Funding for bi-lingual banners and signage
published this on 3:58 pm, Monday, 12th January, 2009Gaelic| News | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
When the Scottish Government started replacing existing road signs in English with the new bi-lingual signs in Gaelic and English, opinion was and probably remains divided.
There was the Gaelic community who saw it as a positive and inclusive move, recognising one of the native cultures of Scotland. There was the Gaelic-resistant community, seeing the move simply as retrogressive. There was the non-linguistically aligned pragmatic community who simply questioned it on cost/benefit grounds.
With the start of Homecoming Scotland 2009 on 25th January, there is another perspective to be considered.
Visitors expect – prefer – one country to be clearly different from another, otherwise the point of travel is diminished. Landscape is perhaps the most immediate major identifier of place – and language follows very closely behind it.
There has long been a school of thought and research exploring how far the language we speak shapes and reflects the way we see and feel about the world around us. There are all sorts of evidences for this from the obvious to the rather more mysterious.
The Innuit have a huge number of words for snow – because their lives are governed by the changing states of it. The use of Irish Gaelic is highly metaphorical, speaking for people bred in a culture not far from the pagan, comfortable with seeing a surface and a deeper reality at the same time and using their language to associate the two.
When we travel we delight in the opportunity to do even a tiny bit of detective work on a language foreign to us – and bi-lingual signs offer the chance to try to relate one language to another or, sometimes, to see no connection between the two. Having these signs around us, paradoxically, makes us less rather than more estranged from a place not our own.
Comunn na Gaidhlig promotes schemes which give support and advice to interested organisations thinking of erecting bilingual signage. Community groups and businesses can get advice about the benefits of bilingual signs, and may get a 50% grant towards acquiring appropriate signage. All sorts of signs can be eligible for a grant, including banners and product labels.
One Argyll group successful in getting a grant to help in its adoption of bi-lingual signs is Cowal’s Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop and its Gaelic arm, Fèis Cheann Loch Goibhle. The group received contributions from Comunn na Gàidhlig and Fèisean nan Gàidheal towards pop up display banners to use at public concerts and other events.
Elizabeth Bain, pictured above on the left, who helps run the group, says: ‘Of course we are in a different position to many businesses and community groups in Cowal in that we already have a strong Gaelic element in the events we organise, so the benefit of bi-lingual signs was obvious from the outset. These banners will be invaluable to us for our annual tour of local schools, our residential Fèis weekends for children, public concerts and any other events we put on such as the Opening of the National Parks HQ which we were involved in last year’.
The core issue is cultural distinctiveness reinforced by the visible presence of a native language in its own place – which in the case of Scots Gaelic is supremely in Argyll – in its very name Earra Gaidheal.
Scotland and England are not the same – which is to the discredit of neither and the advantage of both.The Lochgoilghead Fiddle Workshop initiative is attuned to this and conversations with Comunn na Gaidhlig on following its lead could be interesting and rewarding.
The photograph above, which we have permission to use, shows Elizabeth Bain (left) and Linda Morpurgo (right) of Lochgoilhead Fiddle Club with one of their new mobile bi-lingual banners.
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