"A small Skye-based company has challenged the notion that the Gaelic language has no place in official documentation by submitting its annual report and accounts for 2006-2007 to Companies House, Edinburgh, in Gaelic alone. This was the company's first annual report since the Gaelic Language Act of 2005 came into effect and it had to be registered before December 28 2007.

Innleadaireachd Úi Dhonnghaile Ltd is a company registered in Scotland and was registered at Companies House, Edinburgh, in the year 2000. The main business of the company is engineering consultancy, but from the start one of its registered aims was to be involved in business in Gaelic.

According to Peter Ó Donnghaile, a professional engineer and director of Innleadaireachd Úi Dhonnghaile Ltd, “Companies House did not welcome this development. Initially our accounts were refused, one of their inspection officers claiming that all Companies House documents must be in English.”"

www.bratach.co.uk/bratach/archive/Jan08/...gaelic-accounts.html


From Companies House Website:

"Please note that the documents on our records are in English and we do not provide translations.

This site also contains information in English about Companies House, how to file information with us and information to help companies comply with the law, click here for guidance.

Although this information is not currently available in other languages, if you write to us in another language we will reply to you in the same language. We will also do our best to deal with telephone enquiries in the following languages:"


Arabic Gujarati Punjabi
Bengali Hausa Russian
Dutch Hindi Spanish
Farsi Japanese Urdu
Finnish Italian Welsh
French Norwegian Yoruba
German Portuguese
Greek Polish


Notice anything strange about this list of languages?

Erse isn't included either and both my parents spoke it fluently.

Brenna1508 wrote:
Erse isn't included either and both my parents spoke it fluently.

Yes - it's strange how the UK is so tolerant, cosmopolitan, and multicultural except for the natives.

BTW - Erse is a most unfortunate name for a language - Erish might be less liable to facetious comments.

Although I don't speak Gaelic I think it's quite ludicrous that services are offered by public bodies in all sorts of languages but not in Gaelic. The real farce is of course that people are allowed to take the written part of their driving test in a foreign language. That would be a really big help as they drive past a road sign saying "Bottomless Pit Ahead"

News
Council of Europe calls for UK minority-language push[fr][de]
Published: Friday 16 March 2007

The Council of Europe issued its second report on the situation of minority languages in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2007, which says more effort should be made in favour of Irish, Welsh and Scots/Ulster Scots/Scottish Gaelic.

The Committee of Ministers has called on the UK to create and implement comprehensive education policies for the Irish and Scottish Gaelic languages, and to further develop education in Welsh. It also asks the UK Government to:

Develop a comprehensive Irish-language policy;
give more support for the printed media in Irish and Scottish Gaelic;
improve services in Welsh in health and social-care facilities
make efforts to improve the position of Scots and Ulster Scots.
The report was drawn up by a committee of independent experts which monitors the application of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , which came into force in the UK in July 2001.

The regional or minority languages protected under the Charter in the UK are Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Ulster-Scots, Cornish and Manx Gaelic.

The 86-page report states that the main responsibility for the practical implementation of the Charter's goals of recognising and respecting the value of minority languages rests with devolved authorities, but that central government has the final responsibility to ensure that the Charter is applied.

The monitoring exercise had revealed wide differences in the treatment of minority languages around the country, it said.

Better data would help the prospects for most minority languages, according to the ministers findings: "For some of these languages there are no reliable data as to the number of speakers and their degree of language competence and it would be useful for further language planning to include this issue in future censuses.

"What seems to be symptomatic and recurrent (for minority languages in the UK) is a lack of standardisation or codification needed for the use of the language in many aspects of public life, often a low prestige attached to the language, and finally a lack of an over-arching language strategy and plan. This leads (supporters of minority languages) to perceive the current policies as being merely half-hearted."

The Strasbourg-based Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers said that the UK authorities should act on them "as a matter of priority".

www.euractiv.com/en/culture/council-euro...-push/article-162529

Scunnert wrote:
BTW - Erse is a most unfortunate name for a language - Erish might be less liable to facetious comments.
Particularly in Scotland!

I was interested in learning it, I got a book from the library called "Brush up Your Erse!"

woodysdad wrote:
I was interested in learning it, I got a book from the library called "Brush up Your Erse!"

You learn something new every day, when I heard my Mother say to my father to put a brush up her Erse I thought she was being rude, wat a silly billy I am its a book, thank you woodysdad