Advertiser View: Why so much animosity towards Gaelic?

If past experience is anything to go by I think I can have a decent guess at the responses from Helensburgh: namely, variations on a theme of “not very important at all, thanks very much”.

Which is understandable – up to a point. While Gaelic has been deeply embedded in the life of some parts of Argyll and Bute for hundreds of years, it no longer has much of a hold in Helensburgh.

What I don’t get is the vitriol, at least from some, that greets any suggestion that fostering, encouraging and promoting Gaelic might be worth doing. Not in Helensburgh specifically – though from past experience of posting any news stories about Helensburgh and Gaelic on our Facebook page, Helensburgh is far from immune.

But when ScotRail started putting Gaelic versions of place names on railway station signs, and the ‘Poileas Alba’ name started appearing on police vehicles across the country, I found the angry “what a waste of taxpayers’ money” responses in some quarters more than a little bemusing.

READ MORE: Council wants to hear your thoughts on importance of Gaelic in local communities

For instance, I’m not particularly affected by the people who provide translation services in our country’s criminal courts to people who don’t have English as their first language. But I certainly don’t have a problem with some of my taxes being spent on them.

And, naturally, the outraged complaints from people demanding to know the exact cost to the taxpayer of this scandalous drive to force Gaelic down the throats of a furious nation all revealed that the money involved was a relative pittance – and that the signs and vehicles would have been repainted or replaced in the fullness of time anyway.

To my shame, I’m not much of a Gaelic speaker. (I may have been put off by a week-long festival of Gaelic language and culture at school, during which I signed up for shinty lessons and got a hefty whack from a caman across the bridge of my nose for my trouble.) And I can – again up to a point – accept the argument that if you’re going to learn a new language, then it’s worth choosing one that may have more practical benefits.

But somehow I suspect that the people complaining loudest about the spending of a small chunk of taxpayers’ cash on protecting and encouraging Gaelic were signing up to learn Polish, Urdu, Punjabi, Mandarin or Arabic.

And if you want to compile a list of things that people can do that have no practical benefit whatsoever, I can give you plenty of examples that are nearer to the top than learning, or spending a bit of money on promoting, Gaelic. Spittle-flecked rants on social media about wasting money on something, just because you don’t understand it, being just one example.

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