Can Celtic Cultures and Languages Continue to Survive?
Pessimistic assessments of the situation of today’s Celtic cultures and languages can lead one to think that we may very well be standing at the deathbed of the entire Celtic continuum. If that is the case, then a wellspring of human cultural expression that stretches back continuously for three thousand years will simply cease to be. That would be an inestimable loss, not only for the Celtic survivors and Celtic-descended peoples, but also to the world. But the continued resilience and persistence of Celtic movements, whether for maintenance or for revival, in the face of all of the obstacles, says much about the intrinsic value and life of the Celtic continuum. How many people still believe that the Cornish language is dead, even though, lo and behold, it has been revived? How many people predicted that the Irish Gaelic language would be dead by the end of the 20th century, yet lo and behold, it miraculously held on and has now shown signs of growing again? In every case where Celtic cultures and languages were supposed to have been dying out, they have held on remarkably, despite the disastrous declines that still threaten them. The fact that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, fighting for Celtic survival means that, at least for the present time period, Celtic cultures and languages will be around for some time to come. But is that the best that can be done?
A particular study must be made of the Irish situation because the Republic of Ireland is today the only Celtic nation that is completely independent, at least in political terms. The Republic once had as one of its goals the complete revival of the Irish language as the major daily medium of communication and expression for the whole society. Obviously, that goal has not been achieved, at least at this point in time. Since the founding of the Republic, the government has mellowed out somewhat, and now officially pushes for a ‘bilingual’ society, in both external and internal respects. As anyone acquainted with reversing language decline knows, that sort of policy doesn’t work overall, even though it sounds like a laudable goal. Speakers of hard-pressed languages need areas in which their own language encompasses the totality of society, community, and family. The Irish government, in promoting official bilingualism, seems like it is implicitly giving up on the struggle to see the Irish-language have such areas. Perhaps the Irish government can look to the goal of first securing the language’s future by implementing gaelicization and gaelic mono-lingualism for internal purposes, and multilingualism for external purposes—similar policies are a given in many other nation states, and in areas where language declines have been halted. (Refer to the Basque/Euskadi situation as one example of an area doing so.) But perhaps the Irish government, controlled by anglicized bureaucracies, doesn’t really want to see the messy issue of the language existing much longer.
Obviously, bilingualism and multilingualism is a good thing, but the current bilingualism that exists in Celtic-speaking communities is not the result of people wanting to be enriched by other languages, but of cultural dominance and oppression by the larger Imperial states embodied in both England and France, which for generations have expanded their power and influence into almost every facet of the surviving Celtic nations. Many people unaware of the situation implicitly assume that Celtic languages are obsolescent and offer nothing of value to modern speakers. They also assume that Celtic language-speakers give up their languages by free choice due to the supposed inherent superiority of languages such as English and French. These assumptions come from the attitudes of people used to their languages being spoken and learned everywhere—attitudes that were created to justify Imperial expansion to begin with.
The tenacity of Celtic language-speakers, enthusiasts, and activists in the face of overwhelming odds does bode well for the future survival of the languages. But that is not enough. Political situations (the ‘national question’) must resolved as well, giving the Celtic peoples today a framework in which they can practice and develop their own cultures and societies. It must be recognized that the oppression of Celtic languages and cultures has happened and is happening, even in the independent Irish Republic. Injustices must be brought to light so that they can be healed. Then not only the symptoms, but the hand of oppression, whether political or economic, must be lifted either by gradual civil processes, or, as the Irish did, by spectacular revolutions, that will clear some breathing space for Celtic peoples to gain control over their own lands and resources. And both types of struggle are in evidence in every Celtic land today. No matter the means, if Celtic people can begin to regain control over their own nations, be it total independence or some sort of democratic regional autonomy, the cultures and languages will have more of a chance than they do now. So it is obvious that the Celtic cultures and languages can survive. But will they? That answer depends on many of you reading this.