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Electronic Gaelic dictionary 'needs £4m'



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A PROJECT to create an electronic dictionary of Gaelic will need £4 million over the next nine years to maintain its progress, the culture minister, Linda Fabiani, will be told today. She will visit Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic college on Skye, to launch a business plan for Faclair na Gàidhlig.
The proposal, launched in 2003, aims to create the first authoritative dictionary of Gaelic comparable with those of English and Scots. The dictionary will document fully the history of Gaelic and culture from the earliest manuscript material and is seen as a cornerstone for sustaining the richness of the language.



The full article contains 107 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 02 July 2008 10:13 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Gaelic language
 
1

Guga II,

Rockall 03/07/2008 01:52:37
There are plenty of Gaelic dictionaries on-line, and quite a few printed ones.

Would they not be better spending the money reprinting (in decent sized type) and updating Dwelly's, and making it English to Gaelic as well as Gaelic to English? I don't think Dwelly's has had much by way of updating since the turn of last century.

2

Truely English,

03/07/2008 09:22:50
Waste of money as nobody wants this language in Scotland. Go and talk to the people of Inverness, Edinburgh and Dumfries and find out what they think about Gaelic as I did a few months ago.
Even the Nationalists in Scotland are anti-Gaelic.

Let it die a natural death.
3

radge dug,

03/07/2008 09:32:49
#2 - aye right. You see what you want. I use Gaelic everyday. Your just jealous cause the English dont have a culture. Even your Royal Family is German and if it werent for Gaelic speaking monks, youd still be illiterate. The English cant even think of their own spelling for pizza! In fact, does English still exist? Most of it seems to come from other languages.

Mar sin dheth... tuilleadh airgid airson Gaidhlig. Airson faclairean, sgoiltean, telebhisean, leabhraichean is eile. Siuthad.
4

Josef K,

edinburgh 03/07/2008 10:45:37
#3 you need to check your keyboard, the end of your post goes a bit radge.
5

Truely English,

03/07/2008 10:58:10
3
How odd you to say the English don't have a culture yet 99.9% of Scots use English every day of life.

I am told by Scottish people that there isn't even a Gaelic word for Glen and Loch that they are Norse.
6

Nell,

The Preservation Hall 03/07/2008 12:05:20
No. 5:- And of course English is such a pure language that has no words from other languages. What is your problem if some people want to keep gaelic. It wont affect you, will it?
7

Saoghal Beag,

03/07/2008 13:00:09
5 you confuse a language with culture, but radge dug was a bit unfair, you have morris dancing and cricket and eh, em, ther is more isn't there.

now what's english for a falbh bod ceann?
8

Guga II,

Rockall 03/07/2008 13:54:14
#7. Very appropriate.
9

Saoghal Beag,

03/07/2008 15:57:10
guga, wait till kimba translates it and has it removed, actually where is she???
10

Truely English,

03/07/2008 17:21:24
7
Since when could a culture live without a language of its own?
11

Pilrig.,

Livingston 03/07/2008 19:35:14
2 - truly philistine
12

A.T.,

Edinburgh 03/07/2008 19:47:55
Back to the main issue: in terms of Gaelic development, is this really justified? £4 million is a lot of money for a dictionary, even over a period such as 9 years.

Could the money not be spent on Gaelic, but in better, more value for money ways?

Gaelic needs support. Another dictionary at the cost of £4 million, or even if they reduced the cost to half that, is not the answer.

Spend the money on something more value for money.

Surely the people involved in the dictionary must feel uncomfortable? It's a formidable list of Gaelic academics if you look at their website - Willie Gillies, Donald Meek, Rob Maolalaigh and Colm O Baoill, to name but a few.

Those involved are all listed on www.faclair.ac.uk

They surely know, in their considerable wisdom, that the money could be better spent elsewhere in Gaelic?
13

Saoghal Beag,

03/07/2008 20:03:28
america, australia, new zealand.....language and culture are just not the same thing and language is not all.
14

Eric D,

Scotland 03/07/2008 20:14:20
Gaelic is the ONLY National language in Scotland. Scots is inglis (English and therefore foreign and ), just another dialect such as Geordie etc. The Government could improve the status of the language by calling it correctly SCOTS ,just as Gaelic is IRISH in RoI. They could also do more to promote the learning of it (ie subsidized on-line learning).

A nice start would to have ALBA on the football, and indeed ALL the national sports kits. In general we should look at our ancestoral homeland Ireland as I understand there is 400,000 speakers there.
15

Saoghal Beag,

03/07/2008 22:05:16
14 though galloway means land of the foreigners it does not mean that they are any less scottish than the highlanders. scotland is a nation, defined by its boundaries and these were defined by those that fought for the borders to remain where they are today. this allowed the gaidhlteachad to spend it's time muredering each other. a bit of mutual repsect is due and to claim the term Scots, already attributed to Lallans, is wrong. Gaidhlig is not the the only national language of scotland.
16

The Canadian,

03/07/2008 22:21:12
It is clear that the Scots are not used to either standing up for or defending the Gaelic language by the poor responses given here.

A seperate language like Gaelic creates a unified community which in turn will have a hstory. The sounds and ruitheam (a Gaelic word)inbedded in the language
creates the music for the poetry or(bardachd) to be turned into song.

The value system in the language is very different from the English value system which favours the greed of the individual.

English speakers put a monetary value on everything and this is simply not necessary. The First Nation communities in Canada and the USA say that a language is the expression of the soul and when the language changes so does the kind of person you are.

17

Mìcheal a Eilean Rùim,

Richmond 16/08/2008 01:11:36
5. (Truely English,) wrote: "I am told by Scottish people that there isn't even a Gaelic word for Glen and Loch that they are Norse."
Whoever told you that was pulling your leg or else knew nothing about Gaelic. The Norse word for loch is "sjø". The word for Glen is "dal", often seen in English place names as "dale". Next time, ask a Gaelic speaker, as Gaelic is as foreign to most Lowland Scots as it clearly is to you and the halfwit who misled you in the first place. If you want further proof, go to the Irish dictionary URL below and type in "valley" and "lake" and you'll get the same Gaelic words back, as Gaelic and Irish are dialects of the same Celtic language. It also gives me great pleasure to assure you that the English are a Celtic people who have been conquered so often that their Celtic origins have been lost in the mists of defeat, unlike Scotland, which has never been conquered. Large numbers of English Celts fled the invasion of the Danes up the Thames Valley and the west of England and moved to Brittany in France, where they still live and still speak the southern English Celtic dialect, which is 90% Cornish. None of this would have been taught to you in school, because England is obsessed with maintaining the fiction that the English are Norman-French and German Anglo-Saxons - anything except Celts like us, your Highland cousins and your brothers in Wales!

http://www.englishirishdictionary.com/dictionary
18

Mìcheal a Eilean Rùim,

Richmond 16/08/2008 01:32:23
5. (Truely English,) I should also have drawn your attention to the Celtic Queen Boudicca of the Celtic Iceni, usually mispelled Boudicea who fought the Romans; whose statue stands close to the English Houses of Parliament and who came with a hair's breadth of defeating the Romans.

http://travesti.geophys.mcgill.ca/~olivia/BOUDICA/

Her descendants are the people who today occupy East Anglia. She was one tough lady and as you will see from the URL above, was gratefully accepted by the modern English as the only Celtic woman in the south of England who actually managed to stop the Romans in their tracks before going down to defeat. Someone you English were proud enough of to put up a statue to!

 

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