Make a Gaelic Scotland

Scotland never conquers Edinburgh and the rest of the lowlands. Perhaps it ends up getting conquered by England (likely I think) but then it could be in much the same position as north Wales and Gaelic could survive.
 
Scotland never conquers Edinburgh and the rest of the lowlands. Perhaps it ends up getting conquered by England (likely I think) but then it could be in much the same position as north Wales and Gaelic could survive.

Tyr

That's the best bet, Lothian staying English. That means it doesn't become the centre of the 'Scottish' kingdom because of its wealth and population. Scotland is much poorer but far more Gaelic.

The other point probably would be to have Harold defeat William. That means England would be less expansionist with a foreign military elite in charge. Especially with a south dominating monarchy as they would be looking south and east more and only really paying strong attention to the north if either an invasion or a serious rebellion was under way.

Steve
 
The other point probably would be to have Harold defeat William. That means England would be less expansionist with a foreign military elite in charge. Especially with a south dominating monarchy as they would be looking south and east more and only really paying strong attention to the north if either an invasion or a serious rebellion was under way.

hmm...I'm not so sure there.
IMO a likely thing to happen given William being defeated is that England will seek to take back the English lands under Scottish occupation.
At the least the lords in the north would.

But this could well lead to much the same place as Lothian never being lost in the first place.
 
Like everyone else had said, keep the Scottish Kingdom stuck in the highland areas where even now there's a large Gaelic-speaking population.
 
Like everyone else had said, keep the Scottish Kingdom stuck in the highland areas where even now there's a large Gaelic-speaking population.
There are now less than 50,000 Gaels in Scotland. Outside the islands I doubt one in ten in most Highland towns would even speak Gaelic, let alone know it as a first language. I used to go out with a girl from Fort William, in the Highlands who took Gaelic in School. Out of a school of hundreds of children, four were in her class.

As to the first point, simply have the Lords of the Isles keep control of the Highlands and stop the crown gaining in power and taking control. Possibly a more organised, unified system for them could work. This would probably turn Scotland into a Belgian style state though with two cultures and languages.
 
I think a big part of the problem is that the population in the north is and has been pretty small with few economic opportunities, so there has long been an incentive to leave the area to seek opportunity. In this situation there is a constant export of people to other locations, where they probably will have trouble maintaining their distinct language and culture.

Any POD is going to require either addressing this economic issue or creating another area where this population can transfer to that has this opportunity but where the culture can continue without being subsumed.


On a personal note, a fair proportion of my ancestors were such immigrants, either by way of the Lowlands or Northern England, or directly to the Colonies. My great grandmother was by all accounts fluent in Scots Gaelic (or some Orkney flavour of such) and I think she may have been born in New Zealand, her parents possibly as well. The whole area that they are from is to this day heavily Highlands/Isles Scottish.

So it would appear that a working understanding of Scots Gaelic lasted two generations from immigration, which I find interesting
 
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I think a big part of the problem is that the population in the north is and has been pretty small with few economic opportunities, so there has long been an incentive to leave the area to seek opportunity. In this situation there is a constant export of people to other locations, where they probably will have trouble maintaining their distinct language and culture.

Any POD is going to require either addressing this economic issue or creating another area where this population can transfer to that has this opportunity but where the culture can continue without being subsumed.


On a personal note, a fair proportion of my ancestors were such immigrants, either by way of the Lowlands or Northern England, or directly to the Colonies. My great grandmother was by all accounts fluent in Scots Gaelic (or some Orkney flavour of such) and I think she may have been born in New Zealand, her parents possibly as well. The whole area that they are from is to this day heavily Highlands/Isles Scottish.

So it would appear that a working understanding of Scots Gaelic lasted two generations from immigration, which I find interesting


Nova Scotia at one point had a big Gaelic speaking population.
 
What has been said about a lack of Scottish Gaelic speakers in Scotland is true, I'm half Scottish myself and I don't know a single person North of the border who speaks the language, at all. My name, Ruairi, is Scots/Irish gaelic itself, and Scottish people find the name as hard to pronounce as English people do, which is to say very hard.

If you want to make Scotland more Gaelic speaking, then arguably another potential POD is around Culloden; a result for the forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie (I hate using the name but it's the one most people recognise) that resulted in less severe reprisals upon the Scottish population would probably have resulted in a greater preservation of genuine scottish traditions; most of the ones people associate with Scotland today are just tourist schmuck.
 
Looking at this again, there could be a couple of early changes that might have helped.

1. Bible translation to Gaelic at the lastest by the late 16th century. Not just bits and bobs, but a complete translation. Then reasonably quickly after, translation of other useful Christian texts into Gaelic. Given that religious texts were the primary literary/educational texts until quite recently, this may help create an earlier written Gaelic literary culture

If my brief research has been accurate, the first steps in this direction were taken at the end of the 17th century, with a complete Scots translation written in the 18th century

2. Scotland seems to have a pretty good reputation for education reform, as opposed to say England. I don't really know much about this, but perhaps we either start this earlier, or make sure that the school system at least in the Highlands is either Gaelic or Bilingual from the early 19th century
 
I agree witth the above posters. The only way to get A Gaelic nation is to make the Lowlands English. You probably want a late 10th early - 11th century PoD for this, and abort Scottish unification of the lowland petty kingdoms, and have them instead snapped up by a consolidating English state. This could easily have happened, the northern English lords could easily managed this, as these petty kingdoms were pretty cultural similar even then.

I'll try and track down my 10th century liguistic map at some point.
 
I dont understand why Scot Gaelic has not really survived. Welsh has survived and is increasing in use I think. Around about 500,000 people speak Welsh compared to 60,000 in Scotland when Scotland has 2 million more people!
Also Wales has had much more English influance and was annexed by England 200 years odd earlier than Scotland was united with England. So why didnt Scot Gaelic really survive as a major language in Scotland?
 
I dont understand why Scot Gaelic has not really survived. Welsh has survived and is increasing in use I think. Around about 500,000 people speak Welsh compared to 60,000 in Scotland when Scotland has 2 million more people!
Also Wales has had much more English influance and was annexed by England 200 years odd earlier than Scotland was united with England. So why didnt Scot Gaelic really survive as a major language in Scotland?

Because Gaelic was suppressed, and those who spoke it moved or got killed closer to our time than the Welsh. Also as ,far as my knowledge goes that, didn't happen so much to the Welsh.
 
I dont understand why Scot Gaelic has not really survived. Welsh has survived and is increasing in use I think. Around about 500,000 people speak Welsh compared to 60,000 in Scotland when Scotland has 2 million more people!
Also Wales has had much more English influance and was annexed by England 200 years odd earlier than Scotland was united with England. So why didnt Scot Gaelic really survive as a major language in Scotland?
Firstly, outside the highlands, Gaelic was not really the language of Scotland, the common folk spoke Lallans, or Scots, now Scots English.

The decline was on its way between 1500-1745 as the lowlands grew in power, then was accelarated by a law prohibitting the teaching of gaelic after the 1745 rebellion. Things were made worse during the highland clearances when large swathes of the highlands were cleared and thousands moved, mainly to the industry of Glasgow, where to get as job they had to learn the lowlands language. Once they began speaking the language, Gaelic died a natural death.

It has only been revived by linuistic nationalists who for some reason, along with the rest of the world, forget Lallans. I suppose fighting for centuries achieves fame..:rolleyes:
 
Maybe this could be part of the reason for Welsh doing well whilst Gaelic died out to a heavy degree?
Welsh was Welsh, the language of Wales.
Gaelic...Gaelic to the Scots was the language of those primitive scary folk in the arse end of the country. The language of enemies, not the language of Scotland.
 
hmm...I'm not so sure there.
IMO a likely thing to happen given William being defeated is that England will seek to take back the English lands under Scottish occupation.
At the least the lords in the north would.

But this could well lead to much the same place as Lothian never being lost in the first place.

Tyr

I meant a victory for Harold as well as England keeping Lothian. That means a native dynasty centred in the south looking to maintain order and stability and seeking to avoid any underling getting too power. With the Normans there was a strong emphesis on getting additional land for younger sons so they either conquered [Ireland, Wales, Sicily] or settled into new areas [such as Scotland].

If Scotland got Lothian but Harold won at Hastings then England might at some point seek to regain the land. [Although it made no real efforts during the much of the 11th century England was powerful and united]. However, even if it did it probably wouldn't go beyond that. English monarchies were generally happy with a largely nominal overlordship and peace on the northern border.

More to the point England keeping on regaining Lothian means that the Scottish kingdom doesn't include a large [population wise] and relatively rich [good agricultural land] and settled non-Gaelic population. The capital doesn't move to the area and there is a much greater identification of the state with Gaelic. In that case its far more likely to survive as the majority language.

Steve
 
Simple way to keep Scotland Gaelic: have Macbeth kill off Malcolm Canmore and secure control of Scotland.

With the crown safely in northern, native hands, the centre of gravity in Scotland remains north of the Forth, the court langauge remains Gaelic, and Margaret Canmore never gets into the country.

Scotland's ruling class has historically dictated the nation's language, and a House of Moray would have no reason to shift from Gaelic as the House of Canmore did.

No Malcolm means no Margaret, no Margaret means no David I, and no David I means no Anglo-Norman nobles, and no Inglis langauge. Dare I say it, under a secure Moray kingship, you might see the opposite happening, with the Lowlands increasingly Gaelicised, as happened in the north-east of Scotland.
 
Wad ye be Alec Salmond, then?

Lallands is the tongue o' Burns an' Scott, no' the Gaelic...

But it's close to the dialects of Yorkshire and Cumbria, so Salmond willna hae't, the scunner!

Drappin' oot o' the dog-Lallands a wee while, I'll agree that there's no such thing as a living Gaelic except in the Islands and Wester Ross, even there it's college folk that keep it alive.

Salmond wants Gaelic to divide us from the English - and that's the heart of it. A pity there's not as grand a thing as the Eisteddfodau in Scotland.

Keep Lallands!
 
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