NEXT time some anti-Gaelic bore moans at you about a Gaelic translation on the train station sign, just show them this beautiful chart.
Illustrator Andy Arthur, has pulled together this Monoglot’s railway map of East and Central Scotland, with no Gaelic, Celtic or other foreign Mumbo-Jumbo to confuse or offend the easily offended traveller.
It’s a work in progress, and Arthur admits Belshill’s not quite right, and that some of the names he’s used are from older sources, so there may be a more modern interpretation.
But the map has gone viral on social media.
Every few month it seems, there’s a debate in the press and online about bilingual English/Gaelic signage.
Just last month, The Herald’s Brian Beacom thundered: “Do we need to have a Gaelic signpost at Gilmour Street in Paisley? Yes, it’s nice for tourists to think they’ve arrived in Brigadoon but it all smacks of cultural fabric softener aimed at keeping the Gaelic supporters as sweet as tablet.
“But perhaps we should let social Darwinism decide what happens to Gaelic. And if it has to go the way of Latin as a spoken language, so be it.”
Highlands Tory MSP Donald Cameron summed it up recently, came to the defence of the language, saying “too often, debates about Gaelic descend into proxy battles over completely unrelated issues.”
He added: “The constitution is a particular culprit, especially on social media. Gaelic is frequently appropriated as a quasi-nationalist cause on the one hand or attacked by unionist ultras on the other.”
The National caught up with Arthur and asked him why he did it.
“Mainly to prove a point,” he said. “The point being that Gaelic, and other non-English languages, have gifted us a huge legacy of place names, without which we’re not actually sure where we are in Scotland, which is why the map is deliberately schematic, to remove any geographic cues.”
Arthur said the names “tell us of who lived here and of the landscape they lived in, so many are descriptive and/or agricultural.
“So for the ‘English names only’ purists, you’d have to give back nearly ever railway station name in the central belt and then nobody would know where they are anymore.”
The illustrator says he’s working on a “West/south of Glasgow version”.
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