Concerns mount that the "Scottish Daily Express" may be written by clueless Home Counties toffs, as paper launches bizarre crusade to stamp out the name Queensferry Bothy "because it's Gaelic"

If it wasn't so outrageous, the latest anti-Gaelic rant from the Scottish Daily Express would be hysterically funny.  The paper reports that "one Holyrood source" (translation: an unspecified Tory or Reform MSP) has claimed that taxpayers' money has been wasted on a Gaelic rebrand of the Holyrood food areas in order to "appease the nationalists", which conjures up images of John Swinney invading Poland if long-suffering Holyrood staff hadn't agreed to start referring to the Garden Level Restaurant as "The Garradh".  However, the article later notes that the food areas were due for a renovation anyway, which presumably means that adding Gaelic names didn't actually cost a penny more than renovating with English names would have done.

The Express complain that no guidance has been given on how the word "garradh" should be pronounced, in spite of the fact that the majority of people in Scotland do not speak Gaelic.  That, in fairness, is a very serious matter, given that technology allowing people to instantly look up the pronunciation of any word in any language on a conveniently portable handheld device is a pipedream that presumably remains several centuries away.

More puzzling, however, is the inclusion of the predominantly Germanic name "the Queensferry Bothy" in the Express' list of Gaelic interlopers, and that may explain why a sub-editor seemingly felt moved to insert the tortuous phrase "names inspired by Gaelic" as a get-out clause, although even that is something of a stretch.  The word "queen" comes from the Old English "cwen", and "ferry" comes from the Old English "ferian".  Meanwhile, "bothy" is a Scots language word dating from the 18th century, and although it will doubtless make the Express homicidal to be reminded of this, Scots is a Germanic sister language of English.  It's true that the word may ultimately be a modified borrowing of the Gaelic "bothan" (although it may also come from Old Norse or simply from the English "booth"), but by the same token two-thirds of the words in the English language are borrowings from either French or Latin.  Remind me to describe every Express article ever written as "inspired by French".

As usual, the Express try to justify their anti-Gaelic bigotry by noting that the language has continued to decline even as money has been spent on it, which makes no sense because the more logical conclusion to draw is that the investment has thus far been insufficient or that the language's predicament would have been even worse without it.  Plenty enough money was spent by successive British governments on malicious attempts to eradicate Gaelic (not least by means of the education system), so it scarcely follows that money spent on reversing that process cannot be effective or legitimate.

The Express' logic might be sound in a fascistic sort of way if they were prepared to openly admit that they think the eradication of Gaelic would actually be a desirable outcome, but of course they aren't.  They insteasd still pretend to care that some academics are arguing that Gaelic is on the brink of collapse (ie. within a few decades) as a native community language, and to merely think it's wrong that money is being spent on promoting "symbolic" use of Gaelic as a second language.  That being the case, I really feel it's time to haul the Express editorial team before a Holyrood committee and ask them to confirm that they would enthusiastically get behind any diversion of funds into protecting the remaining fragile Gaelic-speaking communities and promoting the transmission of Gaelic as a first language within those communities.

It might rather fun watching them squirm on that point.

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