Gaelic Culture Puns

Good evening, my fellow Scots;

At least now that I'm typing this it's evening, but that doesn't hinder me from wishing you a wonderful morning or day as well...

I'm an italian guy who's studying linguistic mediation at university, I'm currently at my first year, and as today my lecturer mentioned something about the Celtic linguistic vein I couldn't help but recall the marvellous experience I have had in Scotland. A couple of years ago I went on a fortnight trip in Edinburgh, town that I absolutely fell in love with at frist sight... I also happen to like a lot the local variety of English you guys speak, despite i couldn't tell I would have always caught everything, as a non native speaker; too bad I was clueless about Scottish Gaelic back then... i'd definetely have asked someone to teach me... Well, once I was there i had the opportunity to visit not so few culturally interesting places and i'm truly craving to come back to Scotland once i'll havethe chance again. One of the aspects I love the most about Scotland is the endless amount of castles and ancient ruins one can find basically everywhere, starting from the well-known Edinburgh Castle to the breathtaking view of Dunnottar Castle.

So, as you may have noticed, I'm fascinated by everythin: langauge (both the english variety which is typical of the area and the Scottish Gaelic some people would still speak), architecture, folklore, mythology... and how the Gaelic heritage has affected and still affects the Scottish culture in all its parts.

To sum it up, and provide a reason why i'm writing this post as well, I would want to ask you some help for what concerns the sources where i can get more informations about these topics, if any of you feels like recommending me some websites, books, researches you might have heard of that came to your mind while reading this, i'll gladly appreciate your contribute.

As any non-native speaker always does, i'll apologise for eventual mistakes i could have missed when re-reading this...

I'm thanking you all beforehand, and wishing you a splendid time.

Greetings from Italy!!

Afro-Gaelic culture........

There's a whole documentary about it tonight on the national broadcaster, illusttrating preety magnificently how identity polits can divert resources causing harm by neglect, and corrupt all rational thought.

Gaelic speakers number just over 1%, afro-scots number just under 1%. The cross section must be hilariouslty insignificant.

Gaelic culture itself is in crisis, and the majority of speakers in rural poverty with little access to services, they have slightly more pressing concerns than a while documentary a middle class young black skinned womens identity.

It doesnt even appear to be a broader problem - they interviewed a 19 year old gaelic speaker whose parents were zimbabwean, a pretty racist starting point, as they would have had no historical involvement with the slave trade other than sharing a skin colour with both slaves and some slave traders. She had always felt valued and seen within the gaelic community in Edinburgh.

There are more Campbell's in Jamaica than Scotland. Consider then also that the only reason my second name is a colour, is because my MacGregor ancestors were so decimated by the Campbell's and outlawed, they were forced to change thier names, abandon thier historical land, and flee to the hills with nothing, just to survive. The Campbell's were wealthy royalist elite, and the idea that all of Scotland should identify with that legacy is quite literally enforcing a historical memory on people by occupation of thier lands and cultural genocide, if you wanna pointlessly call it that.

Man i fucking hate identity politics, and middle class people of any fucking melaning density.

My great-great-great grandparents had some fuzzy recollection of being registered with a Highland clan in some way, in the post-revivalist era, but otherwise, my family lived near Glasgow. My great grandparents spoke Scots, not Gaelic, and they didn't own kilts. They came over to the US, but not much was passed down.

In the last few years, my family has become very excited about Highland Games festivals, but am I just living some Americanized Highland-pride farce?

If I can't be sure of where my family is from and can't prove membership with a Highland clan, and don't have any way to verify a Celtic genetic heritage, is it wrong to dress and speak like someone who is sure of these things?

I would love to hear what others think, and if this is the wrong sub, let me know and I'll remove this post-haste!

I'm curious if any indigenous cultures who later interacted with European/other cultures were ever exposed to the musical instruments and styles associated with those other cultures, and vice versa. If so, what were their reactions?

For example, how did an Iroquois Indian react to the contemporary music of European settlers, if they were exposed to it at all? Or in contrast (as another example of two cultures), how did Continental Europeans or other non-Gaelic cultures react to the sounds of the bagpipe? Between Mongolian throat singing and their morin khuur, Inuit drums and tautirut, Arabian lutes and flutes, and the classical European instruments we are familiar with, surely there is some record of musical exchange.

Were the unfamiliar instruments and styles celebrated and absorbed into their own culture's musical stylings? Did it sound grating to the unacquainted ear? Did bards, poets, and musicians share amongst each other?

In 1066, the Scottish nobility spoke Gaelic. Scotland’s nobility overall during this time period was still Gaelic and had not undergone the reforms of King David in the 1100s which began the transition to a more Norman-oriented culture and the adoption of the Scots language. So why is King Malcolm represented as being Scots, a language I doubt he ever spoke?

At launch, Welsh and Breton were in the Celtic group. Now this broad term only applies to a smaller subset of Celtic culture, Irish and Highlander.

Why not just rename this culture group to Gaelic? It would also remove any debate over whether Welsh and Breton should be considered Celtic or not. Neither are Gaelic, so if they renamed the Celtic group to Gaelic, there'd be no debate for moving either of those cultures from their current groups.

I traveled to Scotland 2 years ago for a short while and immediately fell in love with the city. Really want to come back as I only visited Edinbrrrr 😂

Recently I have been watching Outlander series nonstop and must say I am looking for everything about Scottish culture to watch and read.

Anyone recommend me any thing to watch and a place for me to visit this summer in Scotland please?

Thanks x

Hello, I am Emily McEwan-Fujita, a linguistic anthropologist and author specializing in Scottish Gaelic language and culture. I have a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. My academic publications are available at https://independent.academia.edu/EmilyMcEwanFujita. Currently I live in Nova Scotia and write the Gaelic Revitalization blog (http://gaelic.co). My new book, The Scottish Gaelic Tattoo Handbook: Authentic Words and Phrases from Scotland's Celtic Language, is coming out in May for Gaelic Awareness Month in Nova Scotia (book announcement email list: http://eepurl.com/bT0ZVL).

Ask Me Anything about Scottish Gaelic language and culture! No question is too basic. I especially welcome questions about sociolinguistic aspects of Gaelic language shift and revitalization in Scotland and Nova Scotia.

Cultural and linguistic anthropologists stand on the shoulders of historians a great deal of the time and so it’s a privilege to be asked to contribute here. I take a very broad view of “history” as anything that has already happened (even yesterday) and my dissertation covered the period from about 1980 to 2000 and looked at the influence of neoliberalism on Gaelic revitalization efforts. My sub-field is not always well understood (even by other anthropologists!) so as we go along I’ll try to give you an idea of how I approach problems from a linganth perspective. I’ll do my best to address all questions but of course if there’s something that’s not my speciality I’ll refer you to the work of others.

I’m posting this in advance as suggested. We’re predicted to have a lovely snow/ice pellet/rain storm here in Halifax during the scheduled AMA time (Monday, March 21, 10am-2pm) and I’ll be answering your questions with the laptop battery charged up in case the power goes! Siuthadaibh!

EDIT, Monday 10am EST: OK we're starting now! Some great questions here, thank you so much! I may have to pick and choose, sorry if anyone's question gets passed over. I may be able to mop up over the next day or two, or possibly do blog posts for some of them -- we'll see how it goes. For the next 4 hours at least, I'll be madly typing as the freezing rain glazes everything in Halifax!

UPDATE It's 4pm EST (5pm Atlantic) and I'll need to take a break soon. So many fantastic questions everyone, and thanks for your kinds words about my work. I'm going to try to answer a few more tonight, and then I'll confer with the mods on what to do next (mayb

The the Craic lol

Just looking for some very interesting books on the aforementioned topics. I’m fascinated with the Gaelic Clans and there warfare from Ireland and Scotland and just want to learn as much as I possibly can about their culture and specifically their warrior culture. The Picts and Druids are extremely interesting as well. Would love the recommendations on thebest books on these subjects. I am tired of searching these topics only to find Highlander romance novels.

I know that Gaelic is an Indo-European language, and that the Indo-European languages are generally thought to have spread west from the steppes of what is now southern Ukraine/Russia during the Neolithic period, but I was wondering what the most common view, if indeed there is such a thing, on when and how the Gaelic language and culture came to Ireland is. From the fairly limited reading I've done, the main views seem to be that either proto-Gaels arrived in Ireland quite early (late Neolithic or early Bronze Age), that there was an Iron Age invasion, or that Gaelic spread via cultural diffusion (although how entire languages could diffuse is confusing to me.) Is there anyone who could clear this up for me, or perhaps point me in the direction of some good reading material? A lot of stuff written about early Ireland and "Celts" seems to be either quite old or suspiciously amateurish, so any help would be appreciated.

I am planning a UK trip far in advance for when I graduate from grad school (hopefully in May of 2019), and I want to make the most of it. I will be traveling with my husband (late 30s) and my Mom (early 70s). I am an American English teacher who is embarrassingly obsessed with all things UK. Anyone have specific must-do suggestions? I have already been to London (including the Globe Theater) and Dublin, and though I would love to return at some point, I am hoping to focus this trip on places I have not visited yet. Any Shakespeare-related tourist suggestions would be welcome.

What were the traits of Gaelic culture that allowed Ireland to be so bloody? How did Gaelic warfare differ from that of the English or contemporary Europeans? Why did the Gaels get associated with barbarism? How did their style of fighting differ from the Highland Scots so much?