Language proficiency poll

[Josquius]

[quote a
I agree. But I don't think it's a living language. Have a look at this Scots website:
http://www.gov.scot/Topics/ArtsCultureSport/arts/ScotsLanguage

But, no-one talks like that. It's reconstructed from actual Scots - the language of Burns, Dunbar and the other makars. But it's like the Northern versions of Middle English (the Gawain and the Green Knight etc), it merged and was drowned by English. What remains are dialects of English with greater or lesser shadows of Scots/Middle English in them.

Just started reading Ernesto Sabato in Spanish and it's going very smoothly so far - I demand an extra point

The problem with Scots as a language is that way too many people compare it to standard English and use its difference to that as proof for being a different language.... Completely ignoring the north and how historically a heavy northern dialect speaker and a heavy Scottish dialect speaker would have had a far easier time with each other than a southerner.
True the same could be said of some Scandinavian dialects but still....

I was speaking about this recently with an Irish friend who speaks Irish properly and is connected by family to the sort of Irish language intelligentsia (her aunt and uncle ran an Irish publishing house, grandparents involved in Irish language league etc). It's really interesting that in Ireland Irish is compulsory but rarely used and the Gaeltacht is getting weaker and smaller; in Wales there are still entire communities that speak Welsh as their primary language, I knew someone at uni from west Wales who didn't start learning English until he was eight. That's happened in Wales despite the fact that Welsh was at the turn of the 20th century in a far worse situation than Irish. She was wondering how you get that level of enthusiasm and penetration of a language as she'd like to see it happen in Ireland and I'd love to see Gaelic make a similar revival in Scotland.

From what I hear Irish as a first language is doing badly- all that damn EU money building roads and turning Ireland into a first world country did have its downsides in shrinking the place and make gaeltacht kids see the opportunity open to them just an hour or two away.
Wales and northern Scotland being depressed areas is probably helping to keep the language alive.

Though Irish as a second language is apparently really getting stronger these days. The schools are doing a much better job of teaching it. Lots of Irish people I know love having it as a secret language to piss off Brits.

[viper37]

but I think their main problems with learning English are spelling and the huge size of our vocabulary.

the different pronounciation of the same syllabes.  that is the hardest part in speaking english.  It's easier to write than French, but a lot harder to speak.