Gaelic language becoming popular among Germans

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Sabhal Mòr Ostaig

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German students make up the biggest number of overseas students studying the Gaelic Irish language at a Scottish Gaelic college.
 
Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college in Skye, has more German students learning the native tongue of Ireland than any other non-Scottish group.
 
This year the college is reporting three full time students from Germany taking on Gaelic full time while next year three more have signed up, with an additional three wishing to do it through distance learning and 11 more on short courses.
 
A spokeswoman for Sabhal Mòr Ostaig said: "Germans tend to be exceptional students who continue to live and work in Scotland and remain very committed to the language."
 
Lecturer Michael Klevenhaus, took an interest in Gaelic as a child and within a few years of study at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig he became fluent.
 
He now teaches 70 students a year at the Department of Celtic Studies at the University of Bonn and has penned a Gaelic-to-German phrasebook.
 
He said: "The links are being re-established with Scotland. There are students who start learning at the University of Bonn and then move to Sabhal Mòr Ostaig or one of Scotland's Universities."
 
Rena Gertz, now a fluent Gaelic speaker said: "Germans are not allowed to be proud of their heritage so they seek another culture somewhere else.
 
"If you are German and you are proud to be a German you will be called a Nazi. We can't say that we are proud, but the Scots and Irish can. Because music and poetry are alive here, they are alive for the young people."
 
Gaelic teacher and journalist Andreas Wolf, said "German culture is in decline to some extent whereas the culture in general is still alive in Scotland especially with the Gaels", he said.
 
"I think (Germans] are probably the largest group of people outside Scotland who are learning Gaelic. I think we can now be known as German Gaels."
 
Dr Donald William Stewart, from Edinburgh University, has been studying the Celtic-German connection.
 
He said: "Something went far wrong in the 20th century when the Nazis, and the communists after them, had a hold on the German people's culture.
 
"That to some extent explains why so many Germans from the 1960s onwards had an interest in Celtic culture and music.
 
"In every university in Scotland you will get at least one German student every year.
 
They come here to learn the language, sometimes surpassing the Scots."

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