De-anglicising Celtic studies
Sep. 8th, 2025 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smmgI've been thinking about cross-Celtic studies spaces online and how it feels wrong that the majority of them use English as the main language. And I understand that it's because English is the most-spoken language in five out of six of the Celtic nations, and because there's no other common language shared between the Celtic nations, and because the Celtic languages are not really mutually intelligible (especially between Gaelic and Brythonic languages).
As Celtic studies students, it feels wrong that we, as the new generation in the field, are discussing and making decisions on the future of our field in English. But I don't really know what the alternative is. English is a global lingua franca and I suspect that a lot of online/international spaces and communities use English.
Maybe we need our own non-English lingua franca. I briefly thought that a Celtic-based con-lang could work (maybe something combining the most common elements of Brythonic languages with the most common elements of Gaelic languages to make it as easy to learn/understand for speakers of both branches), but I doubt you could get the whole Celtic studies community to learn a brand-new con-lang. And besides, someone would have to make it first.
At my university, we can (and mostly do) talk about our field through Welsh, since it's in Wales. Or Irish when I'm around the smaller amount of people who speak Irish here. So it's possible to de-anglicise our field of study on a smaller, more local scale, but as a pan-Celtic-nation thing I'm not sure how it could work. My immediate reaction is that I don't really like having English as the pan-Celtic lingua franca.
And sure, maybe we don't need to shove all of our nations and cultures and histories under one homogenous "pan-Celtic" umbrella or to invent new spurious pan-Celtic connections such as a con-lang, but I do feel like we should be doing more in Celtic languages. Clearly we need to revive Proto-Celtic and all learn to speak that(!)
And maybe I'm a hypocrite for writing this in English, but I think another issue is that our voices and research won't be heard or seen by others if it's all in minoritised languages. A paper written in English is likely readable to most of the Celtic studies field, whereas, in comparison, a lot less people would be able to read it if it were in Scottish Gaelic, for example. I do think all Celtic studies papers should have a translation into a Celtic language, and maybe then all papers written in a Celtic language should have an English/French translation, in order to make it accessible to as many people in the Celtic nations as possible.
I do think multilingualism/multiculturalism should be embraced in the Celtic studies field, but everything always seems to have to be English when it comes to communicating across Celtic languages/nations, and I wish it didn't. And I don't know what to do about that.
As Celtic studies students, it feels wrong that we, as the new generation in the field, are discussing and making decisions on the future of our field in English. But I don't really know what the alternative is. English is a global lingua franca and I suspect that a lot of online/international spaces and communities use English.
Maybe we need our own non-English lingua franca. I briefly thought that a Celtic-based con-lang could work (maybe something combining the most common elements of Brythonic languages with the most common elements of Gaelic languages to make it as easy to learn/understand for speakers of both branches), but I doubt you could get the whole Celtic studies community to learn a brand-new con-lang. And besides, someone would have to make it first.
At my university, we can (and mostly do) talk about our field through Welsh, since it's in Wales. Or Irish when I'm around the smaller amount of people who speak Irish here. So it's possible to de-anglicise our field of study on a smaller, more local scale, but as a pan-Celtic-nation thing I'm not sure how it could work. My immediate reaction is that I don't really like having English as the pan-Celtic lingua franca.
And sure, maybe we don't need to shove all of our nations and cultures and histories under one homogenous "pan-Celtic" umbrella or to invent new spurious pan-Celtic connections such as a con-lang, but I do feel like we should be doing more in Celtic languages. Clearly we need to revive Proto-Celtic and all learn to speak that(!)
And maybe I'm a hypocrite for writing this in English, but I think another issue is that our voices and research won't be heard or seen by others if it's all in minoritised languages. A paper written in English is likely readable to most of the Celtic studies field, whereas, in comparison, a lot less people would be able to read it if it were in Scottish Gaelic, for example. I do think all Celtic studies papers should have a translation into a Celtic language, and maybe then all papers written in a Celtic language should have an English/French translation, in order to make it accessible to as many people in the Celtic nations as possible.
I do think multilingualism/multiculturalism should be embraced in the Celtic studies field, but everything always seems to have to be English when it comes to communicating across Celtic languages/nations, and I wish it didn't. And I don't know what to do about that.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-09 02:00 pm (UTC)It reminds me of the geology field trip to Donegal I went on in the early 70s. The locals spoke Irish Gaelic amongst themselves. But when one of the students was a very Welsh nationalist young man disappeared into a corner of the pub with a few Irish nationalists to discuss issues of common interest they had to speak English to one another.