Rant.

This is a rant, so don't say you haven't been warned.

It's about my Gaelic course. This is advertised as a course for complete beginners. For people who know no Gaelic at all. Well maybe they can murmur My name is, but basically you're in the starting blocks of ignorance, working towards a finishing tape where in six months time you can chat about the weather without making a total twit of yourself.  All in it together, all exploring and hopefully overcoming, the difficulties together, taking heart from the fact that you're not the only one who wonders why a language would change the first letter of a woman's name from M to V, if you should happen to be looking her in the eye and saying something directly to her, rather than standing at the other side of the room, digging your mate in the ribs with your elbow and pointing her out.

 

This is important because language learning is about trial and error, it's about confidence and its about not feeling an idiot when you make a mistake or don't understand; and you don't feel an idiot if it turns out that the person next to you doesn't understand either. Sigh of relief: no you are not as thick as a brick, the topic is challenging.

 

This course being distance learning we have a 'virtual' place of communication and I wandered onto it last Tuesday to see if anyone had put up a chat thread for our tutorial group. They had, and I opened it up. I don't know what I was expecting; a welcome from the eager beaver student who had done it I suppose, maybe an invitation for us all to say why we wanted to learn Gaelic, how we'd found the experience of a telephone tutorial, that sort of thing.

 

What I was not expecting to see was a long message from said eager beaver  fellow student written in Gaelic (but then thoughtfully translated into English) saying, 'This is the place to leave your contact details if your're interested in communicating and working together by e-mail, phone, facebook, snapchat, meeting up for a cup of coffee or anything else'

 

(Snapchat? What the heck is Snapchat?)

 

Anyway Henry in Texas replied in English but was soon coaxed into a weather report in Gaelic; it was hot apparently and he'd like to be colder. Originator of thread, living in Edinburgh countered with how it was cold and wet in Edinburgh, she preferred the warmth. I know this because they continued to translate this fascinating exchange for the benefit of the rest of us. Or maybe just for me. Maybe I am really the only person in the class who doesn't speak a word of Gaelic beyond My name is....

 

So Henry is far from a complete beginner and the Edinburgh lady is obviously fairly competent already. So my question is, what are they doing on a beginners course, a course for people who know no Gaelic.

 

Apart that is from intimidating the rest of us into inadequacy?