Accomodation in Aberdeen

[45Brit]

oh I know all that. Jokes hate each other nearly as much as they hate the English, it's the same in wales. I've been in S Wales from time to time and it's just the same.

in W Africa you have the magic ingredient - sunshine - and rugby is an international language of its own. Walk on a barge with a screensaver of your son playing County junior rugby, and you have no problems that way. Plus I speak good French, passable Dutch and a bit of Russian and that gets you a long way. A lot further than talking like Billy Connolly and pretending you are speaking a separate language for one thing, as some scots try to do.. try presenting 'scots' spelling in a draft document to the Client and see how you get on... to people who speak English as a second or third language it means less than nothing.

come to that, when you are working with people who regard anyone from the UK as 'a Brit' it's remarkable how it all fades away like snows of April anyway

I so agree with you on the rugby thing - finest game in the world. Hope your son carrys on & progresses. Never made it past the second 15 myself but I loved every minute.I also agree with you about the Billy Connelly thing - unless anyone here has the Gaelic cos that's the real thing.

Take care man & have a good festive type time.

[45Brit]

I played at college but my club career went tits-up because of being away so much, an everyday story of oilfield folk.. but I've played sporadically wherever I've been, it's the game of the expat engineer!



Actually I know a bit about gaelic. Marine crews ( especially on Norwegian vessels ) often contain Norwegian, Gaelic, Icelandic or Faroese speakers who seem to be able to communicate between themselves to varying extents, although I believe that the Eastern 'gaelic' is a Norse-type dialect which is pretty much a different language from the Western, Irish and Manx-type gaelic.

language among expats is a matter of pragmatism!



I also have a certain amount of Welsh, from working with welsh speakers in S Wales, so I know about that.. Welsh also consists of two dialects which differ considerably in detail.



Cornish baffles me, though. I lived and worked in West Cornwall for several years in the mid-70s, I still go back occasionally for work or to see old friends, and my son actually has a rugby coach who is a former Pirates player.. but I can honestly say that I have never heard a word of it spoken, and I have sent that signature that appears on here occasionally, to several Cornish friends who have failed to decipher it. So I reckon the jury is still out on that one.

I have a niece who is something of a specialist on the matter, she did her PhD thesis on some incomprehensible byways of Old English and she tells me that the current 'Cornish' is an academic construct, a projection if you like, using known elements of related languages ( in this case Breton French and Welsh ) to infer earlier forms of words and hence, a possible version of a language which is wholly extinct and of which no known records survive.

I do know that Leland reckoned to be unable to find any Cornish speakers in the 1600s, and Cobbett described a very old woman called Dolly Pentreath who was reckoned to be the last native Cornish speaker, this in the 1760s.


anyone shed any light on this?

Ah yes the difference between the p & q branches of the Celtic language - did a bit of Celtic Studies in my first couple of years at Uni.

I'd heard the thing about the Cornish basically being dead & then reinvented for want of a better word.

Hadn't heard about the 'Eastern' branch of Gaelic being a Norse dialict. if anything Norse would have had more of an influence on the Wesern Seaboard of Scotland as thats where they settled.

By my understanding Gaelic would have superceded Pictish in the East as the Scots control of what became Scotland increased, Pictish being closer related to the Welsh rather than Irish branch of Celtic.

I believe there was still a native Gaelic speaker way up Deeside well into the twentieth century, an old lady, who I seem to remember was taped to record the last remaining gaelic speaker from the NE of Scotland.

Interesting topics on this forum aren't there?

[45Brit]

I'm no expert on celtic languages but I know from experience that scots from the northeast seem to be able to communicate with scandinavians, to some extent at least, and western gaelic speakers don't appear to be able to.

I would also reckon that if you can live and work in places like St Just and Camborne and never hear a word of the language, and friends who were born and raised in places like Wendron and Helston don't know anything about it, then Cornish is stone dead for all practical purposes.

welsh would be all but extinct if it wasn't propped up by pretty large sums of ( english ) taxpayers' money, come to that. That's why welsh road signs are spelt in martian, because by the time of the revival in the mid 20th century the ability to use the written form of the language was long since lost, unlike irish gaelic which has continued in use to the present day.

I grew up speaking what was once the most common second language in the UK - yiddish - as a second language. Certainly as late as the 1960s there were more yiddish speakers in the UK than welsh speakers and gaelic speakers combined. However yiddish speakers have a fundamentally different approach than celts of whatever stripe, and yiddish has declined because it has been replaced by english, and no-one is bothered in the slightest. Certainly no-one is concerned at its eclipse, at least enough to do anything about it.

Yeah there is a weird linguistic link between NE Scotland & some of the Norse languages. It's not so much in the words but in the way we say words, structure sentences and use variation of tone to highlight the important bits of a statementThe closest I've ever heard was strangley from Sweden which would be the least influential you would think.

Given the influence Yiddish has had on English & other European languages it's kind of hard to believe the language is so much in decline. Whole load of questions about being so successfully integrated into a culture that you lose your language/identity etc.

Loads more I could ask on that subject.

Anyway, take care & have a good New Year regardless of language, creed, colour, religion, type of Harley/Non - Harley,Bike you ride or time zone you live in!