Around eight or nine years ago a friend of mine was travelling in a taxi in Dublin on her way home from work when her father phoned her. She was talking with him for a few minutes when she was interrupted by the actions of the taxi driver who turned up the volume on the radio from a barely discernible hum to an eardrum-rattling beat that made phone conversation impossible. When she asked him to turn it off for a moment he replied that he would do so when he didn’t have to hear the “noise” she was making. She thought he meant she was being too loud and unthinkingly apologised for being so. He replied that it wasn’t her loudness it was the “bloody language” she was speaking. Which of course was Irish. My friend got off her mobile phone and huddled back into the taxi seat, both intimidated and humiliated. To this day she is still angry at herself for her perceived lack of courage in not answering back or taking the matter further.
So if that could occur in Ireland’s national capital it is hardly any surprise that it could also happen in Scotland, and particularly in a city like Glasgow where anti-Irish and anti-Gaelic sentiment is still a strong social and political factor. From the Evening Times:
“A Glasgow private hire driver is under investigation for allegedly refusing to allow Irish visitors to speak their language in his car.
Kathleen McAleer, 21, a mental health nurse, was one of four passengers in the car in the early hours of Monday, December 16. She was travelling with a friend and two first cousins from County Donegal from one house on the South Side to another.
Ms McAleer said: “My cousins were just talking to each other in Irish, which is their first language.
“The taxi driver turned around and said to them ‘Stop speaking in that language’.
“We didn’t really know how to take it. He said: ‘When you are in Britain, it is English you speak.’
“He then said: ‘If they want to speak in that language they can get out of my taxi.’
So we got out and said we wouldn’t pay.”
Ms McAleer reported the matter to both Hampden Cabs and the city council.
Initially the company’s Paul Muir insisted the incident related to what he called drunken passengers who had been at a city concert the previous day who had allegedly intimidated an elderly driver and been asked to leave the car.
However, after being told Ms McAleer was reporting an incident a day before the concert, he said he would not comment.
But before doing so he said: “I couldn’t imagine four people coming over from Donegal and going to a party in Britain and not being drunk”.”
He then laughed.”
Well I suppose it could have been worse. They could have been arrested for speaking in Irish…
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
As a Gaidhlig speaker educated in Glasgow (and not a Gael) I have to say that this isn’t entirely representative of Glaswegians whatsoever. Most people I speak to are encouraging of the language and particularly its cultural offshoots in the city. It mainly seems to invoke ire when “Over-Funding” is raised as an issue. But, Gaidhlig has been subject to malicious press cover for a number of years and this obviously leads to the recruitment of a few empty-headed figures to the anti-gaidhlig agenda. I think you’d find however most Glaswegians would be shocked and ashamed that this has happened.
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Lewis, absolutely. I have written before on my positive views of Glasgow and the friendships I have with fellow Gaels o’er the sea. I would view this as an isolated incident though it speaks of a certain atavistic strain in the city that loathes any aspects of Irish or Scottish culture it views as “suspect”, not least the respective indigenous languages. I’m sure speakers of Scottish Gaelic would have received equally discriminatory treatment.
And of course such views are not confined to Scotland. The hatred of Irish-speakers and the Irish language is to be found in extremist anglophone circles in Ireland. Not least in the national press. In that Ireland and Scotland are very similar nations.
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glasgow is an agnlicisation of a gaeilge word as well, lot of place names in scotland are. shows the job that was done there and here this sort of hostility from locals.
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I always understood Glasgow to be a British name, but you can no doubt look it up. The Gàidhlig version, Glaschu, appears to mean ‘Grey Dog’.
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to be honest there shouldn’t be a need to look it up had placenames been left alone in the first place! – i wouldn’t have guessed otherwise that, just like Irish placenames, Scots Gaelic placenames in English are phonetic ‘translations’ and have no meaning: sionnach has good resources on this
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Eh. Whenever people of a different language move into a new country they tend to adapt the local placenames to their own tongue. The Anglicisation of Irish and Scottish placenames is nothing unusual or wrong, though the fact that the English have imposed their adapations as the one official way to refer to those places obviously is. Glasgow is far down south enough that it could have fallen under the Hen Ogledd, though obviously it would have seen Gaelic influence and population as well as the Dál Riata expanded. My point is that it would likely be difficult to figure out if some Southern Scottish placenames were Scottish in origin or Brythonic in origin, even if the English hadn’t imposed their own adapations.
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In some cases the exact origin of placenames is difficult (especially in the east of Scotland) but generally linguists and historians have become quite adept at sifting through the evidence. The restoration of Gaelic names in Scotland, original or adapted from Brythonic forms, to me is simply logic. No one in Germany officially calls München “Munich” 😉
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I think there was considerable debate over the origin of the name at one time but a British (Cumbric/Welsh) derivation is now generally accepted (the “green hollow”?), of which Glaschú/Glaschu is a Gaelicisation. I always thought it a quite pleasing name, phonetically speaking.
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I actually though the first element was something to do with a saint (i.e. early missionary) and the -gow or -chu the equivalent of Gaelic _caomh_, Welsh _cuf, cu_, ‘kind, dear’. But look it up.
It’s a bit pointless asking what’s the ‘true’ or ‘original’ name of anywhere. For instance, Glasgow and similar places must have had an ‘original name’ before the ‘saint’ in question came along.
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St. Cyndeyrn meeting Colm Cille? Something about the naming of their meeting place? But the name probably pre-dated that possibly apocryphal meeting. Ah yes, you can go to far in the name thing but I don’t think signposting “Glaschu” as a modern name is that much of a challenge to anyone (or it shouldn’t be).
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Absolutely. I was more disagreeing with An Iorcánach when he essentially said that if the English hadn’t moved in and muddied everything up, there wouldn’t be any sort of difficulty in interpreting Southern Scottish placenames. Brythonic and Gaelic coexisted (albeit violently sometimes) in the south of Scotland, so even if the English had never arrived, it wouldn’t be quite that simple. As I said in my initial reply to An Iorcánach, while England making their own adapations and translations of Scottish placenames isn’t wrong, their imposing their adaptations as the official placenames obviously is.
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Worth a read: http://www.philmacgiollabhain.ie/an-ghaeilge-i-nglaschu/#more-4306
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Thanks for the link, BD. Good read indeed.
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What the hell…!
I would give almost everything to learn Irish…
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Francesco, Try an app called Duolingo on your phone
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Doenloading 🙂
Thanks a lot
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No Problema Mia amico
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Also give talkirish.com a look. It costs a subscription fee, but the lessons are very logically ordered, feature recordings from native speakers, and are easy to understand. You can try the first lesson free to see if you like it.
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Níl aon bhac romhat. There nothing stopping you!
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Nam bitheadh punnd agam airson gach uair a chuala mi a leithid sin, bithidh mi ‘nam duine beairteach 🙂
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Maire Nic Bhaird (Mary Ward) arrested in Belfast a few years ago for not “giving her name in English”. Possession of an irregular verb?
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😉 Link to story here. The use of Irish is still banned in British-administered courts in the north-east of Ireland, even via a translator.
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IIRC, the Irish Language Act was coming on fine under direct rule but was blocked once Stormont was up and running again. For once you can’t blame the English 😉
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That is quite possibly true 😉
I only blame the English for the historical stuff. The last 90 odd years is all home-made 😦
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Sinn Fein’s Alex Maskey did not give me a straight reply when I asked what we had gained from the policing agreement.
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awful story: can’t imagine many under 30s irish speakers in dublin/cork/limerick having the courage to stand up to a prejudiced (undoubtedly non-immigrant) taxi driver and refusing to pay – not looking forward to sunday indo’s reporting of next saturday’s protest outside dáil – morning weather looks to be good and so hopefully schools and college groups will make their opinions heard
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I wonder though. It seems to be the under-30s, the urban Gaeilgeorí, who are the most willing to see language issues as a right to be demanded not an indulgence to be granted. I think many young Irish-speakers growing up primarily in an anglophone sphere where civil rights (service, even) are a norm find it impossible to reconcile being denied those rights when speaking Irish. Militancy, if I may term it as such, is much more prominent among the new Dublin Gaeilgeorí than their elders. Something that seems to worry or unsettle more established figures in the Hibernophone community, those who have spent decades suckling the selective cash-cow while pleading the béal bocht rather than the béal feargach.
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This is why the future of the Celtic languages is brighter than statistics might indicate. It’s a lot like the hippie movement back in the 60s, here in America. Youthful idealism and energy can accomplish great things. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Irish Government and even Stormont gives Gaeilge the rights and recognition it is entitled to within the next 20 to 30 years. The new generation of “Militant Gaels”, as you call them, will afford their elected officials no choice.
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I hope you’re right, sionnach – nice turn of phrase, “suckling the selective cash-cow” -:) — though I’ve a niece who went to my sisters’ Irish deconday school but like many other graduates of non-teaching disciplines will likely emigrate: interesting reading that France is trying to come to terms with their ‘brain-drain’ – possibly their first since their colonial wars in Africa and Asia in the 60s @
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I don’t know, James: I understand what you’re saying about imposition but “nothing unusual or wrong”? Anthropologists talk about enculturation but even with the distance of couple of hundred of years after Jacobite suppressions, a government sponsored population displacement of thousand year-old ethnographic histories and languages? @
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Again, I am only referring to the English creating their own versions of foreign placenames. Not the English requiring that these be the placenames used in Scotland, Ireland, or wherever else they colonised, and certainly not “government sponsored population displacement of thousand year-old ethnographic histories and languages”. Just about everybody does this. The French call Ireland “Irlande”. The Welsh called London “Llundain”. Does this offend you?
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The French are like the painful cyst on my arse that needs lancing – shag what they think! -:)
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Reblogged this on seachranaidhe1.
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The best source I’ve seen for Scottish placenames is the excellent “Scottish Placenames : Their Study and Significance,” by W.F.H. Nicolaisen, first published in 1976, republished in 2001. For Gaelic enthusiasts it certainly punctures the assertion that Gaelic was confined to the Highlands and Islands : also good sections on Pre-Celtic, Scandinavian, Cumbric, Pictish and Early English placenames.
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Thanks, Ginger, here is a link to the book for anyone interested in it. Looks good.
On a related note, two pieces from Newsnet Scotland that are well worth reading: Newsnet Scotland’s Gaelic map of Scotland and a longer article Scottish names for Scottish places, a proposal for the curriculum.
From the Ordnance Survey of Ireland the new modern Irish language map of Ireland. Hopefully more to follow (including a world atlas?).
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See also “The Celtic placenames of Scotland”, by W.J. Watson, reprinted by Birlinn in 1993 : Birlinn has published many books of Scottish and Gaelic interest, which can be had from their site. Caledonia Books, based on the Great Western Road in Glasgow is a good source for antiquarian and second-hand books, available through their website.
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Thanks, Ginger, another link for interested readers.
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