Gaelic took two centuries to establish itself in Scotland, becoming the people's language only after replacing another. During the 12th century, there was increased interaction with Englishmen and Flemings. In Winford (2003), he speaks of stages of attrition and how language death can be attributed to the L2 invading the domains of the AL (Winford 2003: 258). Therefore, these interactions would be what lead Scottish Gaelic to stages 2 and 3 of language attrition.
The Scottish who spoke Gaelic had been an expanding power until the intrusion of the English into Scottish territory. Notably, the continual English occupation of the Lowlands. Since the Lowlanders had been occupied for so long, the linguistic consequences were inevitable, with these groups being Scottish-English speaking by the 14th century. Gaelic was no longer socially dominant.
Eventually, the Scottish nobility mainly spoke English, and the royalty created centers of commerce, or trade areas, where Englishmen and Flemings held prominent roles. English gained prestige, and Gaelic was considered unfavorable and stopped being socially acceptable. The still Gaelic-speaking Highlanders were considered wild and savage.
Thus, speaking Gaelic came with economic and social consequences. At the end of the 15th century, the government began insidiously imposing English on the younger generation. An education act was passed forcing children to attend schools that taught certain subjects. These schools were outside Gaelic speaking areas, effectively reducing the domains in which these children could speak Gaelic. Beginning in the 17th century, the government had supplemented Gaelic with English (Dorian 1981: 10-17).
According to Dorian (1989), Scottish Gaelic had traditionally been excluded from “areas of community life such as public administration, justice, and education. However, it had been strong in the domains of religion, traditional medicine, folklife, storytelling, and singing.
Dorian states that while Gaelic is still present in Scottish churches, the oldest speakers could not remember entire praters or hymns that they had “learned by heart in childhood,” These gaps in Gaelic knowledge result in what Dorian calls “vacuums” in Gaelic cultural and intellectual life. As the areas within Scotland become more urbanized, more traditional or rural means of earning an income disappear, and their Gaelic jargon follows suit.
Even for the occupations that remain, there is also the influx of new technology coming from English-speaking places. The terminology for this technology essentially substitutes the old Gaelic terms, erasing them from their niche’s vocabulary. As for storytelling and singing, neither has been spared from the cultural damage of language attrition. Though many people are not fully capable of understanding the folktales of their ancestors, Dorian notes that there’s still respect in their attentiveness (Dorian 1989: 49-55).
In Winford (2003), the degree of a speaker’s proficiency depends on how they acquire the AL and how many opportunities they have to use it. He states that there is a correlation between age differences and the extent of attrition (Winford 2003: 261-262). Dorian (2014) discusses this for the East Sutherland Dialect, which is spoken on the east coast of Sutherland county, which lies on the mainland and in the north. In this area, there were less than 150 speakers as of Dorian (2014), and all of them were bilingual in English, which is considered more prestigious.
In the county’s two largest villages, Brora and Golspie, less than five percent of populations between 1200 and 1300 people spoke Gaelic. In these villages, the fluent speakers were the elderly, people between 70 and 80 years old. There were also speakers between the ages of 45 and 65 who Dorian refers to as semi-speakers because even though they speak Gaelic, the older speakers notice many imperfections. In a village called Embo, these two groups were also present, except the semi-speakers were younger, between 35 and 45.
There were even younger Gaelic speakers in this village who Dorian states were “very good” speakers, but their Gaelic showed “certain departures from the conservative norms of the older fluent speakers.” In this area, about half of the adult population spoke Eastern Sutherland Gaelic. This large amount of speakers could be because of the area’s status of being somewhat isolated and relatively smaller than the others. There was also a lower number of English speakers in residence, but since no one in the younger generation is acquiring the language, it will possibly continue to die (Dorian 2014: 68).
Structurally, the Eastern Sutherland dialect of Gaelic has experienced changes in the midst of its death, and these changes are visible in the way that semi-speakers speak. The dialect has experienced simplification and confluence with English (Dorian 2014: 67). In Dorian (1981), she discusses testing changes in the nominal system (gender, case, and number) and the verbal system (tense, number, and voice) among old, fluent speakers, young fluent speakers, and semi-speakers.
In Eastern Sutherland Gaelic, there are two gender-signaling devices: initial mutation after the definite article and the diminutive suffix. These markers are still very present in the speech of fluent speakers and retain strength among semi-speakers. However, the widely applicable use of pronoun replacement and adjective lenition shows marked decay. The lack of using these signals reduces the number of nouns to which gender can be applied (Dorian 1981: 114-156). Dorian (2014) even notes that the grammatical gender of Gaelic has survived with reduction. There is also increased use of confluence between the gender pronouns of Gaelic and English (Dorian 2014: 67).
References
Dorian, Nancy C. 1981. Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Dorian, Nancy C. 1989. Investigating obsolescence: Studies in language contraction and death. Cambridge University Press.
Dorian, Nancy C. 2014. Small-language fates and prospects: lessons of persistence and change from endangered languages: collected essays. The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill
Winford, Donald. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
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