WI more widely spoken Canadian Gaelic?

[funnyhat]

Being attached to a larger polity by no means that a small language community must be marginalized. Icelandic and Faroese survived centuries of union with a much larger and wealthier Denmark, to name one example not at random.

But those aren't places of mass immigration. Neither the UK nor Canada has an incentive to limit non-Gaelic immigration, and if the Gaelic region is part of a massive non-Gaelic country, its citizens will have an incentive to learn the majority language.

The other issue is that, as mentioned above, English is an increasingly dominant language as the 19th and 20th centuries progress. That makes it even tougher for Gaelic to survive. I think it needs strong political intervention.

 

[Duke of Nova Scotia]

A more concerted effort to have the Gaels settle there during the clearances, this makes sense due to the Acadiens being Catholic as well. Which would mean a high chance of gradual integration, and cutting off the guerrilla support, instead of mass deportations.

There are road signs and such, it has mainly been carried on through song here, My father speaks as does my mothers family can all sing it, and some actively speak it. I can swear, and say please and thank you, buts that's just my own lapse in the vocab. The sentence structure is rather simple. There are no possessive pronouns, as in John doesn't have the cup, the cup is at John.

 

[funnyhat]

A more concerted effort to have the Gaels settle there during the clearances, this makes sense due to the Acadiens being Catholic as well. Which would mean a high chance of gradual integration, and cutting off the guerrilla support, instead of mass deportations.

The snag: integration might mean the Gaels, not the Acadiens, losing their language.

IOTL, Britain sent tens of thousands of Irish Catholics to Québec in the mid-19th century as a way of boosting the anglophone population. To the surprise of the British, most ultimately assimilated into the francophone majority.

 

[Indicus]

IOTL, Britain sent tens of thousands of Irish Catholics to Québec in the mid-19th century as a way of boosting the anglophone population. To the surprise of the British, most ultimately assimilated into the francophone majority.

And the same fate has fallen to the Eastern Townships.

 

[Duke of Nova Scotia]

The snag: integration might mean the Gaels, not the Acadiens, losing their language.

IOTL, Britain sent tens of thousands of Irish Catholics to Québec in the mid-19th century as a way of boosting the anglophone population. To the surprise of the British, most ultimately assimilated into the francophone majority.

Or just as it is now, a closing of the communities, Cheticamp as an example.

 

[rfmcdonald]

Closing of the communities?

Judging by the example of Québec, I'm not sure that there is much Irish influence on French, or much Irish survival. Granted that speakers of Irish had different attitudes towards their language than speakers of Scots, there was also a non-trivial amount of Scottish assimilation into the Canadien population, especially of Catholics.

I guess this brings us back to the need of speakers of Scots Gaelic to have much more interest in promoting and preserve their language. What would do that?

 

[damein fisher]

How about Cape Breton remains a separate province from Nova Scotia. It as well as PEI is interested in the idea of a maritime Union, so we see Cape Breton not being in the original Canada. As part of the deal for joining the confederation, Gaelic retains special rights in Cape Breton akin to French in Quebec

 

[Arkenfolm]

How about Cape Breton remains a separate province from Nova Scotia. It as well as PEI is interested in the idea of a maritime Union, so we see Cape Breton not being in the original Canada. As part of the deal for joining the confederation, Gaelic retains special rights in Cape Breton akin to French in Quebec

But would people really be pushing for that? Canada might agree to those terms, but how many Cape Breton politicians are going to push for it?

 

[damein fisher]

But would people really be pushing for that? Canada might agree to those terms, but how many Cape Breton politicians are going to push for it?

Didn't Cape Breton have a majority Gaelic speaking population?

 

[rfmcdonald]

Didn't Cape Breton have a majority Gaelic speaking population?

Quite possibly, yes. I think that you would also have to create, along with the province, some sort of political will to normalize Gaelic, for it to be seen as a language worthy of use in public life and of being supported. There are plenty of examples of societies where most of a population spoke one language but, because of different sorts of pressures, ended up shifting to another.