http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-20795997
Scientists are to investigate changes in brain functions among people who are
fluent in English and Gaelic.
The study involving Glasgow and Edinburgh
universities will require its test subjects to speak Gaelic exclusively for
about 40 days.
The research aims to add new scientific evidence to
suggestions that people who are bilingual have enhanced problem-solving skills
and flexible thinking.
The study will include MRI scans to help detect
changes in brain functions.
The study asked people to only speak Gaelic for forty days. Afterwards tasks
were set for people and it appears that Gaelic speakers did a lot better than
other monolingual English speakers with faster response times and more lateral
thinking. Is this because there is perhaps more neurons in the brain, better
cross functionality. From personal experience and perhaps Apjp and others might
be able to help, the principles of learning a language certainly aided me in
learning other languages. The basic structures of language, as advocated by
Chomsky IMO kick in and we are capable of learning other languages with some
ease .
There is a classic case in point where Hebrew was brought back from the dead to become a living language. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_language) This is a unique case as it has not really been replicated anywhere else and it was done at a time when Hebrew was a pidgin language. It was spoken in the markets as Arab speaking traders and those who spoke Yiddish and other languages needed a common lingua franca and Hebrew was it. The revival took place after there was a shift in grammar and a strong influence in Hebrew from Yiddish which became like a substrate for Hebrew. Most parents raised their children speaking Hebrew but it took a lot of standardising to do such a move (which was audacious to say the least). Hebrew had a helping hand from Zionism which was the nationalist movement in Israel and unfortunately Hebrew became a stick with which was used to beat Palestinians .
What do I propose for Irish?
What I propose is to regularise all the 11 verbs to create all regular verbs and tweak it slightly. Grammar be changed so that it follows English standard grammar but pronounciation becomes a key element in defining it and separating it from English. At the moment Irish is making a comeback but its all being done horribly wrong. The opposition to my idea would come from two sides. The first would be the general public who would kick up at money being spent in such a way and would seek to undermine such efforts by calling such an example a waste of money. The Irish language purists would then come around and say that I am diluting the language and changing years of history but lets make the language accessible to all .
Language does influence thinking ina lot of ways. In Stephen Frys “The Word” he discusses how feminine gender casing on language (in the example used it was Russian) mellowed out men and influenced them in a way. In Afrikaans , they dropped the gender casing completely and it took on words from other languages to become a separate language in its own right albeit it was a language of the oppressors under apartheid. Simplifying Irish to a degree and making it open to access may influence a new generation. I would be interested to know how thought patterns would be influenced by Irish and if such a language change would bring about different changes. I think Irish inspires people in terms of music and literature but its also a language of nature, the druids etc
