What Kind of Gaelic Learner Are You?
With this post I’ve decided to poke a bit of fun at those of us who started learning Gaelic as adults. Based on my experiences on and off over 25 years in Scotland and North America, I’ve compiled a list of some of the most common types (or stereotypes?) of adult Gaelic learners.
What kind of Gaelic learner are you? Depending on where you live and how you learn(ed) Gaelic, you might fit into more than one category — or none of them!
1. The Beginner
You’re taking beginner-level Gaelic classes. Everything is just so different from English. You can’t say much except “Ciamar a tha thu?” and “Tha gu math.”
If you’re in a traditional classroom setting where you are allowed to write things down, you are desperately trying to take notes to remember how things sound. When you go back to your notes the next day for pronunciation guidance, they are worthless! You can’t remember anything. You’re so frustrated.
If you’re in a no-writing-allowed immersion class, you’re still desperately trying to remember how to pronounce everything. You don’t know what anyone is saying half the time, and you want to ask questions, but you’re not allowed. You can’t remember anything. You’re so frustrated.
You frequently go on Facebook groups to ask how to translate English words and phrases into Gaelic. You may not yet understand that not everything can be literally translated word for word from one language to another.
Benefit: Everything is new and exciting!
Disadvantage: You have no idea how much you don’t know… and you’re a deer in the headlights if someone speaks to you in Gaelic.
2. The Eternal Intermediate
You have been taking classes once a week for anywhere from 2 to 20 years… or more. But no matter how much you study, you never seem to make progress. You can hold a conversation, as long as the other person you’re talking to doesn’t mind long strangled silences while you search for the correct word. You’ve never had a chance to experience an immersion situation, or perhaps you haven’t had enough mentors who have engaged you in enough supportive Gaelic conversations on a regular basis to get over the hump.
Benefit: You’ve learned quite a lot about Gaelic language, culture, and history, and you can probably read Gaelic reasonably well with a dictionary.
Disadvantage: That glass ceiling. Also, having a conversation feels like driving along the edge of a cliff with no guardrail.
3. The Prodigy
You’re a language learning genius. Once you decided to learn Gaelic, you just locked yourself in a room for a year with a pile of books and came out fluent, or at least that’s what everyone thinks. Now you command multiple registers of Gaelic and you’re better at speaking, reading, and writing than many native speakers. They give you backhanded compliments about the purity and complexity of your Gaelic… in English.
Benefit: People bow down to your superior knowledge.
Disadvantage: People don’t want to go to the pub with you since you clearly prefer the company of books.
4. The Linguist
Like the Prodigy, people assume you have superhuman language learning powers (which you may or may not actually possess). You take a strong academic or literary interest in Gaelic; in fact, you are probably working on a degree in Celtic studies, history, linguistics, or social science. If you’ve finished the degree, then you’re probably working on an article, monograph, novel, or poetry collection. The library is your happy place. You might be interested in literature, sound recordings, primary source documents, linguistic structure, historical linguistics, onomastics, sociolinguistics, culture and social structure… but any way you slice it, you are driven by intellectual curiosity.
Benefit: Your research subjects bow down to your superior knowledge.
Disadvantage: You can’t convince your research subjects that you would rather bow down to their superior knowledge. (Either that, or your research subjects are all dead.)
5. The Dialect Devotee
You’ve selected a historical Gaelic dialect of a particular area, connected with either your ancestry or where you now live. Using archival recordings, written descriptions, and a handful of elderly native speakers if you’re lucky, you have set yourself the enormous, noble task of revitalizing this dialect. The dialect is substantially different from Lewis, Uist, and Skye Gaelic. This is a potentially lonely road, and your strength, motivation, and confidence are awesome.
Benefit: No one can really correct your pronunciation.
Disadvantage: Everyone will still try to correct your pronunciation.
6. The Super Dad
You’re a father, and you’ve decided that not only will you learn Gaelic, but also you will speak it to your young child(ren) and they shall learn it. No choice, you are the king (laird?) of the castle and you are possessed of an iron will. You speak all Gaelic and only Gaelic to the kid(s) at home, all day and every day. Eliezer ben Yehuda is your hero and you don’t even know it.
Most likely your wife or life partner cannot speak the language. She doesn’t really have time to take classes, either, since she’s so busy doing the school run, making and keeping the kids’ appointments for the doctor, dentist, and haircuts, taking the kids to swimming lessons, sports practice, dance lessons, karate, etc., cooking dinner, and probably working outside the home as well.
Benefit: “I create new native speakers — what’s your superpower?”
Disadvantage: After you’ve read Tè Bheag a’ Ghruffalo aloud for the 100th time and put the kids to bed, you can’t have an adult conversation in Gaelic at home.
7. The Gaeilgeoir
You’re already fluent in Gaeilge (Irish), and so you think, Why not learn Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) too? How hard can it be? It may be easily available to you in your Celtic studies university program, or from a Gaelic institution like Oideas Gael or Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. (But if you also said “Why not learn Manx Gaelic?” or “Why not learn Welsh or Breton?” then see “The Prodigy” above.)
Benefit: Since it’s so similar to Irish, the Gaelic grammar, vocabulary, and spelling that non-Gaels agonize over is a piece of cáca milis for you… at least at the start.
Disadvantage: It’s tha, not tá. Also, false friends and tricky verb tenses and how do you pronounce craobh and bhaile again? (Also you have to stop yourself from reminding Scottish Gaels that Irish is superior.)
8. The Back-to-the-Lander
You believe that the most authentic Gaelic lifestyle is a rural one, and you’re living the dream. As part of your effort to learn Gaelic, you have leased a croft (Scotland), bought a farm (Nova Scotia), or at least planted a vegetable garden and started doing your own canning… or you plan on doing these things as soon as possible and idolize the folks who do.
Benefit: Eating the fruits of your labour, literally.
Disadvantage: Your Gaelic comes with a side order of manure. Also, the circle of life.
9. The Musician
Gaelic music and song were the motivation for you to learn the language. Even if you can’t speak Gaelic fluently yet, your singing is heavenly. If you don’t already have your Silver or Gold card for the Mòd, you’re probably working toward it. If you’re a piper or fiddler, you know that there are in fact port-a-beul lyrics to many of the trad tunes you play. Your idea of a good time is a week-long fèis or music camp.
Benefit: As a musician or singer you’re far more welcome anywhere — cèilidhs, kitchen parties, festivals, concerts — than you would be as a plain old Gaelic speaker.
Disadvantage: Somewhere out there, when you least expect it, a native speaker gonna hate on your style, your voice, your pronunciation, your songs, your tune selections, your arrangements…
10. The Job’s Worth
You are one of those rare people who is actually having your Gaelic language course paid for by someone else, probably an employer. And damn right; you wouldn’t bother if they weren’t. You sure as heck don’t want to go to class more than once a week; that would cut into your social schedule. And forget homework.
Benefit: You’re getting something for nothing.
Disadvantage: You’ll only get as much out of it as you put into it… which is, in this case, pretty close to nothing.
11. The Lapsed or Semi-Speaker
You grew up hearing Gaelic spoken in the home or on visits to relatives, but you didn’t become fluent. Or maybe you did become fluent by speaking with your grandparents, but then you went for decades without speaking Gaelic at all. Now you’ve taken the brave step of formal language classes to rediscover and recover your quasi-native language.
Benefit: Your blas or accent is impeccable and you are totally familiar with Gaelic culture already.
Disadvantage: Your instinct for what “sounds right” doesn’t always match up with textbook grammar. Nonetheless, it feels so right that you may have a hard time accepting the authority of the teacher… especially if you feel that you’re more Gaelic than they are.
12. The Former GME Pupil
You attended a Gaelic Medium Education school or unit as a child. You feel like a native speaker; you can’t remember ever not being able to speak Gaelic. But you still begin every sentence with “Tha,” and you keep using words that do not mean what you think they mean. You need to take your Gaelic to the next level for future employment, so you’re taking a university course.
Benefit: You feel very comfortable and confident using the language.
Disadvantage: Your instinct for what “sounds right” in Gaelic doesn’t always match up with textbook grammar — even in areas as basic as the genitive case, adjectival agreement, and simple verb tenses. You may have a hard time accepting the authority of the teacher, because to you, it’s just how you learned Gaelic.
Postscript: Learning a language as an adult, or even later in childhood, is called Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in linguistics. When this happens with a minority language community like Gaelic, SLA language learners are called “New Speakers” to differentiate them from traditional “native speakers.” Academic study aside, though, we can still laugh and appreciate each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Post-Postscript: I’ve been 1 and 2, and will always be 4…
Interesting blog, especially from a number 4! Don’t get me wrong – linguists are great – but in Gaelic circles I find it’s best if they’re infused with other numbers like 8 or 9, so that I don’t parse out from boredom!
Indeed it takes all types! Life would be very boring if we were all on the same Gaelic learning path. 🙂
I thoroughly wish to learn Gàidhlig as an American of Scottish decent. I definitely qualify as a #1 here. Do you have any recommendations of how to move forward?
Thanks for your comment! Yes, there are several different options out there for learning Scottish Gaelic. I wrote an article for Celtic Life magazine a couple of years about about learning Scottish Gaelic which you can access here: http://www.celticlifeintl.com/learn-scottish-gaelic/ That article discusses the options of community classes in different communities (depending on where you live), Skype/internet classes that people can do from anywhere, and “destination” classes in Scotland and Nova Scotia.
My article doesn’t mention book/audio courses, but there are several of those too that can be used for self study. See the links below. I’ve also noticed that there are flashcards and so forth on Memrise, but I wouldn’t advise to use those alone — you definitely need a coursebook and/or a teacher.
Here are some Amazon affiliate links for good self-study coursebooks (the affiliate links are optional and they help support this blog):
1) The latest (2011) edition of Teach Yourself Gaelic by Robertson and MacDonald which is now titled Complete Gaelic — check very carefully about whether or not you will receive the audio CD with the book, especially if you order a used edition.
2) The Kindle edition of Complete Gaelic.
3) The Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks book by Roibeard O Maolalaigh — check very carefully about whether or not you will receive the audio CD with the book, especially if you order a used edition.
Hope these suggestions help! Let us know how you get on!
I think this may be the right place to say thank you for this blog, and for your work towards keeping Scottish Gaelic a living language. I’ll call myself an “O.1,” or maybe a “0.001,” Gaelic learner. I’m an aspiring writer working on a novel set in the Hebrides at the turn of the 15th century. Since my characters will be speaking Gaelic, I’d been haphazardly trying to get a feel for the language by poking around at self-guided courses and online translators. Your discussion of bad Gaelic tattoos made me realize that the same differences in language that I’d been hoping for insight into were also what has been giving me so much frustration; and my mind-boggling inability to use a Gaelic-English dictionary may be related to my freshly former dictionary being MacLennan’s feckless facalair-&-facler. I’ll be using the resources mentioned here and in other entries, and my new MacEwan-Fujita-recommended dictionary, in what I expect to be much less haphazard future efforts. Thank you indeed.
What is your assessment of Speaking Our Language?
Thanks for this! I started learning Gaelic 2 months ago, so a 1 and a 4. I speak four languages fluently and work as a translator/interpreter. But Gaelic is a whole new ball game. But fun!
2-ish, 3-ish, 4-ish, 11-ish, sort of 9 (well, I think it happened the other way around), possibly an 8 (but I was raised on a hobby-farm in a semi-rural area, so it was just a happy coincidence that the first Gaelic textbook I was exposed to was “Gàidhlig Bheò” and all the vocab was immediately applicable to my life), and occasionally the reverse of 7, when I get so frustrated with not being able to speak Gaelic with anyone that I go, “Well, Irish is close enough – off to Scoil Teanga with me next month then!”
Thanks for the blog – don’t think I’ve commented before, but I have read other posts occasionally. I love the stereotypes list – I think I know someone who fits all of them! I’d like to add a “Type 1.5” though… too many people around here who have been learning Gaelic for longer than I’ve been alive and still can barely respond to “Ciamar a tha sibh?”
Learning Gaidhlig when you are an Irish speaker can be frustrating but at the same time very rewarding. I wish there were far more opportunities to watch Gaidhlig programs subtitled on TG4 and Gaeilge programs on BBC Alba.
Scandinavians do it regularly, and contrary to the 1970’s when even at scholars’ conferences they would often communicate in English, it seems that the norm is becoming that each one speaks his/her own language and expects the other person to understand most of it. I have done this last year in Copenhagen speaking Swedish (my bad Swedish) to a Norwegian while waiting for our trains. I have noticed that speaking Swedish, at this stage anyway, works sometimes better than hesitant Danish. (for many reasons, impatience etc.)
One caveat though, the temptation is strong to try to learn enough of an other Scandinavian language to start speaking it; I would suggest that this can be tricky and confusing for your listener. One should learn more than a smattering of the other languages; this requires considerable time and effort to do it correctly.
Hopefully, similar strategies could be put in place where students doing a Gaeilge (Irish) degree would be required to acquire a good command of Gaidhlig (Scots Gaelic).
I have followed nearly all tv Gaidhlig programs, read Asterix comics in the language and listened and watched tv programs.
At this stage what is needed is a week-long, at least immersion program.
Don’t despair, it will come. Maybe the most important thing is to organize with whom you will use your newly acquired language. I have often met people who have done intensive courses but had no strategy for post-learning practice.
Tapaidh libh
I look forward to using your site. My mother’s family was from Somerset and she was a firm believer in the idea that Glastonbury Abbey was the first Christian church in Britain. I hope to learn enough Cornish to understand some of the background to the origins and development of the Celtic churches. Rate me -1 although I have some experience with learning languages, French for school, Russian for university and Japanese for my Judo Black Belt . P.S. I love the Rankin Family’s Gaelic songs .
Found this blog this evening. I just started working with Mango to learn the language and found this particular list of learners hilarious and uncomfortable. Mainly because I’m 1, 2, and 6 – but not with Scottish Gaelic – with the Cherokee, Spanish, and German. I love different languages, seem to pick up the basics pretty quickly, then can’t progress any further. I don’t lose interest – I just can’t seem to make it over the hump to a basic conversational level.
Cherokee holds a special place because it’s an endangered language (> 2000 speakers by last count) and I feel it’s an important aspect of my wife and children’s culture. I speak more of it than they do, but no matter how much I speak Cherokee, I’ll never belong to the tribe. I’m accepted as a trustworthy white person with the people I know, but to others I’m an outsider.
Which brings me to the first of two questions – As a typical American with Scottish roots, how are we viewed in regards to wanting to learn about the culture And language we are removed so far from? I’d love to have a culture I could claim as my own. Americans are such a mishmash that we don’t have an identifiable culture of our own, but are sometimes viewed as a joke because we want to connect with something from our ancestral past.
My 2nd question is a little more straight forward – is there something you recommend that I could do differently to where I don’t just add another partially learned language to my collection and actually start speaking Scottish Gaelic?
James,
Those are really good, thoughtful questions! Both are challenging to answer, and I would say there is not one single correct answer to either one. I’ll give you my take, though.
As an American by birth, who started learning Gaelic about 30 years ago (yikes), I have been welcomed and treated well by nearly every Gaelic speaker and teacher I’ve ever met. “Roots” or having a Scottish name doesn’t mean much of anything, honestly (unless, I guess, you could connect with some long-lost cousins and visit each other). I have still had a rich and overall positive experience, even without a sloinneadh. If you conduct yourself courteously, show enthusiasm for learning, seek out and take advantage of the opportunities presented to you over time, and respect what more experienced people share with you, you’ll probably have mainly positive experiences too. (Also, don’t make stuff up about your background to try to fit in or look more authentic to Gaelic teachers or fellow students—over the years I’ve seen a few Americans, Canadians, Germans, and Russians who let their wishful thinking lead them into telling outright lies about who they are, where they’re from, and who their people are, and everyone else can ALWAYS see right through it!)
Americans may think that they don’t have a culture of their own, but they most certainly do. It’s good to acknowledge that, acknowledge that outside of the U.S. some aspects of American culture are appreciated while others are reviled, and then approach Scottish Gaelic recognizing that it is not only a language, but also a culture steeped in history, and quite a different culture from that of your birthplace. Like all cultures, its boundaries are porous, it has changed over time, and there are areas of contention, but there is something special there. Pursue what you feel drawn to, let it draw you along and change you, and appreciate the people you meet along the way.
A good starting point is to take all the stereotypes about Scotland that keep getting recycled in tiresome Facebook groups—one Scottish friend calls them “Skahddish” after the stereotypical American pronunciation of the word “Scottish”—and do your best to banish them from your mind. They are irrelevant to learning Gaelic. Resist the urge to bring them up, and just read, listen, watch, and pay attention to what is really there. Don’t assume anything. Take notice of the overlaps or similarities, and the differences, between Scottish culture in general, and Scottish Gaelic in particular. Tread lightly. You don’t have to have your mind already made up about how you feel, or how you might fit in or not, and you don’t have to tell anyone about it, to participate and enjoy it.
I would also ditch the concept of “ownership” and focus on “participation” as your framework for engagement with the language and culture. It’s all too easy to get wrapped around the axle about “ownership” and “authenticity.” A nasty racist rant about who is a “real” Gael and who isn’t really got me down a couple of months ago, especially after it was supported and amplified online by some folks who definitely ought to know better. But you know what? That isn’t what it’s about. Gaelic is as Gaelic does. Learn it, do it, participate in it, enjoy people’s company, help build a community using the language.
For your second question, Mango is an awesome start. To take it further, there are plenty of American Gaelic speakers in various areas, and I would recommend to try to figure out a way to get in community with some of them. Connecting with people is harder than ever now, but in some ways it’s also more accessible now, with more Gaelic events going online. I would recommend you look up An Comunn Gàidhealach Ameireaganach (http://www.acgamerica.org/) and check out the various online Gaelic teachers. Try to get yourself into a situation where you can speak with other people, even online. The more you can get outside your comfort zone and speak, the more it will stick (as you know!). I wrote another blog post called “Learning Scottish Gaelic” (look it up in the Archives) and it lists some other online Gaelic learning opportunities, and other tips. I wrote it pre-COVID of course, so just keep that in mind…
Tapadh leat a-rithsit, thank you again, for your thoughtful questions. Stay in touch and post more comments and questions any time!
Thank you for such an awesome response. I like the idea of not getting too caught up in culture, etc…while learning the language. Let it have its place, but focusing mainly on learning the language is an excellent idea. Tapadh Leibh!