The Pub Quiz, English language hegemony and Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd

"Each separate language throughout the world represents the accumulated history of the people who speak that language; their concepts, their lives, their emotions and their ideas; the thoughts of their ancestors, their influences from outside, both present and past; even their dreams. In many ways, any distinct language is the very embodiment of a people, which in spite of the increasing globalisation and the spread of English, and more specifically American English, as a lingua franca in scientific circles, in trade and commerce and even into the realms of diplomacy and economics, still that unique language continues to define a people.

As Eugene Nida, the great American Biblical scholar and translator once made clear; there is a dynamic relationship between the words spoken, or the words written on the page, and the concepts being expressed. Each separate language is not a set of easily transposable symbols, one must consider both the words used and the concepts being discussed; context is everything." 

Extracted from the "Translator's Notes" to "You will believe a penguin can fly or A simple diary of a (very) simple Penguin" by 'Dai'.

I have been fascinated by language ever since I first ventured outside of the realm of my native tongue and climbed the giddy heights of  "Va te faire enculer (chez les Grecs)"* or "Die Ohrtrompete meiner Grossmutter wurde vom Blitz getroffen"**  or 'Om jeg hamrer eller hamres, ligefuldt så skal der jamres!' *** or even "Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus, rumoresque senum seueriorum, omnes unius aestimemus assis!"**** As I learnt to speak and read other languages, both modern and ancient, I begun to delve much more deeply into the roots of my own native language; etymological dictionaries were a favourite in my youth.

I have been prompted to put my metaphorical pen to paper by the decidedly weird feeling I had while watching a simple quiz programme. A quiz programme built around that typically British pastime of the 'Pub Quiz'; a team quiz, often of a hundred questions or more, divided into categories such as 'General Knowledge', History', 'Music', 'Sport' etc. The object is for one's team to answer as many questions correctly as possible before you all fall under the table in a state of extreme inebriation. The highest scoring team receives a cash prize or free drinks, whichever is more appropriate.

The programme was made by the BBC and the questions were not too difficult; the only problem was that they were not in English! The entire programme was in Scots Gaelic!***** As accustomed as I am to seeing sub-titles in foreign language films and the deluge of Scandinavian TV crime dramas which have appeared in the last few years in the wake of  'Wallender' and 'Män som hatar kvinnor' ******, it was a distinctly odd feeling to watch such a commonplace format, involving British contestants, but in a language that I could not understand a single word of. I was then struck by a thought which I have not had for a while but was insistent nonetheless. The roots to much of the world's common languages lie in Asia, at least according to current thinking in linguistics. The history of the globe's languages lie in successive waves of migration, invasion and ultimate displacement.

Most European languages ultimately stem from the so-called 'Indo-European' family; the exceptions to this are the Finno-Ugric based languages in Finland (Suomi) and Hungary (Magyar) which followed a wave of migrations from, probably, Western Siberia and the various dialects of the Basque country (between Spain and France) and language which is currently believed to be the last surviving member of a language group present in Europe before the Indo-European 'invasion'.

Out of that initial 'invasion' of Indo-European languages came five basic well known groups (there are others but for our purposes these are the most important from a modern European perspective). These are Hellenic (including Greek), Italic (including Latin and the modern 'romance' languages), Slavic (including most of the languages in Eastern Europe and Russia), Celtic and Germanic.

The Hellenic is largely confined to Greece and I find that, despite a Roman occupation lasting nearly five hundred years, from the Battle of Corinth in 146BC until the time of the Emperor Constantine in 330AD and the subsequent fall of the Empire in the west, Italic did not displace Hellenic as the language; Italic certainly supplanted all languages in the western Empire. The Germanic and Slavic languages reigned on a broad, east/west geographical basis in areas in which the Romans did not dominate. 

Following the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD, the Celts retreated to remote parts of Wales and Cornwall but did not return, or at least were unsuccessful in doing so, in the wake of the Roman withdrawal in 410AD; the Gaels had remained behind Hadrian's wall for the duration and only made minor forays thereafter. It was barely a hundred years before the Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, and subsequently the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, invaded Britain, bringing with them the Germanic language group which supplanted whatever was left of the Celtic or Italic languages that remained. It was left to the Norman French in the eleventh century to complete the bastard chimera that was the basis for the English language thereafter; part Germanic, part Italic.

The Celtic group, comprising the Brythonic group, Cornish and Welsh, and the Goidelic group, Scots and Irish Gaelic and the Manx language of the Isle of Man, were confined to the outer reaches of what is now the United Kingdom as English predominated, politically and socially, both in written and spoken speech in Cornwall; in Ireland, following successive attempts, with varying degrees of success, at occupation from the thirteenth century; Scotland, following the Act of Union in 1707.******* The entire language group went into serious decline after the eighteenth century in all of the regions in which had once prevailed.

However, Gaelic is now taught in all state-funded schools in Ireland, although English is the second official language under the constitution of 1937 and there is no longer a requirement to speak both languages as a prerequisite for public service; in Scotland, Gaelic is not an official language and is not uniformly taught in schools; however Welsh is an official language in Wales but not in rest of the UK and is now taught in school across the board until the age of 18. The Manx and Breton scions of the family dwindled to almost zero but, like Cornish, there has been recent revivals of interest. The legacies of the Celts would appear to appear to be slowly awakening from the long slumber of dragons.

Despite the fact that, in general, fewer than 2.5% of 'potential Gaelic speakers' in Scotland and Ireland (and the Isle of Man) actually are fluent, although about 20% are able to passably speak fluent Welsh in Wales, mainly in the north, the languages are now largely protected by a European treaty, 'the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages' which is designed to promote and preserve such minority languages. While the inexorable rise to dominance of the English language continues, it is reassuring to note that, in the midst of the rapid decline in the number of languages spoken around the globe which may, in fact, be increasing, at least something is being done, in however small a way, to preserve the unique language and literature of such minority cultures and thus perhaps turn back the tide of centuries of English language 'colonialism' and cultural hegemony.

Of course this is not without its small problems as the following road sign in English and Welsh makes clear; without any knowledge of Welsh someone merely pasted a reply to an email which was requesting a translation into Welsh of the English instruction to HGV drivers:

Unfortunately, the reply was not quite what the hapless and clueless recipient expected. The Welsh reads:

"I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated." 

That'll teach the bilingual to be smart with their 'Out of Office' replies in Outlook.

* Literally, 'Go bugger yourself (with the Greeks)', although it is perhaps better rendered in English as a simple 'Fuck, or bugger, off!' 
** 'My grandmother's ear trumpet has been struck by lightning'
*** 'Whether I batter or am battered, there will be moaning all the same.' Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt. PG is bemoaning the fact that he is buggered whatever he does.
**** 'Let us live, my Lesbia, and love and value not a jot the talk of crabbèd old men.' The beginning of one of Catullus' most famous poems; the one in which he keeps on asking for a thousand kisses so that he and his lover (and the  crabbèd old men) may lose count  The 'Lesbia' of the poem has no connection whatsoever with Sappho or the island of Lesbos!
***** The programme is called 'gun sgot' which, as far as I can determine, means 'clueless' ('without reckoning')
****** 'Men who hate women' better known in English as 'The girl with the dragon tattoo'.
******* I have purposely omitted 'Breton', that other Celtic language, spoken in Brittany, France, because I believe it is a much later derivation from Cornish, rather than from the main Celtic stem, although perhaps the same might be said of Scots Gaelic (derived from 'Old, and possibly Middle, Irish'.)