Wednesday, September 14, 2005

14/09/05 Gaelic Bread? Gaelic Bread?

I was watching a kids animation show in Gaelic before I left for work this morning. It was the strangest thing. The characters were animals (eg a duck, a frog, a badger etc), but they were dressed up in human clothes and spoke Gaelic to each other. What a bizarre concept! I've never seen anything like it in my life.
Whoever heard of animals dressing up as humans and speaking to each other in a human language? the creators of this so-called "entertainment" must be on drugs.
Should we really be subjecting our children to this surreal, maverick nonsense?
I'm often curious as to the size of the audience that actually watches these gaelic programmes. Not very many, I would hazard a guess.
Surely, it would make the programme more accessible to a larger audience if they included sub-titles with the Gaelic?
This would give people an opportunity to learn a bit more of the language as they could match up the spoken language to the on-screen translation.
I can't understand anything of it. It's like listening to Kath after a few glasses of red wine. Completely unintelligible. You just can't isolate any words or phrases at all, (Jim exits stage left and runs to take cover)...
I've learnt quite a lot of Spanish,French, Italian dialect just by watching sub-titled films. It seems hopelessly eccentric to put shows on in which 99% of the potential viewers haven't a clue what is going on.
I'm not anti-Gaelic though. Not at all. I think it's important to preserve our culture. That sounded quite sensible there didn't it...
Oh my giddy aunt! I must be more stupid and fatuous in the Blog for the rest of the week to make amends....

2 comments:

Cloudland Blue Quartet said...

There is a Gaelic programe I've seen listed on BBC2 called "Cunt Ass"...I've never watched it though...

Why not scrap Gaelic from the TV schedules altogether and split equally the millions wasted on it amongst all those who can prove they speak the language...

Anonymous said...

I did read that it would be more cost-effective to put the gaelic programs onto video and mail them to all gaelic speakers.