List of topics

1. An introduction
2. Ancient Celts before Modern Celts
3. Modern Celtic identity and language
4. Irish Language: from Gaeltacht to the dream of bilingualism
5. Welsh language: The city, the country and the colony
6. Scottish Gaelic: dismal perspectives
7. Manx Gaelic: its many revivals
8. Cornish: Identity issues
9. Breton: the "French Cousin"
10. Some conclusions

Some conclusions

• In all the Celtic Nations, except Scotland, the number of people who know the Celtic language is increasing, but these languages are almost not used in everyday life.
• The advance of this languages usage is usually as a second language in a bilingualism environment.
• Introduction of formal teaching of Celtic languages has the tendency to set up a diglossia situation in relation to the native learning.
• The Celtic languages, when studied by its social aspects, are of interest of geographers and anthropologists rather than sociolinguists and dialectologists.
• The role of official education is the key for continuity, but its implementing must be assessed considering local aspects. In some cases the validity of continuity itself should be assessed.

EXTRA MATERIAL

- The article Reversing Language Shift (alternative link) analyzes the commitment with revival in almost all the Celtic languages (Breton is excluded) and assesses the institution policies adopted by each nation.

- The article Language Revitalization and New Technologies (alternative link) talks about the use of new technologies in the language revival of Irish and Breton among others.

Breton: the "French Cousin"

Among the Celtic Nations, Britanny is the only one that is not insular and the only one whose competing language is not English, but French. Although the Breton is spoken by less than 10 % of the locals, Britanny is particularly nationalist.

So much that in 1943, when the tides of war were already against the Axis, some Bretons formed a brigade which was incorporated to the Nazi SS, the Brigade “Bezen Perrot” (cf. Bezen Perrot: The Breton nationalist unit of the SS, by Daniel Leach, 2008). The survivors of this collaborationist force escaped to Ireland, an act that states clearly the belief on pan-Celtic identity. “France's difficulty would be Brittany's opportunity” said once the nationalist leader Mercier d'Erm, adapting a moto of the Irish party Sinn Feinn (“England’s difficulty would be Ireland’s opportunity”) to the World War II context.

"Bezen Perrot" SS Brigade

(Source: Leach's article, op. cit.)

If before there was a feud between Bretons and other French (partially there still is), nowadays there is a internal division between the Bretons themselves. In the article Breton at a Crossroad (2003), Lenora A. Timm discusses the developing of two distinc variants. The advance of bilingual teaching lead to the rising of a “literary, normalized version” of Breton contrasting with the native spoken Breton and installed a diglossia (the first being the H variety). This phenomenon probably is repeated by other Celtic languages and by other languages that passed through a revival. As most of the native speakers is aged, the author thinks that the only hope of the language is the school variety, the “neo-Breton”.

EXTRA MATERIAL

- "New generation aims to maintain French Breton language"

- Two Breton voices on radio (alternative link), by Ned Thomas, is focused in two Breton radio broadcast persons, a 1940’s collaborationist anti-French and a 1950’s pro-bilingualism man.

Cornish: identity issues

Cornwall is neither independent as Ireland is nor has some autonomy as Scotland, Wales and Man, which is not good news to its language. On the other hand, Cornish is protected by the same European charter as the Scotish Gaelic; still has at least two thousand native speakers (2001census), while Man has none and is far away of the biggest English cultural center – London.

How English are the Cornish? The historian Eric Hobsbawn wrote in Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge University Press, 1980) that “the Cornish are fortunate to be able to paint their regional discontents in the attractive colours of Celtic tradition, which makes them so much more viable”. Not every person at Cornwall think of himself/herself as English. (About that, cf. County, nation, ethnic group? The shaping of the Cornish identity, by Bernard Deacon).

Four authors wanted to prove this sense of otherness to be causeless by a biological way in the article How Celtic are the Cornish? A study of biological affinities (Harvey et al., 1986, alternative link). According to their study, Cornwall people are genetically closer from Anglo-Saxons rather than Celts, and many of their Celtic biological characteristics came from Irish ascendance, not from a Brythonic group. But they dealt with the issue through a biological perspective not a cultural one.

Culturally, Cornwall keeps traces very distinctive traces from the rest of England in fields like gastronomy and fishing techniques. (Information from the Cornwall Council website).

EXTRA MATERIAL

- News about Unesco classifying Cornish as a language being revitalized

- A site where people promised they would not answer the 2011 Census if "Cornish" was not one of the ethnicity options

- Cornish "National" Anthem

Manx Gaelic: its many revivals

The language of the small Island of Man confronted great challenges. The place was disputed by Norse that finally were repealed by the native Celts, but left marks in the language and culture. Soon after, its local Gaelic hybridized with the Scottish Gaelic, when the Scots took over the island. Finally came the English hegemony.

The result of the numerous foreign raids was that currently only 2% of the population speak the Manx Gaelic (zero per cent as native speaker). Two percent of a population of only 50 thousand and less than half of  it was born in Man. (Information dysplayed until here comes from Maddrel, 2002).

The Isle of Man lies in a geo-political vulnerable position, inbetween the British Islands and Ireland

(Source: The Atlantic Celts, by Simon James)

Despite this dismal background, revival waves have happened in the island since the late 19th Century. According to the article Speaking from the Shadows (by Breesha Maddrell, op. cit.) the first wave did not have a strong literary tradition to support it and based itself in the gathering of Manx folklore, from proverbs to music and oral narrative. In this first revival the work of antiquarians  stand out, especially women antiquarians.

Even when the literature spread on the second revival (between the 1930’s and the 1960’s, more or less) it was through English written books, just with Manx themes. To be fair, the books of the first revival were also written in English and the difference between both literatures is in the tone, which is pessimistic towards its culture future in the previous and optimistic in the latter. This data comes from the paper Of Demolition and Reconstruction: a Comparative Reading of Manx Cultural Revivals, also by Breesha Maddrell. On it, she compares the two periods and their most representative authors: T. E. Brown e Mona Douglas, respectively.

We can consider the present as part of a third wave of revival, noteworthy by the relevance of formal education. The article Manx Language Revitalization and Immersion Education (by Marie Clague, 2009) points out the growth of the teaching of Manx Gaelic and also of the teaching in Manx Gaelic, i.e. immersion education, where the Celtic language is used as a means of teaching instead only being taught as a subject. Considering the low number of speakers, it is a very bold measure.

EXTRA MATERIAL

- T. E. Brown's poems at Poem Hunter

- Mona Douglas' poems at BDO site

- Traditional Manx music
- Manx Heritage Foundation website

Scottish Gaelic: dismal perspectives

When compared with other Celtic languages, the Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is on a disadvantaged position. While the Irish language is an official language of a country and the Welsh share the role of administrative and legal language with English, the Scottish is acknowledge only as an autochthonous minority language (the definition comes from a Europe Union Treaty).

It is not as strange as it may look like. The central and southern regions of the nation (the center of the political and economic power) were anglicized already during the Norman invasions by the Saxon courts who fled of the conquerors (cf. Bailey, R. “The Conquest of English” in Greenbaum, S. The English Language Today. Oxford: Pergamon Institute of English, 1985). The Scottish Lowlands became culturally English, utterly forsaken the celtic roots, that were banished to the northern Highlands.

Nowadays, there are little more than 50 thousand native speakers of Gaelic and less than 100 thousand speakers with any degree of ability in the language (at 2001 census, cf. General Registers Office's Gaelic Report). The Gaelic is spoken by less than 2% of Scottish population. But the Scottish Gaelic is not necessarily a language doomed to extinction. There are revival measures taking place at this moment.

In the politic front, the SNP (Scottish National Party), the current majority in the Scottish Parliament aproved the Gaelic Language Act, that orders the creation of a “Language Board”, i.e. a language authority in the model of the Welsh Language Board. (Still, the Scottish is not yet mandatory even for public administration).

Crest of the Scottish Parliament and logo of the Scottish National Party.

(Source: respective websites)

In the cultural front, Scotland is living a retaking of fictional prose written in Gaelic. An example is the Ùr-Sgeul project (about this project, see the article Challenge and opportunity for Gaelic prose in the twenty-firstcentury, by John Storey, 2009).

Some efforts are less organized and systematic, but, because of that, more dynamic. One of these cases is the use of quite old-fashioned technology to keep contact between Scots inside and outside the British Islands: the usenet group Scottish Culture. The article Online, Offline and Beyond (hays, 2008) explains how the interaction through this group helps Scottish-Canadians to build a Scottish imaginary and a Scottish identity.

Although, as relevant as these efforts may be, the survival of a minority language relies heavily on the weight of Institutions (Smith, 2003), the formal education above them all.  The law researcher Rhona K. M. Smith shows in her paper Mother Tongue Education and the Law (op. cit) an overview of the legal shelter offered to Gaelic by Scotland, United Kingdom and Europe Union. The commonest access to Gaelic learning is as a “foreign language”, i.e. it is one of the options of mandatory second language in some schools (along with languages such as French, German and Spanish). Smith, though, recommends full bilingual education for both children whose native language is Gaelic and children whose native language is English. A hardly plausible goal, due to resource difficulties (it would demand huge investments and there are few teachers able to teach in Gaelic) and also because many Scots probably do not think they owe any allegiance to Gaelic.

NOTE: Some of the articles mentioned here deal also with a language called “Scotis”. This is a language related to English, i. e., a non-Celtic language and not approached here because of that.

EXTRA MATERIAL

- Scene from the movie Trainspotting question Scottish Nationalism associated with the rite of visiting the Mountains of the Highlands.
- "An Eala Bhàn" or "The White Swan", Gaelic song by Julie Fowlis

Welsh language: The city, the country and the colony

There is a tendency of minority languages of surviving in the countryside and, even there, they usually end up being reached by a majority language, becoming gradually less used by younger generations until it almost disappears. These relationships, beyond being perceptible even by someone that is not a specialist in the issue, were studied with a scientific view (e.g. Hetcher’s model of cultural division of labour). But the Welsh language, the Cymraeg, tries to defy both tendencies.

In the article The streets of Bethesda (2004, alternative link), the linguist Paul Manning tells how the Welsh nationalist organizations of the 19^th Century debated among themselves wether the Cymraeg was a language hostile to the industrial environment or not. The rural leaders argued that the industrial centers were too bonded to England’s capital and would develop using English language exclusively. The Welsh capitalists sustained that, since more and more workers were leaving the fields to work in factories and slater and coal extraction, the cities would be the only possible future to Cymraeg. Even if those Industry men were not talking the truth, the Welsh seen as “standard” passed to be the one spoken by the miners and workers of slate processing factories, not the rural worker’s. It continued a “non-metropolitan” language though. Only more recently this pattern has started to change.

The Welsh language in Cardiff: a quiet revolution (Aitchison & Carter, 1987 alternative link) describes an increasing use of Cymraeg in the Welsh capital city, a heavily Anglicized area of the nation. Among other happenings that favoured this raise, he points out the founding of the Welsh Folk Museum, the inauguration of more Welsh speaking TV channels and the equality between English and Welsh in courts (a measure that attracted many Cymraeg speakers to act as interpreters and translators). These actions favored the developing of a class of Welsh speaking liberal professionals and white-collar salary men that found themselves privileged by speaking Cymraeg and that wanted to keep this advantage to their children. Because of that, there are several nursery schools (pre-primary schools) in Cardiff which educate children in Cymraeg. (About social division and Welsh language, see also The craft of reference (Manning, 2004).

The growth of the use of Cymraeg in the Metropolis and in a high mobility class defies the regional taboo. The paper Affiliation, Engagement, Language Use and Vitality (Nikolas et alii, 2005 alternative link) shows that the age taboo is also being defied. He exposes how the determinant age group to the growth of Welsh language use is around 16 years old, that would be the time when the adolescents are looking for an identity. This commitment with “Welshness” is crucial to the development of Cymraeg as an everyday language? The authors are not sure:

“But it is also unclear precisely where people locate the social value of Welsh, for example as a ‘language for life’ or as a more symbolic and iconic code.” (Nikolas et alii, op. cit., p. 6)

Cymraeg usage. Source: Welsh Language Board

Now that we already showed the current Welsh language status in its native land, we want to add some info of its usage elsewhere: the Welsh settlements in Chubut, Argentina. According to Maria Teresa Agozzino in Transplanted Traditions: An Assessment of Welsh Lore and Language in Argentina (2006) there are yet an average number of Welsh speakers (that speak the Cymraeg with an intonation pattern markedly influenced by Spanish), but the preserving of Welsh costumes is decaying and the acculturation improving.  

At least in one city though – the small town of Gaiman – the Welsh traditions persist and are improving, because they have become a profitable commodity. In the article TheWar of the Tea Houses (2009), the researcher Geraldine Lublin explains how Welsh traditions – language included – have being preserved in Gaiman to attract tourists. Actually these traditions are quite hybridized, being very specific of the Welsh descendants’ elite and apart of the traditions of Wales. The “War of the Tea” of the article’s title refers to propaganda and legal disputes between the tea houses owned by this elite and the ones owned by other European descendants and Argentines.

Welsh tea house at Gaiman, Argentina (source here)

EXTRA MATERIAL

- Text by J. R. R. Tolkien about Welsh and English languages.