The Unionists are diminishing,

[Loondave1]

It sounds like it has a Gaelic derivation but wiki doesn't know.

Waeki surely ??

[invergowrie arab]

Waeki surely ??

Uigidh

[Hedgecutter]

Interesting. Another related puzzler is why when im abroad the airport departure board says Glasgow Bristol Manchester Bradford etc etc and then Edimburgo ??

Because numerous people outside of Scotland wish to visit Edinburgh whilst the others are simply white noise to the wider international community.

[GTG_03]

Jackie Baillie and Alex Johnstone teaming up on Scotland 2015 to have a go at the scottish government. It was constant '8 years of government, SNP should be ashamed, attainment gap growing. Tories and labour as allies, who'd have thunk it?!

No one from the Scottish government there to defend of course.

[Loondave1]

Because numerous people outside of Scotland wish to visit Edinburgh whilst the others are simply white noise to the wider international community.

If its because of historical importance im puzzling as to why Londinium city airport isn't on the boards.I live in Edimburgo so I definitely feel internationalist and superior now.

[Loondave1]

Jackie Baillie and Alex Johnstone teaming up on Scotland 2015 to have a go at the scottish government. It was constant '8 years of government, SNP should be ashamed, attainment gap growing. Tories and labour as allies, who'd have thunk it?!

No one from the Scottish government there to defend of course.

Probably sticking up Gaelic signs tonight. Too busy.

[GTG_03]

Probably sticking up Gaelic signs tonight. Too busy.

And at no extra cost I am delighted they are busy doing this. Refreshing to have a government that actually knows how to do its job.

[RedRob72]

Don't mind the Gaelic signage one bit, it's all good interesting stuff, even for an auld duffer whose never really taken much notice.

[Alan Stubbs]

Can I just check that we all know the text on road signs aren't printed on there by the nearest JJB?

It's a waste of money because dual-language signs cost more Never heard so much shite in my life.

Tell you who the real wasters are here. Everyone apart from 'Murica and good old Blighty, out there using metric. Extra fucking number on their motorway speed limit signs! Throwing money away.

[Todders]

Eh, I'd imagine naming 'foreign' places in Gaelic is pretty much the same as naming foreign places in every other language in existence. Would it not be weird if it wasn't.

Not really since there are only 18 letters in the gaelic alphabet so plenty of places would need to be spelled differently in Gaelic (even if they are pronounced the same).

[Todders]

Just all seems lazy and arbitrary at times.If people in Holland are Dutch what are they calling it the Netherlands for ?? Dutchland sounds good but again could confuse. Dutchland Dutchland uber alles anyone...

Holland is different to The Netherlands. It's like calling England The UK.

But why people from The Netherlands are called "Dutch" is a mystery to me. I'm sure I could look it up but I'm too busy trying to figure out how to get all the Gaelic symbols on my keyboard to really annoy the mono-cultural fascists out there.

[~~~]

The snp are the first to moan when money is wasted on stupid things and not used to help people who really need it.maybe they should practice what they preach millions on gaelic signs very helpfull.

From the Herald

Full article below. You've shown yourself up on this thread.

Of all the wacky things that happened during last year's big vote my favourite was the internet discovery of a secret oil field west of Shetland.

Westminster, the conspiracy theory went, was covering up untold riches in Scottish territorial waters till after the referendum.

Now, I have no idea who cooked up this nonsense. A Putin-style unionist troll factory? Random wackadoodles on the Yes side?

But the story, whoever invented it, really did tap in to a deep distrust of the establishment in the Yes movement.

Memes, you see, can be telling. Take the latest barmy offering, this time from fringe unionists rather than Cybernats.

So-called Pouters - those who use the #snpout hashtag - think the Scottish Government spends £26m a year on Gaelic road signs in some kind of "fake Celtic" nation-building exercise.

The real cost of such signs is - drumroll - nothing.

That is because signage is simply being updated as and when it needs replaced, according to European-wide best practice on supporting minority languages and laws that predate the SNP.

The idea isn't - as sarkier commentators have suggested - that Gaels would get lost in Dumfries without signs in their own tongue. Nor is it to "force" places with Anglo-Saxon or Welsh names to be Gaelic.

No, signage is just a cost-free way of raising awareness, understanding and esteem of a minority language.

Yet seeing something written in Celtic seems to do strange things to some otherwise sane people.

Peak Gaelophobia, I hope, came last week when inaccurate reports emerged that Police Scotland had rebranded its chopper with Gaelic signage. (It's a new aircraft, there was no cost).

Cue much-repeated but bizarre chat that Gaelic has no word for such an aircraft. I suppose it doesn't, but then neither, does English, "helicopter" being a Greek-rooted term borrowed from French.

And that crazy £26m figure? Well, that appears to be the total cost of all Gaelic services, including schools. This isn't an extra cost: Gaels pay taxes too.

Politicians know this. After all, they passed the 2005 Gaelic Act giving the language parity of esteem, in theory if not practice.

Today the Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the quango that supports the language, will be in Holyrood thanking MSPs for their near universal support.

Hopefully they'll catch up with Tory Jackson Carlaw, who was among those who retweeted garbage about signs.

Remember I said memes could be telling?

I think bogus concern over the cost of this signage exposes bigotry on the No fringes.

But what does it say about unionism that those who should know better on Gaelic, such as Mr Carlaw, fail to challenge their own extremes?

The Pouter obsession with the language also underlines that many British nationalists genuinely misunderstand their SNP opponents, wrongly imaging them all to be romantics who do Gaelic night classes.

Me? I think the scorn shown for Gaels - or any minority - is unhealthy. It is also politically counter-productive. After all, those who speak Gaelic are as split on independence as the rest of us. So let's stop the bigotry.

[Crùbag]

Surely the last word on the SNP funding a 'Gaelic' explosion. Truth is, they've hardly done anything. Wish they'd do more though.

https://basedrones.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/scots-gaelic-scots-law-and-scots-attitudes/

Fact is, Gaelic received its first significant funding from the Tories - perhaps in an effort to make them seem more Scottish and not 'anti-Scottish'? This was continued by the Labour/Lib Dem administraion and then by the SNP. The SNP to my knowledge haven't extended the funding or legal rights of Gaelic at all.

They should though. If we can find dosh to preserve flora and fauna, old castles, museums, libraries, art and opera, private schools etc then why not provide services to a community, albeit a minority one, that continues to exist? Should be remembered that Gaels pay taxes too and Gaelic culture as a whole brings in a lot of dough. I think the new wave of anti-Gaelic Unionism is confined to the more hysterical and extreme fringes. Gaelic is not a simple political statement that languages are in some nations.

Also of relevance to Gaelic are:

• the Local Government (Gaelic Names) (Scotland) Act 1997, a short statute that confers a power on a local authority to change its name into Gaelic and back to English if it changes its mind later (only Comhairle nan Eilean Siar has done so);
• the British Nationality Act 1981, which (in Schedule 1) asks for a sufficient knowledge of the English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic language for naturalisation [note the disjunctive “or”, it is possible to become naturalised in the UK with no English];
• Some rules about education, such as the Grants for Gaelic Language Education (Scotland) Regulations 1986, but with education being such a specialist area I am not going to look into that any further.
• Some rules about broadcasting, such as section 183 of the Broadcasting Act 1990 (a section that has changed over the years, but has always been about Gaelic).
• the European Convention on Human Rights (PDF), which provides for many things including rights for those arrested (in Article 5(2)) and charged or on trial (Article 6(3)) to be dealt with in a language they understand (which is of limited relevance to contemporary Gaels appearing in Scottish Courts, but there might still be situations where this could be relevant, and see above regarding the very unlikely situation of an immigrant who has opted to learn Scots Gaelic rather than English or Welsh);
• Other international instruments about cultural heritage.

There may be others, but I can detect some readers becoming bored by legislation. Let me now pose a question: other than Gaelic (or language in general), what do all of these measures have in common?

Not one of them was enacted by the SNP.

[Jacksgranda]

We rename everything that matters. So Edinburgh will have a long history of use in Latin influenced countries so they have their own word for it. Post industrial revolution cities like Manchester, Bradford and Glasgow were never needed until the last 150 years.

And aren't needed anymore.

[H_B]

Wish they'd do more though.

Why?

Aren't there much better things the Scottish government can be spending our money on than a pointless teuchter language spoken by a handful of gimps.

In fact I can think of few worse things to invest in. I'd rather pay for one of Alex's slap up meals that we fund than anything Gaelic related.

[Fide]

Why?

Aren't there much better things the Scottish government can be spending our money on than a pointless teuchter language spoken by a handful of gimps.

In fact I can think of few worse things to invest in. I'd rather pay for one of Alex's slap up meals that we fund than anything Gaelic related.

Ladies and gentlemen, the troll has arrived.

[mizfit]

Did you know that in Wales there are road signs that have both Welsh & English on it?

HOW DARE DA TAXPAYA PAY 4 DAT, GIVE DAT MUNEY TO UR TROOPZ.

[Fide]

Did you know that in Wales there are road signs that have both Welsh & English on it?

HOW DARE DA TAXPAYA PAY 4 DAT, GIVE DAT MUNEY TO UR TROOPZ.

I remember as a young un on holiday in Wales there was a road sign saying "do not park on the grass verge" in Welsh.

True story.

[H_B]

Did you know that in Wales there are road signs that have both Welsh & English on it?

The relevance of this point being.....?

[Ira Gaines]