Tag: British Newspaper Archive

An issue of "Our Gaelic Page" in The Highland News, 1897.

Learning Gaelic in 1900 : Highland News’ “Our Gaelic Page”

Over a century before the BBC’s Speaking Gaelic team were building a community of modern learners, the Highland News was doing the same with its regular feature Our Gaelic Page.

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a chance language learning find in the BNA – the regular Gaoluinn Irish language lessons in The Irish Independent. I’ve spent some time this week on the trail for similar resources for Gaelic in vintage newspapers. Did anything like Gaoluinn exist in Scotland?

Our Gaelic Page

Well, around the turn of the 19th Century, it happens that The Highland News was publishing this regular page packed with language learning content. Although Our Gaelic Page didn’t consist of lessons in the sense that Gaoluinn did, it featured poetry, prose, song, a learner’s Q&A section, and even recent exam paper questions.

Its aims are clearly different from those of Gaoluinn – this a page for those with Gaelic, who want to maintain or improve it. But it offered a wealth of material for that end; in some ways, the content reminds me a little of the NRK podcast Språkteigen – discussion of language simply for the love of learning it.

Clàrsach nan Gaidheal

Its regular song section, Clàrsach nan Gaidheal – the Gaels’ Harp – is a great find for anyone interested in traditional music. Editions ran into the hundreds, each one offering background notes, lyrics in Gaelic and English, and even the music in the form of what I think are chords. Annotation like m, n and r aren’t familiar to me, though, so if anyone has an idea about what they refer to, I’d love to hear from you!

An edition of the Gaelic song series, Clàrsach nan Gaidheal from The Highland News, 1898.

An edition of the Gaelic song series, Clàrsach nan Gaidheal from The Highland News, 1898.

Exam Reports

One of the more academic inclusions consists of exam reports from various places – sometimes Glasgow, sometimes as far as London. As well as the top performers’ names, we get, unusually, a rundown of all the exam questions, too. Newspapers as a repository of past papers is a brand new genre for me (and one I quite like, I must admit!).

That said, the exams take quite a different tack from the more communicative approach of today. This is Gaelic being taught much as Latin and Ancient Greek were – declensions and conjugations by rote. As much as I love that traditional take, perhaps treating the language as a written classic wasn’t the best strategy for reviving it in conversation.

Gaelic examination reports from The Highland News, 1902.

Gaelic examination reports from The Highland News, 1902.

Our Gaelic Page seems to have run from 1897 to 1902 – at least that’s what turns up in the BNA scans. But it’s certainly not the only focus for learners a century ago. Further searches turn up plenty of other evidence for an active, enthusiastic community at the time. Amongst the tidbits are reports from language societies, notices seeking teachers for adult classes, and ads for new reference books. Nothing new there – in fact, it’s heartening to draw a continuous line between learners then and now.

In any case, it’s a lovely glimpse into life as a language learning a hundred years back, as well as a great reading resource for this modern-day learner. I’ll doubtless be dipping into more of Our Gaelic Page over the coming months.

An Irish lesson printed in the Irish Independent, 1924 (British Newspaper Archive)

Irish Lessons from 1924

As part of my PhD research, I spend countless hours trawling the British Newspaper Archive for forgotten dialect writing. Occasionally, the net catches more than I was expecting.

So it was this week, when I was searching for some Black Country collocation or other. Because they’re often short – like doh yer (don’t you) – and because of OCR errors in the transcriptions, the chance for false positives can be really high.

But this false positive was a bit more interesting than many. The search had mistakenly picked out some Irish text in a 1924 edition of the Irish Independent. It turned out to be part of a regular “Teach Yourself” style column, Gaoluinn. That’s an alternative spelling of Gaolainn – the Munster word for Gaeilge, the Irish language, which suggests that it’s Munster dialect that is the basis for the lessons.

Now, newspapers and language learning lessons are nothing new – there was a giveaway in the early noughties (I can’t remember the paper) where you got a special edition Teach Yourself book with every copy (I still have that mini Teach Yourself Basic Italian somewhere!). But Gaoluinn looked to be part of a run of language lessons that built up readers’ knowledge across editions.

Gaoluinn – Newspaper Irish Lessons

An Irish lesson printed in the Irish Independent, 1924 (British Newspaper Archive)

An Irish lesson printed in the Irish Independent, 1924 (British Newspaper Archive)

It’s typical of the language learning of its time, taking a systematic grammar-based approach (you might remember this from my raving over Teach Yourself Polish 1948!). The particular week that popped up here explains plural formation in Irish, alongside a bunch of illustrative phrases with just a hint of the aphorism and sermon about them.

A lovely thing about the lessons is its attempt at ‘folk’ phonetic spelling alongside the Irish. You can imagine readers giving it a go – readers whose families had maybe lost the language a couple of generations ago, and wanted to reconnect with Irish.

There’s More Out There

There’s clearly loads more Gaoluinn to explore in the archive, but I haven’t investigated further yet. Of course, I have more pressing things to be getting on with on the BNA, as fun as false positives are!

But I’m intrigued by the find nonetheless. A quick peek shows that it ran from at least 1922 to 1925, and later on, often taught via the target language (how modern – the way I learnt to teach!). I have so many questions, though… Was it serialised from an existing course book, or was it turned into a course book later? Was it popular or well received?

It’s definitely something I’ll circle back to when I have a bit more time. And, incidentally,  I’m sure there’s some PhD material in there for anyone interested in the evolution of language teaching, too!