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If Scotland becomes independent,what language will be?
What's the official language for the future Republic of Scotland?
Gaelic? or still English? Recently Scots want to be independent and SNP has won the election in 2007.
It would probably start off as English, but after a while, as national identity begins to strengthen, and if serious rift between the remaining UK and Scotland erupts, then the attitude might change to favor probably Gaelic or Scots, in that order
cont
...but English will always still be important in that nation due to heritage and proximity
I hope they'll force people to learn Gaelic over there. Language is culture. And they're best of teaching English and speaking Scotch. Just like Swiss Germans speak Schwyzerdütsch and learn and write German.
It won't change the fact Scotch beat up the English chauvinist they meet, so it's all the good for the Scottish culture.
>>I hope they'll force people to learn Gaelic over there. Language is culture. And they're best of teaching English and speaking Scotch. Just like Swiss Germans speak Schwyzerdütsch and learn and write German.
It won't change the fact Scotch beat up the English chauvinist they meet, so it's all the good for the Scottish culture.<< The only thing, though, is that (Scottish) Gaelic has only ever been spoken in northern and western Scotland, and even in northern Scotland it has long not been spoken in the very northeastern part of it. The pre-union language spoken in lowland and northeastern Scotland was not Gaelic but rather was [i]Scots[/i], an Anglic Germanic language akin to but independent from English - a fact that is commonly forgotten even by Scottish nationalists themselves.
Ack, forgot which forum I was posting on there (ignore the BBCode above).
Hopefully the official languages will be Scots (all dialects-- Doric, Lallans, Orcadian, Shetlandic, etc.) & Norn.
>>Hopefully the official languages will be Scots (all dialects-- Doric, Lallans, Orcadian, Shetlandic, etc.) & Norn.<<
Norn's far, far too undocumented to ever be revivable, unlike, say, Cornish. It would be better to just try to preserve the Scots dialects spoken in the Orkney and Shetland islands rather than to attempt to revive Norn, which would likely weaken the position of Scots in said islands.
I hope the Scots will respect the Gaelic minority. They are part of Scotland also.
>>I hope the Scots will respect the Gaelic minority. They are part of Scotland also.<<
While at one time the Lowland Scots severely persecuted the Gaelic population in Scotland, these days it seems that Scots itself is in far more danger of being forgotten or at least terminally diluted by English than Scots Gaelic is.
Gaelic is a foreign language to most Scots as they can't speak it. They aren't going to be able to learn it and start speaking it as their native language. The only way would be for those who can speak it fluently to teach children so it could kind of be phased in.
The majority of Scots aren't bothered about learning Gaelic, and they'd probably laugh at the suggestion of making it the national language.
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