# Minority European Languages **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 17, 2005, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537 "2005-02-17T14:55:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2005, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/41 "2005-02-18T13:57:02Z")
That is a problem with languages such as Gaelic and Welsh , the lack of "new " words. I occasionally dip into S4C ( the Welsh language TV channel ) and to my untrained ears it sometimes seems that every third word is English because there is no Welsh equivalent. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2005, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/42 "2005-02-18T14:07:45Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Sami, the language of the Lapps, is spoken in a wide band occupying parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia (Kola Peninsula). Language **s** > [@](#): > > The Sami languages in the Scandinavian Peninsula form a continuum where dialects from areas close to each other are mutually intelligible but the distance in language increases with geographical distance. Therefore dialect from Southern or Northern reaches of the continuum are actually separate languages without a clearly defined border. By contrast Inari Sami and Skolt Sami are completely separate languages with clearly defined linguistic and geographical borders. > **[Sámi languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_language)** > > Sámi languages (/ˈsɑːmi/ SAH-mee), in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia). There are, depending on the nature and terms of division, ten or more Sami languages. Several spellings have been used for the Sámi languages, including Sámi, Sami, Saami, Saame, Sámic, Samic and Saamic, as well as the exonyms Lappish and Lappic. The last two, Th... ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2005, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/43 "2005-02-18T14:32:45Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > ruadh and GorillaMan: Fine. I don’t have any other convenient sources of data on the subject. I’m pretty astonished by your arguments, given that the depressing decline of Irish’s native population has been pretty well known for a long time. I’ll continue to trust those who carry out research on the matter, but I’ll stop arguing it with you guys. Then you can not argue with me as well. I live in the west and I have most certainly met little kiddies more comfortable in Irish then in English. Then again, I was once accused of speaking Irish in a pub when I was chatting to a friend in my native Dutch. I suppose the gutteral sounds threw him. The funny thing was, because I has caught out this Irish person’s inability to recognise the Irish language he kept insisting I was lying and had been speaking Irish. It’s certainly not dead yet, though. ---
**Author:** ![bainne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@bainne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bainne)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2005, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/44 "2005-02-18T17:39:33Z")
Alot of the arguments on this post aren’t really directly related to the OP. I suggest it might be interesting to discuss the status of bi-lingualism in minority language environments in GD perhaps. Does being bi-lingual in the dominant local language somehow undermine the status of the minority language or somesuch question? Begob I can barely string a sentence together in English let alone Irish. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2005, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/45 "2005-02-18T18:13:53Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > So out of curiosity, how good is you guys’s Irish? Where are you from, and how old are you? I don’t speak it - partly because I’ve lived in England my whole life! But as I’ve referred to, all my relatives of a similar age (24) still in Ireland are fluent in Irish, and generally use it with their friends in preference to English. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2005, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/46 "2005-02-18T20:29:01Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > I’m pretty astonished by your arguments, given that the depressing decline of Irish’s native population has been pretty well known for a long time. We aren’t arguing that point. We’re arguing that there are still native speakers being produced. I suppose it’s possible that we both could have hallucinated the young native speakers we’ve met - including the children of one of my co-workers, who are all under six and who I’ve only _ever_ heard speak Irish. And they don’t even live in a Gaeltacht! > [@](#): > > I’ll continue to trust those who carry out research on the matter I guess this is what people mean when they talk about the ivory tower, huh? ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2005, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/47 "2005-02-18T22:11:53Z")
> [@ruadh](#): > > I guess this is what people mean when they talk about the ivory tower, huh? Ahh. Yer right. I’ll just instead trust the word of some unidentified person on the internet. Hey, btw, you need your penis lengthened? 'Cuz I got the hook-up right here in my email! It’s been my experience that minority language communities tend to try to paint their language in a rosy light. It’s cool if there’s still a few kids left who come from Irish-speaking families and have learned the language from infancy. But there ain’t many. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2005, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/48 "2005-02-18T23:52:44Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > It’s been my experience that minority language communities tend to try to paint their language in a rosy light. That’s true. And I haven’t claimed that Irish has a healthy long-term future (and I don’t think anyone else has either). > [@](#): > > It’s cool if there’s still a few kids left who come from Irish-speaking families and have learned the language from infancy. But there ain’t many. So is that a retraction of your statement that “The youngest native speakers of Irish are over 30 nowadays”? ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2005, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/49 "2005-02-18T23:54:13Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Ahh. Yer right. I’ll just instead trust the word of some unidentified person on the internet. Nothing’s stopping you going to Donegal, should you want to. Hell, I’ll give you the names of pubs where you’re unlikely to hear English being spoken, should you want. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/50 "2005-02-19T02:30:28Z")
> [@scotandrsn](#): > > West Frisian, the language most closely related to English of any spoken on the planet I _know_ that fact intellectually, but I swear, when I look at West Frisian, I sure don’t see it! I actually do better deciphering standard Dutch than I do this lingo! Check out this West Frisian quote! > [@](#): > > Alle minsken wurde frij en gelyk yn weardigens en rjochten berne. Hja hawwe ferstân en gewisse meikrigen en hearre har foar inoar oer yn in geast fan bruorskip te hâlden en te dragen. > > \<\\> ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/51 "2005-02-19T03:44:58Z")
**Qadgop** , I can see it. It’s not an exact match, but if you watch for cognates and kind of push most of the words in English that come from someplace other than Anglo-Saxon away into a corner, it’s pretty plain. > [@](#): > > Alle minsken wurde frij en gelyk yn weardigens en rjochten berne. Hja hawwe ferstân en gewisse meikrigen en hearre har foar inoar oer yn in geast fan bruorskip te hâlden en te dragen. Alle (All) minsken (men. “sken” is a plural ending, apparently) wurde (not sure of this one, though) frij (pronounced as the Dutch “ij” is, it’s “free”) en (and) gelyk (ge-like…the Germanic prefix “ge” attached to “like” (as in alike)) yn (in) weardigens (“digens” appears to have the same provenance as “dignity” (there’s an Indo-European root “dek” that appears to mean “worth”, and “weard” in Anglo-Saxon meant “guardian” (warden, warder)) en (and, again) rjochten (another plural form, “rjocht” is almost “right”, as it would have been pronounced in Anglo-Saxon) berne (here’s the verb, at the end, an inflected form of “born”). Hja (they…Middle English in certain regions had a form “hie” that meant “they”) hawwe (“have”…the word is right there) ferstan (forsight?) en (and) gewisse (wisdom) (at this point, I lose all ability to recognize any of these until we get to…) in geast (in ghost (spirit)) fan (of?) bruorskip (brothership…brotherhood) (I can’t quite get this last phrase, either, but if it’s consistent with the last sentence, this is the verbal phrase) No dictionaries used, either, so it’s not like I was translating a completely different language on the fly. It’s certainly closer to English than Dutch or German are. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/52 "2005-02-19T08:47:59Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Hey, btw, you need your penis lengthened? I don’t have one. > [@](#): > > It’s been my experience that minority language communities tend to try to paint their language in a rosy light. It’s cool if there’s still a few kids left who come from Irish-speaking families and have learned the language from infancy. But there ain’t many. As **GorillaMan** says, why don’t you come to Ireland and see for yourself? That way you don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. I’ll be glad to meet up with you for some Guinness and the humble pie you’ll be eating afterward. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/53 "2005-02-19T15:42:35Z")
> [@Qadgop the Mercotan](#): > > I _know_ that fact intellectually, but I swear, when I look at West Frisian, I sure don’t see it! I actually do better deciphering standard Dutch than I do this lingo! Check out this West Frisian quote! They don’t look very mych like each other now, as they have gone their separate paths. I once had occasion to see a passage rendered in Old Frisian and Old English, and they were nearly identical. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/54 "2005-02-19T18:43:16Z")
> [@ruadh](#): > > **Excalibre** , I live in Ireland, and your “expert linguists” are simply wrong As an aside, can an Irish speaker tell me what the Irish language is called properly, Gaelic, Irish? No one ever told me 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/55 "2005-02-19T18:53:10Z")
> [@Rayne Man](#): > > That is a problem with languages such as Gaelic and Welsh , the lack of "new " words. I occasionally dip into S4C ( the Welsh language TV channel ) and to my untrained ears it sometimes seems that every third word is English because there is no Welsh equivalent. It is very common to use an English word when speaking Irish, even when an equivalent Irish word exists. Of course if you don’t understand the language, the English words will jump out at you, but it’s no more unhealthy than the use of French loan-words in English. For me, the fluent and unselfconscious ease with which English words are slotted into Irish sentence structures is a sign of confidence in the language. It’s very common for there to be two alternative terms, one directly borrrowed and one native, such as “teleafón” and “guthán”, or “carr” and “gluaisteán”. Which one wins out in the end is entirely a matter of the preferences of the Irish-speaking community. There most certainly are new words in Irish, as there have to be in any living language. Some examples of technology-type words in general use include “fístéip” (videotape), “ríomhaire” (computer), “idirlíon” (internet), “fuinneamh gréine” (solar power). I must also disagree with the experts quoted by **Excalibre** - I may not be an expert but I have heard local children speaking Irish among themselves in villages in the Donegal Gaeltacht. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/56 "2005-02-19T18:56:38Z")
> [@Pushkin](#): > > As an aside, can an Irish speaker tell me what the Irish language is called properly, Gaelic, Irish? No one ever told me 🙂 Steering clear of the word “properly”, the preference in this part of Ireland is to say “Irish” when talking about Irish, and “Scottish” or “Scots Gaelic” when talking about Scottish. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/57 "2005-02-19T20:04:13Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > Steering clear of the word “properly”, the preference in this part of Ireland is to say “Irish” when talking about Irish, and “Scottish” or “Scots Gaelic” when talking about Scottish. I’d agree with this. ‘Gaelic’ generally means the Scottish language. ‘Irish’ always suffices for Irish. ---
**Author:** ![bainne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@bainne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bainne)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/58 "2005-02-19T20:30:55Z")
> [@Pushkin](#): > > As an aside, can an Irish speaker tell me what the Irish language is called properly, Gaelic, Irish? No one ever told me 🙂 It is known as Gaeilge in Irish and Irish in English. Gaelic (or Gáidhlig) is generally used to denote Scots Gaelic though apparently Gaelig is how native speakers of the Canúint Cuige Uladh (Ulster Dialect) of Irish refer to the language. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/59 "2005-02-19T21:01:25Z")
> [@bainne](#): > > It is known as Gaeilge in Irish and Irish in English. Gaelic (or Gáidhlig) is generally used to denote Scots Gaelic though apparently Gaelig is how native speakers of the Canúint Cuige Uladh (Ulster Dialect) of Irish refer to the language. Which makes sense, since this is how the Scots Gaelic language originated, through migrations of part of the Ui Niall and their followers into Galloway and spreading from there. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2005, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537/60 "2005-02-20T02:05:02Z")
I would like to state that Mr. Ujest’s Grandmother in germany speaks Platte Deutsch fluently. That’s all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minority-european-languages/290537.md?page=4)