….de Nelson McCausland:
This afternoon I met representatives of the Irish language organisation Pobal. At the present time I am preparing a paper on a minority languages strategy for Northern Ireland and it was an opportunity to hear the views of Janet Muller and her colleagues.
We have two indigenous minority languages in Northern Ireland, Ulster-Scots and Irish, and I said to the folk from Pobal that the nearest situation to that in Northern Ireland was the situation in Scotland, where there are also two indigenous minority languages, Scots and Gaelic.
This afternoon I met representatives of the Irish language organisation Pobal. At the present time I am preparing a paper on a minority languages strategy for Northern Ireland and it was an opportunity to hear the views of Janet Muller and her colleagues.
We have two indigenous minority languages in Northern Ireland, Ulster-Scots and Irish, and I said to the folk from Pobal that the nearest situation to that in Northern Ireland was the situation in Scotland, where there are also two indigenous minority languages, Scots and Gaelic.
There are differences but there are also similarities, not least the fact that the two minority languages in Ulster are sister languages to the minority languages in Scotland. Scottish Gaelic developed from Irish Gaelic and Ulster-Scots is a variant of Scots.
I also explained that one of my priorities was to promote a shared and better future and that the minority languages strategy would reflect the core principles of that priority, which are equity, diversity and independence.
I also explained that one of my priorities was to promote a shared and better future and that the minority languages strategy would reflect the core principles of that priority, which are equity, diversity and independence.
2 comments:
Two minority languages Ulster Scots and Irish, Scots and Gaelic. Who are you kidding? I have yet to hear a complete sentence in Ulster Scots. It sprung into existence as a counter point to Irish. "Tha boord o Ulster-Scots". (The Board of Ulster Scots) is just a artiface. Irish has had an existence of more than two thousand years independent of English. Scots Gaelic has had an existence for at least 1,600 years.
Please don't pose as some sort of neutral. You have a very clear agenda to diminsh Irish, either by ignoring it, and where you can't ignore it you want to equate it with your mickey mouse dialect of english, which you call a language. Bet I can read your language without difficulty (because its just bad english). Bet you can't mine.
Daithí
The Minister refers to Ulster Scots as a "variant" of Scots in Scotland, but what is a "variant"? In linguistic terms it is either a dialect of Scots or an independent language. The truth is that it is the former, and the costs of standardisation should be overwhelmingly borne by the Scottish Government in proportion to speaker numbers and not come out of the budget for Irish.
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