Letter: Strong language

I am dismayed the Scottish Government has decided to cease all funding for the wonderful programmes that TAIC/CSNA have developed for Gaelic language revitalisation.

As a scholar and language advocate who has worked for more than 40 years for the survival of endangered languages, I have been following TAIC's innovative programmes with great interest. They are popular and effective in both Scotland and your sister speech communities in Nova Scotia, and are a great model for the rest of the world.

Language revitalisation is a strong and growing movement around the world, and Scotland's new approach to bringing it back into the family and community for daily communication is one of the best. I have been honoured to have TAIC director Finlay McLeod write a chapter for my forthcoming edited book, Bringing the Language Home, about families who use their endangered languages at home with their children. His chapter is about TAIC's family language programme, one of the few in the world designed specifically to help families regain Gaelic as their home language.

How can Scotland give such a blow to its own heritage language?

Leanne Hinton

Department of Linguistics

University of California at Berkeley