BRITONS WHO DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 23 December 1922, Page 8

BRITONS WHO DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH

Few English _ people realise that lo Die Hebridean isiesmen English is just as much a foreign tongue ns—shall we say?—French or German (writes Seton Gordon in a London paper). ( Yet along the western sea-board of Scotland and in the Hebrides many of the older generation can speak no word of English . The younger generation are better educated and converse in tire language ot (he South, hut it is always in Gaelic that they think.

hTw of the visitors to the Hebrides heve any knowledge of Gaelic. The islanders thus have considerable difficulty in understanding their speech, and it is surprising how happy they become should the stranger show even a superficial acquaintance with their language.

Gaelic is a difficult speech to master. It contains many pitfalls for the unwary. Its alphabet is limited; it has no j, k, g, v, w, x, y, or 2.

Tet the v sound is found in many words; it is made by the letters mb, or hh. Thus mhor (great) is pronounced ver. There is no j .sound in the language. For instance, John becomes lain.

Gaelic is a language rich in songs, they are simple and mostly sad. They arc usually sung to no accompaniment. The dwellings of the Hebridean islesmcn are often of the most primitive' type. There are not more than two rooms. In the case of a woman tweed-weaver with a family of eight, these two robins measure no* more than twelve feet, square, and the hand-loom occupies a good quarter of the space in the livingroom. The floor is of earth, and is primiically sprinkled with fine while sand, which is carried in a sack front liic shore two miles awav.

There is no chimney, yet a peat fire smoulders day and night on the hearth, and the smoko escapes through the door and a hole in the roof in the opposite side of the room to the fire. So thick is the room with peat smoke, it is almost impossible to see across It, and one’s eyes smart painfully. Hence the well-known smell of the so-called Harris tweed (the cloth is made not only in Harris but in all tbc Outci' Hebrides).