Keeping Celtic languages alive on TV and the Web

September 15, 2009 11:21 AM

Since 1980, the Celtic Media Festival has brought together people who broadcast, and now Webcast, in Celtic languages. Videoblog Gwagenn.TV provides a report (with autoplaying video) from the 2009 festival whose clips and interviews are spoken and subtitled variously in Breton, French, English, Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish, Catalan, and Basque, not all of which are actually Celtic.

Special feature: Man-on-man kiss during Catalan soap opera.

(Poke around at Gwagenn.TV and you’ll find such amusements as a rocket launch carried out entirely in Breton with Beastie Boys soundtrack, an interview with an Occitan-language reggae band subtitled in Breton [Flickr snippet], and a report from a Manx-language workshop.)

posted by joeclark (5 comments total)

tinne luis; duir ruis*
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:35 AM on September 15

Is maith liom and thread seo.
posted by Elmore at 12:51 PM on September 15

and = an
posted by Elmore at 12:51 PM on September 15

Cá Bhfuil Na Gaeilg eoirí?
posted by homunculus at 6:29 PM on September 15

When I was growing up in Scotland there would often be Scots Gaelic forced into the BBC Scotland schedule. This would be done by looking at the English schedule, picking the most interesting program for that day (usually Star Trek) and deciding 'yup we'll replace that with some puppets talking gaelic'.

The best way for a language to survive is surely not by annoying geeks awaiting their fix. If they had dubbed Star Trek into Gaelic (and have the Klingons speaking Breton say) then they would have seen a surge in the popularity of the language and surely couldn't have cost more than the shoe string budget shows they put in it's place.

Upon reflection right enough Scots Gaelic was always amusing when speaking of the modern world at the time as words such as television seemed to have been lifted wholesale from English and mispronounced to make it Gaelic; 'telefision' for example, so maybe it could not have handled sci-fi.
posted by Gratishades at 2:27 AM on September 16