Channel 4 News is carrying an interview with a victim of the sexual abuse at the former Kincora Boys' Home in east Belfast who has bravely waived his anonymity.
Interestingly, it is the first occasion of which the Blether Region is aware where a definite link has been established between abuse at Kincora and what went on at the Dolphin Square apartment complex in London, suggesting both that the Kincora abusers were active members of a paedophile ring rather than simply immoral opportunists (their victims were teenagers), and that there may be a London link to the intelligence services, who were reputedly aware of Kincora, exploited it for blackmail purposes, and protected the offenders.
The late Cyril Smith MP, about whom numerous allegations have surfaced in recent years, is also thought to have been protected by the establishment, with some observers wondering why a relatively unimportant member of a minor party should have been mollycoddled that way — well-liked as the jovial Smith was at the time. Of course, deference may be part of it, as, perhaps, may be the patronage of other highly placed abusers.
But it is also the case that the Liberals held the balance of power in the late 1970s, propping up Jim Callaghan through the Lib-Lab pact.
Smith's parliamentary career began when he was "hand-picked by party leader Jeremy Thorpe to fight Rochdale in the 1973 contest". Indeed, "His first frontbench job was as chief whip at the time when the party was being buffeted by the scandal over [the secretly gay] Thorpe's alleged involvement in a plot to kill Norman Scott [...]".
Interestingly, Wikipedia notes that "In 1978, Smith approached former Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath [about whom there have also been serious posthumous allegations] to discuss forming a new centre party."
Given the fact that there have been persistent allegations of a plot by the intelligence services to destabilise the Labour Government of the day, that surely merits further investigation — particularly since it involved Northern Ireland. In that context, it may be no coincidence that the operation was supposedly codenamed "Clockwork Orange".
As matters stand, Kincora has been ruled outside the remit of any inquiry into historical child abuse in England. That is a mistake, since, as Channel 4 has shown, the cases may well be linked. It is highly unlikely that Kincora can be adequately investigated by a tribunal in bankrupt Northern Ireland. That will suit any abusers who remain living — and it may also suit the powers that be.
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In the media over the last few days have been reports about a genetic study published in the journal Nature that analyses what it calls "single nucleotide polymorphism data" (amusingly enough shortened as "SNP").
The headline finding has been that there is no single Celtic genetic group. That's hardly surprising, as academically speaking "Celtic" is a linguistic rather than a genetic categorisation. Most likely it would be found that there is no single Germanic genetic group either, with the area of the former East Germany notably "Slavic", and no doubt some other surprises too. Indeed, the reason that the "Celtic" finding has received such prominence may lie partly in the fact that everyone already knew the English were only partly of German stock.
Upon moving into a new office two years ago, the Blether Region found itself sharing a room with two Catholic colleagues, both of them with (Gaelic) Scots surnames. One of them, a middle-aged woman, even said that "we", meaning Northern Ireland people, had "come from Scotland". She was also a fairly staunch Republican, and often heard to lament the English habit of "taking over other people's countries". The fact that, unlike in Ireland, Britishness in Scotland was historically an act of self-colonisation didn't fit with that, of course, but that's another story.
Here, then, were two Catholics obviously partly of Scots ancestry, and anyone familiar with Northern Ireland knows that there's nothing unusual about that. Whisper it, but the surnames Hume and Adams are sometimes raised in that context. The Blether Region itself is mainly of Scots Presbyterian stock, but with a smaller Irish Catholic branch that, when looked into, turned up an Armagh Anglican element that presumably originated in north-west England. No one in Northern Ireland or anywhere else can claim to be genetically pure — and one wonders why they would wish to.
So much by way of introduction.
While one should of course be wary of abusing genetic data to aid one's own case, one should also be careful that it isn't used, knowingly or unknowingly, to further anyone else's agenda.
In that context, the Blether Region has a few words to say about Mick Fealty's interpretation of the findings on Slugger O'Toole:"So on the genetic purity distinctions (still favoured by some of our politicians) between Planters and Native Irish the news from the science journal Nature is, erm, not so good."
While purity is a myth, it is surprising to say the least that the Slugger piece is not more nuanced, since Fealty quotes from the same BBC article linked to above:"The study also notes that there are two genetic groupings in Northern Ireland: one of which also contains individuals across the sea in western Scotland and the Highlands; the other contains individuals in southern Scotland and southern England.
The former appears to reflect the kingdom of Dalriada 1,500 years ago; the other probably represents the settlers of the Ulster Plantations."
Fealty omits the second paragraph.
Whether the first group are best viewed as having an Ulster Gaelic marker or as a more general Goidelic one can be debated — unfortunately, the study didn't cover the Irish Republic, and of course it may well be pre-Celtic in origin anyway. Whatever the truth, it's highly likely that its range in Scotland was extended south in the nineteenth century as a result of Highland and Irish immigration to the Lowlands.
The "Northern Ireland/Southern Scotland" marker, on the other hand, still covers the entire south-west coast, including Ayrshire, from where most Planters came. Of course, it's also possible that the "Northern Ireland/Southern Scotland" marker originated in Ireland and was itself brought to Scotland at some stage in the dim and distant past (with or without mentioning the "Cruithin"). Less tendentiously, there may well be a link between it and the Strathclyde Britons.
Another interesting finding is the existence of two distinct "NE Scotland" markers; it is tempting to associate those with the Picts. Interestingly, the most iconic linguistic marker of north-east identity ("fit" instead of "whit") originated through Goidelic influence in the Middle Ages. However, that's no more and no less strange than a form of Portuguese being a marker of Celtic identity in Galicia — or, for that matter, Catholicism playing the same role in present-day Northern Ireland.
Assuming that Fealty did not deliberately confuse the study's findings, one has to ask how he was able to draw such conclusions. The answer to that question is most likely that the Highland Clearances, which left much of that part of Scotland empty, have somewhat obscured the prevalence of the "Northern Ireland/Western Scotland" marker — although it is still there if one looks.—
PS — The most Gaelic place on the map would appear to be the Isle of Islay, which, fittingly enough, is also famous for the almost unfeasible prevalence of its whisky distilleries. The Blether Region will raise a glass to that.
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The Herald has an interesting article about anti-Gaelic sentiment in Scotland with the provocative title "Insular, Parochial and Narrowly Nationalistic".
Readers will be asking themselves which nationalism is being referred to, but those acquainted with Scotland know that the answer is irrelevant, since grass-roots prejudice is well represented on both sides of the constitutional divide — and, for the most part, not shared by the leadership of any political party.
One could go as far as to say that it is the very fact that Scottish national identity is not based on ethnicity that allows such ignorant bluster to continue to be spouted. Thus many people view Gaelic as a regional rather than a national language. They may be profoundly ignorant or in denial concerning the geographical extent to which it was previously spoken. Indeed, they may even view Gaelic-speakers in the Lowlands as incomers seeking to foist their culture on others and derive unfair economic advantage in the process — imaginary pheonomena summed up in the expression "Gaelic mafia".
Yet, when one considers the situation in Scotland, one can hardly avoid the conclusion that it is much healthier than that in Northern Ireland, where prejudice is very much associated with a single constitutional viewpoint and the core motivation of those who wish to promote the language is routinely misconstrued — even by self-styled non-sectarians — as seeking to offend the other.
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There has been much talk of the possible repercussions of the UK repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 and replacing it with a British Bill of Rights, a task rendered more difficult by the existence of the devolved authorities, as Lallans Peat Worrier points out.
Veteran legal correspondent Joshua Rozenberg argues that there is "really no need for any significant reform". In fact, although the middle-brow press has often expressed its righteous indignation at terrorist suspects not being extradited or some prisoners being given the right to vote, the UK loses very few indeed of the cases that reach court.
There is no doubt, however, that trying to do away with the Act and failing to persuade Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to go along with the scheme could lead to greater distance between Westminster and the fringe, which would need to pass legislative consent motions if all parts of the UK are to proceed in uniformity.
In the case of Northern Ireland, scrapping the Human Rights Act would be a clear breach of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, which has the status of an international treaty. Proceeding with the reform would require the support not only of the Northern Ireland Assembly but of the Republic of Ireland.
In that regard, the Blether Region has one or two suggestions. Everyone knows that, although an Irish Language Act was promised by the last Labour Administration, real pressure can be exerted on the UK Government to come up with the goods only if the Northern Ireland Assembly collapses and direct rule is imposed. If that happened, of course, getting the Assembly up and running again might be easier said than done. If, on the other hand, the Assembly continues as it is, any Irish Language Bill will almost certainly be blocked in the Executive or by a petition of concern, since the Unionist parties have chosen to oppose it for purely political — not to say, sectarian — reasons.
Rather than refuse point-blank to negotiate a new Bill of Rights, Republicans and Nationalists should enlist the aid of the Irish Government and play hardball on the inclusion of linguistic rights — say, rights of the kind that reflect on the Welsh experience — and put the ball firmly in the Unionist court. Better still, why not just encourage the Welsh to do the heavy lifting themselves? An annex to the Bill of Rights might not be able to do everything that a Language Act could, but it might well put a stop to the most arbitrary and egregious limitations placed on use of the language, for example, the ban on using it before the courts or the requirement for super-majorities before bilingual street signs can be erected.
The outcome might of course be that Unionists rather than Nationalists turn out to be the ones to reject the new Bill of Rights, but in that case Irish-speakers will be no worse off than before and will have gained valuable publicity for their cause.
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While it has been widely pointed out that repeal of the Human Rights Act might constitute a breach of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, there has been less publicity about the fact that a deliberate withdrawal from the Council of Europe's human rights regime might mean that the UK finds itself in an impossible position regarding its continued membership of the body.
That would clearly entail a further weakening of the Nationalist position in Northern Ireland, since Irish is protected, after a fashion, by the UK's adherence to the Council of Europe Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Although technically Ulster Scots is also part of the package, it has never enjoyed the same degree of protection, and in any case ordinary Unionists have always had a rather ambivalent relationship with the dialect.
The main failing in the Charter has been that it is not justiciable: the Northern Ireland Executive has consistently failed to present required reports to the Committee of Experts tasked with gauging implementation, obstructionism that has seen it named, shamed — and then left alone.
However, there is no doubt that the Charter has been better than nothing. Current Conservative policy envisages an end to universal human rights in the UK, and perhaps both a hard land border with the Republic and kicking away the linguistic protections of the Charter. All in all, it's a decidedly unappealing mix for Northern Ireland's Nationalists.
It is therefore clear that a two-pronged approach must be taken — on the one hand working to defeat the Conservatives' madcap isolationism and on the other engaging with them to ensure that linguistic rights are protected, this time in a fashion that envisages legal remedies where appropriate.
Of course, the truth is that the Conservatives stand little chance of being able to repeal the Act, not only because legislative consent is required from the Devolved Administrations but because its majority is simply too small. There are enough pro-European, liberal Tories such as Kenneth Clarke to stymie the change, which appears to be being pursued merely in order to keep the more swivel-eyed backbenchers happy. All the better reason, perhaps, to sit down with the UK Government and persuade it of the need for justiciable linguistic rights.
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It is a fact that the Nazis used the German language to promote industrial murder. They idolised the philologists and folktale-collectors Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, tried to ban foreign words and replace them with German ones (such as Blattleiter for the French-derived Redakteur), and included works by eighteenth-century men of letters in the same school textbooks, printed in Fraktur, that taught children they were individually unimportant vessels for their shared Germanic blood. Indeed, in Jena towards the end of the war, staring defeat in the face, they even seriously contemplated blowing up the remains of Goethe and Schiller to prevent them falling into allied hands — as "trophies", obviously.
Small wonder, then, that the German language is universally detested as a symbol of racism and thuggery, with English-speaking politicians routinely calling for it to be banned and decrying its speakers as hereditary terrorists.
Only that's not actually true. British and Irish schoolchildren still learn German, a valuable language for both art and commerce. Indeed, in the form of Yiddish, German is even a growing language among the Orthodox Jews whom the Germans came close to wiping out, some of whom reject the use of Hebrew as an everyday means of communication for theological reasons.
But all this seems to have been lost on one Northern Ireland politician, the professional Ulster-Scot Nelson McCausland, who has yet another diatribe against Irish in the Belfast Telegraph. Bizarrely, the Tele strapline calls McCausland a Minister, something that hasn't actually been true since September 2014, and strangely fitting for the fantasy-football article. Mr. McCausland, it should be remembered, was removed from ministerial office by his own party after being accused of having misled a Stormont Committee. As ever in Northern Ireland, however, such misdemeanours can be overlooked, just as long as one can get the boot into the other side.
One of the revelations collected by Mr. McCausland is that Scoil na Fuiseoige in Twinbrook is named after Bobby Sands, whose family moved there after being put out of Rathcoole — the experience that radicalised him — and who apparently used An Fhuiseog as a pseudonym (though he was better known by his sister's name of "Marcella"). While that of course does little to promote Irish as a language for all, it's hardly the most in-your-face Republican reference either. Indeed, if the Blether Region were being cheeky, it might suggest that naming a school after James Orr would be more obvious.
The article is depressing, not merely because it rehearses the same tired prejudices but because it underlines, yet again, that Nelson McCausland can have no genuine interest whatsoever in secular culture, the field in which he made his administrative, and later political, career.
But that will cause him no difficulty, since Nelson's supporters, like the man himself, clearly have their priorities upside-down. Rather than form their own Loyalist Irish-speaking schools, or even promote a genuine, unweaponised form of Ulster Scots, they simply attack Irish, since in their world-view politics will always come before culture, and the latter is of value only to the extent that it reinforces the former.
The piece ends by latching onto news of the latest decline in Irish in the Gaeltacht, a tidbit no doubt passed on with a rictus grin of Nelsonian Schadenfreude.
Oh dear, the Blether Region just used a German word.
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The BBC reports that Creative Scotland has launched a new role for a "Scots scriever", a writer in residence expected to produce original work over a two-year period. The use of "scriever" as a direct equivalent of English "writer" of course typifies a tendency in contemporary Scots writing to go for difference over accuracy. For all the term's similarity to more or less neutral words in other Germanic languages, the DSL confirms that not to be the case in Scots.I. v. 1. To write, esp. to write easily and copiously (Sh. a.1838 Jam. MSS. XII. 193; Ayr. 1880 Jam.; Rxb. 1923 Watson W.-B. 341; Sh., Abd., Kcd., Ags., Per., Edb. 1969). Vbl.n. scri(e)ving. Agent n. scriever, skriever, a writer, used somewhat contemptuously, a scribbler, “a mean scribe” (Lth. 1825 Jam.).
This is of course but the beginning of what one hopes will turn out to be an overarching and carefully planned Government policy on the language, showing parity of esteem, though not equality of action, with Scottish Gaelic.
In that regard, it is disappointing to read the following:"The Scots Scriever will be expected to produce work in all the variants and dialects of Scots [...]"
It would of course be perfectly possible for a speaker of Doric to produce work in Central Scots, which after all is the language of most literature, and if one can produce work in Central Scots, Southern and in particular Ulster Scots surely don't present an insuperable challenge. But would that same writer be capable of producing work in Insular varieties? If so, he or she would be a great linguist.
However, these points are minor. The day is one of celebration and hope.
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The new Fermanagh and Omagh District Council is to have bilingual English-Irish signage at all council facilities, save two where signage will be trilingual, reports the Ulster Herald.
The area covered by the council is the size of a county — indeed, larger, since it takes in the entirety of Fermanagh and a fair chunk of Tyrone.
Earlier this year the Belfast Telegraph reported on a dispute concerning the use of languages in the new bilingual logo to be adopted by Newry, Mourne and Down District Council — a first, since it concerned not the practice of bilingualism but the order of the languages, a sign of increasing Nationalist cultural confidence or a lack of concern for community relations, depending on one's interpretation."SDLP and Sinn Fein are also backing plans to implement the policy throughout Northern Ireland. It could see three new nationalist super councils - Fermanagh and Omagh, Derry and Strabane, and Mid Ulster - adopting the same policy for their logo for corporate stationary and vehicles."
Geographically, the council areas cover approximately half of Northern Ireland — but much less in population terms.
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"One way in which a language becomes dead is that people simply stop speaking it: some other language spreads over the area where it is spoken, and it dies without issue. This is what happened, it seems, to Sumerian: round about 1500 BC, the Sumerian language disappeared from everyday use (though it continued to be used as a liturgical language for another thousand years). The people who spoke it must have changed over to some other language, presumably Akkadian, and the reason for that change was simply that they were conquered by peoples who spoke Akkadian, which became the general currency of the area. Sumerian may have been spoken for a long time as a minority language, but Sumerian speakers would need to speak Akkadian as well, and literature and official transactions would be in Akkadian. Anybody who wanted to get on in the world would have to speak Akkadian, but no native Akkadian speaker would have any incentive to learn Sumerian. If there were intermarriages, the children would tend to speak Akkadian. In such circumstances, the number of speakers of Sumerian would gradually shrink, until finally the language disappeared."
— Charles Barber, The Flux of Language, 1964.
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The Blether Region has been researching an ongoing Twitter spat between Nicola Sturgeon and Cathy Newman, who incorrectly claimed that the Scots First Minister's opting to make an affirmation rather than swear allegiance to the monarch was a mark of republican sentiment (it is in fact a mark of secularism; there is no "republican" option in the Scottish Parliament). While doing so, it happened across this article in the News Letter, which carries the Ulster-Scots version of the oath sworn by Strangford MP Jim Shannon, who was of course previously among the most prodigious users of the dialect in the Northern Ireland Assembly."A sweer bi AAMICHTIE GOD that A wull aye houl a richt leal an faithfu hairt tae HIR MAJESTIE QUEEN ELSBETH, an Hir Line o Heirskip, anent tha Laa. Micht GOD be ma halp an stay."
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Today's Herald has an interesting article on Scots by Katie Gallogly-Swan, in which the author displays keen awareness of the political context in which the leid was doomed to its present status — which, of course, may or may not be its future one.
As a democratic project, she also champions giving the imprimatur of languageness to modern, urban, sociolectal Scots, a variety increasingly separate from the "written 'standard' Scots which diverges so drastically from that spoken in the schemes and streets of the nation — academic and inaccessible, even for linguists like myself."
But to what extent is it standardised, and to what extent does the mere act of standardisation account for its divergence from contemporary urban speech?
Surprising as it may sound, literary Scots is less standardised now than it was in the nineteenth century, with the decline of that standard in many ways a by-product of multiple failed attempts to re-standardise the tongue, which has confused writers and encouraged them to regard the result as an apposite arena for creative self-realisation (in the medium rather than the message).
It is also the case that where literary Scots — the traditional kind — appears to differ from speech, it is a result of pan-dialectal spelling practices that epitomise rather than belie the democratic ideals advocated by Ms Gallogly-Swan. Were that Scots to be written according to the sound-to-letter correspondences of Standard English, which is presumably what she is advocating, it would clearly be much less of a language, since it would have multiple spellings for each word, reducing the whole to a collection of dialects enjoying, if that is the word, a series of bilateral relationships with the Hochsprache.
Literary Scots may of course also be incomprehensible to contemporary urban speakers because so much of its vocabulary has been lost. Very often, however, those are not so much the recherché offerings of the elite as country words. Can we really claim that it does not matter if Scots loses half its vocabulary and (partially) replaces it with (what in this case really is) slang?
Two questions must therefore be asked: is urban Scots a language (distinct from English)?; and is it Scots (the same language as the traditional variety)? In the Blether Region's view, the answer to neither question is a clear-cut yes.
That's not to say, however, that Ms Gallogy-Swan's big idea — a crowd-sourced Scots dictionary — is altogether a bad one. While the notion that it could replace an academically rigorous work such as the SND is an inherently laughable one, it could well prove a valuable source of material for it.
When the Blether Region was at school in 1980s Glasgow, the playground was abuzz with earthy slang (yes!) expressions not well covered by the SND, terms like "dauber" for 'penis' (Ms Gallogly-Swan might prefer the spelling "dobber"), "brouner" ("brooner") for a 'male homosexual', and "giein it teugs" ("chugs") for 'masturbation', not to mention "pish flaps" (have that one on me). Not nice expressions, perhaps, but real nonetheless.
And as far as the Blether Region can make out, though the individual words may surface in quotations in the SND, the senses don't.
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Back in the mists of time when the Blether Region was learning Irish, it was intrigued by the word long, meaning 'ship'— or rather by its etymology. Long is apparently a loan from the Latin navis longa. Now, as anyone who knows a bit of Latin is aware, the "ship" part here is in fact navis, ultimately the origin of the word "nave" in church architecture (German Schiff). It seems that the ancient Celts, encountering a word meaning something like "longboat", started using long as their word for 'ship'.
That isn't the only occasion where something similar has happened with a Latin loan. The English word "street" (German Strasse) comes from the Latin via strata, meaning 'paved road'.
Adjectives of course often become nouns in English, and vice-versa. One need only consider the political terms "red", "green" or "true blue"— or, in Northern Ireland, discuss what links "the Orange" and "the Black" (leaping through an Arch Purple, if I recall correctly).
That sort of change, however, is conscious, since we all know that those nouns are also adjectives. Long and "street", on the other hand, are interesting etymologies, and thus interesting stories for linguists to tell.
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The Blether Region notes that the new majority Conservative Government is considering whether funding for Gaelic-language broadcasting should be reduced— apparently on the somewhat spurious criterion of "cost per hour" compared with English-language equivalents, which needless to say takes no account of the public good or even whether the language lives or dies.
It would be particularly sad if that happened, since it was of course a Conservative Scottish Secretary, Michael Forsyth, who oversaw the expansion of Gaelic broadcasting in the 1990s that eventually led to the creation of BBC Alba.
Gaelic in Scotland is not a nationalist shibboleth or even a party-political issue (though from London it might seem that way), and while there are many people like the Blether Region who share an interest in both language and independence, there are others who do not.
Recently the Blether Region discovered a neat little program called get_iplayer, which allows the full contents to the BBC's mediatheque to be selectively downloaded in mp4 format (those living abroad will need a proxy server). BBC Alba has many dozens of good programmes available through that route. Indeed, without it the Scottish offering would be poor indeed.
Of course, as BBC Alba is funded partly by the licence fee and partly by the Government, any shortfall in funds is likely to be made up by the latter, if not by Westminster, then by the Scottish Government. What a cut would entail, therefore, is a hidden reduction in the block grant.
If broadcasting were devolved, on the other hand, we could expect not a decrease in the budget for Gaelic but an increase — as well as, for the first time, a publicly funded station dedicated to the preservation and celebration of Lowland Scots.
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60 Minutes Australia has produced a shocking documentary about the paedophile scandal linking Kincora in Belfast with Dolphin Square in London. Politicians implicated in the sexual abuse of children include some who now sit in the House of Lords, as well as former Home Secretary and EU Commissioner Leon Brittan, who was the subject of numerous below-the-radar allegations before his death earlier this year.
Most shocking of all, the programme:- alleges that former Kincora resident Richard Kerr was abused by the Liberal MP Cyril Smith and Sir Peter Telford Hayman, deputy head of MI6;
- links the Westminster ring with the suspected abduction and murder of the son of the chauffeur to the Australian High Commissioner in London; and
- claims to have uncovered abuse carried out as recently as the 1990s.
As Richard Kerr himself says, those abusers who remain alive can now expect a "knock on the door", while another campaigner says "All those who were ever linked to William McGrath must be regarded as highly suspect."
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One of the annoying (because so ill-informed) things occasionally spouted by self-styled "utilitarian" bashers of Irish is that we should instead all be learning Mandarin— which, they contend, is the Holy Grail of future economic advancement, both personal and regional.
The Blether Region loves languages, no matter where they come from, and there is no doubt that anyone learning Mandarin, or another Chinese dialect such as Cantonese (better represented locally) would be culturally enriched by the experience, no matter how far they progress with it, something the utilitarians rarely mention.
But do the Mandarin-backers really appreciate how difficult it would be to learn a tonal language with a pictographic writing system? Of course not: they only speak English themselves. There is a place for teaching Mandarin, but common sense suggests that the best way to do it would be to recruit seasoned linguists for scratch courses at university or, alternatively, send European children to Mandarin-language schools alongside Chinese counterparts from the get-go.
Of course, one could also hothouse speakers of Mandarin at private schools, something that would no doubt stand pupils in good stead later on. Many such schools, however, are focused on getting pupils into Oxford and Cambridge, and presumably a Chinese language qualification would not attract any more points than French or Spanish.
Evidence for the extreme difficulty of learning Mandarin, and even of recruiting pupils to do so, is provided from Scotland. The Herald rather illiterately reports that:"The Scottish Government's clear focus on Chinese - where teaching funded by Chinese Government - continues to fail to translate in to large numbers of learners.
Figures fell this year, to just 89."
Yes, 89 pupils in a country with a population of over 5 million.
The Blether Region has no particular grouse with the Scottish Government, which, after all, is promoting Mandarin as part of a wider language package that also supports Gaelic (rather than as a half-hearted rhetorical alternative to it).
It does, however, show just how ill-suited the conventional state school environment is to learning Chinese.
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A post or two ago the Blether Region had occasion to go into some of the racier uses of Scots vocabulary not covered by the DSL. It appears that they are not limited to Auld Scotia, since an office colleague given to constantly verbalising the feverish sexual concerns of the over-40s has now introduced it to "dundering" (the word, not the act). None of the meanings given for "DUNNER, v.1, n. Also dinner, -ir; dunder" in the DSL would appear to cover what the Blether Region's university lecturers used to refer to as "sexual congress", but it does seem to be semantically similar to some uses of the English verb "bang".
The source for the previously unattested usage, incidentally, is not an Ulster-Scot but a duniwassal from Tyrone, demonstrating the diffusion of Scots vocabulary throughout Ulster and the wider north of Ireland.
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It is a commonplace to those familiar with Northern Ireland that words elsewhere considered inoffensive can here take on unexpected and nasty overtones, a prime example being "community". In 2012, for example, when former punk supremo Terry Hooley was assaulted on the Comber Greenway, his attackers informed him that he was a "disgrace" to his "community".
A counter-example is "sectarian", which, in Unionist usage at least, is employed to describe anything connected with communal conflict, including avowedly secular Irish nationalism and, one friend in the Alliance Party actually argued, the singing of Amhrán na bhFiann before GAA games (though oddly enough it appears to be "sectarian" only in the North).
Now the Blether Region has discovered another misused word, "pluralism". The occasion is the publication of historic UK Cabinet papers under the 30-year rule. NIO advisers, we are told, warned Margaret Thatcher that allowing for bilingualism would mean "The conventional pluralism of Northern Ireland public policy will be shattered and we shall end up with two rabidly British and rabidly Irish communities."
Although the Northern Ireland conflict is usually thought to be post-colonial, the Blether Region has often thought that the temporal qualifier might comfortably be disposed of when it comes to the various prohibitions and hindrances faced by Irish, which is banned from the roads, banned from the courts, and requires undemocratic super-majorities to be used on street signs (though one could argue that applying democratic tests to human rights is in any case, well, undemocratic).
The most bizarre aspect here is the fact that those who cheerlead for such anti-Irish discrimination appear genuinely to believe that they are doing the right thing, and that their stance actually contributes to calming tensions and, thus, to the creation of a normal society.
So, monocultural pluralism it is, then.
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September 9, 2015, 11:54 am
Many readers will already have heard the alarming news that the University of Ulster is to end the teaching of modern languages, including Irish — as well as, perhaps even more bizarrely, doing away with single-honours maths.
Some may take the view that if a "university" decides to scratch such courses and continues to think itself worthy of the name, that's its affair. However, UU was always a university, not an upgraded polytechnic, and Irish is not like other languages. For a start, it isn't foreign, and the course is of great importance to the successful implementation of public policy on linguistic diversity, cross-community relations and perhaps peace itself.
Damningly, the proposed cuts come at a time when the university is planning to spend hundreds of millions on a new Belfast campus only a few miles away from its current one at Jordanstown, and when its vice-chancellor is trousering £250,000 a year.
A petition at change.org has already attracted hundreds of signatures.
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September 9, 2015, 12:02 pm
The Labour Party has unveiled plans to hold a referendum on same-sex marriage over the head of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which voted against its introduction in April.
The party has also confirmed that if direct rule has to return in the event of current talks failing, that too would provide an opportunity for change. Northern Ireland is now the only polity in the UK, the British Isles or the western European seaboard not to have instituted gay marriage.
While such unions offer few if any legal advantages over civil partnerships, the fact that they are now available so widely in Europe and the United States means that Northern Ireland can hardly continue as the odd one out for ever. As such, the Labour plan is a fudge. Granted, including a referendum muddies the waters with regard to the act of overruling the Assembly, which of course looks better politically. It also neatly gets around daft rules on cross-community voting, which have no logical application to the question in hand. However, it also makes a human-rights issue subject to a popular test. If all such issues were dealt with in that way, it would clearly be the end of universal human rights.
Language campaigners will watch with interest what happens with the Labour plan (presumably nothing, given the state of the party). If Labour is so keen to rewrite the rules to bring Northern Ireland into line with the modern world on gay marriage, what about other human-rights issues, some of them connected with language? In Scotland, for example, it is a statutory requirement that a member of the Land Court be a Gaelic-speaker in order to facilitate crofters. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, the Administration of Justice (Language) Act (Ireland) 1737 forbids the use of any language other than English before courts of law. Northern Ireland also commonly requires weighted super-majorities among residents before bilingual street signs can be legally erected. Meanwhile in Scotland, signage at train stations and on trunk roads is bilingual.
One could go on.
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October 7, 2015, 11:39 am
The newspapers have two stories about Irish-language signage this week. In the first, in the Newry Times, Caitríona Ruane decries vandalism against signs on the main Hilltown to Mayobridge Road.
Meanwhile, the Kerryman reports on a brouhaha regarding the correct Irish version of the place-name Farmers Bridge, which has been rendered as Droichead Farmer on the advice of www.logainm.ie.
If the "Farmer" in the English version is a proper name, the translation is, of course, entirely correct, whereas if it is a generic "farmer" or "farmers", it is wrong. Many local residents will no doubt have taken it to be the latter regardless of the truth of the matter. It might, of course, help if English place-name signs had apostrophes, but the convention seems to be that they don't.
Those with long memories will remember that luminaries of the Ulster-Scots Language Society once got into a spot of cognate bother when they translated Belfast's Beersbridge Road as "Yillbrig Road", which must have come as something of a surprise to Mr. Beers.
Unfortunately, the Kerryman blots is copybook somewhat with the following."This has led to some puzzlement among local gaeilgeoirs who suggest that the true translation of the name should probably be 'Droichead an Feirmeoir' or something similar."
Well, similar, yes, and no doubt, to those who are semi-conversant in the language, acceptable. Just not to those grammarians who haven't read I dTreo Teanga Nua.
And with that the newspaper sums up Ireland's problem with Irish. Even in a Gaeltacht county, it seems that no one working for the newspaper had the nous to ask a native speaker about the correct form.
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