perhaps one of our fine neighbours [sic] to the north could specify where and if they still exist -- and they might well have records in Scottish Gaelic.

Scots is the language of the Lowlands, and has been used for writing primarily in poetry since the Union of Crowns under James VI & I. Students who speak in Scots, or with a Scots accent, are still "corrected" in school: one Glaswegian friend of mine reported the odd sensation of having her grade school teacher correct her pronunciation every day -- excpet for Burns's birthday, where the teacher corrected her pronuciation *back* to the Scots version. The first New Testament translation into Scots had to wait until the 1983 Lorimer translation, in which only the Devil speaks in RP English. (To cite the quote used by, wait for it, _The Story of English_: As he gaed yont the gate frae there, he saw a man caa'd Matthew sittin at his desk i the Towbuid, an he said till him, 'Fallow me'; and he rase an fallowt him.) So one couldn't have an old family bible in Scots, either.

Written materials do not seem to me to be adequate proof of who speaks what, given the high rates of illiteracy and necessary bilingualism (if my grandparents read _The New York Times_, was it because they couldn't read Yiddish papers or didn't want to?). Perhaps our language mechanic would like to step in here?

Michele "I just give the words a buff and polish, myself" Tepper