Thursday, 16 July 2009

Keltalingva Radio la National Examiner:

The 20th century witnessed an epidemic decrease in the number of people who spoke Celtic languages as their mother tongue. Particularly in the case of Ireland and the United Kingdom, centuries of attempts to linguistically homogenize the people of the British Isles under one speech (English) broke the link between older and younger generations of passing down languages like Gaelic or Welsh.

This, combined with the recent global saturation of English-language media, has threatened the extinction of these ancient tongues. Scholars and census-takers have warned of the grim prospect that conversational Celtic languages will never be heard again outside the academic world.

But recent years have seen resurgence in the use of Celtic languages. The desire for stronger cultural identity amongst the peoples of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and Cornwall (as well as their continental Celtic cousins, Brittany and Galicia) has lead to radio, television, news and music being increasingly conducted in native regional tongues. These have by no means superseded English, but are a strong step towards reversing the decline that Celtic languages have suffered...

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