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In Ireland Gaelic is a core subject that you start learning in Senior Infants (in Scotland that's P2 and in the US I believe it's kindergarten) and have no choice but to learn it up until you leave school with Irish counting in your final exams towards the points you get and subsequently which universities you can attend. Foreign students coming into Ireland have to do Gaelic is they're under the age of 12 and already speak English fluently. There is also a government funded Gaelscoil in almost every town in Ireland where you can send your children to get them to speak Gaelic fluently.

I think the fact that it's forced for most people and counts towards which university you can go to is ridiculous and certainly not something I'd want implemented into the Scottish education system but it has kept the Irish language alive with most Irish people being able to speak it to some degree and many being fluent.

I think it would be good for the Scottish government to fund the creation of far more Gaelic/Scots speaking schools than it Scotland currently has and have them as optional language subjects in all highschools.

Obviously this is up for debate as it would cost a lot of money but I think it would be worth it to keep Scots and Scottish Gaelic alive as those languages are a part of our national identity that are being forgotten.

(Obviously most people in Wintreath don't live in my region of the world but I'd still be interested to hear foreign opinions on the subject)

I'm not sure I have an opinion, per say. On one hand, as I understand it most children outside the US are made to become fluent in at least one foreign language, especially in Europe where I suppose it makes more sense as there's so many languages in the area. It's also a scientific fact that children can pick up a language more quickly and more fluently than an adult can. If there's a time to have someone learn a language well, it's when they're young.

On the other hand, besides national heritage, is there a point? Would the time and money that would be spent teaching the national language be better spent on other subjects? Would it be better to make it an optional elective course and let the children and parents decide for themselves? Is it a case of keeping something that's vital or just holding on to something symbolic that's become obsolete? Not living in Scotland or having a sense of the culture there, those aren't questions I'm qualified to weigh in on.

I believe it should be a choice 100% but I think it should be a subject in school
(I'm not sure if that's how it works in the US but here you choose most of the subjects you learn) and I believe there should be more Scots and Gaelic speaking primary schools as an option for primary school children (there's only a few in Edinburgh and Glasgow atm)

As for logistics you raise a very valid point that it would be a lot of resources for something that isn't very valuable upfront but I'd say it is valuable to maintain our identity and keep our original languages alive because being a part of the UK has been a massive cultural genocide and in the case of Ireland speaking their original tongue again took back their cultural identity and massively helped to spur their revolution. In cases like those of Scotland and Ireland where our culture has been slowly worn away after effectively becoming colonies of England we shouldn't give into that, we should fight back and keep our cultures alive even if it does cost us some money.

I'm not sure I have an opinion, per say. On one hand, as I understand it most children outside the US are made to become fluent in at least one foreign language, especially in Europe where I suppose it makes more sense as there's so many languages in the area.

Is it not the case in the USA that you learn a foreign language?

Also the UK is not a good example of a country where children are taught foreign languages properly but for most countries in Europe you'd be mostly correct.

@Potato Bagel: Usually foreign languages classes are offered as electives in high school. It's possible that some school districts require them (in the US states control the curriculum, not the national government), but if there are it's not common practice.

You describe being in the UK almost in the same terms that I imagine a Native American would describe being part of the US. But if it's come to the point that most people don't speak it and there's even a need to "fight back", doesn't it sound like society has passively made a decision in this matter? According to Wikipedia only around 57,000 people in Scotland spoke Gaelic in 2011.

Again, I'm not an expert on Scotland or Scottish culture, but I would wager that you feel more strongly about this than the average person there.

(Warning: I'm taking a sociolinguistics class right now (though will likely drop it in favor of another linguistics class), so a lot of what I'm going to say is going to be directly influenced by things I literally just learned from some linguists, lol.)

Huh, I always thought that a language requirement for high school graduation was the norm in the US, but I guess that's not the case. It is more common for college admissions, though, which is probably why my perception is skewed. That said, taking a (quite likely subpar) language class in high school is very different from learning to speak multiple languages as a child. The "normal" thing for languages is for people to be bilingual/diglossic; the monolingual nature of most of America is actually more odd from a sociolinguistic perspective.

I don't think it's fair to say that society has passively decided to prefer English. As Potato Bagel noted, the linguistic changes are directly and intrinsically tied to the suppression of particular cultures in favor of the dominant ones. In the case of Gaelic, laws directly prohibited the speaking of the language, which to my knowledge acted in conjunction with other state activities to help wipe out and assimilate Highland cultures.

And 57,000 people is still about 1% of the Scottish population, so in spite of past suppression the language is still surviving. It certainly makes sense to promote the teaching of the language to young children in order to keep it from dying out. It is a tragic fact that our current increasingly connected and literate society is probably going to lead to most of the world's languages dying out in perhaps the next few centuries. So even though I have no stake in the matter of Scottish nationalism, I think efforts to preserve the language are still quite valuable, as more living languages is always more interesting, and perhaps it is a fair thing to do to right past wrongs.

As for Scots, the language is also quite alive. Wikipedia says there are 99,000 native speakers and 1.5 million people who learn it as a second language, which is, like, 28% of the population. The decline of Scots is of course directly connected to artificial patterns of language standardization, which can lead to the qualities of a language often simply being regarded as "broken English" or similar. I think Scots is really cool, especially since, unlike most languages, English doesn't have many living languages which are mutually intelligible to some degree (as opposed to, say, the Romance languages, of which neighboring languages are typically quite recognizable). So I'd certainly support efforts to promote native speaking and greater formal study of Scots.

@Potato Bagel: You describe being in the UK almost in the same terms that I imagine a Native American would describe being part of the US. But if it's come to the point that most people don't speak it and there's even a need to "fight back", doesn't it sound like society has passively made a decision in this matter? According to Wikipedia only around 57,000 people in Scotland spoke Gaelic in 2011.

Gaelic and Scots were intentionally snuffed out over time, as I said it was a cultural genocide. We didn't just choose to go with English because we liked it more and a lot of people in Scotland are still interested in Scots and Gaelic and most people in Scotland speak English with Scots and Gaelic words mixed in. Also 57,000 might not be a lot in the US but it is here.
Many people would be all for bringing back institutionalised learning of our original languages, it's not just me.

EDIT: Tau basically already said all of this, lol. I should have maybe read his reply first.

Presented without comment

Presented without comment

Jesus Christ! I lived in Dublin when I was 8 and this is so relatable!
Not the interrogation part but the stuff you learn.

Again, I'm not particularly knowledgeable on the topic and I don't have a dog in this fight.

However, it seems to me that we often fall into a mindset where every old knickknack is an antique, every old building is historic, and everything related to someone's ancestry is part of their heritage that must be preserved. Sometimes things are just old, obsolete, and best left in the past. Should we revive every old language that's fallen into disuse?

I think those are questions best left to individuals and groups of like-minded individuals that are willing to put in the time and money to preserve it. Maybe it'd be for the best, because they'd be doing it from their hearts. I guess what I'm saying is that I agree that it shouldn't be something that the government forces on people through the education system. Best leave that decision to children and their parents. If enough people feel that it's worth learning and bringing back, then it will be, simple as that.

We're not talking about a dead language, we're talking about two languages which are very much alive. Language death is permanent and irreversible. Once it dies out of commonly spoken use, it cannot be brought back; at that point I think it is pretty much useless. Or if it is somehow revived it will be in a very different form (the only real instance of this actually happening is Hebrew). Until that point, I think there is inherent value in efforts to continue the language. There are invaluable linguistic insights that living natural languages can provide us that dead ones cannot.

I also think it's one-sided to talk about the government forcing things on people via the education system. That is exactly what the government does with standard English. These and other official acts of language standardization demonstrate to the people which languages are valid and invalid. If the government chooses to only teach English, that is an active choice to encourage other languages to die out. Which languages and dialects are considered proper is a matter of social and political status, which is in large part determined by the actions of official institutions and how they choose to consider them.

(Edit: Not to mention that "forcing" isn't even what Potato Bagel was suggesting; he was bringing up proposals to make Scots and Gaelic education options in primary/secondary school.)

Again, I'm not particularly knowledgeable on the topic and I don't have a dog in this fight.

However, it seems to me that we often fall into a mindset where every old knickknack is an antique, every old building is historic, and everything related to someone's ancestry is part of their heritage that must be preserved. Sometimes things are just old, obsolete, and best left in the past. Should we revive every old language that's fallen into disuse?

I think those are questions best left to individuals and groups of like-minded individuals that are willing to put in the time and money to preserve it. Maybe it'd be for the best, because they'd be doing it from their hearts. I guess what I'm saying is that I agree that it shouldn't be something that the government forces on people through the education system. Best leave that decision to children and their parents. If enough people feel that it's worth learning and bringing back, then it will be, simple as that.

I think you're making the mistake of believing these languages are dead like Latin or Ancient Greek and are just things that some people like to learn for no reason. Scots and Scottish Gaelic are very much alive and I'm sure it's quite likely that a lot of people would want to make education in them more available. They're not just antiques of our past, English became the official language of Scotland in 1707 but Scots and Gaelic were still the main languages for most people until 150 years ago and it still isn't completely dead. It's a part of Scottish culture, not just a part of our past, many people still speak them, a couple of communities have them as the spoken language, many people have interest in partially learning them (like me) and words from these languages are still massively a part of the Scottish dialect. And what? Because we were forced to learn a foreign language and our native languages were suppressed and even outlawed we shouldn't even consider having the available option of learning our own bloody languages because we've moved on from these "relics".

EDIT: Again Tau got there first lmao

(Edit: Not to mention that "forcing" isn't even what Potato Bagel was suggesting; he was bringing up proposals to make Scots and Gaelic education options in primary/secondary school.)

Yeah, forcing Scots and Gaelic would likely lead to people rejecting their implementation and voting for them to be removed.
Plus anyone I know that has to deal with the Irish education system absolutely resents Gaelic because they're forced to learn it.