Gaelic amongst Schoolchildren: Ideas on Language Change and Linguistic Choices in Gaelic

Today’s children’s Gaelic is different in a number of ways from the Gaelic that their grandparents’ generation would speak (cf. Gillies 1980; MacAulay 1982; NicLeòid 2016). Sometimes Gaelic-medium¹ pupils receive harsh reactions from older, native speakers, such as: ‘Chan eil fhios ’am dè tha thu ag ràdh an sin! Dè seòrsa Gàidhlig a th’ agad an sin?’(‘I don’t know what you’re saying there! What kind of Gaelic is that?’).² Comments of that kind usually refer to different aspects of change which native speakers recognise in the children’s speech in comparison to their own. The most obvious change manifests itself in...