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[Owlbread]

Have you learned Gaelic as a second language or are you a native speaker?

It is a second language. I am a lowlander originally but I learned the bulk of my Gaelic late in high school.

How can something so geographically approximate to English be so...not English? Freaking German is easier for me to translate than that!

It is virtually impossible to comprehend. When I started learning it, it was like I had hit a brick wall. It is so, so far from English, but after learning it for about 6 months it suddenly clicked and it got really easy. Now I find it easier to speak than German, even though I've been learning German for longer. I think it's one of those languages like Spanish or something where once you learn the basics, you can start stringing sentences together willy nilly. When you try to speak German you've got to keep all sorts of grammatical rules in your head so you feel like you're doing a maths sum every time.

I remember when I started learning it I kept thinking "this is such an old language". It was just my overall impression of it, all the sounds and the expressions. It felt like I was learning proto-Indo European or something.

[XXSockXX]

How can something so geographically approximate to English be so...not English? Freaking German is easier for me to translate than that!

They were there first. Germanic-speaking people came to Britain later.

I find Gaelic and Welsh fascinating from an aesthetic point of view, but found them always much harder to learn than the Germanic and Romance languages I'm familiar with.

Is Gaelic regularly taught in Scottish high schools?

[Leafsnail]

English has a lot of the same influences as German (such as Latin), and also directly trades some words with it.  Gaelic is really from a wholly different family of languages.

[Owlbread]

I find Gaelic and Welsh fascinating from an aesthetic point of view, but found them always much harder to learn than the Germanic and Romance languages I'm familiar with.

Is Gaelic regularly taught in Scottish high schools?

It is, especially in the highlands and formerly Gaelic speaking areas, although some schools in the big cities also teach it. The government subsidises Gaelic education. Gaelic only died where I live about 10 years ago so pupils still learn Gaelic, though their teachers are from elsewhere.

Some schools also provide Gaelic medium education for native speakers, where they can be taught in Gaelic throughout their experience at school, so even if they're learning Maths they can be speaking Gaelic. When I did my final exams I could have requested that they be Gaelic papers. That sort of thing is more common in the Western Isles were natives can still be found, though.

English has a lot of the same influences as German (such as Latin), and also directly trades some words with it.  Gaelic is really from a wholly different family of languages.

It is also from a different sub-family to Welsh, a bit like how Spanish and Portuguese are in their own little sub family while French and the Norman languages belong to a different one. Or Russian and Ukrainian vs Czech and Slovak. Scottish Gaelic goes hand in hand with Irish and Manx while Welsh goes with Cornish and Breton. I can understand an Irish or Manx speaker to an extent, but I can't understand a word a Welsh person is saying beyond the little bits of Welsh I've managed to pick up. It's totally different, though we share the roots of words and basic grammar and the like.

[MonkeyHead]

Phonetically, the Welsh/Celtic alphabets are very, very different to the Gaelic ones. Welsh is very basic in terms of its phonics though - you say words pretty much exactly as they are constructed phonetically from thier letters.

Beth sydd mor ddrwg am Gymraeg beth bynnag? Roddwyd, mae gennym brinder llafariad cronig, ac yn ffordd anarferol gyda geiriau benthyg ac idiomau, ond prin yn ei gwneud yn debygol o achosi diwedd y byd.

[Owlbread]

The thing with Gaelic is that it should be phonetic, but the nature of the dialects means it isn't. Loads of "dh", "mh" and "bh" sounds can be silent depending on where the speaker is from.

[kaijyuu]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23338279

Hooray!


My fiancee pointed out that the House of Lords did essentially what it's supposed to, too:

MPs decided not to oppose a number of minor changes agreed by the House of Lords.

Among these were protections for transgender couples, which will allow people to change sex and remain married.

Apparently no one in the Commons thought about trans people at all when drafting the bill.

[LordSlowpoke]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23338279

The bill allowing same-sex couples to marry in England and Wales has passed its final hurdle in Parliament.

what about northern ireland

or scotland (they have their own parliament but doesn't this affect them too?)

or the overseas territories

this is a highly specific bill for some reason

[Loud Whispers]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23338279

Hooray!


My fiancee pointed out that the House of Lords did essentially what it's supposed to, too:

MPs decided not to oppose a number of minor changes agreed by the House of Lords.

Among these were protections for transgender couples, which will allow people to change sex and remain married.

Apparently no one in the Commons thought about trans people at all when drafting the bill.

About bloody time. No matter how you feel about legislations on sexuality, all must be afforded the same fundamental rights in spite of our prejudices.

[Leafsnail]

The bill allowing same-sex couples to marry in England and Wales has passed its final hurdle in Parliament.

what about northern ireland

or scotland (they have their own parliament but doesn't this affect them too?)

or the overseas territories

this is a highly specific bill for some reason

Those are issues for the governments of Scotland, Northern Ireland and overseas territories respectively.  I don't think Westminster wants to needlessly tread on their toes.

[Owlbread]

In Scotland we are busy passing through our own gay marriage laws. It'll be done pretty soon I reckon. I think we actually started talking about it well before Westminster considered it. As for Northern Ireland though I really doubt it considering the attitudes of their leading politicians towards homosexuality - calling it evil and debauched and stuff. Well, at least, that's Ian Paisley Jr.'s belief.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

According to Wikipedia, the majority of Scots oppose same-sex marriage while the majority of Scotlands MPs support it.

[Loud Whispers]

I prefer prejudii. Probably incorrect, but still!

It's not prejudus and it's not derived from Latin.

I will end you with extreme prejudice.

I AM TIME ITSELF

[Owlbread]

According to Wikipedia, the majority of Scots oppose same-sex marriage while the majority of Scotlands MPs support it.

Yes, it's quite a complicated thing there. The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey found that 60% of Scots were in favour of legalising same sex marriage, but the Scottish government's consultation found 67% of the 50,000 respondents to their own consultation opposed it. Polling is a weird and wonderful thing in Scotland and it is never, ever accurate. For instance, one year prior to winning the greatest electoral victory in Scottish political history in 2011, the SNP were running something like 20% behind Labour in the polls.

For something to jump from 60% in favour to nearly 70% against so quickly implies something is seriously wrong with their polling methods. For 67% to be an accurate representation of the population, I think I would have met more people opposed to it. I haven't, most people I know are in favour. Scotland has quite a prominent gay community, mostly based around Edinburgh I think.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If you only like to read things superficially, that is.

Well, that's because I have you around. It's quite refreshing to finally have a subject in which I only need to make lazy ill-informed statements from my own unsupported guesswork, because I know you'll be around within a few hours to explain everything in depth and remind us that the Scottish Unionists are the enemy of all that is good within this reality quadrant, rivaled only by the Cult of Leng and their unnamed masters in the starless void between galactic clusters. And even they don't want to abolish their own political institution.